Amandaburnham

If you are looking for a exceptionally witty, and colorful gift for the comicbook lover in your life Super Graphic, A Visual Guide to the Comic Book Universe by Tim Leong is it. In fact, your giftee doesn't even need to be into comics to appreciate Leong's wonderfully, funny graphic book chocked full of charts galore. It's one of the most clever books I've seen recently.

I worked with Leong during my short time at Wired. I never had the opportunity to work directly with him (he served as Director of Digital Design), however any time I ever spoke with him he was delighful and kind. (His desk was also a visual playground with much to look at, and be inspired by.) Leong gave a sneak peek of the beginnings of Super Graphic during a retreat last spring to the staff of Wired, as he walked us through his visual world it was clear this was going to be a must have for the bookshelf. I've been waiting for his book for a year and a half!

You how ever will only have to wait a few weeks.

Super Graphic has so much great stuff going on, that I would almost prefer you to discover it on your own. It's that good. But for sake of this blog post (and the original reason as to why Chronicle Books sent me it) let's hop to it. As I already mentioned Super Graphic is funny, and it's also incredibly bright both literally and in its copy. Not an easy thing to pull off. Leong knocks it out of the park in many regards. The book itself is quite literally overflowing with data — beautifully and sharply laid out in venn diagrams, maps, graphs, tables, matrix' (!!!), and any chart you can think of from bubble, pie, bar, and so on.

Leong diagrams such topics as the obvious to the most obscure comic facts. From secret identities, to the evolution of Superman's logo, to how to read a comic book (both in English, and the Japanese Manga). What makes the book so delighful and unique is Leong's quirky sense of humor and obvious deep interest in comic books. Along with the above, he creates hilarious and completely unexpected charts. You'll see rap stars influenced by superheros, 70 years of Wonder Woman's legs, Scrooge McDuck's family tree, to ten years of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pizza combos. You'll even find Leong's own downward trajectory of his faith in humanity mapped out when he sees a Calvin peeing on a car logo sticker of Calvin & Hobbes.

Like I said, funny, fantastic stuff. Super Graphic is available on August 1st. Order yours now.

via http://scotchandjazzatdusk.com/post/23545783562/petapeta-zsazsa-bellagio

Maria Popova spotlights a 1915 letter from Albert Einstein to his 11-year-old son, who was living with his mother (Einstein’s estranged wife, Mileva) in Vienna while the physicist worked in Berlin:

My dear Albert,

Yesterday I received your dear letter and was very happy with it. I was already afraid you wouldn’t write to me at all any more. You told me when I was in Zurich, that it is awkward for you when I come to Zurich. Therefore I think it is better if we get together in a different place, where nobody will interfere with our comfort. I will in any case urge that each year we spend a whole month together, so that you see that you have a father who is fond of you and who loves you. You can also learn many good and beautiful things from me, something another cannot as easily offer you. What I have achieved through such a lot of strenuous work shall not only be there for strangers but especially for my own boys. These days I have completed one of the most beautiful works of my life, when you are bigger, I will tell you about it.

I am very pleased that you find joy with the piano. This and carpentry are in my opinion for your age the best pursuits, better even than school. Because those are things which fit a young person such as you very well. Mainly play the things on the piano which please you, even if the teacher does not assign those. That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes. I am sometimes so wrapped up in my work that I forget about the noon meal. . . .

Be with Tete [Albert's brother] kissed by your

Papa.

Regards to Mama.

Just as the Internet thought it had finally decrypted the many embedded occult references, Fibonacci sequences, and T-shirts to unlock the clues of interactive murder-mystery Mad Men, its diabolical creator Matthew Weiner has devilishly declared that the game has barely even begun. In an interview with the L.A. Times, Weiner tents his fingers and addresses the many theories that the presumed Megan Draper-Sharon Tate connection means the former will die, has already died, or is being played by a ghost. “I don’t want to spoil anything for people, but after Lane…” Weiner says by way of referring to the late Lane Pryce, who appeared to be the first to join Sterling Cooper & Partners’ growing spectral chorus of the damned. And then, always willing to be his mouthpiece, Elisabeth Moss chimes in, “They’re barking up the wrong tree.”

