The More Things Change...

The more our celebrities look the same?  I could not have told you that these mashup / photo collage images would have worked so well, but they do.

George Chamoun has made a bunch of images like this one:

 

And Marc Ghali has taken the ball and run with it as well:

Check out the other images they've made in the links above, they're worth scrolling through.

(via BD)

 

Get Out Of Your Car & On The Bus

Or why mass transit makes so much sense...

 

Kind of speaks for itself doesn't it?

(via AC)

Go Read A Book

I really, really like books. I like reading them, I like holding them, I like having them on shelves, I like browsing for new ones to read whether that's in a store or a library, or once upon a time a bookmobile.

Bookmobiles are awesome, this is a fact.  It's sad that they aren't around anymore for the most part if you ask me.

Messy Nessy Chic took a look back at the history of the bookmobile and dug up some great pictures to help tell the story of their rise and fall.

Lots more where that came from...

(via LS)

Down By The River

In case you haven't noticed I like maps, a lot.

Here are a couple that caught my attention this spring, hopefully you saw them already (actually scratch that, I hope this is the first time you see them and they blow your mind and you feel forever indebted to me for showing them to you) but if you haven't they're worth a gander.

Someone took the time to make a map of the US out of just rivers and streams and it's beautiful and fascinating.  You can also think about this as a map of all of the waterways in the US and nothing else, two sides of a coin if you will.



If you're interested in who you might run into by your local or regional river or stream you can check out this fairly meta map of the US broken down into geographic areas based on the circulation of dollar bills.

In order to figure out exactly what you're looking at head on over to the NPR story on the map and the researchers who put it together.

Don't Believe Your Eyes

People definitely didn't make these things before the interwebs...

Yeah, so, um, wow.  That pretty much looks 3D but it isn't.  FastCoDesign has the story.

(via TMN)

End Of The Year Tab Dump - Art

It's the end of 2012 and my folder full of tabs / bookmarks that I've been meaning to share is over flowing.  The end of a year seems like a good enough reason to get them all out there for your perusal and it doesn't hurt that it will help get me up over the 100 post threshold for 2012 either.

We're gonna do this categorically, sort of at least, some other links ended up on twitter; check the sidebar for those or @hcoppola.

And now it's time for Art, and/or art type things that didn't fit in anywhere else.  There were fewer of these lying around than the other categories I could come up with.  For the most part it's easy to share art stuff so I get to it more often.

Orhan Pamuk built a museum in a house in Istanbul that comes from a book that he wrote and was financed with his Nobel Prize money.  I've read two Pamuk books they were both pretty weirdly intense and one was fascinating and the other didn't hold my interest and no I don't recall the title of either.

Jeff Koons taught a bunch of second graders an art class and someone did this delightful little write up.

There is a dude who does photo-drawing mashups and calls them Pencil vs Camera...


A Japanese collective of sorts makes occasionally mesmerizing spinning animated GIFs...

Steve Winter takes pictures of tigers and of people and of how they interact and inter-relate.

Stay tuned as we close out 2012 and roll into 2013 there's still more to come...

It's Been Really Freaking Hot This Summer

There have been record high temperatures all over the US and it's been 100 out again in DC this week.  Dealing with the heat can be a miserable endeavor and a shock to your electric bill as the AC cranks but it's nothing compared to the drought issues the same global heat wave has been contributing to or the fact that all of the ice in Greenland is melting...

That's a pretty scary picture, details and context from NASA available here.  Suffice it to say that the scientists working on this thought for sure that their instruments were malfunctioning at first.

(Greenland via DCist)

Wear. Sunscreen.

Seriously kids, folks aren't kidding around when they tell you to put on sunscreen...

 

Dude drove a truck for years sans sunscreen, guess which side of the road they drive on where he's from.  The New England Journal of Medicine breaks it all down in a more serious and studious manner if you're interested, but the take away is pretty clear.

(via kottke & elsewhere on the interwebs)

The Corporate World We Live In, Visualized

You know how it comes up every once in a while that there are only really a handful of corporations in the world anymore if you go back up the chain far enough? 

