Change Agent: Paying it Forward, Extreme Edition

If you liked Alonso Alvarez Barreda‘s Historia de un Letrero (The Story of a Sign),  then you’ll love  Sharon Wright‘s Change for a Dollar, as seen here: (ht David Gebler) There is an old tradition that describes how all times, there are thirty-six very special people in the world.  According to this tradition, it is thanks to [...]

Losing Control with the Boogie Woogie

(NOTE: For an optimal experience of this blog posting, please beginning playing the music from the embedded video link where indicated, using headphones, while reading) Standing there in the galleries of MoMA, I saw a lot of classic, seen-it-a-thousand-times-before art that no longer held any magic or surprises for me. Then suddenly, something jumped out [...]

MoMA Moments (Part 1 of 2): Seeing and Being Seen

At a recent visit to MoMA in New York, I came across some best selling posters inspiring 19th and 20th century artworks for which I’ve regained an appreciation. Regained, that is, after having my deep enjoyment of art become atrophied during my years as a wall decor peddler / online retail gunslinger. Some of these works [...]

Animated Text Favorites: Taylor Mali, Dan Pink, Visual-Aural Enchantment

Compelling, well-structured messages + Great voices + Deft animation =  Edutainment for the aural and visual learner    Bonus track of Tali Mali… combine him with Dalton Sherman and you have weapons-grade motivation:

Gothic Sublime: Ruskin Meets Wood

What we think or what we know or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do. – John Ruskin   All the really good ideas I ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.                         – Grant Wood (There’s something about those two guys [...]

..and the rockets’ red glare: Some Favorite Fireworks

Dragon’s Eggs…  they’re just like popcorn, only buttered with a magnesium-aluminum alloy…  Tasty! Whistlers…  or as D.E.S. would call them, Screaming-Slytherin-Quiddich-Players-From-Hello-Without-the-O Scrambling Comets…  cf. Whistlers Salute… used for those grande finales, blinding-Titanium-white explosions of earth-shaking, ear-splitting, bowel-moving power The World’s Biggest Firework Shell… 48 inches of incinerating love… haven’t seen this one personally, but apparently [...]

Say the Same Thing, but in Different Words

Here is a powerful short film, Historia de un Letrero (The Story of a Sign),  by Alonso Alvarez Barreda, winner of the Cannes 2008 Online Shorts film competition, sponsored by the National Film Board of Canada:    (tip of the hat to Anne S). WIRED contributing editor Daniel Pink points to this short film as an illustration of [...]

There’s No Such Thing as a Synonymous Synonym

  Synonym: Syn”o*nym\ (s[i^]n”[-o]*n[i^]m), n.; pl. Synonyms (-n[i^]mz). [F. synonyme, L. synonyma, pl. of synonymum, Gr. synw`nymon. See Synonymous.] One of two or more words (commonly words of the same language) which are equivalents of each other; one of two or more words which have very nearly the same signification, and therefore may often be [...]

Rediscovered Love: The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to Her Last Berth to Be Broken Up, 1838, by J.M.W. Turner

Nothing beats the love of great art out of you than going into the art/wall-decor business. It’s literally been years since I’ve been able to really appreciate museum art.   Then this week I came across an article in one of my favorite magazines (The New Yorker) about one of my favorite painters (Joseph Turner), written by one of [...]

From Pushkin to Pausch: Dreams, Habits and Happiness

Привычка свыше нам дана, замена счастию она. Heaven sends us habit to take the place of happiness. from Eugene Onegin, by Alexander Pushkin, Book 2, Stanza 31    Taking that quote out of its narrative context (preserved for obsessive-compulsive posterity, below) and giving it a generalized interpretation:   We start out young and foolish, ambitious with pie-in-the-sky dreams. [...]

George Washington’s Ascension to Heaven

This image, courtesy of Barewalls.com, will be featured in a book, “American Gospel” by Jon Meacham, due out from Random House in April.   (buy the poster here) What an allegory! This makes you realize how far removed we are from those early days of this country’s history. I think it’s kind of like an early American [...]

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