I’ve been coming across alot of very negative reviews of the new Star Wars film, but of the reviews I’ve come across, this one hits the mark for me: Review: Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Kids Will Love It, Geeks will Shudder | Geekdad from Wired.com

When the lights went up at the end, all of these men — like me — trooped out with the 5 and 6 year old son, no doubt many of them to Toys R Us to load up on new Star Wars toys or McDonald’s for a Star Wars meal. And the kids (well at least my son) loved it. It was perfect for him.

As for me, I thought it was going to be painful. But I tried to see it from his perspective, and I thought it had alot in it for him. I also thought it moved along at a pretty good pace, too.

As for George Lucas, he now has a whole new fan base to work from, and a more accepting one at that. (Plus he has all those Dad’s to buy all that follow-on merchandise! 🙂 )

This should be interesting. According to Yahoo News — ok, Reuters — we will have:

“Daniel Okulitch (as) Seth Brundle and Ruxandra Donose (as) Veronica Quaife in the opera ‘The Fly’. David Cronenberg’s sci-fi (sic…I would use SF) terror movie ‘The Fly’ has taken on a new life in the Canadian director’s first foray into the world of opera. ‘The Fly’, described as a classical re-imagining of the 1986 movie about an eccentric scientist who turns into a massive fly, will open the new season at Los Angeles Opera in September with LA Opera director Placido Domingo conducting the orchestra.

I think Cronenberg is a significant artist, and if Domingo is on-board, it could be a great opera. In some ways, “The Fly” has similar themes to “La Boheme”. Cross your fingers/wings. 🙂

Miroslav Tichy took this:

with this:

Yes, I was fascinated, too, especially these days, where digital cameras are everywhere. Go to Jason Kottke’s post to get the details.

Which nations are the most corrupt? Most generous? Healthiest? If you want to know any of these things, you want to head over to NationMaster.com. There is so much information there, including this result, Probability of not reaching 40 (most recent) by country, which starkly highlights the North-South divide of the world.

I was somewhat surprised to see that in many categories, Canada ranks high but not in the top, including health. But see for yourself.

if you use the site Mr. Picassohead! It’s easy: anyone who can drag ‘n’ drop can make Picasso-like portraits. Here’s mine!

You won’t be able to produce “Guernica” with it, but you can have some fun.

There are so many good architecture and design blogs I have stumbled upon, it is difficult to know which one to follow. (And it also makes me wonder why I would subscribe to magazines covering the same topics.)

One I recently liked is CubeMe. It had alot of good posts, including one of this incredible museum planned for Qatar.

For more on the Museum of Modern Arab Art and other interesting design/architecture, see CubeMe.

The nytimes.com has an article on what I consider a precious addition to any city: the streetcar. While subways and buses can move masses of people, streetcars add a quality to the urban landscape that the others cannot (save London’s doubledecker buses). I believe that any city that can get streetcars should get them. And unlike other modes of transportation, age adds to their appeal (as I can attest to, having travelled on some old streetcars in places like San Francisco).

See the slideshow here, Desirable Streetcars.

There’s also an article.

The nytimes.com has a classic recipe for minestrone today: Recipes for Health – Summer Minestrone With Fresh Basil.

Now, you could follow this, but I have a better suggestion. Use the recipe as a guide, and instead of slavishly following it, take advantage of all the great vegetables available at this time of year to make the soup of the day. Let’s run down the list:

