it’s about empowerment and it’s about SIMPLICITY: fan loves art, artist needs money, fan gives artist money, artist says thank you.

the critics are welcome to criticize.
they do not have to attend the party.
and even if they attend the party with rolling eyes, they will not be charged.
they will be hugged, they will be accepted and entertained, and they will not be given the hairy eyeball if they leave the room without tipping.
chances are they’ll tell a friend about the next party, and their friend will probably leave a dollar. and tell someone else.

taking my stand as a virtual street performer is the best thing that’s happened to my career and i revel in it.
and i love bringing people along for the ride.

i believe in the future of cheap art, creative enterprise, and an honorable public who will put their money where there mouth is, or rather, their spare change where their heart is.

So says the self-professed Virtual Street Performer who started her performance career working the street-busking circuits as an inert sculpture, "i do not claim to have figured out the perfect system, not by a long shot. BUT … i’d rather get the system right gradually and learn from the mistakes and break new ground... we are creating the protocol, people, right here and now. i don’t care if we fuck up. i care THAT we’re doing it."

This hoard is perhaps the most important collection of Anglo-Saxon objects found in England. It compares and perhaps exceeds those objects found at Sutton Hoo. Originally discovered by metal detectorist Terry Herbert in July 2009 and subsequently excavated by Birmingham University Archaeology Unit and Staffordshire County Council.

Leslie Webster, former Keeper of Prehistory and Europe at the British Museum describes this discovery as:

"...this is going to alter our perceptions of Anglo-Saxon England in the seventh and early eighth century as radically, if not moreso, as the 1939 Sutton Hoo discoveries did; it will make historians and literary scholars review what their sources tell us, and archaeologists and art-historians rethink the chronology of metalwork and manuscripts; and it will make us all think again about rising (and failing) kingdoms and the expression of regional identities in this period, the complicated transition from paganism to Christianity, the conduct of battle and the nature of fine metalwork production - to name only a few of the many huge issues it raises. Absolutely the metalwork equivalent of finding a new Lindisfarne Gospels or Book of Kells."

The images contained in this set invite comment. We accept there may be some errors with labelling as this was done in a very short space of time. If you do use these images please attribute as used courtesy of the Staffordshire hoard website.

For more information:
www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk and www.finds.org.uk The entire hoard will be catalogued on our database in due course and made available to the public.

see also http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/011708.html for some context on the biblical inscriptions.

The people at HuntingLodge.no noted that these illustrations

by Shogo Endo are from "An Anatomical Guide To Monsters,"

a 1967 book with text by Shoji Otomo,

adding "If anyone can find a copy, we'll take it!"

[via Milena]

Study these carefully. You just never know. In related news, if you're looking for the sort of mini-pickup used in Godzilla - Final Wars
to transport baby-Godzillas (Minya), there's a pristine (untrodden) one for sale at the video store in Sauble Beach. Again, you just never know.

If there were a surefire way to improve your brain, would you try it? Judging by the abundance of products, programs and pills that claim to offer “cognitive enhancement,” many people are lining up for just such quick brain fixes. Recent research offers a possibility with much better, science-based support...

"when children find an art form that sustains their interest, the subsequent strengthening of their brains’ attention networks can improve cognition more broadly."

Put another way, yes there are other ways to enhance the humanity in children, but looking at it realistically, will anyone later pay to watch them do those? That said, I often criticize precisely these sort of me-first rationales because the key difference with music or dance training is in the societal dividends that the playing induces, and it disturbs me a bit to see the music shops now brimming with accolades of musical training as some sort of self-improvement, self-enhancing strategy, which is true and good, but they neglect the wider and perhaps more important aspects of community enhancement to be had in a choral society.

It's very easy. Simply do what most people do: when someone tells or gives you something or sends you a link or a photo or anything you already have or have read or seen, first thing say, "Oh, I saw / knew / have that."

