Cameramail: sending disposable cams through the post with a note asking posties to take pix

Matthew McVickar designs these Cameramail packages with disposable film-cameras taped to their front and a note exhorting posties to take pictures of themselves and environs as the package passes through their custody.

The first camera traveled from Cape Cod, Massachusetts to Honolulu, Hawaii, collecting a total of seven pictures on its way. I couldn't have hoped for a better set of photos! The Postal Service sure does move fast.

I ended up trying three more cameramail packages to Washington, to Japan, and to Massachusetts (all three when I was living in Hawaii) but never heard back.

Cameramail (via Neatorama)

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Harry Potter vs. Star Wars

I wonder if Harry Potter will hold the same significance to my kids' generation as Star Wars does for mine?

Via Reddit.

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A sweet cinemagraph by Jamie Beck

We have the yummiest little cinemagraph from Jamie Beck to share with you this morning! We are such giant fans of her work and we're so so excited to be able to post a little something here.

Isn't it lovely?

The couple is Alisa and Jared of Erstwhile Jewelry, an amazing online vintage jewelry shop. Have you heard of them? You should definitely spend a few moments on their site. Lots of interesting things to lust after.

And Jamie posted their home tour on her blog this afternoon! Be sure to pop over and check it out.

Thank you Jamie for sharing and Alisa and Jared for being so sweetly in love!

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Mosh pit paintings by Dan Witz

Brooklyn painter, street artist, and musician Dan Witz has a solo show opening at NYC's Jonathan LeVine Gallery on June 30. The series of large-scale hyper-realistic figurative paintings is titled "Mosh Pits, Human and Otherwise." From the Gallery:

Applying old master techniques, (Witz) achieves impressively convincing trompe l'oeil illusions of light, shadow and depth in his finely rendered portraits, landscapes and still lifes. The artist recently added digital media tools to his process (having previously used traditional projection methods). Combining old master techniques and digital technology, he photographs his subjects, composes in photoshop, prints an a-chromatic underpainting on canvas then glazes and scumbles over this foundation using traditional representational painting...

In contrast to paintings that portray throngs of punk youth, titled after music venues such as ABC No Rio, Witz expands upon the crowd theme to include a rush-hour herd of suit-wearing businessmen in Grand Central Station in addition to non-human subjects in other works with animals such as a pack of fighting dogs and a writhing mass of rats.

"Mosh Pits (Human and Otherwise)" (DanWitz.com)

Jonathan LeVine Gallery (Thanks, Maléna Seldin!)

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Bookcase in a stairwell that you access via bosun's chair

Sallie Trout stuck a bookcase into a narrow stairwell, contriving an ingenious access method via a bosun's chair with a chain hoist.

Sallie Trout's bosun chair (via CribCandy)

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Woman who filmed cop from own yard charged with obstructing his administration of government

When police cars, lightbars on, pulled up outside her house in the middle of the night, a Rochester woman began filming the traffic stop from her front yard. She was arrested and taken to jail by a police officer who first said she was "anti-police," then claimed to feel "threatened" by her; and ultimately told her that he didn't have to explain himself at all. Her arrest, which required the officer to enter her property without permission, was on a charge of "obstructing government administration." [Indymedia]

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Smile! Creative Street Art in France by OaKoAk

For today we gathered a few street art works that are sure to bring a smile on your face. OaKoAk is a "French artist who likes to play with urban elements". The result? Cute urban jokes that liven up the gloomy city streets. From the "Chuck Norris Sat Here" broken bench (you guys are probably familiar with all the buzz around Chuck Norris jokes lately, we are certain) to a puzzled Pinocchio and ghosts with brick heads, the array of subjects seems to be never-ending. We really like the artist's art "improvisations" and believe they are able to make anyone's day just by encountering them unexpectedly on the street. There is even a design idea that you might have observed (the one with the piano stairs) that could be implemented indoors also. Enjoy the photos and contact the designer if you need any other type of information.

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Hula-hooping from the hoop's point of view

Laura and Nick Saik, a brother and sister team in Alberta, attached a small, wide-angle camera to the inside of a hula-hoop and then recorded a hulaing session from the hoop's point of view. It's a great piece of video, in which Laura Saik comes across as a whirling dervish while the skybox reels overhead and around and around.

