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October 15, 2008

Links for 15 Oct 2008
Posted by Avram Grumer at 02:55 PM * 36 comments

Comments on Links for 15 Oct 2008:
#1 ::: Linkmeister ::: (view all by) ::: October 15, 2008, 04:16 PM:

In the same spirit, here's a fascinating blog post describing the Obama ground game. The method could (and probably will) be used as a primer for future community organizing.

#2 ::: Adam Lipkin ::: (view all by) ::: October 15, 2008, 04:22 PM:

I've been a fan of the ramen page for a while (and I highly recommend some of the ramen and egg recipes).

They also occasionally cover fashion. :-)

Incidentally, at my local Shaw's, a box of ten Machuran beef ramen packets has risen almost a dollar in the last three months (from $2 to $2.85). Still cheap, but not as cheap as I'd gotten used to.

#3 ::: Keith ::: (view all by) ::: October 15, 2008, 04:25 PM:

Never understood the Shepherd Fairey hate. It's solid, well designed, eye catching and dynamic with it's own visual language. Everything you want in a designer of posters, CD covers and book jackets.

#4 ::: Stefan Jones ::: (view all by) ::: October 15, 2008, 04:30 PM:

Warning: Some of the Mad Men period illos are slightly spoilerish. (I'm several weeks behind.)

I once made cold sesame ramen noodles. A bit of creamy peanut butter, hot sesame oil, sesame seeds.

#5 ::: abi ::: (view all by) ::: October 15, 2008, 04:31 PM:

Here in the Netherlands, the Google text ads on the Official Ramen Homepage are advertising windows and windowsills.

You see, the Dutch word for "windows" is "ramen".

#6 ::: Ginger ::: (view all by) ::: October 15, 2008, 04:35 PM:

abi@ 5: I am now in a hurry to close all my ramen and shut down my computer before I eat it.

#7 ::: miriam beetle ::: (view all by) ::: October 15, 2008, 04:46 PM:

keith,

Never understood the Shepherd Fairey hate.

certain segment of the population seem to believe that if you use photographs, it's cheating. which should have gone out with... the first artist to use a photograph, in my opinion.

if tracing off a photograph is "just copying," then anyone should be able to get the same results if they have the same source & tools at their disposal. which that page disproves delightfully well.

#8 ::: Earl Cooley III ::: (view all by) ::: October 15, 2008, 05:00 PM:

Love to eat them ramens,
Ramen's what I love to eat.
Bite they yummy noodles...
Nibble on they OM NOM NOM NOM.

#9 ::: Tracey S. Rosenberg ::: (view all by) ::: October 15, 2008, 05:07 PM:

And of course ramen is honored by Jorge Cham as part of the graduate student food pyramid, in the cheap foods you eat from a bowl tier.

I haven't been a graduate student for a while now, and yet the 'free food' urge has never left me. Kind of like my student loans....

#10 ::: Chris Quinones ::: (view all by) ::: October 15, 2008, 05:15 PM:

I've never been a grad student - there's nothing wrong with free food, whatever your status in life.

#11 ::: Madeline F ::: (view all by) ::: October 15, 2008, 05:42 PM:

I love the WCW bad roommate poems. Reminds me of why I'm moving. In my case it would be something like,

This is just to say

I have replaced
the hand towels
that were in
the bathroom

and which
you thought were
plush
and washable

Forgive me
I did not notice
I don't
wash my hands

#12 ::: Lizzy L ::: (view all by) ::: October 15, 2008, 07:37 PM:

Here's another one.

Friends for sixty years and still going strong. Ya gotta love it.

#13 ::: Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) ::: (view all by) ::: October 15, 2008, 08:32 PM:

miriam beetle @ 7

That segment of the population seems to forget that a lot of the great art of the Renaissance was created with techniques like tracing the screen of a camera obscura. It's the result that counts.

#14 ::: Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) ::: (view all by) ::: October 15, 2008, 08:55 PM:

This is just to say

I have written all possible
William Carlos Williams poems
that could be in Borges' library,

and which you thought you'd
write when you got around to it.

Forgive me,
He is stone cold
and can't do
anything about it.

#15 ::: Dom ::: (view all by) ::: October 15, 2008, 11:16 PM:

The October 2008 whiteboard video explanation of CDOs ("How we got them to take our crap") is copied from this cool December 2007 animation.

