Silly things

These artists seem to be pursuing wealth and fame using the business model pioneered by Alex Tew at the million dollar homepage.

First, there's onethousandpaintings.com, where Swiss artist Sala is selling "unique" paintings of every integer (not number, as she says. I have to nitpick) from 1 to 1000. She calls them unique because each is a different number and she doesn't make copies. I put it in quotes because each uses the same font/color scheme. In her words:

One number, one painting - the number is the art is the limit is the price. Each of the one thousand paintings is unique, showing a number between 1 and 1000. This is an experiment of art and mathematics, on the web, the first of its kind.

The value of each painting is defined by its number (value = 1000 - number). The earlier you buy, the more you save.

She later mentions the minimum price is $40, plus $20-30 shipping.


Next up, via a link on her own site, is theblackcubes.com which is slightly more pretentious. Again, from the site:

I'm making 999 wooden black cubes. Every cube has the same shape, appearence and dimensions (every facet is 20 cm.). The strange thing is that there is something inside the cube!. But nobody can take possession of its real sense, because if the cube is opened this sense is lost irreparably. The cube is the material representation of human curiosity.

[...]



There is a reason for the number of the cubes, 999. If i sell a good number you will know it

• What is it inside the cubes? I can only say that there is something different for every cube, that make your cube unique;
• You can't get its sense if the cube is opened (that means breaking it).
• Every cube is a part of an unique project
• DON'T OPEN IT!!
• Something else will happen to my project some day (when i have sold all cubes)

The price of the cubes is determined by the number of sold cubes; every cube sold the price will increase of 0.50 USD. If you buy now you save your money!

The current price is $85.50 USD.

In both of these cases, no matter how lofty their rhetoric, their greed gets in the way of the message they're supposedly conveying. In the first case, it's obvious that the number is the art is the limit, but is not the price. The $40 minimum interferes with the idea. Not to mention she's trying to buy back popular numbers and sell them again at a profit.

I'm less clear about the black cubes. I feel that their increasing value over time conflicts with my idea of "human curiosity." I don't see how uncertainty adds value to itself over time.I suppose if I buy a pack of baseball cards in 1989 and don't open it, I will be able to sell it at a higher price today. But in that case, it's what the pack contains that gives it value, not the curiosity of the owner. Yes, those 20 cards would be worth less if not in a factory sealed pack. But consider this. If you burgled a house and found a sealed envelope with "20 mint-condition 1989 baseball cards" written on the outside. Would you be able to sell this for more or less money than the sealed pack? Decidedly not. Which would you be more likely to tear open? Probably the envelope. To me, this says that the extra information implied by factory sealed package (they are baseball cards, they are from 1989, they are more likely in mint condition) increases the price. In other words, more information, higher price, but less curiosity.


I guess I can go on as long as I want about hype, artificial demand and over-priced, pretentious art, but they're selling Why does seem that collective action never works the way I want it to?

Suddenly, Everything has Changed

All kinds of good news. The graft went on as scheduled, and now all I have to do is get myself healed. I have extra incentive now, as I found out I got accepted by Michigan Tech to start January 15th. So I'll have a lot to do between now and then. Needless to say, worrying about packing, finding an apartment, or registering classes now seems like a luxury. What's more, the doctor said my prognosis was excellent and that the chances of the cancer recurring are very slight and he'd personally make certain the Peace Corps understands exactly that. So it's just up to me to make sure the second interview goes well. Five weeks ago, my plans seemed to be falling through. Lucky for me, they managed to fall right into place.

Lamest Cancer Survivor, Ever

The path report came back, and all the margins were clear. They did find a pre-cancerous lesion in the scar tissue, but they took enough skin to be sure it won't spread any time soon. The skin graft surgery is scheduled for Wednesday of next week, which is sweet, because that means I can stop watering the plastic covering over the hole in my foot every two hours.

On that note, I was kinda curious about the covering and learned a little bit more about it on the glorious internet. From the FDA (italics mine):

What is it? INTEGRA® Dermal Regeneration Template is a device to treat the skin of people with severe burns. FDA has recently expanded the approved use of this device. I INTEGRA® may now be used to treat the often disabling scars that result from severe burns.

