The NYTimes.com continues to have interesting coverage of the Venice Biennale. This article, John Wesley Has His Art Moment in Venice, is a delightful story of theirs about a painter who defies easy categorization. Indeed, as the article starts:

“For more than 40 years the art world has never known quite what to do with John Wesley”

Critics may ask: is he a pop artist, minimalist, a reinventor of Rococo, or perhaps something else? But when you get right down to it, he is someone who creates “bright, funny” works of art that happen to be great.  Sounds like someone who deserves a spotlight in Venice. If you have a chance, check out the article. Not to mention the other articles they have on the Biennale.

Over at Haaretz is a good article on Swiss artist Olivier Suter and his ‘Enemies’ project. (Can you tell the difference between an Israeli and a Palestinian?). Suter has started with Israelis and Palestinians, but he is moving on to Rwanda and other places. In some ways, it is obvious what he is doing. Yet people continue to demonize others for various reasons. Projects like this can be a corrective and a reminder how similiar we really are.

It’s true, says this: It’s official: ‘Futurama’ is reborn!
I’ll be interested to see how it changes. Personally I could do with less Bender and more of everyone else. Let’s see what they think and what you think.

It’s hard to know where to tackle this article: Brandeis Economists Find Race Leads to Price Disparity at Fulton Fish Market – Real Time Economics – WSJ. There are a number of things objectional with it. Let me start with the conclusion:

“White shoppers would fare better in a fish market with fixed and publicly displayed prices, Graddy and Hall conclude.”

Why not conclude: shoppers who appear to be willing to negotiate will fare better? After all, the abstract of the paper talks about how the authors “estimate a dynamic profit-maximization model of a fish wholesaler who can observe consumer characteristics, set individual prices, and thus engage in third-degree price discrimination.”  It seems like the person who wrote the column asked the authors a loaded question and they answered it.

Why didn’t the columnist ask: instead of being “Asian”, could looking poor affect how the wholesaler prices the fish? Or looking picky? White people can look either way. The same goes for people who appear to be from Asia. I would be willing to bet that if the tests were done with a  group of mainly poor looking white people and a group of affluent looking non whites, the former group would get better prices.

But I guess that wouldn’t make for as good a story in the WSJ then this one that says Asians are tough bargainers and white people are getting ripped off.

You’re in New York. You want to eat well and not spend a fortune. Perhaps you need a good concierge for some inside advice? If so, look no further than here: The Concierge | Eating Cheaply (But Well) – The Moment Blog – NYTimes.com

I’m not sure why BW.com went with the 1950s graphics for this article, but that aside, there are some good ideas to be found in this: Twenty Part-Time Business Ideas: Businesses You Can Start on Your Own. If you are unemployed, retired, or someone who simply wants to work something other than a 40 hour (or more) work week, you should check this article out. Your new career could be there.

The Venice Biennale is on. As discussed in the NYTimes.com, it’s not the same event it might have been a few years ago. Less money means a lower key event. That said, it is still a great event, and anyone wanting to know about what is current in the world of art should check it out. At the very least, read the article: In Venice, a Quieter Biennale of Careful Choices and Looks – NYTimes.com

(Photo of Hot Spot III by Todd Heisler of the NYTimes.com – artist is Mona Hatoum)

..you may be asking yourself: are there times I shouldn’t tweet? Well, yes. These may seem obvious, but I have seen may people break the guidelines listed in this posting on the blog Meg’s Single Step. There may be more than this, but start with the Top Ten Worst Times to Tweet.  Incidentally, what goes for tweeting goes for blogging and any other digital communications.

(Thanks to Andy Piper for the tip.)

I love Tumblr. And I love Motown music. So why didn’t I think of doing something like this? No matter, someone did, and the result is good. You don’t like Motown? is a tumble log dedicated to that sweet music. If you like good music, then go take a listen.

Just one more good thing coming out of tumblr.com

This is such a happy video. It makes me smile just watching it. See:

YouTube – MATT AND KIM – DAYLIGHT

This is a brilliant commercial from Bacardi. The man cuts across the club in search of a drink. And as he does, he cuts through time as well, going through the 60s, the 50s, 30, 20s, etc. until he ends up with a bartender who looks like he is from the 19th century.

What struck me was three couples: at the beginning, the main character leaves what appears to be a mixed race couple who are almost easy to overlook (they are only in the shot for 3 seconds). They are together in a very casual way. Midway through the ad, there is a black man dancing with a white woman in around the 1950s: they are very close.  (Though interestingly, she wears gloves.) This is in contrast to the black and whilte couple towards the end of the commercial: a black piano player with a white flapper from the 1920s, where there is a greater separation of the pair.

