Okay, maybe you heard me say this before, but you hafta see THE COVE. When we played it at the Darkside Cinema, unexplicably, we had a very low turnout, even after I promoted it to the university and marine science... [...]
This weekend I attended my 40th Blackford High School reunion. It was a blast, but in that "you hadda be there" kind of way. If you haven't gone to one of your high school reunions, I'm sure you have your... [...]
Poor Teddy. May he rest in peace. But his death is not in vain. Like the events surrounding the death of Michael Jackson, his memorials will be an economic stimulus for all branches of media. The Subject Line of the... [...]
To celebrate the 60th year of the National Book Awards, the National Book Foundation will present a book-a-day blog on the Fiction winners from 1950 to 2008. Each day, from July 7th to September 21st, the blog will discuss one... [...]
The Boston Globe is featuring 40 big, beautiful photographs called "Remembering Apollo 11" in their online gallery called The Big Picture. This is but a mere thumbnail snapshot of the first image. [...]
The West End in London is buzzing about the sell-out production from the National Theatre: WarHorse. In a dramatic departure from traditional theater, the horses in the play are giant puppets—each controlled by three puppeteers. The footage reveals the stunning... [...]
I don't have to tell you the many, many reasons we are looking forward to having Trader Joe's open a store in Corvallis. Cheers went up around the area when the news broke yesterday morning. Lots of local comments on...' [...]
Shortly after noon on July 8, comes the moment that can be called 12:34:56 7/8/9. In another 80 years or so, we'll have 12:34:56 7/8/90, but that's another story.' [...]
I don't always play on the Interwebs. Sometimes I do other things. For example, in May I read 9 novels. That's a lot, even for me. So, not a lot of blogging. You can't have it both ways. [...]
In an admittedly serpent's tail-ish reference, I'm posting a link to an ironic syllabus and course overview for the Internet age, by Robert Lanham, courtesy of McSweeney's. The course is designed for students wishing to prepare for a career in... [...]
My son Coleman Howard remixes music videos live in West Coast clubs, under the name DJ C.Flo. Mixing videos live is different from what video DJs (VJs) do. Typically, a VJ will create video effects while someone else runs the... [...]
I can't stop going to Thru-You.com and streaming the musical selections created by Kutiman. This is, basically, an "album" of 7 new and original songs, created fresh by putting bits and pieces of YouTube videos together. One song is soul/funk...' [...]
I'm thinking about experimenting a little with our candy selection at the Darkside Cinema. It might be fun to offer candy that appeals to our sense of nostalgia. I never see Neccos, Sugar Daddies, or Bit-O-Honeys in movie snack bars...' [...]
Oregon State University's student-run radio station, KBVR, features a series each Monday at 11:00 a.m. Pacific, called "Talking in the Theater" and hosted by Mervin Kurniawan. In this MP3 recording, Paul and Jon discuss the 2009 Academy Awards. The show... [...]
Today in Sacramento, the original home of Tower Records, the big yellow and red sign was taken down. Russ Solomon started the Tower empire in the 1950's, selling records out of his father's pharmacy on Broadway in Sacramento. The Tower...' [...]
There were lots of great short films shown this weekend at the da Vinci Film Festival. But what seemed to catch my imagination the most were the films created by teenagers. The amount of talent and commitment shown by these... [...]
In my previous post, I talked about the da Vinci Fast Film Project, where each film used a balloon as a prop. Here's another inspired use of balloons in movies. Jerry Rees has put together archival movie footage from many... [...]
Over the weekend at the da Vinci Film Festival we screened the Fast Film Projects to a sold-out crowd. These films were created in only 48 hours by 9 different teams ranging in age from 12 to 60. Some of... [...]
What a treat! The NY Times is hosting the full video of a 1981 Dick Cavett interview with John Cheever and John Updike. It's 28 and a half minutes long, but not long enough. Dick Cavett: A Last Look at... [...]
If you know me, you know I am a long-time fan of Riddley Walker, by Russell Hoban. Over the decades, I must have bought 15 copies and given most of them away. In fact, last Friday at the Friends of... [...]
My friend Ian is living on display for three months in the upscale, green Portland building Cyan PDX. From the website: "Cyan PDX are well-designed urban apartments with small carbon footprints for real people." This is an interesting way to... [...]
The 2009 da Vinci Film Festival will be held March 6 – 8 in Corvallis, Oregon, featuring 30+ selected films ranging from features to short subjects, documentaries, and films by young filmmakers. Check out the new television commercial on YouTube! [...]
