Poetry and the "avant garde"

Austin Kleon is a poet whose basic tools include a black marker and the New York Times rather than pen and paper. Kleon, recognized by NPR and Toronto’s National Post as an original, insightful poet with a fresh take on the world of poetry, has a blog featuring new poems every few days. Many are funny, some are weird, and a few are insightful. An interesting take on form and restrictions when there are so many debates going on in the poetry world about what constitutes avant-garde, whether there should be a return to traditional forms, and what the role of poetry is today–how relevant is it and how relevant it should be, what the act of poetry is (very controversial when you get people like Levertov saying that ‘writing the poem is the poet’s means of summoning the divine”).

Thanks go to Aaron for the discovery of Kleon.

Prefab skyscraper

Here comes another amazingly complex and expensive skyscraper from Dubai. Unlike the super-tall “Almas Tower”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almas_Tower and “Burj Dubai”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Dubai or the sail-shaped “Burj al Arab”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Al_Arab, this building innovates in more than just size and grandeur. I am very excited about this.

The “Rotating Tower”:http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/06/09/rotating-wind-powered-tower-to-begin-construction-in-dubai/#more-10134, designed by David Fisher and his firm “Dynamic Architecture”:http://www.dynamicarchitecture.net/ is amazing in a number of ways. First of all, every one of the building’s 51 floors will independently rotate around the central concrete spine. This makes the face of the building dynamic and gives every apartment/room an ocean-view for at least part of the day. Also, between the rotating layers there will be 48 wind turbines which should not only make the tower energy self-sufficient, but also allow it to generate $7 million a year in excess electricity revenue.

As if rotating floors and excess power generation wasn’t enough, the Dynamic Architecture building will also be the first skyscraper to be built mostly in a factory. Apart from the central concrete core, all the floors are being built off-site and will be slotted together–electrical, plumbing, heating and all–at the construction site. This system of prefabrication, already becoming popular in residential construction, will shorten the build time from 30 to 18 months as well as reduce the on-site crew from 2000 to 90 people. Not only will this make the building cheaper to build, it will also vastly decrease the environmental cost for construction.

Fold-able handle bars… Amazing!

On Friday I wrote about “Bloom”:http://duenos.net/article/426/Pedalpoweredplanting, the pedal-powered planting device from the “Power to the Pedal”:http://www.design21sdn.com/competitions/11 design competition at “Design 21”:http://www.design21sdn.com/, but since then I’ve discovered something way cooler from the same competition.

This entry by Joe Wentworth is rather obviously called “Retrofit Folding Handlebars”:http://www.design21sdn.com/competitions/11/entries/3095/gallery/18523 . Like the Bloom, this entry is innovative and stylish but whereas the Bloom was frivolous and intended more for statement purposes, these handlebars are oh so practical. The benefits of these bars are two-fold: Firstly they serve as a wheel/steering lock when closed which helps with storage (no infuriating slide down the wall/fence/lampost) and with security. Secondly, along with standard folding pedals, these handlebars narrow the profile of the bike to make storage more efficient which really matters when you have a lot of bikes.
In college my roommates and I used to hang our bikes on the wall using big old utility hooks and we would have paid dearly (at least 12 packs of Ramen noodles) for something like this. In fact, I would still pay a fair bit for this, but this being a design competition, there’s no link to buy it.
Other design entries I wish were real:
* “eBooks in the round”:http://duenos.net/article/350/eBooksintheround: A beautiful concept eBook reader that is just too pretty to be made.
* “Flying Men!”:http://duenos.net/article/337/FlyingMen: Imagine diving out of an airplane thousands of feet in the air, reaching terminal velocity and then landing right back on the ground, all without a parachute.

Keep your finances minty fresh

http://www.mint.com. http://www.mint.com/investments-beta-invite-tell-a-friend.html but if you'd rather not use their tools, the site is still worth visiting for advice. Mint has teamed up with "Motley Fool":http://www.fool.com/ to produce a "finance blog":http://blog.mint.com/blog/ that has great tips on saving, investment and all that sort of thing. Some interesting links I've come across are this "renting vs. buying calculator":http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/business/2007_BUYRENT_GRAPHIC.html?_r=1&ex=1188014400&en=03cc4186608359a8&ei=5070&oref=slogin from the New York Times, and these "30 free eBooks":http://blog.mint.com/blog/finance-core/30-free-ebooks-to-learn-everything-you-want-to-know-about-personal-finance/ about personal finance. This post is running on in length and I don't want you to stop reading so I'm going to link now to some good old Duenos articles about money management that Brian put together under the title _Save Money_: * "Canceling Credit Cards":http://duenos.net/article/300/SaveMoneyCancelingCreditCards * "AmEx Mortgage Rewards":http://duenos.net/article/295/SaveMoneyAmExMortgageRewards * "Stop Junk Mail":http://duenos.net/article/252/SaveMoneyStopJunkMail * "Get Your Free Financial Report Card and GPA":http://duenos.net/article/198/SaveMoneyGetYourFreeFinancialReportCardandGPA * "Don't Sell Your Books at the Bookstore":http://duenos.net/article/176/SaveMoneyDontSellYourBookstotheBookstore