The hangman’s tree? The tree bearing strange fruit, blood ...

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The plan was to end the All These Theses series a few weeks back but things keep trickling in. Rather than end it, we’ll just consider it an ongoing series with occasional posts. We have no intention of posting them all but now and then we’ll share interesting thesis work.

Sang Eun Lee earned an MFA Southern Illinois University Carbondale. A statement about the work follows the images.

 

Sang Eun Lee’s Statement…

We require a sense of identity and belonging. Individuals derive a sense of identity from their culture. Surroundings or environment also influences how
they live. We become who we are by developing a certain relationship to the past as well. Indeed, the notion of home has a great impact on our lives. No matter
where we end up and how we grow, we are always the product of where we come from. The places we call home shape us and influence how we make
connections and interact with one another.

I have led an unintentionally nomadic life, living in four different countries since I was a child, calling many places home. To this day I still move quite frequently. My memories of these places have faded and blended together. My work is based on dissonant and fragmented memories about home and people I have encountered in the past. Many different layers of images become sandwiched together without indicators of time or separation in between. It is my endeavor to bring those disjointed memories together, while allowing the viewer to relate to my ideas about home, origins and identity.

Ever since Dan Harmon confirmed he would be returning to Community, there’s been a certain amount of wishful speculation (if that is such a thing) that he might undo the events of season four with a wave of his wizardly hand—dismissing them as an occasionally passable dream, or more likely, one of those alternate timelines he’s so fond of. But if Harmon’s recent comments to E! are any indication, that’s probably not going to happen when he starts work on Monday. “I'm not going to be a jerk about it. I know there were some great writers working on that show who bled with me for seasons one, two and three…the worst thing I can do is fart in their direction at all,” Harmon says of how he intends to approach absorbing the fourth season, most likely during a binge-watch this Sunday, then ...

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The world's most popular room-renting service is now illegal in the largest city in the United States, CNET reports. This could be a setback.

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Damnit, we keep missing these important milestones by a matter of hours. Oh well. Tell it to the internet police.

On May 19, 1998, the Yankees and Orioles engaged in one of the best brawls in baseball history, featuring the sorts of roundhouses and flying punches you simply don't see anymore. In a macro sense, the fight was a sign of an AL East changing of the guard. The Orioles were in the midst of their first sub-.500 full season since 1991, while the Yankees would win their first of three straight titles. In a more micro sense, Armando Benitez is a crazy person, and the Yankees roster was full of guys willing to throw down. Jamie Mottram calls this his favorite baseball fight ever; I agree heartily.

Benitez had a history with the Yankees, specifically Tino Martinez. After giving up a home run to the first batter he faced, Benitez drilled Martinez in the back, and it was on.

Highlights include Graeme Lloyd charging in from the bullpen to attack Benitez (4:56), and Darryl Strawberry demolishing Benitez (amazing replay at 6:01). The fight would move to the dugout, where Strawberry was bloodied by a punch from Alan Mills.

The final damage: an eight-game suspension for Benitez, three games each for Strawberry and Lloyd, and two games apiece for Mills and Jeff Nelson.

For years now, affluent (mostly white) Americans have been moving back into our nation's "inner cities," those once-scary locations populated only by forgotten minorities and a distinct lack of quality condo development. And poor people, in turn, have been decamping for the suburbs, those once-deluxe bastions of white flight. Slumburbia is no longer our future. It is our present.

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American artist Soo Sunny Park took over Rice Gallery, part of Rice University in Houston, Texas, with a glistening, labor intensive, abstract installation called Unwoven Light. The suspended piece is made up of 37 individual units composed of chain link fencing that is arranged into a sculptural form that’s all about light.

Watch the video:

As you make your way around the space, the ever-changing rainbows of color bounce off each piece of iridescent Plexiglas that has been wired into the openings of the metal fence. The coated Plexiglas causes the light to “unweave” making each shape turn from clear to colorful as light hits them.