GO PRO ON HULA HOOP (via Kottke)

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Skirt Police

[image via New Amsterdam Bicycle Show]

Yesterday there seemed to be an unusual number of disconcerting bicycle stories floating around. Among the more bizarre were the news that a woman was stopped by the NYPD for wearing a skirt on her bike. Says a representative of the New Amsterdam Bicycle Show:

Our friend Jasmijn was stopped in SOHO by NYPD for riding in a skirt! The officer said she could distract drivers and cause an accident...and should go home and put pants on.

The incident is alarming, because cycling in a skirt is, of course, perfectly legal. So when this sort of thing happens, one has to wonder how best to respond to it. After all, it has been shown that just because the officer is technically in the wrong, does not mean that the cyclist will not be ticketed, or even arrested and tried.

But what's more, is that when this story was posted on twitter other women replied that they too have been stopped by police while cycling dressed up - seemingly for no particular reason other than for the officer to comment on their appearance. It happened to me last summer as well. A policeman gestured for me to pull over, only to ask some random question about my bike. When I politely replied, he proceeded to comment on my outfit. Nervously, I kept wondering what law I broke and when he was going to get to the point. Was I required to chat with him? Was there some protocol to treat me as hostile if I didn't? When I finally asked "Excuse me, but can I go now?" He seemed hurt and simply said, "Yeah, sure..." adding "Be careful out there!" half-heartedly. What am I supposed to make of that incident? For a while I kept going over it in my head, but it seems he stopped me without any legal purpose what so ever.

On a bicycle we are more noticeable than we are inside a car, and at the same time we can be legitimately pulled over as vehicles. Does us cycling make it easier for the police to abuse their power by supplying them with a reason to pull us over? That's an uncomfortable thought.

How would you respond if a police officer stopped you to comment on your appearance, or to tell you that you can't ride a bike dressed as you are?

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Robopocalypse: rigorous, terrifying novel about a robotic campaign to exterminate humanity

Daniel Wilson is a PhD roboticist who made his name with a series of fun, light science books about robot uprisings and similar subjects. But his new novel, Robopocalypse, is anything but fun and lightweight: it's a gripping, utterly plausible, often terrifying account of a global apocalypse brought on by a transcendant AI that hijacks the planet's automation systems and uses them in a vicious attempt to wipe out humanity.

Robopocalypse opens on the first days after the terrible robot war, with Cormack Wallace, a human soldier, contemplating a "black box" containing the war's history as recorded by Archos, the rogue AI that nearly exterminated the human race. After this bit of stage setting, we go back to the months before the war, when a researcher unwittingly creates Archos and then loses control of it when it murders him. A series of small, grisly episodes follow in which automation systems are compromised by Archos and domestic robots, autonomous cars, and other devices turn on their owners. These presage the war that is to come.

But the war, when it arrives, is far more brutal than Wilson hints. Archos possesses perfect global coordination, and so when the killing begins, it is near-total and so swift that humanity hardly knows what's coming. Cars mow down people in the streets (even as their owners, trapped within, scream in horror and beat at the windscreens); elevators and domestic robots conspire to drop terrified people down empty shafts or shake them to jelly; planes crash themselves; buildings seal themselves and asphyxiate their occupants.

But some humans survive, thanks to luck and sheer numbers and a bit of cunning, and these humans live to fight. Slowly, and with little success (at first), humanity strikes back at the robots, learning something about the threat they face. Archos is adaptive, though, and every successful measure evinces a countermeasure, horror piled on horror that will have you glued to the pages.

Like Max Brooks's World War Z, Robopocalypse is structured as a kind of oral history, composed of vignettes that take the form of first person accounts, transcripts, technical documents and so on. This is a great literary device in that it dispenses with much of the stage-business in novels where characters get from A to B so that the reader can see what's going on -- rather, the author is free to jump from anyplace to anyplace else, telling the story with a viewpoint that's both omniscient and intimate.

But Brooks's novel had very little in the way of recurring characters, while Robopocalypse quickly converges on the stories of a dozen or so freedom fighters whose lives gradually become entangled. This recurrence gives Robopocalypse something World War Z lacks: heart, in the form of character arcs, wherein heroes learn and change and grow, and we get to root for them.

The film rights to Robopocalypse have been bought by Stephen Spielberg, who has announced a big-budget feature for 2013. If the script is at all true to the novel, it might just be one of the best and scariest science fiction movies of all time.

Robopocalypse

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Internet Archive becomes archive of physical books, too

The Internet Archive, alarmed to see that many libraries discard books after they are digitized, has decided to start collecting copies of every book ever published, cataloging and storing them in modified shipping containers that serve as long-term archival storage. The stored print-books are to serve as canonical references for the digitized editions.