INTEGRA® has two layers. The bottom layer (dermal) is made of a fibrous protein material (collagen) from cows and a substance made from shark cartilage. The top layer (epidermal) is made of silicone

How does it work? When INTEGRA® is placed on a wound where the burned skin or scarred tissue has been removed, it allows blood vessels and other cells to grow a new layer of skin while the collagen is absorbed into the body. The silicone layer helps close the wound and prevent fluid loss. After approximately 14 to 21 days, the silicone layer is removed, and a very thin graft of the patient's own skin (autograft) is applied to the wound area.

So basically I'm now part shark. And I'm cool with that. What I'm not cool with is why my doctor wouldn't tell that to me, a 23 year old male, outright. Why should I have to dig around on the internet before I can tell people I'm some kind of shark mutant? I mean, I've only wanted to be able to say that ever since I was six years old...

Channel Frederator

Among the things my macbook can't do is watch adultswim cartoons on the Fix. See, when I follow that link, I get this:

Whoa, whoa there buddy. Where do you think you're going?

Not with that Mac you're not. The Fix, she don't like Macs.
But we're sweet talking her. Wining and dining her.
Sending appropriately casual yet suggestive IM's. Things will change.

Until then, here's a weekly mini-Fix.
Those chumps with PCs have to sift through all the other crap to find this gem.

While I appreciate their sensitivity to my needs, the mini-Fix does not do the job. Lucky for me, I think I have found a replacement. Meet Channel Frederator. They're the folks who brought you Dexter's Lab, Powerpuff Girls, etc. Now they've got a weekly webcast of user-submitted animated shorts, complete with snarky bumps between episodes. The fact that it is user-submitted means the occasional short can disappoint, but the huge variety of styles and ideas is more often rewarding than annoying. Plus, each week they let the viewers vote on which shorts they liked most, so they can improve their selections in the future.

What I like most of this is that submitting doesn't require agreeing to a verbose license agreement or forfeiting your rights to your work. I'm no lawyer, but the "fine print" seems clear and concise enough for me to understand it:

By submitting this form you agree that this cartoon is your work, you have permission from everyone who worked on the cartoon to submit it, you have composed all the music yourself or have permission to use it, the whole cartoon is original, and you're over 18 years old or have a parent's permission to submit this cartoon. You will retain complete ownership of your work and we will not use your film in any other way without your expressed permission.

Because we want to pack as many cartoons as we can into each episode, Channel Frederator may have to edit or delete your film's credits if we feel they go on way too long. Don't worry, we'll still list them on our Website.

It's a lot of fun, and definitely worth checking out the next time you have 15 minutes.

Musicovery

Musicovery is a really cool website that lets you shuffle songs you don't even own by mood. You can use it like a regular internet radio station, or you can fast forward through the playlist (as indicated by the grey line), or you can select any number of parameters to play the exact music you're in the mood for. These parameters include tempo, mood, genre, popularity and decade. You can include a combination of these to create quite a nice mix without even thinking about it. Perfect for when you're bored of your own music, but don't want to be subject to the whims of some radio DJ or sit fast forwarding through your own collection on shuffle until something acceptable comes up. Getting a CD quality stream costs a little over 2 bucks a month, which seems pretty reasonable. That said, I'm pretty content with the free 32kbs stream.

LCFE IV

IV... I had one of those this morning.

The surgery went well. The doctor didn't see any immediate sign of a tumor and the lymph node looked normal, which is pretty amazing. We still have to wait on the path report to be sure they got all the cancer cells. But all in all, the best possible news.

I'm still kinda groggy from the anesthesia, and on a heavy dose of painkiller, so I'm going to wait to post more until later.

LCFE III

Not much new information, but I told people I'd post. The oncologists on the tumor board were amazed that the tests were negative and suggested I buy a lottery ticket. There was some debate about the benefits of taking a lymph node. The surgeon thinks it would be a good prognostic tool, and I'd feel better with the peace of mind. Surgery goes forward this Wednesday as planned.

Refurb Madness!

I did it. I finally took the plunge. I bought a mac.

One by one, my fears and hesitations eroded until all that was stopping me was the price tag. Then I found the refurbished laptops on Apple's website. They're almost affordable by even Dell standards. It doesn't have the exact specs I wanted, but it's still a nice piece of iCandy. The FedEx tracker says it gets here on the 15th.