From Park:

“Like a net, the sculpture is a filter that is meant to capture the light that is already there and force it to reveal itself. Now we can see it, the light, in purple shadows and yellow-green reflections that both mirror the shape of the fence and restructure the space they inhabit.”

Unwoven Light is on display at Rice Gallery through August 30th, 2013.

All photos © Nash Baker.

After Chelsea's final match of the season, friends and family gathered on the pitch to listen to the retiring Paulo Ferreira's farewell speech. But even Ferreira had to pause as Josh Turnbull, son of goalkeeper Ross Turnbull, made a run on net.

As always, the crowd's reaction is the best part—though the kid's hesitation before pumping both fists in the air is pretty great too.

The grandson of the brewery’s founder is credited with “one of the first eco-conscious consumer designs”:

In 1960, Freddy [Heineken] took a trip to the island of Curacao in the Caribbean Sea and discovered that he could barely walk 15 feet on the beach without stepping on a littered Heineken bottle. He was alarmed by two things: First, the incredible amount of waste that his product was creating due to the region’s lack of infrastructure to collect the bottles for reuse. (Back then, bottles were commonly returned for refilling, lasting about 30 trips back and forth to the breweries). Second, the dearth of proper building materials available to those living in the impoverished communities he visited. So he thought up an idea that might solve both of these problems: A brick that holds beer.

The rectangular, Heineken World Bottle or WOBO, designed with the help of architect John Habraken, would serve as a drinking vessel as well as a brick once the contents were consumed. The long side of the bottle would have interlocking grooved surfaces so that the glass bricks, once laid on their side, could be stacked easily with mortar or cement. A 10-foot-by-10-foot shack would take approximately 1,000 bottles (and a lot of beer consumption) to build.

The brick bottles never made it to large-scale production, but they inspired others to take up the challenge.

(Photo by Flickr user greezer.ch)

Reveling in the small, quiet corners of everyday life, Bay Area photographer Amanda Boe explores themes of isolation, curiosity and mise-en-scene in her strange, stunning work. When looking through images from her series Here and There, it’s easy to let your mind wander into each frame, gently prompted to think about time, place, and what it feels like to be “passing through.” The crisp simplicity of her work is charged with her natural sensibilities as a curious, highly-engaged observer—collecting visual treats as she moves through the world. Boe investigates the places in-between the larger moments of life, and reports back with work that is meditative, personal and poetic.

Photos by Adam Bartos.

View the whole post: Adam Bartos over on BOOOOOOOM!.

via http://tema.livejournal.com/437014.html

From his press conference today:

Whether it's a free country or not, you should be free to act as you want to do as long as it's not violent. No matter what it is. I came here in a Cookie Monster shirt because I wanted to, and I was going to wear the pants. But I thought you guys were going to judge me. I was going to wear the hat too. But I thought you guys would judge me. I didn't want Mitch [Kupchak] to judge me. So that's why I didn't wear the hats and the pants. But I should've wore it. You should be free to do and act how you want to act.

He also said this. Don't ever change, Metta.

via

According to Joseph Bennington-Castro, “we don’t just eat foods because we like them, we like them because we eat them”:

After birth, your preferences continue shaping for the next two years. “Up until the age of 2 you will eat anything,” [psychologist Elizabeth Phillips] says. But then you become neophobic — that is, you don’t like new food. So if you hadn’t already been exposed to a certain flavor by the time you hit your terrible twos — whether through amniotic fluid, breast milk or solid food — chances are you won’t like it. At this point, most parents make a big mistake. “They think, ‘Oh my child doesn’t like this,’ but it’s actually anything new that they don’t like,” Philip says. So parents typically stop trying to feed their child that food and the kid ends up apparently hating it for years to come. “They don’t know that if they just keep giving it to their child, they’ll eventually like it.”

