Kids These Days

From Chabon’s recent compilation of essays on manhood.

Kids write their own manuals in a new language made up of the things we give them and the things that derive from the peculiar wiring of their heads. …When he was still a toddler, Abraham liked to put a glow-in-the-dark bedsheet-style Lego ghost costume over a Green Goblin minifig and seat him on a Sioux horse, armed with a light saber, then make the Goblin do battle with Darth Vader, mounted on a black horse, armed with a bow and arrow. That is the aesthetic at work in the Legosphere now–not the modernist purity of the early years or the totalizing vision behind the dark empire of modern corporate marketing but the aesthetic of the Lego drawer, of the mash-up, the pastiche that destroys its sources at the same time that it makes use of and reinvents them.

That is the brilliance of the system, and something i feel we really miss out on as adults – seeing what can be made when we actively set aside the instruction manuals, an act we are not prone to, due to the inherent risk (money wasted, a drive back to IKEA, electrocution, possible firing).

Nerd Uprising

Thankfully, George Lucas was available to once again crush the hopes and dreams of his fans.

Understanding Twitter

…in relationship to facebook.

On Facebook, you’re supposed to connect with close friends. Becoming friends with someone means he or she gets to see your content, but you also get to see his or her content in return. On Twitter, that’s not the case: you choose what information you want to receive, and you have no obligation to follow anybody. Facebook emphasizes profiles and people, while Twitter emphasizes the actual content (in its case, tweets).

The result is that the stream of information is simply different on both services. You’re more likely to talk about personal issues, happy birthday wishes, gossip about a changed Facebook relationship status, and postings about parties on your Facebook News Feed. On Twitter, you’re more likely to find links and news, and you’re more likely to follow brands, news sources and other entities outside of your social graph. In fact, Twitter tells me that one out of every four tweets includes a link to some form of content.

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AT-AT Afternoon

Courtesy of Mr. Pinero..

Rube Goldberg

I can’t even begin to imagine how many takes this took.

Hoth for the Holidays

Similar to my assertion that The Two Towers is a great holiday movie, I’ve always thought Empire Strikes Back is a fantastic Christmas flick. This guy has taken it a few steps further and combined another few of my favorite things, photography and legos, with my favorite holiday classic. He captures these scenes by submerging the whole scene in a water tank and sifting in plaster of Paris.

Amazing shots, Cool technique, and the hilarious captions are awesome.

Social Networking Backfire

“There’s a certain amount of intelligence work involved in kidnapping that Facebook makes easier,” said Roberto Briceno Leon, director of the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence. “Before, what did kidnappers do? They could spend months checking accounts, studying a person’s daily movements in order to be able to plan the kidnapping. That implies an investment. Now, Facebook makes that easier.”

Honestly, it’s surprising this hasn’t been happening more. Internet narcissism has it’s price. Not that it’s really holding anybody back, myself included.

Libraries

A boarding-school library in New England has completely eliminated the old stacks and gone digital.

“If I look outside my window,” Tracy says, “and I see my student reading Chaucer under a tree, it is utterly immaterial to me whether they’re doing so by way of a Kindle or by way of a paperback.”

This is interesting to me, not because it’s cutting edge – it actually seems well past due for libraries to make the jump to an electronic format – but because the of the backlash they seem to be getting. Who wouldn’t rather have a giant beautiful old book to carry around? But we’ve entered the century with 6 billion confederates riding around on this tiny rock of ours, and the only way were going to make it to the next century is by educating the hell out of everybody.

That means we need to be pushing out all our information to as many people, as possibly as quickly as possibly. The internet provides that, but libraries need to be the linchpin of the strategy – to promote the database if knowledge, the new methods of research – to teach the next generation the all important task of how to educate themselves. But the format, the easiest cheapest way to disseminate knowledge to the remotest poorest parts of the world is electrically. Monks used to hand-write books and the global knowledge-base was proportionately small. Then came Gutenberg. Now comes something else.

Space Elevators

Just pure, geeky awesomeness.

In a major test of the concept, robotic machines powered by laser beams will try to climb a cable suspended from a helicopter hovering more than a half-mile (one kilometer) high.

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I’m guessing jetpacks won’t be ready to go any time soon, but if I could ride on a laser-powered space elevator before I go, I’d be feeling pretty good about things.

Fake Style

I (believe it or not) own several copies of the AP Style Guide and regularly use it for light reading, so I feel like I can say with authority that this fake version, posted through twitter, has an extremely high awesomeness content. Catch it while you can, before the AP sues to have it shut down.

The guide is very current, too. For example, be sure that you “Refer to him as ‘President Obama’ when he first appears in an article, ‘Soul Brother Number 1‘ in subsequent mentions.”

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