Entries Tagged 'news' ↓

If the world ends, it’s been nice knowing you all.

The Seattle Times has an interesting interview with Rem Koolhaas, the Dutch architect who designed the much-lauded Seattle Central Library. He mentions his thoughts on the “book spiral”, saying:

… one of the points of a library was that there are accidents and that you find yourself in areas where you didn’t expect to be and where you kind of look at books that are not necessarily the books that you’re aiming for. So it was to create a kind of almost arbitrariness — or to create a kind of walking experience, an almost kind of urban walk … a kind of Rotterdam, a very efficient, direct aiming for limited destinations.

Check it out.

I’m in an alliterative mood today. Besides, sibilants are sexy.

ABC News, among others, is a-huffle
over another Joss Whedon kerfuffle.
“Why can’t he”, they say,
“keep his girls ungay,
or at least make the sex more a-muffled?”

Double-meaning FTW.

The story is interesting itself, of course, especially if you’re a Buffy fan. Perhaps even more interesting are the current 113-odd comments of people calling for censorship and of people responding to the people asking for censorship, telling them that they’re uninformed idiots. Personally, I don’t know what the big issue is. (That was a comic book joke, right there.) BtVS had plenty of steamy moments in the show. In one episode, Buffy almost gets sexed-to-death as she and Riley get it on at a haunted party. Less graphic, but equally blatant in its own right, is when Tara goes down on Willow in the musical episode singing, “Lost in ecstasy / Spread beneath my Willow tree.” The camera pans up, of course, just as Willow begins to levitate over the bed. No, that’s not obvious at all.

So what if Buffy gets a little saucy between the pages. Graphically, it’s nothing worse than what we see on the standard Image comic cover. Even DC and Marvel covers can get pretty racy these days. Ideologically? Well, considering chicks are making out on street corners these days (albeit in Canada) as a form of protest, I’d say that it’s only a matter of time before the taboo gets … well, less taboo.

In the meantime, good for Buffy, and as she so eloquently puts it, “Wow.”

Everytime I blink it seems like Google takes over one more small part of the world. Maybe next weekend they’ll learn French?

Earlier this week, we started inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that we are calling “knol”, which stands for a unit of knowledge. Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing. For now, using it is by invitation only. But we wanted to share with everyone the basic premises and goals behind this project.

Sound familiar? Yeah, Google is out to kill Wikipedia. Kill ‘em dead.

(via Steve)

Heath Ledger found dead in Manhattan apartment.

For some reason this news makes me very sad. Maybe because he’s about my age. Maybe because Abby and I were just talking about him in 10 Things I Hate About You. Maybe simply because he was a damn fine actor.

In any case, so long, Heath, and happy trails.