Also, I got a call from the Chicago Peace Corps office, and they can't schedule the second interview until Michigan Tech gives me a thumbs up or down. I'm getting really good at waiting for stuff to happen. Mr. Rogers would be proud.

Lamest Cancer Fight Ever, Part Deux

So the plan is to go on with, well... the plan. They're still going to take a big ol' slab of skin, a lymph node and maybe a tendon or two. They'll look at all of it really carefully and . I'll deal with the 'if not' if 'if not' happens. Regardless, I'll probably go into a short period of hiding while the skin graft takes.


Dude, it's sixty degrees outside.

Goodfeathers

"Am I a clown to you? Do I amuse you?"

I've always hated pigeons. For me they rank with the cockroach and rat as symbols of urban filth. But listening to the Diane Rehm show this morning, I heard her guest mention attending a Pigeon Beauty contest in Lancaster, PA. Hearing his descriptions of some of the breeds, I had to see pictures of these beasts. I wasn't disappointed. This site has a nice gallery of some truely remarkable squab. Apparently, the American Fantail has a neck so long it curls its head around and rests it on its tail. Here are some of my favorites:

Lamest Cancer Fight Ever?

I've been reluctant to post about this for a variety of reasons, and one of those reasons was realized this morning. But given that recent development, I think now is the time to unravel this twisted tale and share with everyone what I've been going through the past ten days. So, follow along and enjoy the ride, knowing that a freeze frame and sappy music awaits you at the end of the episode.

Three years ago, I saw a number of doctors about a lump on my foot that had been growing over the past five years. No one seemed to know what it was, and finally a vascular surgeon agreed to take it out and perform a biopsy. We heard back that it was a dead lymph node and nothing to be worried about.

Flash forward to this October. I've been keeping an eye on the scar tissue where the lump had been removed, and I think it might be getting bigger. Since I want to ensure a clean bill of health for the Peace Corps, I decide to have it checked out and schedule an appointment with the clinic who had taken it out before.

The evening of the last Sunday in October I get a phone call from the head of vascular surgery. He's on the road and the reception made it difficult to hear, but the message is unmistakable. They've known I've had cancer for the past three years, but no one had bothered to tell me. Also, the doctor who had seen me has moved on, so it will take a while to figure out what happened. He says they are looking into it, but I would have to wait until Thursday to know more. So much for my clean bill of health.

The four days of considerable anxiety happen to include my peace corps interview. I don't mention it.

At the appointment on Thursday, I find out at least three mistakes were made. (1) Lymph nodes aren't located anywhere below the knee, so whatever they pulled out wasn't a lymph node. (2) An appointment was never made to tell me the pathologist #1 thought I had melanoma. (3) Pathologist #2 looks at the slides this week and says it isn't melanoma, but a rare form of cancer called clear cell sarcoma. Do yourself a favor and don't google that.

The doc also says that from the looks of it, it is a very 'indolent' tumor (that's my kind of tumor!) and that decreases the chances that it has spread. However, if it has spread, it probably would go to the lungs. They need an MRI, CT scan, bloodwork and chest x-rays before they know anything further. The tentative plan would be to take a swath of skin and 4 tendons off the top of my foot, and maybe a (real) lymph node or two out of my thigh to see if it spread. This would happen the day before Thanksgiving.

The hospital called in their risk management people to get a feel for how pissed I was that they knew I had cancer for three years and didn't tell me. I won't go into details, but they are picking up the bill for all the pre-op care, as well as anything that the insurance doesn't cover after that.

All the tests are performed that day, including the MRI. (Thank you risk management!) The closest available x-ray machine is in the plastic surgery ward. The nurses there say, "Gee, no one in plastic surgery gets their chest x-rayed. You must be pretty special!" I don't know what to say, so I say nothing.

They send us home, for another week of waiting and hoping. My doc has to consult the cancer board, which meets every Wednesday, with my test results before they know anything further.