(Oops, I just noticed that the link is in the sidebar, not this thread. Forgive the digression.)

#16 ::: Avram ::: (view all by) ::: October 15, 2008, 11:56 PM:

Bruce @13, are you referring to David Hockney's theory about Renaissance art? Because it's far from proven.

#17 ::: Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) ::: (view all by) ::: October 16, 2008, 02:14 AM:

No, as I understand it, Hockney's theory is about the Dutch masters. I was thinking of the earlier Italians; I know that Leonardo investigated the camera obscura, and I'm sure I remember seeing sketches from at least one other artist showing him using the device. I may have overstated the amount of work done with it, but I think (it's been a long time since I studied any of this; mostly I rely on Eva's memory of several years worth of art history classes) that it's been generally assumed that it would have been used by some of the same people who worked out the viewport method of analyzing perspective.

I may have picked a bad example, but the point I was trying to make is that all art is a bag of tricks (or several bags), and trying to say one trick is legitimate and another is not isn't either very reasonable or especially useful. What matters is what the art communicates to the viewer, not how the artist created it.

#18 ::: miriam beetle ::: (view all by) ::: October 16, 2008, 03:12 AM:

bruce,

but the point I was trying to make is that all art is a bag of tricks (or several bags), and trying to say one trick is legitimate and another is not isn't either very reasonable or especially useful. What matters is what the art communicates to the viewer, not how the artist created it.

hear, hear.

#19 ::: ajay ::: (view all by) ::: October 16, 2008, 08:51 AM:

14: no problem, we can just go ahead with the shift to Walter Carlos Williams.

This Is Just To Say

I have written
the space opera trilogy
that is now
in bookshops

and that
you will
probably
find yourself reading at some point

forgive me
the plot is a little
implausible
but oo the characterisation

#20 ::: ajay ::: (view all by) ::: October 16, 2008, 08:58 AM:

Or, indeed, Jerome Karlos Jerome:

This Is Just To Say

I have forgotten
To bring the tin opener
Which I left
On the kitchen table

And which we
Were probably
Relying on
To enable us to eat

Forgive me
I was distracted
By H
(Or, possibly, the dog Montmorency)

#21 ::: C. Wingate ::: (view all by) ::: October 16, 2008, 11:20 AM:

I'm not especially convinced by the camera obscura hypothesis, particularly looking at van Eyck's work. There are two things that make me particularly dubious. One is the Albergati portrait. For whatever reason we have what seems to be a preliminary study done in silverpoint. It's quite instructive to use a tabbed browser and flip back and forth between the two, because it shows a considerable distortion has taken place between them. The face in the drawing is rather too large for the rest of the head and the shoulders, but in the painting, it's a little overcorrected. It's hard to explain this optically, because they did have pantographic devices and could simply transfer one to the other fairly exactly. It seems more likely to me that van Eyck rendered the face and the ear in the drawing quite closely, but then just sketched the rest in to suggest the contours without worrying about exact detail. Then, in painting from the sketch, he fixed the proportions, but lost some of the facial detail in "flattening" the facial curve to match the corrections. (The only other explanation that makes much sense is that someone else of extremely high talent did the sketch from the painting; but then the problem becomes explaining why the sketch shows detail that the painting does not.)

The other thing I see is that the many paintings of the "virgin in a room" type almost uniformly exhibit the classic error of beginning one-point perspective. To start with, if a camera was involved, he had to have used the view camera trick of shifting the image plane to achieve parallelism. I don't know that they knew about that back then, but in any case the strictly rectangular shape of the back walls argues for construction rather than tracing. But beyond that, the shape of the room is wrong. I did this sort of painting myself back in high school, and he has done what I did, except not with such exaggeration. The shape of the space has been flattened, so that the walls and floor and ceiling appear to slope away from the viewer a bit. When looking with the eye alone, the tendency is to put more of the periphery into the picture than a camera would actually see; to maintain the perspective, the viewpoint shifts further away, but the sides of the box are then twisted so as to shrink the back wall. A camera clips all this stuff out; or if moved farther away, it shows more of the sides, but tilts the distant portion of them even more. It does seem to me that the patron portraits in these paintings were done separately at some stage and then applied to the painting (a practice supported by the drawing/painting pair). They seem in some sense very "accurate", but they don't fit into the perspective of the room.