Based on this success and the increasing availability of physical materials, a production facility leveraging this design will be launched in June of 2011 in Richmond, California. The essence of the design from the book's point of view is to have several layers of protection, each able to be monitored and periodically inspected:

* Books are cataloged, and have acid free paper inserts with information about the book and its location,
* Boxes store approximately 40 books with labeling on the outside,
* Pallets hold 24 boxes each,
* Modified 40′ shipping containers are used as secure and individually controllable environments of 50 or 60 degrees Fahrenheit and 30% relative humidity,
* Buildings contain shipping containers and environmental systems,
* Non-profit organizations own and protect the property and its contents.

Why Preserve Books? The New Physical Archive of the Internet Archive

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Ticketed for being childless and eating doughnuts in a playground

Two women in Brooklyn sat down on a playground bench to eat their doughnuts. They were issued summonses by local cops for violating the playground's "no adults without children" rule (because the way you keep children safe is to make sure that adults and children don't come into proximity with one another, unless the adults are parents or childminders, because those people never, ever harm children, and the only reason to want to be around children is to molest them). According to the women, the cops told them they were getting off light with a court summons because the official procedure called for them to be brought in for questioning.

This cop attempted to be sympathetic. He proceeded to tell us that he was trying to be a gentleman by just giving us summonses instead of taking us in for questioning, because that was what "they" wanted him to do. If he just gave us warnings and told us to leave, he would get in trouble for "doing nothing all day." He went on to say that all he did when he was growing up was "do Tae Kwon Do and go to school." "Are you trying to say that we are bad people for sitting on a bench in a park and eating doughnuts?" I asked him, just trying to figure out where he was going with this. "No, no, I'm just saying that I never got in trouble. Sometimes I play basketball," he said, pointing at the courts behind him. Not in that park, he doesn't. Not unless he has a kid strapped to his back at the time.

Finally, we were given our summonses and were free to go. Because we hadn't been drinking alcohol or urinating in public, we do not have the option of pleading guilty by mail. Not that I am planning on pleading guilty. But either way, we have to show up in court or a warrant will be issued for our arrest. My friend does not live in New York and I am out of the country all summer, so this is going to be an ordeal in itself, given that the summons has no information on how to contact the court. Nor do we know how much we owe. Because the cops had no idea about that, either. They were just "doing their jobs," in the most mindless sense of that phrase.

Two Women Ticketed For Eating Doughnuts In A Brooklyn Playground (Thanks, Jack!)

(Image: Retro Playground, Thetford, Norfolk. Rocket ship or delta wing bomber. Sept 2008, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from sludgeulper's photostream)

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Alamo Drafthouse Will Eject Your Ass for Using Your Cell

The Alamo Drafthouse, a movie theater in Austin, TX, will kick you out if you use your mobile phone to send text messages while a movie is playing. This young woman, a proud citizen of The "Magnited States of America," called the theater to express her displeasure with this rule. Salty language ahoy!

We do not tolerate people that talk or text in the theater. In fact, before every film, we have several warnings on screen to prevent such happenings. Occasionally, someone doesn't follow the rules, and we do, in fact, kick their asses out of our theater. This video is an actual voicemail from a woman that was kicked out of one of our Austin theaters. Thanks, anonymous woman, for being awesome.

Don't Talk - Angry Voicemail (Uncensored)

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Hyper Realism Art: Photographic Quality with Paint

Beautiful photography, isn't it? Except these aren't photos. Welcome to the wonderful world of hyper realist art, where artists use incredible techniques to make photo-realistic paintings so realistic that it seems impossible they were painted by hand.

Yigel Ozeri

(Images via mymodernmet, bitsofteeniness, artlistpro, afewreviews)

Yigel Ozeri is a New York-based artist who loves painting young women, and the only way to tell these aren't true photographs is by checking out the background, which is just too out of focus for your typical photo.

Stephen Shub

(Images via discoveredartists, frontiernet, discoveredartists, discoveredartists)

Stephen Shub loves cars, and while his paintings concentrate mainly on America's classic vehicles, he also showcases his skill with intricate paintings of what seems like impossible complexity.

Simon Hennessey

(Images via likecool, thecuriousbrain)

Simon Hennessey concentrates on human faces, one of the most difficult subjects for hyper realist masters to tackle. Humans are hardwired to pick up details of other's faces, so it's a testament to Simon's skill that he's able to bypass our subconscious and trick it into believing his paintings are real.