It’s a highly impressionistic commercial, and it is an advertisement, not a history lesson. But it does flash moments of history in the spot, and I was struck by these three couples. It could be happenstance, but the strong historical sense in the ad got me thinking otherwise.

Anyway, watch the ad and see what you think.

Over at the very cool site TRANSRACIAL, they are highlighting that…

“This weekend marks the anniversary of the historic Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia — which in 1967 removed all legal barriers preventing mixed-race marriages.”

And to celebrate this event, the wonderful named Loving Day is being celebrated around the world. You can lean more about it at their site, including reading this post,  WE SALUTE: Loving Day. You can also go to Wikipedia and learn more about the case of Loving v. Virginia. There you can read, among other things, this very timely quote from Mildred Loving on the 40th anniversary of the decision:

“Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the “wrong kind of person” for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.”

Amen.

It’s alot harder than you think, what with all this new Web 2.0 technology! The following is a funny take on how much harder it can be to promote a book these days. See:

Watch this. Be happy. 🙂

P.S. I love the light in this video. It perfectly captures the light of dusk in late spring, summer.

(H/T: andrew sullivan)

Over at the brilliant blog, Lowering the Bar, is a survey of some of the wackier things happening in the field of law. Did you know that someone sued because they thought there were real berries in “Cap’n Crunch with Crunchberries”? Or that someone is threatening to sue the Venetian casino because of bad Feng Shui? Well, if you follow this blog, you will!

Everyone has the potential to be smart, but some people choose to act otherwise. I have little time for anyone who makes such a choice. Everyone I spend any amount of my time with/on chooses to be smart. Whether they are 6 or 96, nearby or far away. They may be smart in any number of ways, but talking to them, you come away being that much more intelligent.

I started this blog because I wanted to share things with such people. By sharing what I know,  I get feedback from them and an opportunity to learn from them. The benefit I get is not having smart people hear what I say: it’s having smart people respond to what I say.

Of the smart people I know, one of the smartest is my brother, Eddie (shown here). If you like my blog, you should check out his: PANG — The Human Realm. Better yet, add it to your feedreader. It’s the smart thing to do, I think.

And what could that be? Why Drew’s cancer! You see:

“On May 20th, 2009, Drew Olanoff was diagnosed with cancer. Ever since that day, Drew has blamed everything on his cancer. Losing his keys, misplacing his wallet, Twitter being slow, the Phillies losing, etc. Why? Because you have to beat up on Cancer to win… and you can help out.”

How? Well go to his site, Blame Drew’s Cancer – Blow off Steam on Twitter… for Charity! and you can get all the details.

Execution by Beijing artist Yue Minjun. This work was inspired by the events of Tiananmen Square that occurred 20 years ago, in 1989.
Incidentally, Wikipedia reminded me of this painting by Manet of the execution of Emperor Maximillien of Mexico. The influence is strong.

Koko Taylor, Blues Queen, Dies at 80 – Obituary (Obit) – NYTimes.com

It takes a minute to like someone,
An hour to love someone,
But a lifetime to forget someone.

Flying your date to NYC for a Broadway show with a Marine Honor Guard send off is definitely a way to leave a good impression. 🙂
From Obamas’ Date Night in NYC at TPM Photo Galleries

(Rather than restrict it to FB, I put it here. It goes like this:)

Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me.

1. A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine Engel
2. The Good Soldier – Ford Maddox Ford
3. Emigrants – W.G. Seybald
4. Stalingrad – Antony Beevor
5. Europe – Grandeur and Decline – AJP Taylor
6. Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel Marquez
7. The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
8. Unpopular Essays – Bertrand Russell
9. A Moveable Feast – Ernest Hemingway
10. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
11. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch – Philip K Dick
12. Zen and the Birds of Appetite – Thomas Merton
13. The Dhammapada – The Buddha
14. Brighter Than a Thousand Suns – Robert Jungk
15. The Brothers Karamazov or Notes from Underground (book 1)- Fyodor Doestoyevsky

When? Well, it depends on the year and the location. Different parts of the world celebrate the day in different months. And the day changes ever year too. So, for help on locating the exact day, check out When is Father’s Day? 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014?

I love good silent movies. Some of my favourite films are from Fritz Lang and Charlie Chaplin. They never get old for me.

