Arcade Fire has a new album out (Millie’s verdict: not too shabby!) and to go with the current single (We Used to Wait), they’ve set up an interactive music video. You enter your childhood address, and the video uses footage from Google Maps to make it look like the video takes places in your old neighbourhood. It’s processor intensive, and works best in Chrome (and didn’t work well on Millie’s MacBook in Firefox) but it’s a pretty neat idea. Also, if ever you have a chance to see Arcade Fire, do your ears a favour and go: they’re absolutely FABULOUS live.
This post at Sociological Images is an impressively thorough examination of bathroom signs, and how gender is designated in visual shorthand.
Millie can’t get over how compact this apartment is! She used to live in a very small apartment, and she’s never doing that again if she can at all avoid it. The whole blog is an exercise in !!! to her.
Millie’s mind is also completely blown at the Antikythera mechanism, which she just heard about this past week.
What Makes Us Human? A short film by the Leakey Foundation (which Katie always reads as the “Leakey Fountain”) featuring some of the most famous researchers studying human evolution talking about what it means to be human.
Project Runway Remake Challenge – Burda Style’s challenge to refashion an existing garment into something fabulous. Better get going – you only have two weeks!
A Plea for Bees – TED Talk by Dennis vanEngelsdorp on the role of bees in contemporary ecology and economy. Very interesting and one of the best and most compelling summaries on bees Katie has seen (and she’s seen a lot).
It’s a wonder Millie’s got any mind left by now, especially after reading letters Morrissey wrote to a penpal back before he was, you know, Morrissey. A sampling:
Do you get out much? Or do you watch television all week? You really don’t tell me much about yourself. Are you catholic, or what? The questions are getting desperatesville. Who are you anyway? I know absolutely NOTHING about you. Maybe it’s just as well, Are you a nice person? Are your parents rich? Do you smoke (I supposed you do)? Failure to answer these questions may result in prosecution. I wish you’d send me a photo. I like to see who I’m criticising. Oh well, I’m off upstairs to play “Love Zombies”!
Your good friend of friends,
Ronald Regan
Barbie Roundup – Bizarre and disturbing facts about Barbie from the beginning of Barbie time.
Words We Need to Stop Misspelling - Oatmeal sets us straight. Now someone do a cartoon on how people keep misusing the word “impact.” Unless something actually hits something else, there’s no impact people. None!
I’m gonna check out the missepelling thing now. I love spelling! and grammar! But then, it’s presumably all US english anyway and hence all wrong (only joking). But seriously, what’s wrong with impact? I’m a civil servant, so I do hear a lot of werid misuse/methaphorical use of words that are a bit odd, but I don’t understand how anyone could oppose impact? The ‘making an impact’ meaning is totally standard and there’s nothing obvious you could use instead. Do you think any word should only ever have one meaning?
I understand that words are fluid and meanings change (e.g. the root of “terrific” is “terrify,” and those are used today to represent things on opposite ends of the spectrum). What I don’t like is how a word can become the expression du jour and suddenly everything and their sister is saying it everywhere. “Impact” means “to hit,” and while you can argue that things can “hit” you emotionally, mentally, etc., I get frustrated when now “impact” is being used to replace “effect,” “consequence,” “impression,” “influence,” “power,” “significance,” “weight,” and others. There’s nothing wrong with language evolving, but not when it makes us lazy and I think “impact” does.
I guess we have to agree to disagree. I just don’t think impact is a faddy word/ ‘expression du jour’ at all. Impact assessments in government have always been called impact assessments, and there has been academic wok on ‘research impact’ since the 1980s, so it’s definitely not a new word.
Anyway, if you like this sort of thing, you’ll enjoy this:
http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/core/page.do?pageId=9422797
Now there’s some proper ridiculous phrases!
Um, is the tiny Seattle Apartment supposed to be nothing? I mean, I’ve seen Millie’s old apartment, but I’m having trouble comparing.
I was able to launch the Arcade Fire music video in Safari.
The Sociological Images post IS thorough, even overwhelming. What would an inclusive, inoffensive set of restroom signs look like?
Morrissey was much nicer in my daydreams. I need to cry.