First off, if you don’t know what dark matter is, Technology Review gives a description:

The universe is filled with mysterious invisible stuff that refuses to interact with light. It doesn’t reflect, emit or absorb light. But astronomers know it is there because of its gravitational effect on the visible stuff. They call it dark matter.

But there is a problem. If dark matter exists (and on this blog we’ve looked at a number of alternative ideas), there ought to be a lot of it out there. Astronomers estimate that 83 percent of the mass of the universe should take this form. The rest, a mere 17 percent, is visible.

So where is all this stuff? It should permeate the Solar System, the Earth and our environment. And yet when physicists look for it, they find zip.

More importantly, it seems that some scientists are coming up with consistent ways of discovering it. For more on this news, go here.

Over at kottke.org is a pointer to fake 2001 ads for HAL and Pan Am. Nice IBM touches in the one for HAL, including the use of the “eight bar” font for HAL (which makes sense, since HAL = IBM by shifting one letter to the left).

In this article, Reviving Fort Book, in the Toronto Standard, Alex Bozikovic does a great job going from talking about the current renovations underway on the Robarts Library in Toronto to talking about Brutalism in general. If you are not familiar with this architectural style, try this article, then head over to Wikipedia for more on the topic, here.

I believe over time alot of these structures will be demolished. See and think about them while you have the chance.

Apple sells itself well. That strikes me every time they make announcements. Does any company get the same coverage for product announcement that they do? There’s lots of reasons to account for it, but their ability to get people’s attention is impressive in itself, regardless of what they announce.

Data Centers are sexy again. When Google or others build data centers, they are admired for various reasons, but most people never talk about them. Apple makes them interesting, just like it does with all of its technology. However, like alot of its hardware these days, I suspect it will “disappear”, or I should say, fade into the background.

Apple brings the same “easy” quality to the Cloud that it does to their other
devices.  This is remarkable to me. In a sense, Apple will treat the
cloud like it treats the personal computer or the handheld mobile
device. This will set a high bar for others. That said, Apple has strong
competition with Amazon and Google, to name their current competion listed in their Keynote slides. The winners here will be the consumer.

Apple is displacing the Web.  Not the Internet, but the Web. They are not the only one, of course: Facebook is doing this too. But their current strength is in Apps and the Cloud, and those are not the Web. I don’t mean to imply this is a bad thing. It remains to be seen what the effect of this is. But their technologies are disruptive to the Web and could displace it. This is not surprising: new technologies displace old technologies all the time; why should the Web be any different?

Who could have predicted Apple would become such a large employer of developers? Because of the App Store, $2.5 billion has been paid out to developers. Those are developers who would have likely have made $0 on their software. Not only that, but I think Apple has encouraged people who might not have bothered to develop software to make the effort. This is also impressive to me.

Apple’s competion is now Google and Walmart. Did you see it mention IBM or HP or Microsoft? All the companies mentioned in their slides were mostly non-IT. Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy: those are the companies that Apple is competing with now.

Apple stoops to conquer. Apple has done a good job of reducing the price of technologies and products in order to be successful. Once it was a given that there was an “Apple Tax” on their stuff. Now they have no problem with going head to head and even undercutting competition when they want to win. The latest version of that is the price of iCloud. Mobile Me was $99. iCloud? Free. They announced a number of other products as well, all with low costs. It will get harder and harder to beat Apple on price. They are stooping (in terms of price) to conquer (the markets they want).

Media makes Apple sexy, and Apple is great at associating themselves with media that lends sexiness to them. They feature the coolest music and other media and the association rubs off on them. That’s not to say they aren’t sexy, but they borrow as well.

Lots of focus on Lion. The Mac is still important, and not just because of sales. I suspect it will be as long as Steve Jobs is around. iOS is the growth OS, while Mac OS X is the stable OS. Even the version is stable, save for the big cat designation. (Compare that to the operating system drama over at Microsoft.) Alot of the features of the platforms seems to be converging according to my very limited viewpoint. Apple has done a great job with that.

Anyway, those are my idiosyncratic thoughts on Apple’s announcements. Needless to say, these are my opinions and have nothing to do with those of my employer.

For some great notes and photos of the event, see: WWDC 2011 liveblog: Steve Jobs talks iOS 5, OS X Lion, iCloud and more! — Engadget

Missing your morning coffee? This will get you going:

YouTube – Daft Punk – Derezzed Guitar Cover (Tron)

Boing Boing has a great story about how a Toronto artist, who turned an abandoned bike into sculpture, ended up being threatened by the city for “storing bike on public property”.

The article is well worth a read.

My own two cents is that the artist did a great job, and is to be commended. However, I also appreciate the municipality’s view. What would be great would be some in-the-middle decision, but right now, I don’t see that.

Some potential thoughts on this: any bike left in a spot longer than a reasonable period of time should be taken by the City. It could then either be picked up at a depot by the owner with appropriate credentials, and if it wasn’t, a program could be set up to clean up the bikes and provide them to kids who don’t have a bike but could use one.