• olive oil? Sure, but if you have another oil like walnut of peanut or even corn, go with that
• onion? I would keep that, unless you want to go with an onion substitute, like a shallot or even a red onion (nice colour)
• Carrots? Keep. Get some nice fresh ones (not those ones in the bag)
• Celery? Sure, although I sometimes pass on celery, since I end up throwing most of it away. But it gives a nice flavour.
• Salt and garlic? Got to keep those, though try and experiment with more garlic
• Tomatoes? Must have those. But get fresh ones. Try yellow ones, if you have them.
• Turnip? A good choice, but if you see another root vegetable of comparable size, try that. A big yam or a fistful of potatoes will also work. Beets may work, but that might be a bit trickier. But it could be delicious, too.
• Zucchini? I like zucchini, especially yellow zucchini. But mushrooms would also work well here.
• As for the cheese and herbs, use whatever you like for the herbs. Have a bunch of basil or tarragon, then go with that. If you have some romano or other hard cheese, try it out. Asiago would be great.
• Can of beans? Really, anything will work here. I love beans in minestrone, but don’t get hung up on a certain type. Heck, even lentils will work fine. Or if you are fresh out, add more pasta and vegetables.
• Green beans? What about yellow? Is there a deal on asparagus? Then try that.
• Soup pasta? Really, any kind will do. You could even use orzo.
• Basil or pesto? What about sundried tomato pesto, or tapanade? Or any thick spread you might like.
• Finally, consider using a stock in place of 2 quarts of water. Use chicken, beef or vegetable stock.

Minestrone gives you an opportunity to use up and highlight vegetables you have. When you think of minestrone, think “leftover soup”, and you will end up with something useful and delicious!

Businessweek.com is talking about an a new program American Express has launched. In a nutshell:

“Rather than retiring and leaving the company at once, participants gradually give up their day-to-day responsibilities, while replacing some of their free time with activities like mentoring and teaching master classes to their successors. In addition, they get more time out of the office doing whatever they want—be it planning for life in retirement or doing charity work. The phased retiree continues to receive a portion of his previous salary, benefits as usual, and the company in turn gets to hold on to some of its most valuable employees a year or more past traditional retirement age.”

In the “1960s and ’70s public sculpture was contemporary art’s foremost fatality — deader than painting actually. The corpse generally took the form of corporate, pseudo-Minimalist plop art.” Amen to that. But sculpture has been changing, as this article, Public Art, Eyesore to Eye Candy in the NYTimes.com neatly explains and illustrates with a great slide show. And what is it about the new sculpture that makes it “So Different, So Appealing“? 🙂 Well, by…

“Freely mixing elements of Pop, Minimalism, conceptual art and realism, these pieces also often benefit from new technologies and materials that make them dynamic and provocative.”

I highly recommend the article. A good overview of what is happening in sculpture, with a bit of a review of two of the more signifigant artists in sculpture today, Jeff Koons and Richard Serra, and a little shot taken at Damien Hirst, too. 🙂

make it (freshly sliced) has a selection of these superb illustrations of lyrics. (Can you tell which one this is? 🙂 )

I found this from another good tumblelog, http://marclafountain.com/

Lots of good stuff from tumblr. You should get your own.

Over at the NTimes.com is a feast for folks like me who like to look at sports statistics. It’s a History of World Records – Interactive Graphic. For many sports, it appears that the improvements have made a gradual progression over many decades. But not all. One that stuck for me was the women’s marathon.

In May of 1967, just over 40 years ago, Maureen Wilton of Canada set the record time for the women’s marathon with a time of 3:15:22. In just a few months, Anni Pede-Erdkamp of West Germany beat that with a time of 3:07:27. Ten years later, Grete Waitz of Norway is bringing it down to 2:32:30. That’s seems incredible. But that’s has been the way it has been for the women’s marathon. In April of 2003, Paul Radcliffe ran a time of 2:15:25.

Who knows what women will do in this sport? From the looks of things, two words: greatly improve.

Go here for your all the stats.

(flickr photo from Conor Lawless’ photostream)

You can easily find lots of articles on what to do when you go to New York City. Having visited many times myself, I think this article, Gridskipper: 18 Steps to Having a Good First Trip to New York, is one of the better ones.

Rules like “Fear Not the Subway” and “Get the Hell out of Midtown” and “Identify and Avoid Freaks” are excellent pieces of advice, and just three of eighteen good tips. Go read the article, then go to NYC.

