I just wish I’d known about Very Good Friday earlier — I’ve only got two hours!
(via Something Positive)
iTunes: “(Big) Wish” by D., Thomas/Potente, Franka from the album Run Lola Run (1998, 3:53).
Links
Stuff I find around the web that interests or amuses me.
Moving the library
For someone who whines and complains every time I switch apartments, I’m fascinated by what it must take to move the Seattle Central Library to its new building.
It was the biggest word problem the Seattle Public Library had ever faced:
If the Central Library housed 855,840 items, and they weighed around 14,000 tons, how could they be moved out of the old building in 2001, separated and stored for years, reshuffled into an entirely new order, and moved into a landmark new building?
The logistics of the double-move seemed unfathomable. Most people were convinced the splashy new Central Library, scheduled to open May 23, couldn’t be built on the same site as the old one.
“She’s crazy” is the chorus City Librarian Deborah Jacobs remembers when she broached the plan.
But now, book by book, waist-high packing box by waist-high packing box, the freightloads of the final move are under way.
I pass by the new library building every night on my way home from work, and I was excited to notice a couple weeks ago that, even though interior construction still seems to be in progress, books were starting to line the shelves visible through the windows.
I’ve taken a couple evening walks by the library, getting off my bus a couple of stops earlier than I normally do so that I could walk by the new building once I noticed that construction had moved to a point where the sidewalks around the building were open again. I’d already decided that I liked the design, but at night, it’s absolutely gorgeous, with all the odd angles picking up reflections of sky and stars above, other buildings across downtown, and traffic streaming by on the streets below. Really makes me wish I had a new camera.
Just a few more weeks until the new library opens, and I’m hoping to be able to stop by on opening day just to wander around. The funny thing is, I’m not entirely sure now much I’ll actually use the library — they always have this funny habit of wanting their books back, something I have deep issues with. ;)
iTunes: “Girl” by Amos, Tori from the album Little Earthquakes (1991, 4:07).
Sci-Fi museum to open in two months
Paul Allen’s new addition to the EMP, the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, is due to open in approximately two months, according to the Seattle P-I.
About 13,000 square feet of the Frank Gehry-designed EMP will be dedicated to the new Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame (which was initially dubbed SFX, for Science Fiction Experience). This new sci-fi wing will have three levels of exhibit space and add more than 1,000 square feet of performance space to EMP.
Exhibits and artifacts celebrating such movies and television programs as “Star Trek,” “Planet of the Apes” and “Dr. Strangelove” will be complemented by objects or exhibits aimed at demonstrating how the literary genre sometimes leads to real scientific developments or technological achievements.
I’ll be very interested in checking it out, of course — my only worry is that I found the EMP to be fairly ridiculously overpriced, and I wasn’t a large fan of how the displays were set up (very little textual information, as there were PDA-ish handheld audio devices to guide you through, which were too heavy and kind of a pain to use). Hopefully the SFX doesn’t have these same issues, though as they are part of the same complex, who knows.
Guess I’ll find out in June, huh?
That’s one kinky rabbit
Okay, so there isn’t really a lot of connection between the resurrection of Jesus Christ and a magical rabbit that distributes eggs to children…but couldn’t this church have come up with a better way of getting their message across than whipping the Easter Bunny during a church pageant?
A church that put on an Easter show said it was trying to teach about Jesus Christ.
But the people who saw the show say they were upset by performers who broke eggs and pretended to whip the Easter bunny.
People who attended Saturday’s performance of an Easter celebration at a memorial stadium in Glassport, Allegheny County, quoted performers as saying “There is no Easter bunny.”
If I could draw, I’d have all sorts of fun with that combination of elements…I’m thinking something involving furries in S&M gear in front of an altar.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go scour my brain to get rid of that image.
I am a grammar god! Bow before me!
You are a GRAMMAR GOD!
If your mission in life is not already to preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!
How grammatically sound are you?
Brought to you by Quizilla
In all honesty, I was a bit surprised — while I’m generally fairly sure of my ability to use the English language, some of the quiz questions actually had me debating and choosing whichever one “felt right”. Apparently my instincts haven’t gotten too terribly sloppy yet after all!
(via Shelley)
iTunes: “Habanera from Carmen” by Bizet, Georges from the album Trainspotting #2 (1994, 2:08).
Gmail and Safari
So I got curious about Gmail, Google’s new e-mail service, and thought I’d stop by to take a look.
Somehow, I’m not very impressed so far.
Update: As it turns out, they’re in a closed beta right now, so I couldn’t have signed up in any case. Still…the lack of support for Safari — the default web browser on all new Macintosh computers — hardly leaves me with a good first impression.
iTunes: “Run to the Sun” by Erasure from the album I Say I Say I Say (1994, 4:25).
The Heirophant’s Proselytizer Questionnaire
Ellenoir pointed out a fascinating page that I’d not seen before: The Heirophant’s Proselytizer Questionnaire, one person’s response to being constantly harassed by missionaries of one faith or another trying to “save” or “convert” him.
The Heirophant’s Proselytizer Questionnaire is a series of offensively phrased questions that explain my problems with and objections to the various Christian churches. I originally wrote it in 1997 as a tool that I handed out to the too-numerous proselytes who were crowding at my door, explaining that I would consider entering into a dialogue with them if and only if they could answer each and every question to my satisfaction. …Though I have received numerous responses to the Questionnaire since I wrote it, none has satisfied me enough to tempt me back to Christianity.
