Happy St. Patrick’s Day! This is the first time I’ve been in a city that starts celebrating a full week before St. Patty’s. Please enjoy this video shot at the South Side Irish St. Patrick’s Day parade on Sunday. [flashvideo file=”flash_video/st.pats.flv” /] *** Update, 3/27/2009 *** Looks like this was the last South Side Irish … Read more
This is really excellent. This fellow took a bajillion unrelated YouTube videos of people playing instruments, or singing or whathaveyou, and edited them all down into a “virtual album” of seven tracks, including the original video samples with the music. The results are brilliant. It kind of reminds me of Coldcut’s Timber video, but that … Read more
This is interesting. ScienceDaily.com is reporting that some folks at the University of Exeter have used game-theoretical models to predict strange food gathering behaviors that ravens exhibit only in particular geographic conditions… “The researchers built a mathematical model to understand how this behaviour evolved and why it might occur in some roosts and not others. … Read more
[flashvideo file=”flash_video/UnemploymentSeminar.flv” /] This is the first video that I’ve turned in for Northwestern that hasn’t been completely terrible. It’s a story about a group in Chicago that provides support services for the unemployed to assist in their job search called the Career Transitions Center.
Yesterday, Lawrence Lessig spoke at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern. Lessig is like the Elvis Presley of the nerd universe; a rock star of the highest order. I don’t need to run down his resume… if you’re reading this, chances are you’ve heard of Lessig before. You probably know that we have him … Read more
Well, I asked Google, and I found this metafilter page, which helpfully has an answer from one of my heroes, Robert Anton Wilson: Robert Anton Wilson called it “metanoia”: Paranoia = “everything wants to destroy me”; Metanoia = “everything wants to help me”. I’m not sure if he was getting that somehow from John Lilly’s … Read more
Over the weekend, it occurred to me that I haven’t been to the movies in a great long time. Of course, I’ve been watching stuff — Netflix, FearNet On-Demand, and so forth. But, being in Chicago, I remembered that there was probably some pretty neat places to see interesting movies around here. So I went … Read more
They both elucidate meaning, as well as obscure. To wit:
So I found this at the Chicago News Bench blog. The author is a little bit crazy in the “socially-conservative” sense, but it’s a nice little pic snapped near my house. Stopbirdporn.org is a real website. I suggest checking it out. From their front page: “Adults, disguised as bird watchers mask their debauchery by taking … Read more
On Wednesday, Louis Uchitelle, economic reporter for the New York Times, told an audience of nearly 90 faculty and students from the University of Illinois at Chicago that layoffs had gotten out of hand in the United States, and that the consequences of mass layoffs extended far beyond the corporate bottom line. Beyond the immediate … Read more