Category: Culture

Embedded/Live is boring

I’m one of the faithful liberals, but I found this document kinda boring and not very enjoyable. Elvis Mitchell thought that this was an interesting attempt to capture a stage play, but I think that “Uncle Vanya on 42nd Street” or “Looking For Richard” are much better.

Sorry Tim, maybe I needed to be there…

My good pal is making a cool movie about an awesome musician

check it out: What’s the Problem? A documentary about Stew.

More and more people are carrying less and less cash, that is a huge mistake

Corporate America is making it easier and easier to walk around with only a card in your pocket. For customers, it is convenient: no trips to the ATM to get a coffee, no worries about getting mugged. For Corporate America (and the Government as well), it means that you are a much richer data-mining target and more likely to spend more. For thieves it means that it is ever easier to steal your identity. For the rest of us, it means waiting for ages while you write your check or swipe your card to pay for a $.25 newspaper.

I’m not advocating that everyone carry around $1000 in cash all the time, that would be stupid. Credit cards have their purposes. However, I think that Americans are getting far too dependent on them for the little things. I think that this is part of the reason why our consumer debt is at record levels. If you have cash in your pocket, you are aware of how much money you are spending on a very visceral level. If spending $100 or $5 involves the exact same transaction, It is doubtful that you think so much about how the amounts you are spending are adding up.

Every time you use a credit card, or club card, or any cash substitute, you create a record in a database. This record will let someone know what you spent, when you spent it and what you spent it on. As these records pile up, corporations (and government) can create a fairly accurate profile of you and your interests. Corporations want this information so that they can more directly sell to you (I’m open-minded enough to acknowledge that this may not be a bad thing, ie: Amazon’s recommendations). Government wants this information so that they can track their citizens and maybe look for evil-doers (depending on your level of trust in the government, this may or may not be a bad thing, I think it is a scary thing given this government). Each one of these records also makes it easier for someone to steal your identity. These records are stored and replicated all over the place. A thief only has to find a single unsecured database to get your personal information.

Now you can ignore my warnings and do whatever the heck you want. This is a free country. Here is my final argument: sometimes it is just plain rude. When you write a check or use a card, you waste time. It is slower than cash. It is always slower than cash. Making a line of people wait while you write out a check and then fill in your register is just rude. Ditto for swiping your card and waiting while the card reader connects to the system and prints out the receipt. Again, I understand this in a grocery line where you are spending a lot of money. I can’t stand this at my local coffee shop, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen it.

Of course, the government is planning to add RFID tags to cash soon so a lot of the privacy arguments for cash will go away…

A sick weekend prompts a slew of rentals, here is the quick and dirty

The Motorcycle Diaries – A very well shot and acted account of the early days of Che Guevara
My Architect – An excellent documentary from the son of Louis Kahn
The Newsroom Complete Series – An awesomely funny short-lived series from the CBC in the spirit, but predating, the BBC series “The Office”
Cellular – Big hollywood thriller that bugged me at first, but then I got into enough to finish watching it.

One of my favorite architecture and city planning writers has a slideshow on Disney’s planned town

Like many city planning geeks, I’ve got a weird fascination with Celebration, Florida. It is a town designed, built and controlled by the Disney corporation. On Slate.com, Witold Rybczynski has an interesting little slideshow about the town which is now 10 years old.

If you know the Seattle arts community at all, you’ll realize that this is pretty serious

When Matt Richter made Consolidated Works happen, the Seattle art scene was in decline. There were fewer and fewer exhibition spaces for up and coming visual artists. He created an ambitious and amazing and huge space for visual art, theater, film and music. Over time, with good curators, it became an anchor and important part of the modern art scene in the Northwest. When Paul Allen reclaimed the building that Consolidated Works lived in, Matt oversaw the move to a new, even larger, space and made that venue just as vital. On Tuesday, this week, the ConWorks board removed Richter for reasons that are currently unknown. I hope that this won’t mean the end of Consolidated Works or Matt or Northwest modern art.

Arthur Miller, dead at 89

Last night we saw “Dinner Rush” a film from 2000 starring Danny Aiello that I feel compelled to recommend

Ever since I read Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, I’ve been really interested about what life is like inside a real working kitchen. I was recommended the film Dinner Rush, rented it and watched it last night. It was surprisingly good. Here is the plot summary for the entry in IMDB:

Is it just another evening at the hugely popular Italian restaurant of proprietor and bookmaker Louis Cropa (Danny Aiello) in New York? Anything but as tonight’s guests include; a local police detective and his wife specially invited by the owner; on the balcony rival bookmaker gangsters from Queens who want to become partners in the restaurant; in the corner renowned food critic ‘the food nymph’ is her usual demanding self; and at the bar, seemingly unnoticed, is Ken (‘John Corbett’ ). As the evening continues enter Duncan (Kirk Acevedo), inveterate gambler and sous-chef on-the-line in the frenetic kitchen downstairs, who acts as the catalyst that causes the evening to draw to its inevitable, explosive, deadly conclusion.

The film itself is wonderfully shot, the cinematography is excellent. Additionally, the film is worth watching for the kitchen scenes alone if you, like I, are interested in that kind of stuff. The acting itself is solid. If you liked films like Big Night, this is definitely worth a rent.

1up has a an article on Women characters in Video Games

1up’s article is ok, but it isn’t very deep. The fact that the industry is mostly populated by men and that the majority of gamers are men is the obvious reason that women in video games are unrealistic and 2 dimensional. Given the plethora of studies about how women are shown in other media I’m surprised how little I was able to find about this in google…

I am now a fan of Aaron Draplin!

Aaron Draplin of Draplindustries has created some handy cards that you can hand to that annoying cell phone user standing next to you talking loudly about something you don’t want to hear.