The questionnaire itself is a list of 153 questions for the proselytizer to answer before discussion can continue. The author admits in the FAQ that the questions are written in a very aggressive, possibly offensive style…
…It’s meant to be really offensive. If you look at the reasons why I composed it in the first place, you’ll see that my primary motivation was, quite simply, to get proselytes to fuck off when they wouldn’t do so any other way. By setting a condition for them to fulfill before I’d engage in a dialogue with them and by making the condition more trouble than it was worth to most of them, I wound up able to sleep later in the mornings than I’d been able to when I had a constant stream of preachers on my doorstep. Ensuring that the phrasing of the Questionnaire was confrontational and offensive was an integral part of the process of getting people who had essentially nothing to say to me to leave me alone.
As someone brought up in the Episcopal church who still bases many of my core beliefs in the Christian faith (though I’ve certainly had my fair share of questions, concerns, and doubts over the years), I thought the idea was wonderful — and have no problem at all admitting that I would be very hard pressed to answer many (if not most) of the questions posed.
On a personal level, I stand very much in the same camp as the author (along with Ellenoir, too, from what she said in her post): believe anything you want, just don’t try to force your beliefs on me, convince me that you’re “right” and I’m “wrong”, or attempt to frighten me into joining your religion through threats of hellfire and damnation.
This document is not meant as a personal challenge to you or to your beliefs. As far as I’m concerned, you can worship Jesus or be a Buddhist or a Muslim or have sex with Tinky Winky and call that a religion: It’s all the same to me. Really. The HPQ was meant to state my own reasons why I’m not a Christian; it’s not meant to imply that you shouldn’t be one. (There’s a big difference between the two, and many Christians would do well to learn it.) Be a member of whatever religion you want; just leave me alone and don’t push it on me. I’m not knocking on your door asking you to be a Wiccan or a Buddhist or a Satanist or an atheist or a Muslim or anything else that you’re not; all that I ask is that you extend me the same courtesy.
iTunes: “Blasphemous Rumours” by Depeche Mode from the album Blasphemous Rumours (1984, 6:23).
Pickled dragon…published!
Last January, I passed on a story involving a pickled baby dragon in a jar that was making its way around the ‘net. Turns out the entire thing was a hoax…a hoax that landed the perpetrator a book deal!
An author who was so desperate to get his book published that he staged a hoax involving a baby dragon has won a lucrative publishing contract.
After numerous rejections Allistair Mitchell concocted a tale that a dragon had been found in a garage last year.
He said: “I created the hoax in order to attract potential readers.”
Mr Mitchell, based in Oxford, has now signed an book deal with Waterstone’s for his book Unearthly History, a thriller featuring a dragon.
Nicely done!
(via Neil Gaiman)
The Untitled Project
A few weeks ago, as I was standing in downtown Seattle waiting for my bus to work, I started looking around at all the logos, advertising, and slogans plastered all over the city. From the sides of delivery vans to shop windows, from faded paint on old brick buildings to garish posters hurriedly tacked onto construction barriers, advertising was everywhere.
Suddenly, I started wondering what the city would look like if all of those logos were removed.
And the word “PROJECT” flashed before my eyes…
My goal at that point was to wander through the city, taking random pictures, then come home, take them into Photoshop, and remove every logo, every piece of identifiable advertising, leaving only the “empty” buildings, automobiles, and walls. It seemed like a really interesting idea.
Then two things happened.
First, and most importantly, I lost my camera. Kind of makes it difficult to work on a photography project.
Secondly — someone else beat me to the idea.
The Untitled Project is a series of photographs of urban settings accompanied by a graphical text layout. The photographs have been digitally stripped of all traces of textual information. The text pieces show the removed text in the approximate location and font as it was found in the photograph.
Well, damn. Even if I didn’t get my chance to do it, and even if it’s a slightly different take on the idea, it’s a fascinating look at an ad-free (or at least text-free) world.
(via Kottke)
iTunes: “God is an Astronaut (Hot Tracks)” by Blunt Funkers from the album Roadkill! 2.13 (1995, 6:06).
Gay Penguin Love
This makes me grin for two reasons: one, because of all the people who claim that homosexuality “isn’t natural”, and two, because it’s penguins! ;)
Wendell and Cass, two penguins at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island, Brooklyn, live in a soap opera world of seduction and intrigue. Among the 22 male and 10 female African black-footed penguins in the aquarium’s exhibit, tales of love, lust and betrayal are the norm. These birds mate for life. But given the disproportionate male-female ratio at the aquarium, some of the females flirt profusely and dump their partners for single males with better nests.
Wendell and Cass, however, take no part in these cunning schemes. They have been completely devoted to each other for the last eight years. In fact, neither one of them has ever been with anyone else, says their keeper, Stephanie Mitchell.
But the partnership of Wendell and Cass adds drama in another way. They’re both male. That is to say, they’re gay penguins.
Maybe there’s another reason Opus’ relationship with Quiche Lorraine never worked out? ;)
(via DeAnna)
iTunes: “Angel (Dusted)” by McLachlan, Sarah from the album Remixed (2003, 5:29).