Sadly, they aren’t seen that much anymore. They need a way of getting people to rediscover them. One way of doing that is with music mashups. I’ve seen someone do a great version of “Fade Into You” over Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth. (You can find it on this blog, or YouTube). Here’s another mashup using The Killers and Mr. Brightside and combining it with the luminous Louise Brooks from Pandora’s Box.

It would be great if people who like The Killers, see this, and go out and rent or download Louise Brooks and others. It could be the start of a beautiful thing.

Emergency rooms need better architecture. I started to think about this when I had to go to an emergency room a few years back. Reading this blog post, concerning “How do we decongest our overcrowded and dangerous emergency departments” (The Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan) had me thinking of it further.

Essentially you have one room where everyone comes in and gets processed at a rate slower than they come in. You have people who aren’t really an emergency but who may have no where else to go (e.g. someone needing medical care at midnight). You may have people who really do need care but are wrongly ignored until it is too late. And I am sure there are lots of other problems as well.

I think doctors, nurses, patients and architects could work together to come up with a much better approach to dealing with this overwhelming situation.  If you were to visit an ER, what would you likely see:a seating area,
nurse’s station, and then a secondary area for waiting/treatment.
Maybe there is a coffee shop. Perhaps there is a TV. Right now the situation is constrainted by the architecture of the ER room. and the ER process. I think both should change.

One way to change this is to look at what other organizations do to relieve this bottleneck. Retailers are a good example of this. They have essentially broken down their bottleneck: the checkout space. For example, car rental agencies have people who come to your car and check you other there. They are essentially extending the checkout space over a much larger area. Other retailers are providing people kiosks or scanners that people can use themselves which again speed up the process and eliminate bottlenecks.

And such services are being provided in the area of medicine. Where I live, the province provides Telehealth Ontario, which is free access via telephone to a registered nurse, 24/7. I have used this in the past when I have had a sick child and it has been a great benefit to me, my daughter, and the local ER which wasn’t clogged with my presence.

There needs to be more of this, however. Redesign the ER to allow for check in kiosks could speed up the process. Ceiling mount monitors to provide people with updates on how quickly things are going. Give out pagers to allow people to leave the ER , but then provide them with areas within the hospital or around the hospital that they could go to in order to have a coffee, a rest, a bite to eat, a diversion of some sort.

These aren’t the best of ideas: I think someone who works in ER and is really familiar with the problems there could also come up with better ideas. But better ideas are needed now.

(Great photo from Mark Coggins’ photostream at flickr.com)

OPENING CEREMONY has lots of great fashion online for sale. But you need to see what they have, so they need models. I think they’ve made an excellent choice in their models for the bowties they carry from Alexander Olch.

You and I should look so good. 🙂 It’s a pretty smart association: Churchillian, you could say, since he was associated with both bulldogs and bowties.

I suspected bowties were going to be hot before I saw this: I am pretty sure of it now.

(Tip to the great blog, Cup of Jo)

I learned this via The Edge of the American West. Try this trick:

1. Go to Google.
2. Type in the beginning of a common phrase (e.g., “how do I..”, “where are…”, “is barack…”)
3. Look at the drop-down list of suggested searches.

I tried “god is” and here are some of the answers:

1. not great
2. dead
3. an astronaut
4. love
5. not a fish inspector
6. a girl
7. good

Most of these I get, some (3) are a bit odd, but number 5?! What’s up with that?

Ok ok…you have to go try it now. 🙂

(Tip from Andrew Sullivan).f

Over at The Moment Blog – NYTimes.com is a number of articles on men’s shoes that should be helpful to any man looking to pick up something new. This article, Fancy Footwork | Designer’s Men’s Shoe Collaborations, features these numbers from Florsheim that not only have some great models in black, brown and tan, but they slip in a blue number, too.

They also have a good write up on low cost Zig Zag shoes (like these below) that are perfect for summer.

NYTimes.com has some great approaches to travel writing. I’ve mentioned the “36 hours” in a city article before: those are great for the quick visit to a place. They also have save-or-splurge guides that give you the high and the not-so-high cost ways of seeing a number of the great European cities. You can find it here: Travel – Guides and Deals for Hotels, Restaurants and Vacations – The New York Times

I’ve already found a place I want to stay in Paris in the “save” section: it’s Mama Shelter Philppe Starck had a hand in it, it’s in Paris, and the price is right, so I have to go!

What’s great about blogging is that someone, like the writer of the blog Ecocomics, can take what appears to be two very different interests (economics and comic books) and put them together to come up with something very different and interesting. For example, where else would you find someone posing the question: Where Does the Canadian Government Get the Money from to Keep Making Super-Soldiers?, other than at Ecocomics?