Raphaella Spence

(Images via designyoutrust, fineartamerica, recave, zupi)

These images are not postcards from famous locations, they're hand painted studies by Raphaella Spence, a master painter whose still life subjects are quite larger than most.

Mikel Glass

(Images via 9to6, artisticthings)

Mikel Glass does not always concentrate on the hyper realist aspects of a painting, though some of his works display an ability that puts him in the top tier of this style of artist.

Deborah Rubin

(Images via deborahrubin, artistsnetwork, rmichelson, springfieldmuseums)

Part of the fascination Deborah Rubin's fans have with her work has to do with the fact that her hyper realist paintings are done using watercolor – a medium not well suited for incredibly accurate paintings.

Davis Cone

(Images via 163, artnet, wfreese, wfreese)

Davis Cones loves to capture every detail of remnants of America's past. The vintage movie house on main street will be preserved through his paintings long after it's replaced by a generic pharmacy.

Ron Mueck

(Images via brooklynmuseum, eklektz, rustylime)

Ron Mueck is unique in that his hyper realism is exhibited in sculpture. Imaging walking into a gallery and facing down an oversized human, and being unable to tell (without touching) that they're fake. It's a blessing that Ron tends to exaggerate features, or it would be easy to overlook his sculptures as just another person strolling through the gallery.

 

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New York Times summer science fiction picks

Jeff VanderMeer sez, "My latest SF/F column for the New York Times Book Review is featured in their summer reading issue, and includes coverage of fantastic books by Jo Walton, Genevieve Valentine, Peter S. Beagle, and Lauren Beukes.

Science Fiction Chronicle "Among Others" purports to be the diary entries of 15-year-old Morwenna Phelps, but it is really a strong argument for the importance of books and reading. Set in the late 1970s in Wales and England, the novel follows Morwenna's adventures at boarding school after a car accident has left her with chronic injuries. Reunited with a father she barely knows, the solitary teenager discovers the joys of a weekly book club, acquires a boyfriend and is sent sinister photographs by a mother who blames her for the death of her twin sister. This may seem the stuff of routine teenage melodrama -- but Morwenna can see fairies, her mother is really an evil witch, and the car accident that injured her and killed her sister was part of a magical conflict. At one point a fairy tells her, cryptically, "Doing is doing." Echoing the novel's synthesis of the realistic and the supernatural, Morwenna takes him to mean that "it doesn't matter if it's magic or not, anything you do has power and consequences and affects other people." As she tries to come to terms with her sister's death through both books and fairy magic, the novel assumes true emotional resonance. A late confrontation with the mother, who disappears as a threat for many pages, seems anticlimactic by comparison. The real key to appreciating this novel can be found in an earlier passage, about the way our favorite writers become touchstones and guides as we navigate through life: "Tolkien understood about the things that happen after the end. Because this is after the end, this is all the Scouring of the Shire, this is figuring out how to live in the time that wasn't supposed to happen after the glorious last stand. I saved the world, or I think I did, . . . and it doesn't care about me any more than the Shire cared about Frodo." It's a brave act to write a novel that is in ­essence all aftermath, but Walton succeeds admirably. Her novel is a wonder and a joy.

I've reviewed some of Jeff's summer picks here: Zoo City, Among Others.

Science Fiction Chronicle (Warning: may use up one of your NYT paywall viewings)

(Thanks, Jeff!)

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The lost art of mapping games

Leigh Alexander recalls the lost art of mapping games, such as Colossal Cave, by hand:

The terse text lent itself to that kind of dreaming. The game was littered with treasure objects: a Ming vase, a pearl, an emerald, clearly meant to be carried, but for what purpose? Points? Why were we in a cave, for what were we searching, to what end? Why was there a pirate? We never asked. We never even thought about it. It was about the exploration, and we cared only about how to get to the next room, and how to put it all in order. We never finished the game, of course

Gaming Made Me: Colossal Cave Adventure [Rock Paper Shotgun]

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If It's Hip, It's Here: ABC Bookcase - Letters and Numbers Modular Cube Storage from Saporiti

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Homeowner Forecloses on Bank

(Jonathan H. Adler)

It's hard not to chuckle at this story: Bank of America tries to foreclose on a couple's house, even though they don't owe a cent. The couple fights BoA in court, and wins — but then BoA fails to pay the legal fees and court costs. So what does the wronged couple do? Precisely what the bank would have done: They seized the banks assets.