I spend a lot of time with my family, call my sister to break the news. She and her fiance make plans to drive up before the surgery and spend time with us. To deal with stress, I go for a lot of long bike rides. It helps me feel normal and healthy. I deliberate day and night if I should tell anyone else, and how, and in what order. I don't. My reasons:

• I want to feel as normal as possible for as long as possible.
• I don't want it to be an excuse.
• It's better to give you guys a book report than to write you into the novel.
  
• It could be a huge mistake. They've already made three, remember.
  

Ready for the freeze frame yet?

The doc called me this morning with my test results. X-rays: clear. CT scan: clear. Blood work: A-OK. Nothing even showed up on my foot from the MRI. I like to think that the lungs spread to the foot, rather than vice versa.

They still might want to take the lymph node, just as a further diagnostic. Given the test results, they gave a higher priority case my time at the tumor board, so it'll be a couple weeks before we get the whole story. I'll know a little more tomorrow, and a lot more by next Thursday. Things are looking up.

I'm going to go ride my bike now.

Where it comes from

Doing yardwork...


Brendan: Dad, check it out. Looks like Zoey got into some Halloween candy. Grosss, is that a 'mounds' wrapper?
Dad: Is it? Looks more like Reese's Feces to me.

Quick Update

I should mention I've taken my next steps to getting out of Ann Arbor. I applied to Michigan Tech's Master's International program. It's simple. 1 year coursework + 2 years Peace Corps service = masters in civil engineering. Pie, no? The past few weeks have been busy making sure all the paperwork is in. Recommendations, fingerprints, background checks, letter of intent &c. It hasn't been fun. My interview with the Peace Corps last Wednesday went well enough, and there should be a second interview over the phone with the office in Chicago sometime soon. If that goes well, all I have to do is clear medical and legal checks and I can be nominated. Meanwhile my MTU application is in committee, so I should hear about that in a couple of weeks. It's nice to be in a place where the most I can do is cross my fingers.

I'm pretty excited. I visited MTU at the end of the Summer on the way back from a wedding in Wisconsin, and the campus defied my expectations. The kids in the program seem to be a tight-knit group and have a lot of fun together. So it was good to see that it isn't just a bunch of nerds staying inside and playing Counterstrike. I don't even think it will be too hard to find some folks to help me test out a little winter camping. Not to mention the coursework sounds exciting, and the Peace Corps is something I'd probably want to do anyway.


Plus, I don't know what the hell I'd do if I didn't get in.

Bush Needs Brain, Lobotomizes EPA

NPR's Science Friday did a piece [mp3] with Jeff Ruch of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) on the closure of the Environmental Protection Agency's library system that went into effect this afternoon. Here's the gist from the PEER website:

These libraries and their staff provide essential services to EPA staff and to the general public, such as finding the most current information on health risks of chemical substances, providing documentation in enforcement cases against corporate polluters, and helping to prepare scientific support for new regulations.

Shuttering the EPA libraries means that:
• Tens of thousands of unique holdings will be boxed up and inaccessible for an unknown period;
• Public access to EPA holdings will cease; and
• EPA scientists, enforcement agents and other specialists will have a much harder time doing their jobs. See EPA scientists’ letter of protest to Congress.

While cloaked as a budgetary measure, the actual motives appear to be rooted more in controlling access by both EPA staff and the public to information. (An internal EPA study estimated that the library network saved approximately $7.5 million annually in professional staff time, an amount far larger than the agency library budget of $2.5 million.)

I want to highlight that this is irreversible. It is not a matter of cracking open the sealed archives and digitizing them. The library in Chicago has already started to find new homes for many of their documents. Also, FOIA requests will not be effective since these records have not been catalogued. If you can't name the document, you can't request it.

Also, this is NOT about balancing the budget and finding a responsible way for paying for our dabblings in offensive warfare. It is not even an effective way to achieve a "small government." The library program IS small ($2.5 million isn't even a rounding error compared to the proposed $350 billion non-military discretionary spending) and it is not "government waste." It's what keeps the Agency running. In fact, removing the program will likely cause the $7.3 billion spent annually by the Agency to get tied up in paperwork and data mining. And THAT is wasteful.

I've stopped seeing stars when I stand up to fast. Must be election season. Call your Congressman.