If ecocomics had come out sooner, we’d have alot more people interested in economics! Go see.

Roo Reynolds now works for the BBC. He used to work for IBM, where I got to know of him. He has a gift for social media, and anyone who wants ways to use it more effectively should consider following Roo.

One of the things he does well, among many, is write about which books he is reading. He takes a photo and then talks about them. It’s simple, but it works well, I think.

Here’s a recent selection of works he is reading, including some books by Stephen Fry (always a good choice).

Go see his blog.

There was alot of flippant commentary after Canada’s Governor (GG) General Michaëlle Jean participated in an Innuit skinning ritual, including the eating of seal (specifically the heart). I think it pays for people to at least read what she said. Some of what she said is here: GG defiant about eating seal – The Globe and Mail. They should also learn more about her and her background and how she approaches the role of GG. While people can still disagree with her or the hunt, they should at least try and understand what she was trying to do.

I think I have been looking at Richter’s images too long. In a number of his works, he employs a tripartition, which creates depth in the work (in many ways). I thought of this today when I snapped this photo of myself. Here’s me followed by two of Richter’s works.

I especially like the second work, since it seems to use an incandescent light source for illumination, giving it the flat, bright lighting that you see, as well as creating the deep shadows on the wall. But the skull is obviously very powerful too.

Sometimes I overlook something that appears simple. Deceptively so. If I am fortunate, someone comes along and says: look and listen carefully…you will see and hear alot more if you look and listen carefully.

This video, The Reeling by Passion Pit, is one of those things. What is it? Is it simply a catchy pop song video of young people going to a club? Look and listen carefully…

Thanks to the blog, Letter To Jane, I’ve discovered another great photography blog, this time by Chloé Richard.

What struck me was the similarity I found between this photograph of Richard’s

and this work of art by Gerhart Richter:

which no doubt borrows something or is influenced by this painting by Vermeer

There are similarities to each of the works, particularily in the contemplative aspect of the single woman in the work, the triangular composition, and the importance of the light source. Even the nature of the woman’s hair. There is likely alot more that I am missing, not being an art historian. And I can’t say that Chloé Richard is influenced by or even is aware of Richter’s work. But I was struck by the common elements in each of the work.  What do you think?

Regardless, you should check out Richard’s blog and the great photographs there. Oh, and check out the work of Richter and Vermeer: they’re pretty good, too. 🙂

If you are a lover of cycling and cake, and you are in Toronto, then you might want to consider a new event: the Tour de Dufflet. As the site explains, participants will…

“Get a little exercise and something sweet by cycling to all 3 Dufflet retail café locations in one day. Registered participants will receive a souvenir gift, something sweet and other goodies by cycling to each Dufflet cafe and having their Tour de Dufflet Passport stamped when they arrive.”

Registration fee is merely $5 and it goes to charity. What’s not to like? Did I mention something sweet? And not just any ole sweet, but something sweet from Dufflet. Sweet! 🙂

Excited?  Check out their site for the details.

According to the NYTimes.com, Texting May Be Taking a Toll on Teenagers.

Clearly teenagers are texting alot these days, but I wonder how much of it is taking an actual toll vs a perceived toll by their parents and other authority figures. After all, what is too much? (For one thing, teens are not so wordy as adults in text messages, based on my not very signifigant sample. I would like to know how many of those messages were “K”, “BFN”, “LMAO”..I am guessing alot! 🙂 )

And it’s not just texting. I was watching my teenager using my laptop the other day, and she was texting on her cell as well as using Facebook and IM! Oh, and watching YouTube. The world is increasingly networked and generating more and more information that is coming at us. Not to mention being generated by us. However, it’s not just about processing information. How we socialize is more and more revolving around this. That’s what’s in front of us, whether we embrace it or reject it.

Is it bad? I think it is simply different. Indeed, this article, The Benefits of Distraction and Overstimulation in New York Magazine defends all this information. Good or bad, it’s something we need to address.

…is actual a plug. But no ordinary plug: it’s a fully functioning computer with a fast processor, sufficient memory, Linux (of course), gigabit ethernet and a USB 2.0. What can you do with it? Well, pretty well anything.

I think this is the next big thing. You can configure this plug computer into anything you want. I want one! 🙂

This article, Plugging In $40 Computers in the NYTimes.com has more details, including why it is (going to be) a $40 computer.

This is the stuff of modern novels: first female professor of poetry, sexual harrassment charges, great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin, Oxford, beating — or should it be cheating? — a Nobel laureate out of the position…it goes on. For a summary: read
Oxford’s First Female Professor of Poetry Resigns.