(flickr photo from aturkus’ photostream)

If you have worked at Starbucks, wanted to work there, or (much more likely) ordered a coffee at one of the many stores they have, you now have a chance to hear what the people behind the counter think by going to this tumblelog at tumblr: 147xxxx

It’s a fun expose of life at Starbucks. So get yourself a grande <insert your favourite Starbucks beverage> and go read it.

P.S. this marks another great use of tumblr.

This is pride, naturally

See the other six here: yatzer | designistoshare

Not only does trove have great wallpaper, they also have a nice way of showing it. Check them out here

If you are concerned about this, go this web site.

For more information, click on Canadian Food Inspection Agency – Index of Food Recalls

Or better yet, if you have an RSS feed reader, you can add their feeds by going here and get updates as they occur.

This feed for all Food recalls and allergy alerts is: http://active.inspection.gc.ca/eng/util/newrsse.asp?cid=40

You might think this woman is looking at a portrait of herself

but it is actually a mirror. If you were to stand in front of it, it would resemble you. There’s more on it at the very interesting oliveloaf design blog, including a fascinating video showing how it works.

If you are following the upcoming U.S. presidential elections and you are interested in how it is going to turn out, consider going to this site, FiveThirtyEight.com: Electoral Projections Done Right.

The name comes from the “number of electors in the electoral college” and it has the mission of accumulating and analyzing “polling and political data in way that is informed, accurate and attractive. Most narrowly, to give you the best possible objective assessment of the likely outcome of upcoming elections.”

I’ve seen a number of other sites reference it, and I can see why. It can put lots of numbers at your fingertips. So if you want to join the punditocracy :), or you are trying to cut through all the chatter to get a better sense of how the election will turn out, pay it a visit.

Sometimes greatness in sport is shown with dominance. Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps are examples of that at this year’s Beijing Olympics. Another way to show greatness is dealing with adversity. Paula Radcliffe demonstrated that amply in the women’s mararthon event, though I felt she didn’t get enough credit for that.

Adam van Koeverden also gave a good example of dealing with adversity in bounching back from his “shocking eighth in the 1,000 metres” race to go on and win the silver in the 500 metre race. It must have been difficult to get over the shock of losing like that. But he did, and in the long run, it may make him a greater athlete in the years to come.

So hats off to him. And for more on the story, you can read Christie Blatchford’s article in the globeandmail.com: Van Koeverden rebounds for silver.

Great stuff all ’round.

(Linked photo above from: Shaun Best/Reuters)

No, I don’t know either, but if you check out this: The Diver’s View – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com, then you will get a better sense.

Thanks to kottke.org for this. Like he said, it’s awesome!

“Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.” – John Kenneth Galbraith

Speaking of the Kindle, you can get newspapers delivered to your Kindle wirelessly. Alot of newspapers as delivered this way. See Amazon.com: The Kindle Store for more details.

As for me, I am not sure everyone will want to pay for newspaper delivery when they can browse the sites for free. But there will likely be many readers who will want to read the paper in a way that is different than using a computer. Personally I am betting that eventually computer monitors will be as big as desks or drawing tables and then people will read those.

(We used to tip our delivery boy when I was a kid. I’m not sure if you have to tip your wireless router for delivering it. 🙂 )

Not just for everyone, the Black Card (actually the Centurion Card) is truly a card for the well off (like John McCain and many Hollywood celebs, too). Wikipedia has a run down on it. And of course, there is a blog on it too!

Ok, not really. But this site: Deliver me from Swedish furniture has an interesting concept. For example, this is the Bjernny (type in “bernie” when you go to the site and you will see why.)

People who like IKEA will like the site. And those who are less than excited about IKEA will also like the site!

Christie Blatchford has a thoughtful article — not a blog post –outlining her thoughts on blogging and journalism:

globeandmail.com: I’m not blogging this, mark my words

It’s worth reading, because Blatchford is a good journalist and a good writer. I think her comments on blogging are comparable with comments people used to make about typewriters and computers. There are benefits to traditional ways of writing, but the traditional is being swept away by the new. Conservatives, in the best sense of the word, need to remind people what could be lost, and how important it is to conserve at least the essential goodness of the traditional way of doing things.