Me, I see a lot but you'll never, ever hear me saying that. Why? Because the instant you deflate the other person's bubble of joy at giving you something they think you'll like, you make it much more likely that next time they'll reflexively think, "the heck with him/her, why bother?" And you'll be sure to miss out on something that would've indeed been a wonderful surprise as a result of your having been so full of yourself you just had to show how up to the minute you were.

Common courtesy demands graciousness, perhaps an increasingly lost art but still one worth cultivating, not only for your own good but that of those around you. A simple "thank you" works beautifully. Always has, always will.

ah, but, you probably already knew that.

Traveling in an urban environment can be daunting, particularly if you’re sightseeing in a new place. If you’re lucky enough to be in Paris, where rental bikes dot the landscape (or in the future, where these awesome energy-generating rental bikes live), you’ve got it made. But for the rest of us? We can either drive, try to learn the mass transit system, or hoof it.

Thanks to a group of tireless researchers at MIT, we might have another option in the future. These nifty stackable cars, dubbed CityCars, could one day be available to rent, just like those Parisian bikes. They’re electric, so there’s no need to worry about filling them up. You just grab the first fully-charged one on the rack and go. The racks would be located outside of tourist spots and mass transit stops, making it much easier to fill in the gaps in a city’s transit system. And since the project is getting stylistic input from legendary architect Frank Gehry, you know you’re going to look ultra cool riding around in one.

Yonge & Adelaide tangled up in great swarms of these things would be like an adult version of those electric mini-car derbies they have in the malls for the toddlers! Seriously, though, can you imagine if Toronto closed off all traffic except delivery/emergency arteries and left the rest to the likes of these mutant golf-carts? Set up whole regions as "No Combustion" roadway zones and you can bet your bippie the other auto-makers would rapidly join GM in rolling out special purpose and custom-taste variations of the electro urban-podcar, and who cares if hydro/electric is limited by charge and the lightweight frames limited in speed: It's only really a few km from Steeles to Front St (just seems light-years away) and Toronto trafficbarely ever beats 40km/hr anyway!

A Cassini photo show sent back from the 7th Heaven.

[A tailings pond is a toxic lake so dangerous that air cannon and scarecrows are used to deter wildlife. © Greenpeace / Eamon Mac Mahon]

One of my favorite films from this year’s TIFF has to be Peter Mettler’s Petrolis.  Mettler, who was the cinematographer for Edward Burtynsky’s Manufactured Landscapes, takes on a directorial role on Petropolis, which visually documents the Alberta Tar Sands.  Given the massive scale of the project, the infrastructures, and the process, Mettler had few choices but to document the project from an aerial perspective.

[A giant earth mover transports earth mined at an open pit for processing to separate the bitumen. © Greenpeace / Eamon Mac Mahon]

The Canadian Tar Sands are the largest supplier of oil to the United States and the largest GHG emitters in Canada.  Located in northern Alberta, the Tar Sands consume over 140,000 square kilometers (or an area the size of England).  While the scale and sheer devastation to the landscape is incomprehensible, currently only three percent of the project (or 420 sq. km) has been carried out.  Increasing oil prices is attracting more investors to the Tar Sands.  Currently there are close to 100 projects planned, which total approximately $100 billion.

simultaneously beautiful and horrifying

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Alexander Solzhenitsyn (who knew about evil)

it's not that we don't really earnestly try the old sift-and-gas approach, over and over and over. it's just that it don't ever work.

Astro Boy is a boy robot who has to use his super-strength, x-ray vision, speed and flying ability to save the things and people he cares about. The new CGI (computer-generated images) Astro Boy movie will be coming to theaters this fall on October 23. Astro Boy will be voiced by Freddie Hightower and Nicholas Cage also lends his voice to the movie. The film is directed by David Bowers. Script by Timothy Harris. Astro Boy is produced by Summit Entertainment and is based on the Japanese anime cartoon character (below) created by Dr. Osamu Tezuka.

Been waiting hundreds of years for this.