End of the Line

Foreign Policy Magazine has a stunning photo essay about the shipbreaking industry in Bangladesh. About half of the worlds super tankers are disassembled there, the others mostly go to China or India. The methods and work conditions are almost medieval. From the essay:

When the tide is high, vessels are driven at full speed toward the shore. Once the water recedes and the ships rest along the muddy beach, the salvage crews move in, emptying the vessels of everything on board.

The OSHA factsheet [PDF] on shipbreaking includes a who's who of toxic chemicals including PCBs, lead and other heavy metals, asbestos and CFCs. Not to mention all the sharp metal, broken glass and fire-prone liquids aplenty. The US has workplace standards to protect its citizens from these hazards. The laws of economics see to it they are protected from doing the work at all. Bangladesh has few or no standards, which is why you see 200,000 people in bare feet and no protective equipment. Bangladesh also has lax environmental regulations, so when the tide comes in, all those chemicals get washed right into the Bay of Bengal.




The magazine isn't the first to cover this story. Will Englund and Gary Cohn were awarded a Pulitzer Prize for their 1998 piece in the Baltimore Sun on Alang shipyard [google satellite image] in India, and Greenpeace (yes, they're still around) has declared it one of their priorities. So I'm a little surprised I hadn't heard more about it.

Hold me

Adblock

Adblock

Take a Bow

My friend Annick has been working hard as producer for a documentary about Clare Woods Academy, a school for kids with special needs. From the website:

The film chronicles the amazing kids, with various disabilities, through rehearsals, classroom time, their home lives, and finally, the sold -out, standing-room-only performances of the musical. The film aims to show that despite outward appearances or physical differences, these special kids are just like any other child, with the same hopes, dreams, and fears.

She just posted an announcement that the rough cut has just been finished and the real thing shouldn't be too far behind. The trailer is wonderful (I found the quicktime file to work better for me), and the whole project oozes with a professionalism that just awes me. But as LeVar would say, take my damn word for it and make a donation.

Tomatoes

My dad never ceases to amaze me with his ability to be trendy at least a decade too early. He was making himself "western-style" shirts back in the late 80s. He developed a predecessor to GIS for Wayne county way before it became an important land-use planning tool. To be fair, he has his share of things that never caught on. Before I was born, he started a croquet league that played during the lunch hour - in 1970's downtown Detroit. This time, though, he's caught something just before it reaches its tipping point.

Every August, the kitchen becomes inundated with tomatoes of all shapes, colors, and states of decay. By the second week, my tongue is raw and my sense of taste diminished. I start to wonder if the same happens to the fruit flies which have by then fortified a perimeter around the kitchen table.

This year, our troubles were alleviated when People's Food Co-op in Ann Arbor agreed to sell his tomatoes - at $5.69 a pound. The PFC was already carrying his heirloom vegetable seeds, which were profiled in a Michigan Radio piece in May last year. I'll work on posting the audio file later. Michigan Radio doesn't have a very friendly archive. Meanwhile, you can listen to a higher-profile bit [transcript. Scroll up for the mp3.] on heirloom tomatoes that aired on NPR's Living on Earth just a few weeks ago.

As I was searching for the segment, a bit of fill music caught my ear. It was Wendy Mae Chambers' car horn organ playing "New York, New York"

The instrument is comprised of 25 car horns operated by a homemade keyboard and powered by a car battery charger. The car horns were selected with a pitch pipe and purchased from junk yards, with the exception of the Cadillac C-Trumpet and the "ahooogah" horn which were purchased new... She believes she got the idea for the instrument while asleep in her apartment in Brooklyn, waking up to a distant traffic jam on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway that sounded like a Mahler symphony.

Bonus points for the apt Mahler similie. She also has a quite charming version of "Winter wonderland" that she plays on her toy piano. John Cage would be proud.

Speaking of Cage, youtube has his "Sound" posted in three parts. If you can tolerate Cage's urgent and self-important blatherskite, it's worth a look to see why I like Roland Kirk so much. Kinda like my blog. Was that too self-aware? C'mon, you like it when Eggers does it!

Kirk and Cage

Adblock

Adblock

Adblock

Holy Ballot Proposal!

