June 27, 2010 Culture, Travel
Still astonishing for the engineering fete of persistence that keeps a city built on mud flats standing after 1500 years. Piazza San Marco floods with a rising tide every twelve hours but what’s a little water in the foyer? A true Venetian would never abandon his city to a fickle tide.
If anything the ground is giving way to the centuries of history that saturate the buildings and streets above it. Yet it’s sad to see such a marvel, once ‘the liquid frontier between the east and the west’ transformed into a tourist attraction. Although it’s probably been that way since long before my time, each year more citizens are forced to relocate to affordable suburbs away from their beloved canals and bridges. Tourists we come and spend and drive up prices, we leave trash and take away photographs and silly souvenirs, but we don’t keep the city standing; the citizens do and they’re the ones tourism forces out. After a while we’re bored and we leave and the citizens that are left go about their business. They work on renovations funded in part by our lavish pleasure-spending and do their best to keep their city standing, flooded or dry, infested by tourists or not. A simple task to master the fickle tides! The true engineering fete of persistence for Venice would be not to abandon the city to the flood of tourists, either.
June 4, 2010 Culture, Review
I’ve been on pub tours before, but never one that fired my imagination like this.
Twelve of us were led through the cobbled streets of the Old and New Town’s of Edinburgh on a Literary Pub Tour. It began at the Beehive Inn, a large pub with an appropriately aged appearance, just off the Royal Mile.
Read on »
February 19, 2010 Culture, Technology
This is beautifully designed map of predictions for our future. It was made for WIRED by Density Design. The concept comes from research done by a non-profit organization, a sort of seer collective for science. Unsurprisingly, they are called The Institute for the Future. Read on »
February 16, 2010 Culture
“Cosmology is the theory and lore of how the world or universe is structured. A kind of map or picture of the cosmos, cosmology is a way of naming things and putting them in their proper places.” James D. Tabor
Note, in the smooth illustration above, that the realm of the dead is called Sheol by the ancient Hebrews, to be distinguished from the Christian version of Hell. The difference is to some extent a matter of semantics. Eternal punishment for sin and life after death are conflated with the word Hell, whereas the “idea of Sheol is negative in contrast to the world of life and light above, but there is no idea of judgment or of reward and punishment.” The fascinating Biblical distinctions are traced through history by James Tabor in the rest of this essay.
Illustration by Michael Paukner (via)
January 24, 2010 Art, Culture
Here’s the scoop on Banksy at Sundance. The world renowned film festival is “getting back to it’s roots” this year. I’ve always been a fan of Banksy’s work and I’m sure his film won’t disappoint.
If you’ve never heard of Banksy, he is often referred to as a “guerilla street artist.” Here is a related Banksy narrative at Esquire from a few years back. Esquire always does the most wonderful investigative journalism narratives, and this one reinforces the idea of the anonymous artist that is Banksy in an endearing and somewhat informative fashion:
When I exited the bookstore, a backpack-wearing kid with baggy pants, a Krylon-paint T-shirt, and headphones walked past me. On the back of his backpack was the graffiti tag PEACE NOT WAR. I approached him and asked him if he knew Banksy, and with a smile he said, “Everybody knows Banksy, but nobody knows Banksy.”
Update: Banksy rocks Sundance. No surprise there!
January 1, 2010 Culture
The first day of the New Year never feels any different to me than the day after yesterday usually does, except that it comes with a vicious hangover. Sometimes I think we drink on New Year’s Eve so that the next day’s pounding headache will guilt us into keeping the resolutions we drunkenly pronounced at the party the night before.
I’m not being cynical, just realistic. How many promises to yourself have you broken in the past year? I don’t need science or statistics to support this conclusion; I know from experience what it means to break a promise to myself. What makes you think your New Year’s resolution will turn out any different than the promises you failed to keep before?
As far as New Year’s resolutions go, it’s impressive if you make it through the first two weeks. If you’re a gym rat, you know exactly what I mean.
As for me? I don’t make any resolutions. I can’t break a promise I never made to begin with, so I’m in familiar territory. There’s no reason to start the year with a disappointment.
Not that resolutions don’t work, or that no one can affect a change in their life by sheer power of will (possible, but unlikely). I’m simply pointing out that just because it’s the start of a new decade doesn’t mean you’ve got more gumption than you had yesterday, or two weeks ago. Today is still the day after yesterday no matter how proudly you turned the page on your calendar this morning, while holding an icepack to your throbbing head.
If you’re going to make a resolution, don’t do it out of hangover-induced guilt, or because all the cool kids are doing it. I’m all for bettering yourself, but change doesn’t work unless you believe in it too.
November 19, 2009 Culture, Review, Technology
It all starts with the beat of a heart. The entrance corridor pulses red in time. Just like the beginning of a human life.
Body Worlds & The Story of the Heart is located in the Ontario Science Center and features over two hundred specimens. The complex arrangement of the cardiovascular system, especially how the heart connects with other anatomical systems, is revealed with stunning transparency.
Every figure, cross section, and model is poised to give the viewer a three hundred and sixty degree panorama. Sometimes a specific part of the system in question is accented in the display, like the major blood vessels or the nervous system, but the whole body is powered by the beating of the heart.
The full-sized figures are the premier attraction. They are frozen in the poses they are named after. The Ski Jumper is caught mid-jump. The Archer is captured right after she releases her arrow. Each of the dozen figures is arranged differently to show a unique view of the muscles and organs.
Surely, you’re thinking, these people didn’t die that way. No, they donated their bodies to science. Gunther van Hagens came up with a process called Plastination in 1977 as a smarter way to preserve organs for medical study. After much improvement, this method was brought to the public. Now Body Worlds has been seen by the eyes of millions and there are currently six exhibitions running on three continents.
The heart’s role in our life and history is emphasized throughout the exhibit, as is the importance of a healthy heart to living a happy life. The heart has always been of pivotal importance in literature and religion. Science is no different.
The exhibit runs until February 9, 2010. It is located on Don Mills Road in Toronto, south of the intersection of Don Mills and Eglinton. Entrance is $28.50 for an adult, and $18.50 for a child, which includes a ticket to Body Worlds and access to most of the Center.
August 31, 2009 Art, Culture
Houses are built to shelter the course of a human life or family of lives. These feral houses, photographed in Detroit, no longer serve the same purpose. They still stand, but they have been reclaimed by nature.
The absence of human presence in the photos sharpens the contrast. They stand alone, emptied of occupants and of their original meaning. They stand only for the observer, as a reminder of what was lost.
Whether they were abandoned or neglected so long that abandonment was the only option left, the end result is the same: Mother Nature now rules these buildings.
The growth that inhabits a space once used by people proves that the houses are more than just monuments to decay. They have taken on a new meaning as the birth of life in the midst of a city in decay.
The beauty lies in the opposition between destruction and creation. People would do well to remember that destruction implies the chance to build anew.
July 14, 2009 Culture
Through the Global Warming hype I have remained skeptical towards the idea that our carelessness and lax standards have caused our planet’s climate to overheat and blow a fuse. Mother nature, I thought, can take care of herself.
But the fad for Green is growing on me. Even if the future that climate doomsayers paint for us is blown wildly out of proportion– how often is your weather man spot on about tomorrow?– we cannot go backwards from here. No effort toward a healthier planet, a more sustainable economy, a cleaner life, can possibly be wasted.
To get right down to the basics, GOOD takes the day to tell us about our Water problems and what might be in the future. However, I hope the ingenuity of our engineers is enough to avert the impending civil war over Florida’s oyster industry…