The key, then, is to make the food not new. Basically, you’ll like a new or previously hated flavor if you’re repeatedly exposed to it — studies suggest that it takes 10 to 15 exposures. “So if there’s something you don’t like, just eat it over and over and over again,” Philip says.

Kelly Nash, who covers the Tampa Bay Rays for Fox's Sun Sports, was in Boston Saturday for the Astros-Red Sox game, and decided to pass the time during batting practice by taking a few selfies around Fenway Park.

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Last week Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma introduced an amendment to a bill called the Marketplace Fairness Act (the so-called "Internet tax") that would revoke the tax-exempt status of sports leagues. This is the news, and Think Progress has covered it nicely here. Also news, to most people: Sports leagues are taxed as charities.

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Pretty much does what it says on the tin. No topography, no labels, no lakes. Just a big, zoomable map covered with all the roads in the lower 48. We think it's beautiful.

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If you ever wondered whether the health insurance crisis in the United States was really something to worry about, this new study will give you pause. A randomized poll of thousands of Americans revealed that almost half had no insurance or inadequate insurance for at least part of last year.

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Rebecca Makkai lists the top five books she would save from a fire. One was a blank hand-bound book she received as a wedding gift:

We couldn’t see ourselves asking people to sign it. I wasn’t about to fill it with crappy story drafts or start journaling. So we began writing down every book we read. (Jon gets the left page and I get the right. As you can tell, he’s a much faster reader.) It’s made me more determined to finish things, in the same way my childhood library’s summer reading program once did. It’s also the best diary I could have. If I want to remember December, 2003, I just need to see that I was reading Motherless Brooklyn and it all comes back: pneumonia, hospital, striped sweater, and the last time I ever played tennis.

And it’s also afforded me the greatest insult I could give a book. When a book is so extraordinarily bad that I’d be embarrassed to record it—terrified that my grandchildren, after I’m gone, might pick this one book off the list and read it to see what kind of person I was—I’ll refuse to write it down. It’s a rare punishment, one I’ve only exercised a few times. And therein lies the essay I’ll never write, a companion to this one: The Five Books I’d Consign to the Flames.

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In case you’re not glued to the TV, here’s the uncle of the two suspects laying it down. If you can’t watch video, key quote:

Q: What do you think provoked this?

A: Being losers, hatred to those [who could] settle themselves. These are the only reasons I can imagine of. Anything else, anything else to do with religion, with Islam, is a fraud.

When you've lost a beer magnate, you've lost America. Adolphus A. Busch IV, heir to the Anheuser-Busch beer fortune, resigned his lifetime NRA membership last night in a blistering two-page letter that called the gun lobby a corporate shill and attacked its "distorted values." More »

Here's a wonderful picture of Jeff Green, moments after sinking a game-winning layup at the end of last night's Cavs-Celtics game, giving a big hug to Dr. Lars Svensson. Dr. Svensson is the man who performed open heart surgery on Green to fix an aortic aneurysm over a year ago, saving Green's life as well as his career.

Here's how Green described the moment to Boston.com after the game:

“Just a year ago and a couple months, I was under that bright light with him working on me,” said the forward, who scored 21 points and grabbed seven rebounds.

“It’s a blessing to be here.”

Then, a moment later, Green smiled and said, “That was for him.”

It's cool if you want to shed a tear or two right now. We won't tell anyone.

Picture via

[Boston]

When Sergio's Garcia errant shot got caught in a big ass tree today at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, he was basically screwed. The only thing he could've done was climb up that big ass tree after it, because you have to play the ball as it lies. So that's what he did, and it was spectacular and kind of defied the laws of physics, and then he jumped out of the tree and landed on his feet like a fucking leopard and walked away from the tree without looking back like the whole thing was a movie and he just threw a grenade at the tree and the tree blew up and all that's left is a raging fire and rock music in the background and sex.

Garcia double-bogeyed the hole, and withdrew two holes later. Still, it was probably the best shot of the day, unless you want to count Matt Every shooting a ball out of the water from a pond for eagle, which also probably shouldn't have happened:

Nonsense.