Notebook(blog)

Page 41 - It looks more like a sad turkey.

Clockwise from top left: Network theory in The Economist, detail from the Drawn Onward show at the Engine Gallery, a helmet that looks like a sad turkey as discussed in my article about Damien Hirst on The Rumpus.

Page 40 - Laughter is a moment when our mind refuses to reason

Clockwise from top left: a hockey player demonstrates commitment, Yue Miniun quoted in The Rumpus, magazine cover from Ti I Ja Magazine published in Poland from 1950-1970, Joseph Strick on how to make a good movie, another cover from Ti I Ja.

Page 39 - How easily people may give up flossing their teeth

From top to bottom: Ball Nogues's Chinese dragon, made of 12,000 American Apparel vests and underpants, on display in the Shenzhen Civic Centre, I have been reunited with my favourite sardines, a passage from Alain de Botton's A Week at the Airport. 

Page 38 - Exercise your face, keep the muscles limber

Faces are photos by Charla Jones for The Globe & Mail from the article 'Hooray for Bollywood', about a Bollywood acting school in Mississauga, my knee in 2053 as pictured in the Fall 2009 issue of Schulich Engineer.

Page 37 - Rupiah Banda was born on February 19, 1937

One of the incredible Photographs of World Leaders by Platon in The New Yorker, December 7, 2009.

Page 36 - One proposition is the Urbmobile.

From: William E. Shapiro's The New Book of Knowledge Annual, 1979, p. 78-79.

Page 35 - We like lists because we don't want to die

Speigel interview with Umberto Eco

Page 35 - Belowground Corrugated Steel Culvert Shelter

Clockwise from top left: The Belowground Corrugated Steel Culvert Shelter (via Mt. Holly Mayor's Office), “Oases for Life and Pre-Biotic Chemistry: Hydrothermal Exploration Using Advanced Underwater Robotics” a project to do the deepest-ever submersible dive with a name that only a committee could love, marble porn, a great tune All the Money I HAD or HAVE is Gone by Deep Dark Woods, Harrison Ford looks smug about narrating the King Tut audio tour, Paul Quarrington in the National Post, an adult swinger, from Hollywood by Charles Bukowski - if you don't want to read just take the tour.

Page 34 - The name brutalism comes from béton brut, meaning ‘raw concrete’.

Photos from the day I got lost in the Barbican - see the street view.

Page 33 - A game of spot the difference: Kim Jong Il, Wen and Clinton edition

How many differences can you spot in the second photo?

ƃuıןıɯs sı ʇɟǝן uo uɐɯ ˙7 ɹǝʍoןɟ ǝɹɐɥs sƃǝן sɹıɐɥɔ ˙6 ɹǝɥʇǝƃoʇ ɹǝsoןɔ sɹıɐɥɔ ˙5 ʇɹɐdɐ spuɐɥ ˙4 sǝoɥs ɹǝıuıɥs ˙3 sǝssɐןƃ ˙2 ǝıʇ ʞɔǝu pǝɹ ˙1

Both photos are from The Economist, Bill and Kim's Excellent Adventure and Smile, please.

Page 32 - My heart goes is going ba bump ba bump ba bump.

 

Clockwise from top left: Photos from Godchildren by Tessa Handley (also in middle), new ideas about viruses based on old ideas from the mind of Erwin Schrodinger, my New York Times Op-ed piece, a compilation of inmates statements before execution - 'Last Words', an artist in tights, photo of Schrondinger, Troy Brauntuch at the Friedrich Petzel Galleries (quote from Andrea K. Scott's write up in The New Yorker).

Page 31 - Which seems to suggest what is sacred to me is beauty.

Tags (clockwise from top left): One of 'My Favorites' from The Sartorialist, looking good Jeff Harris (thanks Amy), Dubai has a subway with 29 stops, a quote from 2666 by Bolanos as found by Stephen Elliot who has just started a book tour in support of The Adderall Diaries (I am still reading 2666 and it maybe that I always will be), some of the first few words from The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, one of four moons of Jupiter.

Page 30 - Love is imperfect

Ikea meatball on white

Page 29 - The solitary life of cranes

via @bldgblog

Page 28 - I believe mustard to be one of the most amazing condiments.

Tags (clockwise from top left): Countee Cullen (1903-1946), a big, pink bunny named Jim McMurtry by Michael Parekowhia, Justin Timberlake on Twitter @jtimberlake, the decline of declining Coney Island, there is a new smoking ban in Iraq, a North Korean child can expect to be up to 7 inches shorter than his South Korean counterpart by adulthood (photo from The Economist).

Page 27 - I knew that whenever I got there he would be there.

Tags (clockwise from top left): To the greater world, this is Paul Ehrlich who was featured in the article "Knowing How to Pick a Fight," Seed Magazine, to me, he is someone else; Sheriff Ed Tom Bell's closing speech in No Country for Old Men, which you can watch.

Gone fishing

Page 26 - Evolution is not linear

Tags (clockwise from top left): Detroitosauras wrecks made the cover of The Economist, a romantic steamboat, the smooth turtle-like underbelly of the EV1 - GM's recalled electric car (Who Klled the Electric Car?), a wood model of Buckminister Fuller's Dyamaxion Car by Isamu Noguchi (Youtube video of car in action), the Concorde - here is a virtual tour of the cockpit. 

Page 24 - Wows last no longer than the striking of a match.

