De(con)struction

The crane collapse on the upper east side this past weekend was morbidly spectacular. I had my fill of gawking on a lunchtime walk past the site. The rescue workers had quite an audience of appreciative, slack-jawed onlookers.

The following morning, my commute through Grand Central was interrupted by red tape barring my usual route through the station. Behind the red tape a group of men was standing and kneeling around a still (lifeless?) body on a stretcher. They had clearly been there for some time. One man was administering defibrillation to the body. They had taken the dead man's shoes off. Is that protocol? In any case, all I remember is the scene illustrated below quite clearly. Lots of people had gathered to gawk but I hurried past. I felt for the guy, thought about him and his death, but I didn't feel that stopping and staring was appropriate.

The Fold, presented not by Deleuze but by the Cooper Hewitt

I am really looking forward to seeing this exhibit at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. "Rococo: The Continuuing Curve, 1730-2008" promises to have some breathtaking objects. Make sure you click through to slide #5. It is quite humbling, and thus important, to see objects that are not merely exceptional in our time, but which were standouts in their own time. It makes you remember that people have been fashioning unique and fantastic objects forever, styles and eras be damned.

Can your imagination tell the difference between a 40 ft and a 50 ft reptile?

Luckily for you and me, dear reader, the Tuesday Science Times has become even more visually enticing. The newish Science in Pictures combines an extremely concise format with useless and bizarre information. And pretty pretty pictures, which was the only part I liked anyway. A fun picture or illustration is matched with a title, and an explanatory paragraph of two to four sentences. But don't worry; there is still plenty of room for fun!

Here are my two favorite tidbits.

I have actually devoted a significant amount of time-um, let's say minutes--wondering about the origins of domesticated farm animals, notably sheep and cows. But I had not yet given any thought to chickens. Luckily, the Times always anticipates my burning intellectual desires. So, Darwin believed modern chicken to be descended from red jungle fowl. Boy, is the joke on him. Turns out, chickens are descended from gray jungle fowl AS WELL as red jungle fowl. What on earth is a jungle fowl? Is it a specific species? Or just a genus? Could I have a pet jungle fowl? Would it (either color) get along with my jungle reptile? Goddammit, they always leave me wanting more...

In other earth shattering discoveries, a ferocious Jurassic reptile previously believed to have reached lengths of 40 feet is now thought to perhaps maybe one time a billion years ago to have reached lengths of 50 feet. And inspired the most awesome illustration ever! One question: How big is that sea gull?

Amazon has me all figured out. Can it help me figure me out?

All Categories Arts & Photography Astronomy Classics Composers & Musicians Contemporary Art Criticism Culture Drawing Electronica Ethnic Studies European Geography German History History of Science Indie & Lo Fi Lo-Fi Modern Music Nonfiction Philosophy Renaissance Rock Social History Urban

During a recent visit to my "personalized" amazon home page, I was startled by its new format. In addition to suggestions, the new style presents a list of categories culled from past purchases with the font size adjusted for relevance! (I assume that it is frequency of purchase from each category that determines relevancy.)

This page could be a useful tool for self-reflection. One could mine their personalized amazon page for cheap psychological advice, or better yet, career counseling. Looks like I should have gone for my Ph.D. in philosophy after all. Damn. Why didn't I have this page senior year of college? Oh yeah, I was too busy studying philosophy to conduct elaborate shopping sprees on Amazon.

Perhaps instead of allowing participants on social networking sites to choose their own likes, influences, etc., one should have the option of submitting an objective summary, courtesy of Amazon.

However, there are a couple of flaws in this system. For instance, these categories are presented as equal concepts when they are actually wildly irrelevant types of classification. Surely, inserting Lo-Fi and History into the same hierarchy can be done by an algorithm but makes no sense to a human being. Second, the above list of my favorite categories includes Ethnic Studies; this can only have been included due to a purchase of textbooks I made for a friend. Also, every time I log on Amazon tries to sell me pastel ruffled baby socks, similar to a set that I purchased once for an acquaintance's baby shower. I feel like these items have nothing to do with me. And yet it is a true and unavoidable fact that I purchased them through Amazon. And so they must!