Here's a pretty good graphical representation of that experience...

I'm not sure who put this together (and I just noticed that A&W is in two corporate structures) so I can't vouch for its full authenticity but I decided to share it anyway since I think it helps frame a legitimate point in an interesting and more digestible way even if it isn't perfect.

(via ML on fb)

Should You Check Your Email When You're Done Reading This Post?

Luckily we have a flow chart to help you with that decision...

Flow charts are great, nice work Wendy MacNaughton.
(via LS)

On The Importance Of The Oxford Comma

The Oxford comma seems to be a dying breed these days.  The Neurotic Penguin helps explain why this is unfortunate...

Plumbing The Depths

The best thing on the internet (aka XKCD) has tackled this issue before but this recent take on the depth of water bodies is pretty great...

It's even better if you click through and check it out full size.

Your Brain Is A Powerful Thing

This is pretty neat.  Give it a read to take it for a spin...

I'm not sure if some folks can read this and others can't (my guess is that the vast majority of people can, as long as they don't think too hard).

(via George Takei's fb, which is pretty cool itself)

Watch Out For The Go-Rillas

I'm a big fan of street art, especially when it's smart and classy, and also of guerrilla gardening.  So I'm obviously taken with this East London project from Steve Wheen...

DesignBoom has a few more details and pictures for you to check out.

You Are What You Eat - Seafood & Plastics Are A Bad Mix

Great promotional poster on ocean plastics pollution and marine debris issues from Surfrider...

Here is the hyperlink for the campaign from the poster.

(via Cape Ann Fresh Catch on fb)

Endangered Species

Most folks have heard about the Endangered Species Act (ESA), I wonder how many of them think (incorrectly) that it is administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)...

 

Cute cartoon, I think it would have been a bit more poignant with a polar bear or maybe a wolf and referencing the proper agency would be a nice touch as well, if more complicated.

The ESA is administered by the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) with FWS taking fresh water and all terrestrial based species and NOAA in charge of marine creatures.

Wikipedia has a pretty good rundown of the ESA as well if you want some more info on the Act.

(Cartoon from Paul Noth in the December 5, 2011 issue of the New Yorker)

A New Spin On Worth A Thousand Words

Not photographs but sculptures this time around, and these bad boys actually contain thousands of words.  Indeed words, it could be argued, are the very building blocks of these incredible works of art.

An unknown artist took the Edinburgh literary / culture / arts world by storm over the past year or so with 10 incredible pieces of art constructed from books and 'in support of libraries, books, words, ideas.....'

All 10 pieces are fascinating and the corresponding story is wonderful as well.  It's an all around entertaining and uplifting snippet of life, be sure to check it all out.

(via RCC on fb)

Recognition: Authors, Portraits & Society

I know that the December 5th, 2011 cover of the New Yorker ('black friday' by Daniel Clowes) is at least most overtly about the demise of books (in actual physical form) and small bookstores but I was much more interested in the depiction of authors on the cover.

I was struck by how quickly I recognized the male authors and my complete lack of ability to place the two women.  I was a little surprised at first but when I thought about it I couldn't recall seeing lauded female authors' depicted regularly whereas the many of the men are frequently portrayed in pop-culture items like those shown on the cover.  Maybe it's just me, but I feel like this says a little something about society as well.  Seems like it's still harder to make it as a writer, at least an iconic one, as a woman than as a man.

Hemingway, Twain, and Shakespeare I didn't even have to think about.  James Joyce (in the hat) took me longer (my first thought was Tolstoy to be honest) and I would never have placed Virginia Woolf or Emily Dickinson without googling the cover.

How The World Works

Often, a picture's worth a whole bunch of words...

























Steve Sack at the Star Tribune nails it.

Promoting Scientific Integrity

It's a big lift, and one of the ways that the Union of Concerned Scientists tackles the mission is with an annual scientific integrity editorial cartoon contest and calendar.  This year's winner and the 12 cartoons for the calendar were announced recently...

Congrats to John Klossner and all the other entrants.

You can see more of the cartoons on the UCS site.