I also think that the city should provide spaces for visual artists, just like it provides spaces for food vendors and musicians. Artists could apply to put installations and sculptures in parts of the city for a period of time. If we had such a program, the pink bike could apply for it. Likewise, we could have graffiti parks, public boxframes for visual artists, etc. I would love to see that sort of program become available. The city could use more art, and artists can always use more venues to display their great work.

Here’s the close up

Found at the brilliant blog, Wooster Collective

I must say: anyone who is being interviewed should memorize this and practice what is here: Seth’s Blog: How to be interviewed. So simple, and yet, it is violated all the time.

My friend Solange is a fine photographer, and she is selling her photographs here: Solange Noir Photography.

I particularly like this one:

But there is a lot of good work there, all at very good prices. I highly recommend you go there and buy something. Let’s face it: that wall you have in your living room is crying out for some good artwork. Here’s your solution.

While you can try to go through someone like Amazon to do this, I like what Lina Scheynius has done. She uses PayPal for the collection of money, which doesn’t surprise me. What she also does is create YouTube videos like this

That way you can see what the book looks like before you buy it. Smart! And given that she has sold out a number of her books, it’s very smart indeed.

Obviously you need to have great content, and she does. Once you have that, capitalize on existing tools to take care of all the boring essential part of making it easy for people to buy what you made.

Not to watch films, but to be in attendance for a screening of a film that he wrote the music for. It’s an interesting view of the Glamorous Life, because even though he is very well known, he writes about his Cannes experience like someone who is not. I always enjoy reading his blog, and this entry in particular is very good.

You can find the journal entry here: David Byrne’s Journal: 05.20.11: The Glamorous Life

Recently the NYTimes.com said that a “Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts”.  Andrew Sullivan also thinks that “there is a real conundrum here”. If you look through his blog for the posts titled, Crime Falls Further, you will see people offer many good theories for why this is.

My belief, ever since I read this book, Boom, Bust & Echo: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Shift by David K. Foot with Daniel Stoffman, is that it has to do with demographics. Crime, revolutions, riots, even wars: these are all byproducts of countries have an excess of young men. When your national demographics shape up like that, you will have trouble. Likewise, as your nation gets older, you will have less of that.

I think there are other causes of these serious societal problems, but it needs that fuel, and the demographic analysis explains it. Older men equals less crime.

Even if you disagree with this idea, I highly recommend this book. It’s well written, easy to read, and very thought provoking, I recall.

While they were announced in 2010, I only recently paid attention to Amazon.com’s Kindle Singles (featuring journalism, novellas, essays, humor, and short Kindle eBooks), when two of my favorite authors released Singles:  Mark Bittman with Bittman’s Kitchen: What I Grill and Why and Susan Orlean’s Animalish. The reviews of those books have been mostly good, with people pointing out the obvious limitations of this format. I chalk this up to growing pains, however, and I think in time these will come to represent a new format that is very successful. It is time that the eBook publishing business start pricing books (and magazines) based on the new eBook format, and not on a pricing model based on paper publishing. And it is time that publishers get used to people reading on mobile phones, tablets, eBook readers, big screen monitors, what have you. I would like to see more essays and shorter works made available this way and priced low. I would also like to see really good books published that take advantage of excellent quality monitors (think Art Books).

Here’s hoping this is the start of a big, good, new wave of publishing. And if the traditional publishing houses can’t manage it, no doubt Amazon and Apple can.

Found on Will you be Raptured? [flowchart] – Holy Kaw!

While I know Pet Sounds is one of the greatest albums of all time, and I know it sounds brilliant, until I watched this video, I never appreciated how rich and complex it was. Well worth studying to better appreciate Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys, and Pet Sounds.

Nowadays everyone would be recorded on a separate track, but back then even a four track recording (like Sgt. Pepper) was a big thing. Hence you see these photos of all the musicians in the studio.

YouTube – Behind The Sounds: Wouldn’t It Be Nice

Awhile ago I wrote this post, The end of the old money and the creation of the new money and I concluded

The money supply is already alot more complicated than it was decades ago. It is going to get even more so. Welcome to the new money.

Turns out that this complication is happening now, according to this: Prepaid cards attract money launderers. I am not surprised crooks are in on this. It’s one thing for Starbucks or even Walmart to create money this way, but it was only a matter of time before it was put to more nefarious uses. And money laundering is only the start of our problems, I suspect.

swissmiss had this funny “Dear John” letter from Brooklyn to Manhattan:

While that’s great, so are the comments in the post, with people taking on the parts of “Manhattan” or “Brooklyn” writing the breakup letters.  Go to the link and read them all for a good laugh.

Salads are great any time of year, but perfect in the summer, especially if you don’t want to turn on the oven or the BBQ.
Chatelaine.com has put together a month of great salads that are varied in their ingredients, easy to make, impressive to see, and delicious.

I don’t know if I agree with it all, but it is good food for thought:

Found here: INFOGRAPHIC: The Real Cost Of Facebook.

You get the BLACK CAB SESSIONS. The site is an incredible collection of improvised videos from some great indie bands. You really have to see the site, but in the meantime, here’s a few videos, including some of my favourites, like Lykke Li:

Holly Miranda doing a nice cover of  Ex-Factor by Lauryn Hill

And here’s Winter Sleep (who manage to bring drums!)