"They've ignored our calls, ignored our letters, legally this is the next step to get my clients compensated, " attorney Todd Allen told CBS.

Sheriff's deputies, movers, and the Nyergers' attorney went to the bank and foreclosed on it. The attorney gave instructions to to remove desks, computers, copiers, filing cabinets and any cash in the teller's drawers.

After about an hour of being locked out of the bank, the bank manager handed the attorney a check for the legal fees.

(Hat tip: Instapundit)

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Artists build house where it rains inside

Nicolai Lorenzen photo

Australian art/design collective The Glue Society built a house where it rains inside. Continuously. It reminds me of San Francisco's kitsch equivalent, The Tonga Room tiki bar in which there are regularly-scheduled rainstorms over the artificial lagoon. More photos over at Hi-Fructose. The Glue Society's "I Wish You Hadn't Asked"

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Guerrilla camper re-opens shuttered Michigan public campsite

Persons unknown recently re-opened Michigan's West Branch State Forest Campground, mowing sites, moving the boulders that blocked the entrance and breaking into the bathrooms. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources speculates on the guerrilla camper's motivations, suggesting that s/he was either just eager to camp, or wanted to protest the planned closure of more Michigan campsites.

But recently, perhaps over the Memorial Day weekend, someone illegally re-opened the campground. Grass at two of the campsites had been mowed, as well as along a short path toward the river. The campsites are nearest restrooms, which had their door handles and locks broken away.

Campsites numbers 15 and 16 were mowed and are situated across a dirt roadway from each other. Tracks from a truck and a passenger car were still visible in the sand at one of the sites Saturday.

Campground closed in 2009 illegally reopened (via Consumerist)

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Want to see The Human Centipede II? If you live in the UK, you're out of luck

Did you think last year's The Human Centipede (First Sequence) was gross? Well, apparently you ain't see nothing yet. The sequel is so much worse that it has been denied a general release in the U.K.

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Figure Drawing For All It's Worth: prized instructional art book by Andrew Loomis back in print

Andrew Loomis was an American illustrator whose work appeared in many magazines in the mid-20th century. In addition to his beautiful editorial work for magazines, Loomis also wrote and illustrated a half dozen or so instructional drawing books, and for the last 30 years or so they've been in great demand, even though they've been out of print.

About 15 years ago I went to a used bookstore here in Los Angeles, and when I asked the owner if he had any Loomis books for sale he told me that the Disney studio had a standing order for any Loomis books that came into the store.

Many professional illustrators have told me that their Loomis books are the most valuable teaching tools they own.

I eventually got my hands on a couple of his books, paying about $100 per copy. These were beat up copies, without the dust jackets. (If you want a Loomis illustration book in good condition, you can expect to pay a few hundred dollars or it.)

It's easy to find Loomis's books as PDF files online, but the quality isn't that great. Fortunately, Titan Books just released a new edition of Figure Drawing For All It's Worth, one of Loomis's best-known instructional illustration books.

This hardbound edition is a facsimile of the original edition, which came out in 1943. Since I have the earlier edition as well as the new one, I was able to compare them side-by-side. The new version is much better.

The original edition was printed on cheap, thin paper. The new edition is much thicker, and the pages are whiter.

The quality of the printing in the original (top) is very slightly better than in the new edition (bottom). The new edition is a touch more harsh than the original. The original has more shades of gray. But the overall difference is very minor. Like I said: I paid about $100 for my beat-up copy of Figure Drawing For All It's Worth, and I feel it was money well spent. The new edition is $23.49 on Amazon, which is an outright steal.

Figure Drawing for All It's Worth

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Scarification Tattoos – Art Or Sick?

In the process of scarification, scars are formed by cutting or branding the skin. There are many reasons why people may turn to scarification. Aesthetically, scarifications are usually more visible on darker skinned people than tattoos. Also, unlike tattoos, scarifications are a product of one's own body.

There are also religious and social reasons for scarification. According to some tribal belief in Africa, producing scars on newborn children helps preventing vision related illness. There may also be religious expressions used in the scarification process.

Scarification is not a precise art; there are many variables, such as skin type, depth of the cut, and how the wound is treated while healing, that make the outcome somewhat unpredictable.

The body creates the scar, not the artist; it is important to keep in mind that a method that works well on one person may not work so well on another. Also, the scars tend to spread a bit as they heal, so scarifications are usually relatively simple designs — small details can easily get swallowed up in the healing process.

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