Click on the image to magnify (and open in a new window).

 
Tags (clockwise from top left): R. B. Kitaj in Brick 81, Anthony Lane in The New Yorker, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolystoy, Vera Frenkel in Once Near Water: Notes from the Scaffolding Archive, something Nikki Sixx of Mötley Crüe said or something I imagined he said, Vera Frenkel from Once Near Water again. 

Page 23 - Pontiacs I have loved

On April 27, 2009 GM announced it would drop the Pontiac brand.

Tags (clockwise from top left): 1979 Trans Am, 1972 Pontiac GTO, 1975 Firebird, 1973 Firebird Trans Am, 1965 Tempest Wagon, 1968 Pontiac LeMans, 1989 Sunbird, 1962 Grand Prix, 2001 Trans Am, 1987 Safari Wagon.

Page 22 (cont.) - It's not the face, it's the expression.

Tags (clockwise from top left): Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, oil from the gallery of Yue Minjun, writer Iris Murdoch, Argentine politician Raúl Alfonsín, more Yue Minjun, Mavis Gallant, Zanzibar Buck Buck McFate.

Page 22 - It's not the face, it's the expression.

Thank you Jada.

Page 21 - There's a kid on a Pogo stick in front of my house.

Click on the image to make it bigger (and open in a new window).

Tags (clockwise from top left): JIC Boyd, Christoper Quigley's eye, A CT scan of a 6-piece order of Chicken McNuggets from McDonald's, pot, A View from the Foothills: The Diaries of Chris Mullin, Applied Research Bulletin - Volume 2, Number 2 (Summer-Fall 1996), Not Christopher Walken on Twitter @cwalken, Only baroque and roll - maddest art of all by AA Gill.

Page 20 - By the end of the day, your pants look like they have been through an accordian.

Click on the image to make it bigger (and open in a new window).

Tags (clockwise from top left): I always get wrinkles around the crotch area when I use a Corby Pant Press - FAQ here, Charles Ponzi looking dapper (Boston Public Library/The New York Times via The Globe), Against Love by Laura Kipnis (via TSR), Does your face give away your personality?, Dr Karl Kennedy: Gynaecologist, Psychiatrist, GP, Mater of the Universe (via New Scientist), What's painting mars?.

Page 19 - Reason is shaped by your body.

Click on the image to make it bigger (and open in a new window).

Tags: The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, The Nature of Consciousness by Piero Scaruffi, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson,Your 21 Senses (originally published in the New Scientist), A Metaphysics of Distinction, Performance and Practice by Michael R Finch.

Page 18 - Thick mascara on thin eyelashes.

Click on the image to make it bigger (and open in a new window).

 

Tags (clockwise from top left): 12252 Rutland St. in Detroit, Michigan on sale for $50, Gregory Crewdson, Reagan could sense communism was weaker than it looked (via The Economist), Damien Jurado sings Dancehall Places with Mint Royale, Katherine Kiss Me by Franz Ferdinand, Me.

Click on the image to make it bigger (and open in a new window).

 

Tags (clockwise from top left): 12252 Rutland St. in Detroit, Michigan on sale for $50, Gregory Crewdson, Reagan could sense communism was weaker than it looked (via The Economist), Damien Jurado sings Dancehall Places with Mint Royale, Katherine Kiss Me by Franz Ferdinand, Me.

Page 17 - We're a virus with shoes, that's all we are.

Click on the image to make it bigger (and open in a new window).

Tags (clockwise from top left): Alison Des Forges, a witness to genocide, died on February 12th, aged 66, Iceland's Deep Freeze, an image from Tim Knowles, Spy Box -- a digital camera inside a parcel looks out through a small hole and captures images of its journey through the postal system, I missed Bill Hicks day,  a bike rack designed by David Byrne (this one a dollar sign to install on Wall Street, via WSJ.com), the heck if I wrote down where I found this photo, David Foster Wallace quoted in The Unfinished by D. T. Max.

Page 16 - What does swan taste like?

Click on the image to make it bigger (and open in a new window).

Tags (clockwise from top left): The Big Chill special investing issue of Report on Business magazine, The Lady has her own show, Norma table lamp by Salgado Saucier, Editorial: Drugs drive politicians out of their minds in New Scientist, Popbitch 19.02.09 Issue 435, Globe-trotting city theorist Richard Florida and wife Rana find a home to love perched on a Rosedale ravine.

Page 15 - I got drunk last night and picked these from a neighbor's garden.

Click on the image to make it bigger (and open in a new window).

Tags (clockwise from top left): Kenny Rogers wearing his old eyelids (which are like mine, his new eyelids here), The Background Hum: Ian McEwan's art of unease by Daniel Zalewski, Tony Burgess on working with Bruce McDonald in the Quill & Quire, The Sweet Smell of Semantics by Jason Logan, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, The Ponzi State by George Packer, The Laundromat Essay by Kyle Buckley.

Page 14 - One person in ten thousand has their heart in the wrong place.

Click on the image to make it bigger (and open in a new window).

Tags (clockwise from top left): Sir John Mortimer, barrister and freedom-fighter, died on January 16th, aged 85, Lucifer's Legacy: The Meaning of Asymmetry by Frank Close, A Balloon Debate, Peter Schjeldahl on Peter Doig in The New Yorker, 10 Facts About an Olympic Phenomena.