#22 ::: abi ::: (view all by) ::: October 16, 2008, 11:28 AM:

William Carlos Castaneda?

I have eaten
the peyote
and pissed on
the dog

and now
I can no longer
return
to Ixtlan.

Believe me
like don Juan I am
become
a warrior.

#23 ::: ajay ::: (view all by) ::: October 16, 2008, 11:40 AM:

This Is Just To Say

I have signed
the letters
that were in
my in tray

With the name
"Washington Irving"
(or occasionally
"Irving Washington").

Forgive me
I am not coping
well
with my promotion

--- Major Carlos Major

#24 ::: Fragano Ledgister ::: (view all by) ::: October 16, 2008, 12:00 PM:

Anti Carlos Anti


This is just to say

I have grown tired
of the parodies
of that dratted
little poem,

which you
most probably
thought so refined
and enjoyable.

Forgive me
the were boring me
far past the point
of tears.

#25 ::: ajay ::: (view all by) ::: October 16, 2008, 12:32 PM:

I have marked
about a third
of the
student papers

which leaves
only another eighty
squatting
on my desk

Forgive me
I am now going
a little bit
bonkers

--- Fragano Carlos Ledgister

#26 ::: Erik Nelson ::: (view all by) ::: October 16, 2008, 12:48 PM:

Ths s jst t sy
hv tn ll th vwls
Tht wr n th lphbt.

Frgv m
ddn't rlz y hd nygthng lft t sy.

#27 ::: Faren Miller ::: (view all by) ::: October 16, 2008, 01:02 PM:

Knowing this blog's fondness for things piratical, here's a link to a "Science Daily" item called Did Pirates Create the Credit Crunch?.

#28 ::: Rob Rusick ::: (view all by) ::: October 16, 2008, 02:01 PM:

There had been a local competition to submit poems in the form of This is Just to Say, written as similarly insincere apologies. 180 were eventually received.

Unfortunately, the newspaper moved a couple of articles describing the winning entries, from a public archive to another location requiring a payment to view them. All the links I've found via Google point to the original archive article, and are now broken.

The first link above in the article announcing the competition shows a few examples written by University of Rochester students*; ultimately, the winning entry had been written by a fourth-grader.


*
1) This Is Just To Say

I knew you
were going to
eat the plums
that were in
the icebox.

You always do.

So I took it
as an opportunity
and poisoned them.


2) Everything gets
turned into a poem
with you.

I couldn't
take it anymore.

Try writing
about that.

#29 ::: Fragano Ledgister ::: (view all by) ::: October 16, 2008, 02:38 PM:

ajay #25: Only a little bit, you think?

#30 ::: C. Wingate ::: (view all by) ::: October 16, 2008, 02:40 PM:

P.S. I think the Fairley hate is in reaction to the Heroic Realism. OTOH the "MORE COWBELL" one is classic.

#31 ::: abi ::: (view all by) ::: October 16, 2008, 02:41 PM:

You people made me do a bad thing. I hope you're sorry...

#32 ::: Jon Meltzer ::: (view all by) ::: October 16, 2008, 05:24 PM:

so much depends
upon

a cold white
icebox

open with
plum stems

beside a note
"sorry".

#33 ::: Rob Rusick ::: (view all by) ::: October 16, 2008, 10:28 PM:

Rob Rusick @28: Unfortunately, the newspaper moved a couple of articles describing the winning entries, from a public archive to another location requiring a payment to view them. All the links I've found via Google point to the original archive article, and are now broken.

Ah, here is a google-cached page for the article describing some of the winning entries.

#34 ::: Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) ::: (view all by) ::: October 17, 2008, 02:40 AM:

ajay @ 19

Hmm, my subconscious seems to be trying to tell me that the poet was really William William Williams III, formerly a meteor miner who was actually a cover identity for Kimball Kinnison. Either that or I've been listening to too many of Rev. Spooner's sermons.

#35 ::: geekosaur ::: (view all by) ::: October 18, 2008, 12:16 AM:

Bruce Cohen @34:
Sybly White, actually. Except for its lacking mention of a zymosely polydactile tongue.

#36 ::: geekosaur ::: (view all by) ::: October 18, 2008, 12:25 PM:

Erm. All that and then I spell it wrong. Sybly Whyte, he of the space opera starring QADGOP THE MERCOTAN (caps his).

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