Pedal-powered planting


Some of the stuff I’m most interested in are “bicycles”:http://duenos.net/article/bikes, “design”:http://duenos.net/article/design, and “the environment”:http://duenos.net/article/environment: which is why I was pretty excited at “this post”:http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/06/05/bloom-bubble-and-seed-spewing-bike-device/ at “Inhabitat.com”:http://inhabitat.com.
The thing pictured above is called “Bloom”:http://www.design21sdn.com/competitions/11/entries/3147/gallery/18791 and it was one of the entries in the “Power to the Pedal”:http://www.design21sdn.com/competitions/11 design competition at “Design 21: Social Design Network”:http://www.design21sdn.com all about innovative designs in the world of cycling.
Aside from being a _subversive and inspirational tool for our concrete jungles_, Bloom is a device that attaches to any bicycle and distributes plant seeds in soap bubbles that land and plant themselves as you go through town. The appeal here is irresistible and though I don’t think I’d ever actually use this device/art piece myself, I’m glad that it exists. For more bright, pretty pictures, see the “Bloom contest entry”:http://www.design21sdn.com/competitions/11/entries/3147/gallery/18791 at Design 21 and rejoice in the frivolity.

Chis Jordan: Incomprehensible Numbers

Quantities in the millions and billions are impossible for most people to visualize, and statistics that reach such large numbers are impressive but at some point very inaccessible. Chris Jordan is an artist whose work addresses the issue of visualizing the impossible: his current project, Running the Numbers, focuses on many statistics such as:
-one million plastic cups, the number used on airline flights in the US every six hours
-32,000 the number of elective breast augmentation surgeries performed monthly in the US in 2006
-two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes
-200,000 packs of cigarettes, equal to the number of Americans who die from cigarette smoking every six months
-426,000 cell phones, equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day
….and many more. Below are three images of “Cans Seurat,” 2007, depicting 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.



Go here to see more of Chris’s work.

Maximizing Firefox speed

This a boring post with no jokes, interesting links or stories about last night. I just came across “this pointer”:http://www.techlads.com/2008/06/firefox-tweaking-for-broadband.html from the “TechLads blog”:http://www.techlads.com/ about setting everyone’s favorite browser up for getting the most out of high speed internet connections. Apparently it is optimized by default for dial-up connections.
1- Type *about:config* in the address bar and press enter.
2- Enter *network.http* in the filter field and enter the following changes.
3- Double click on *‘network.http.pipelining’* and set the value to *true*.
4- Double click on *’network.http.pipelining.maxrequests’* and in the dialog box enter a higher value than the default value 4. *15* is an ideal value.
5- Double click on *‘network.http.proxy.pipelining’* and set the value to *true*.
6- Right click on the page and select *New* -> *Integer*. Enter *nglayout.initialpaint.delay* and then click ok. Set the integer value of this to *0* and click ok.
_Disclaimer: I have no idea if this works_

Stuff white people like

I have never been so thoroughly pegged by a website than by this blog, “Stuff White People Like (dot) com”:http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com one. Just looking through their “full list”:http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/full-list-of-stuff-white-people-like/ of stuff that I supposedly like, I can’t help but feel a little ashamed that I’m so transparent.
Stuff that particularly applies to me in an eerie way:
* “#99 – Grammar”:http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/05/12/99-grammar/ “If a white person were to catch a mistake in The New Yorker, it would be a sufficient reason for a large party.”
* “#94 – Free Healthcare”:http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/04/04/94-free-healthcare/ “after all, they have it in Europe.”
* “80 – The Idea of Soccer”:http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/03/03/80-the-idea-of-soccer/ (without real knowledge or passion)
* “#67 – Standing Still at Concerts”:http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/02/17/68-standing-still-at-concerts/ “Remember, at a concert everyone is watching you just waiting for you to try to start dancing. Then they will make fun of you.”
* “#62 – Knowing What’s Best for Poor People”:http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/02/10/62-knowing-whats-best-for-poor-people/
* “#48 – Whole Foods and Grocery Co-ops”:http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/02/03/48-whole-foods-and-grocery-co-ops/ “In modern white person culture, Whole Foods has replaces churches and cathedrals as the most important and relevant buildings in the community.”
* “#28 – Not Having a TV”:http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/26/28-not-having-a-tv/ “It is effective in making other white people feel bad, and making themselves feel good about their life and life choices.”