Even though same-sex marriage is rapidly losing ground, it has still cast its morally ambiguous shadow over the institution as a whole. Opponents of same-sex marriage often suggest that allowing such unions could pave the way for even less desirable nuptials such as intra-family and inter-species wedlock. Indeed, two liberal eurotrash fowls have proven them right. I must admit, what worries me more is high school english classes having to deal with five more chuck dickens. Groan again, into my good ear?

Vinyl Sharity

I've been finding a lot of sites where people are "ripping" their old out of print LPs to mp3 and sharing them online. Most of these are novelty items that are fairly safe from any applicable copyright interests. For instance, Bellybongo specializes in lounge music and Swedish pop. Sabadabada offers a small selection of Brasilian music from the 1960's, and a large collection of album art from the same era. Unpleasant.org is a better music blog than I could ever write, and dabbles in a little sharity. Singing science records has a bunch of those campy (albeit catchy!) let's-make-science-fun songs. Funky16corners posts funk tracks and albums of varying obscurity.

Some of my favorites:

• 'Summertime' by Klaus Wunderlich has got the funk. I really want someone to mash this up with a thicker drum track.
• 'Y Deja Andar El Reloj' byOsmar Milito Y El Quarteto Forma is a laid back tune featuring the cuica. My family named our first dog after it because of the noise it made locked in the bathroom at night before it was housetrained. While you're on the page check out 'Magnolia' by Jorge Ben. Fans of Seu Jorge's contributions to the Life Aquatic soundtrack should like this. Also, Side A of Obofe is also a gem. One minute it sounds like Sergio Mendes and the Brasil '66, the next minute like the Sesame Street theme. 'Madame Sabe Tudo' sounds like a Brasilian Bob Dylan over a Dixieland jazz band.
  
• 'Kiedy Allach Szedl (When Allah came)' by Marek Sewen and his band. The whistling (or theramin?) and woodblock remind me of Ennio Morricone's work on the spaghetti Western soundtracks. I guess Allah came by for tea and an afternoon cha-cha.
  
• The Very Best of Robert Delgado. It is mandatory that you enjoy a drink with a miniature umbrella in it while listening to this album at least once this summer. Let me know if you can't figure out how to get the rapidshare thing to work.
• 'Sheherezade' as done by Trumpet A'gogo reminds me more of 'One Nation' off of Roland Kirk's Blacknuss more than Rimsky-Korsakov.
  
• Lastly, if you don't have enough to do with your life, check out 'Zoom a Little Zoom' over at Singing Science. As the page notes, it features the guy who penned "On top of Spaghetti". The harmonies warm me from the inside.

That's all for now. If I know me at all, there will be more. Thank you for indulging me.

Another Dream Realized

By someone else. Seeing my old roommate Nic record his own music often made me fantasize about writing/recording a multi-violin piece. But never did I even consider doing something on as grand a scale as this. And putting it together on video? Forget it! Enjoy.


9:17pm - I had the video embedded here, but I guess you'll have to go through google instead.

Also, here is Ethan's own website.

Stupid 1973 Energy Crisis.

If there is such a thing as a PhD in GoreTex, I was sure Richard would have it. Maybe Graham had found my blog and had already moved on to brighter candidates. I couldn't be sure how it happened, but the jig was up. I had been outted and Graham was calling all of his HR buddies, making sure they burned my resume upon receipt. I was so worried I even emailed him, suggesting that my cellphone reception might be bad, so why not call this land line instead. For 45 minutes, I jumped everytime the construction vehicle down the street shifted into reverse.

Most cities in most states in our country set their clocks forward every Spring. Flagstaff, AZ isn't one of them. The interview went fine. No mention of my apparent doppelganger. (Or am I his? How does the doppelganger refer to his fleshy counterpart?) I (we?) even have a follow-up appointment this Friday.

To set my conscience at ease, I set out on stalkernet to find Richard. There is a Chemical Engineering Richard with a uniqname very similar to mine. He's a bit of an all-star. Won awards and whatnot. Alumni. Doesn't live in Flagstaff. In short, the glass pocket protector fits. My only consolation is he doesn't seem to have a profile on the alumni career page. I do, and the job Graham forwarded me is also posted there. Still -- if all goes well -- I might have to send the guy a bottle of champagne and a hand mirror with a headshot pasted to it.