Over at the EFF web site is an excellent commentary by Hugh D’Andrade on the Kindle. While some (Steve Jobs, for example) have not put much stock in it, it appears it has traction. Moreover, Hugh makes a good argument for digital books.

I still like books myself, but I find myself increasing trying to have all my media in digital form. While I am not crazy about the Kindle, I think better digital book readers will come along to drive adoption.

I highly recommend this article: What If the Kindle Succeeds? at the Electronic Frontier Foundation website..

(Image from wikipedia)

Interesting. This could be good for HMV as it becomes more of a communications and media company and less of a music company. See this article, reportonbusiness.com: HMV to sell Bell cellphones

Look at Usain Bolt’s expression here:

He is overflowing with emotion. As well he should be!

What I love about the Olympics is obvious from looking at the great slide shows that the nytimes.com puts together. The thing that I love is the human drama of it. The Olympics is packed with it. You see joy, despair, pain, excitement, disappointment, happiness, anger….it’s all there in the faces of the athletes competing. And so much of it. You can’t get that from most other events. But with the Olympics, you get a wealth of that. And that’s just one of the reasons that I think the Olympics is great.

Check out the slide shows at nytimes.com. They are superb. You can find them here

Winner’s Spotlight, Aug. 20 – The New York Times > Sports > Slide Show > Slide 7 of 8

The very fast Roqaya Al-Gassra of Bahrain won her 200 meter heat today.

Photo: Gero Breloer/European Pressphoto Agency and the nytimes.com

Wonderbra, or their ad agency, has an taken a innovative approach to draw attention to their product. It’s this:

It’s a billboard/photograph made of many women of all shapes, sizes, and backgrounds in their…well, the same thing wonderbra sells. 🙂

The same technique could be applied to anything, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see this used for other ads as well.
More details on the campaign can be found here at 3MakeStuff Blog on World’s greatest collage?

If that is the kind of feast that gets you excited, then you want to check out the blog, i heart photograph.

Lots of great artists represented there, and a wide range of work from the whimsical to the very serious.

…see this man:

To be more specific, read/view his blog, The Sartorialist. It’s superb.

When I saw these photographs, I was impressed by how the artist is able to take basic settings and make them capture my imagination. A clothes closet like this, for example. I had one of these, and I found it dreary. Augusta Wood makes it a work of art. See here for more great work.

gadgettastic.com has a rundown of Victorinox’s latest addition. Ofcourse there is Swiss Army knife with a USB! They’ve been around since the 128 MB days! 🙂

Fortune has a nice assortment of interesting applications you can run on your iPhone, Blackberry…even for devices that use Google’s Android. Some are pretty far advanced (the BioWallet), and others are very practical (the one for Zipcar, depicted above). There will be a flood of these applications coming out. For now, here are 10 10 cool tools for your mobile phone to get you going.

The blog Unclutterer has lots of great advice on simplifying and improving your life. I like this tip on dealing with the problem of:

Work life creeping into personal life? Try a battery-only weekend

This is especially good advice in the summer. If you do feel the need to work on the weekend, going battery-only will help you focus on getting the essentials done. And once they are done, go for a walk, see a movie, talk with friends, read that stack of books piling up on the shelf/next to your bed.

P.S. That goes for Blackberries and iPhones too. 🙂

For those of you excited about the Beijing Olympics and are interested in having a recording of the highlights of it, NBC tells me that they are “offering a DVD of the Olympics Opening Ceremonies and it is available for purchase on their website www.nbcdvd.com. Other DVDs available include “2008 Beijing General Highlight DVD” and “Michael Phelps: Greatest Olympic Champion…The Inside Story”.

NBC continues to impress me with its innovation, hardwork and success. And not just me: see this article in the NYTimes.com: A Surprise Winner at the Olympic Games in Beijing – NBC

I would argue that it shouldn’t come as a surprise. It’s a good article nonetheless.