Good tune with a good video to boot. Here they are doing “Does this mean you’re moving on”

YouTube – The Airborne Toxic Event – Does This Mean You’re Moving On (Official Video)

Here’s Beyoncé – Run The World (Girls)

And here’s M.I.A. – Boyz

From the title, to the sound, to the video, there’s alot of overlap, to say the least.

And this story, Is Obama about to break the law? – CNN.com, is just blather. It’s hard to tell, but the crux of the matter is this:

Angry lawmakers in both parties say part of the problem now is that their own congressional leaders are not raising a stink about Obama’s failure to come to Congress about Libya.

“Very few people are talking about this; they’re just letting the president do whatever he wants, and I think that’s Congress abdicating the rule of law and abdicating constitutional restraints that he should obey,” Paul said.

The fact is this, ripped from a blog piece by Matt Yglesias: Congress Doesn’t Want Power Over Whether Or Not The United States Keeps Bombing Libya. If they did, the White House would be doing more lobbying to get support. But they don’t have to, because the U.S. congress abdicates this responsibility. There is little if any upside for them, so mostly they vote to support whatever the Executive branch wants.

Including this!

Kill those zombies! Yeah! 🙂 For more great stuff, see: The Last Monkey

There are exceptions, but yeah, if you are bored all the time, the fault lies within. That’s why I have never have much respect for people who talk about “ennui”. Ennui is a fancy way of saying you are bored, and hence, boring. Worse, you should be smart enough to do something about it and you aren’t.

Don’t be bored. Be creative, silly, ridiculous, outrageous, daring, bold, ingenious, outlandish…be any of those things, and more.

P.S. Love the orange too: orange is very not-boring. Image found on this nice tumblr blog.

The good folks at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention do important and serious work. But they also have found some time to have some fun and gain some awareness from people who know little of them (but likely know alot about zombies). Since zombies are a constant threat, they put together this kit to help people: CDC EPR | Social Media | Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse. 🙂

This piece of art cost $15 to make and looks striking. For information on how it was made and how you can make it, go to
Just a Girl.  (Found via Apartment Therapy Ohdeedoh)

According to this: Beware the Facebook “Dislike” Button Scam – Security Watch, not only (a) will it spam your friends on Facebook but it has (b) some obscure code (“obfuscated JavaScript”) that is an “opening the potential for even more trouble”.

With regards to (a), not only will it spam your friends, but some of them will also click on it, making it viral, and that is not good.

From f— yeah dementia!!1! (ok, I bleeped out the F word. :))

Like a lot of things, it’s how you go about measuring it. (From 100% from ReflectionOf.Me and 9gag.com)

CBS News has photoessay, at times horrific, of cancer patients of the 19th century, including:

33 year-old Jane Todd Crawford, of Wellington, Ohio, (who) rode 60 miles on horseback to seek treatment for what turned out to be a huge ovarian tumor. Anesthesia wasn’t yet available, so she sang and recited psalms to calm herself during the 25-minute operation. The surgeon made a nine-inch incision and “took out 15 pounds of a dirty gelatinous-looking substance” before removing the rest of the tumor. She was up and about five days later, and 25 days later she got back on her horse and rode home. She lived another 50 years.

Cancer still has a way to go before it is beaten, but compared to then, we’ve come along way.

This is #8:

To know why it looks like this, and to see the rest of the photo essay, see: 10 Best Alleys in Los Angeles – Los Angeles Art – Style Council

It’s simple: I consider clothes a form of expression, just like words. They have a utilitarian side, but words do, too. Past that, they are a way we express ourselves. And not just with text on T-shirts. The clothes we wear, from our hats to our shoes  (even the clothes no one sees) are ways we communicate to the world. Therefore with extremely rare exceptions, no one should infringe on the choice of what you want to wear. To me the only exceptions should be in the interest of public safety and when I enter into a contractual agreement with someone. Otherwise, I should be able to wear what I want.

This doesn’t mean I should expect everyone to like or accept what I wear. But I should have the right and the ability to wear it, and I should not be legally limited or illegally discriminated against for wearing it.

There’s a great story about how Nick Risinger ended up taking all those photographs and you can find it here: The night sky in 37,440 exposures – Yahoo! News. But what really impressed me is the interactive display of the sky here at Skysurvey.org.

You really have to see it to believe it. Take your time, make it full screen and practice zooming in and out. It’s an incredible view of the sky.

It’s also like something from the science fiction film, Blade Runner, where the main character takes a photograph and is able to zoom in and out of what seems to be an ordinary picture.

Stop reading me and go see for yourself.

I am a strong proponent of women exercising and participating in some form of physical fitness, be they 6 or 106. That said, there is something about this article, At Ballet Workouts, Getting That Dancer Physique – NYTimes.com, that made me think this new fitness trend is less about good physical fitness and more about being ahead of everyone else. Maybe it’s the name dropping and the other things in the article that whispered exclusivity  (“Upper East Side”, exercise only the strongest can do) that made me discount it. Plus the entire article is more like an advertisement than a story.

Read it yourself and judge (and feel free to argue with/berate me if I got it wrong).