If you like tag clouds, you will enjoy Wordle. As the site says: Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source... [...]
Here's a segue back to my eclectic postings, from what I now see has become an Obama-obsessed blog. By now, most humans have seen the incredible panoramic photo of Barack Obama's inauguration, taken by New York photographer David Bergman and... [...]
Another presidential post, this one on the positive side. Has there ever been a cooler president? Women swooned for JFK, it's true. But could he dance? Today on KRVM-FM I heard the song Chocolate City by Parliament. George Clinton sings:...' [...]
Looking through some boxes today, I ran across this note. In the intervening years I'd forgotten that I wrote about events on that terrible day. A pretty cold account, but then I never did feel safe writing about my feelings,...' [...]
This impressive page is a tiled arrangement of many hundreds of newspaper front pages from around the world, featuring headlines announcing Barack Obama's election to the U.S. presidency. The images were compiled by (simply) "Geoff" with help from the Newseum's... [...]
This narrated slideshow of images by Damon Winter for the New York Times contains several photographs you will long remember. Worth clicking through! Slideshow takes just a coupla minutes. [...]
In 2004, bin Laden described his game plan. Why has the administration (and Congress!) been in lock-step ever since, carrying out every aspect of his plan as if they were his lackeys? If someone gives you the inside scoop, what... [...]
A screen capture from last night's Presidential debate, the last before the election. McCain must be a major shareholder in the Comedy Writers Corporation.' [...]
Now that I'm contracting again, I went looking for a simple time tracker to install on my Powerbook G4. I downloaded Fanurio and used it for 30 days free trial period, just the right amount of time to go through... [...]
Just going through old emails, I ran across this shot of the exalted shish kebab we made at Mom's last Christmas. Yum. I think it might be time for dinner, dagnabbit.' [...]
This is a hilarious tribute to LOLcats, courtesy of the well-respected British newspaper, The Guardian. "George Bush paid a visit to Beijing for the Olympics. We took liberties about what his thoughts were during the trip." There are 9 photos.... [...]
I started out contracting on and off at Edge Design for a couple of years. Then I spent 4.5 years on staff. I worked with a lot of great people over the years. My last day at Edge is scheduled... [...]
In this movie: The secret lives of invisible magnetic fields are revealed as chaotic ever-changing geometries. All action takes place around NASA's Space Sciences Laboratories, UC Berkeley, to recordings of space scientists describing their discoveries. Actual VLF audio recordings control... [...]
The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire reported on July 16, 2008, 6:04 pm: McCain Surrogate Fiorina Meets With Clinton Supporters The McCain campaign dispatched its top female surrogate Tuesday to meet with about 25 disaffected supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton... [...]
LoveFoodHateWaste is a gold mine for those of us who hate to throw away good food—or food that we allowed to go bad in the fridge because we just couldn't use it up fast enough. I buy romaine lettuce three... [...]
As one of thousands of ex-employees, it is with sadness that I note the passing of yet another icon of our generation: Cody's Books in Berkeley. I worked at Cody's from 1979 to mid-1981, along with a group of unforgettable... [...]
From the first time I saw one in McCall's magazine, probably at the dentist's office around 1958, I have loved makeovers. Don't you? I was fascinated by these Before-and-Afters. Click any of the photos and be amazed. The Makeover Guy,... [...]
This comes from the New York Times:Researchers say they have unearthed a recording of the human voice, made by a little-known Frenchman, that predates Edison’s invention of the phonograph by nearly two decades.The 10-second recording of a singer crooning the... [...]
Last fall I attended the Internet Strategy Forum, where the focus was on the role of Community in business websites. The most distinctly out-of-touch speaker was from FedEx, and it was painful to watch the audience barely hiding their eye-rolling.... [...]
My sister Liz is busy with her organizing career, and has been partnering with various companies. In this brief spot, she acts as a spokesperson to tout the benefits of using Bento, a new oreganizing product from Filemaker, which works... [...]
In his 2004 writeup, software geek Ron Avitur tells about designing and developing the PowerPC version of the Graphing Calculator. The nifty Graphing Calculator was developed under the radar at Apple by a team of people led by Ron and... [...]
JP Rangaswami, in his Confused of Calcutta blog, posits the economic and societal basis for the shift from institutions to individuals as drivers for products and innovations. This article, which he calls The Kernel for This Blog, proposes the need... [...]
