Category: Culture

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New Online Image Collection

It is no secret that I love paintings and art galleries in general. The National Gallery in the US has opened its digital vault to allow access to thousands of high resolution images of its work here.

From the website:

NGA Images is a repository of digital images of the collections of the National Gallery of Art. On this website you can search, browse, share, and download images. A standards-based reproduction guide and a help section provide advice for both novices and experts. More than 25,000 open access digital images up to 3000 pixels each are available free of charge for download and use. NGA Images is designed to facilitate learning, enrichment, enjoyment, and exploration.

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Tonight’s movie: some classic 1970s martial arts!

I can’t wait!

I saw The Man From Hong Kong on a crappy Beta (don’t ask) tape when I was twelve or thirteen! Yu Wang and George Lazenby in a international drug dealing, hang-gliding, kung-fu on top of Ayers Rock, over the top sound effects, Australia-Hong Kong butt kicking old time kung fu film! More here! If I have time I may also watch The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, the 1978 master piece of Chinese kung fu and re-live my youth 😉

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World War Z

So that book about the approaching zombie apocalypse, World War Z, is soon out at the theatres. I had meant to read the book. Alas, Hollywood’s ability to convert text to pixels is outpacing my ability to read. Truly Sad. Here is a link to the movie website. It is quite a nicely integrated site with my iPad.

As I ruminated on the continued proliferation of the zombie genre I couldn’t help but to think that, like Paul Krugman and other, that the zombie metaphor is the metaphor of the age: no matter how dead you think an idea is, wrong. It is still alive. Ideas that inhibit the growth of our culture and our society still linger, old hatreds die hard. Or, I think, don’t die at all. Horror movies used to have a single threat, a Jason or a Freddie. Now all of use are potentially the destroyer of all that is good. So much for inevitable progress!

I’ll put the zombie movie on my list, although that list is growing and no plans to hit the theatres in my immediate future. Oh, and Superman looks good too! Nice iPad site too!

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Lazy Like a Fox

Click here for a great TED talk on open source houses that can be printed by a 3d printer after downloading the open source blueprints from the web. Incredible technology! They are pioneering a process that is completely open source and can be accessed by anyone: the Wiki House!

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Early anti-Nazi film re-discovered

In the early part of the last century Cornelius van Derbilt IV, the descendent of the railway tycoon, was in a unique position to interview some rather lofty players in the game of European politics including Adolf Hitler. In 1934 he produced a film called Hitler’s Reign of Terror that was censored and denied access to distribution due to its inflammatory nature. It has been recently re-discovered in the Belgian Archives. More here.

Did I mention that the film was censored and denied distribution in the United States?

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Words that the English language could use

You know when you are expecting someone to come to your place and you keep checking to see if they have arrived? It is called iktsuarpok in Inuit. Or seigneur-terraces, French for coffee shop dwellers who sit at tables a long time but spend little money.

Great article here.

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Virtual Tokyo

So the Victoria Day (Victoria and Aboriginal Day if the petition is successful) weekend is almost over. I have had a very quiet and relaxing few days, catching up with some old friends. I have also backed up my entire photo collection. Took me 3 hours! I ate a lot of bacon and eggs, great steak and fennel, roasted chicken and now I have brownies baking in the oven. It will be nice to work some of this off tomorrow at the gym. Yoga was awesome on Sunday, while I felt a little rusty since I haven’t gone in three weeks, it sure was nice to sweat!

Here is a great video of a miniaturized Tokyo. No Godzilla but cool techno funky beat here.

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Inferno, the new Dan Brown novel

The new Dan Brown novel was released today and so I decided to pick it up. It felt rather comfortable, a similar story to the other stories by Dan Brown that I have read: The da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. I haven’t read his other work but Inferno follows a similar template: noted Harvard professor Robert Langdon tracks down yet another medieval mystery whilst being chased by unknown bad guys. This time it is not la Jaconde or the Vatican, it is Florence, de Medici, and Dante’s masterpiece of the descent to Hell: Inferno! The recipe works, right? Well, I will liken it to the movies of M. Night Shyamalan. Shyamalan burst onto the scene with The Sixth Sense but by the time you get to Signs, you weren’t all that impressed anymore. Same narrative devices, same pacing, essentially the same story that you are familiar with but it seemed, well, lacking and unconvincing. So while Brown provides wonderful historical information of beautiful architecture and art in locales in Italy, it lacks the punch of da Vinci Code. I am sure, though, that tourism to Florence will increase.

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Jaron Lanier

Jaron Lanier has a new book out, Who Owns The Future arguing, among other things, that the internet killed the middle class. Salon has a great interview here.

Lanier is a deep thinker about the role of information technology, capital intensive labour, and the fate of democracy. Seeing integrated communications technology as a key driver in the alignment of social forces, Lanier’s thoughts normally make the tours through global history by connecting seemingly disparate forces such as the Facebook and increasing wealth inequality. His main argument throughout his work has been that society gives up much to satisfy efficiency.