Style
Not Style
photo credits: style and not style
Monday, March 28, 2011
Tsunami Ravaging Kesennuma Port
[ed. note. I've been hesitant to post much about the Japan earthquake and tsunami because of all the media coverage elsewhere. But this is different. This video could well become one of the most enduring images of the tsunami that we remember. Very powerful.]
via:
Sky's The Limit
Located on a coastal rainforest bluff overlooking the Pacific, Hotel Costa Verde near Quepos, Costa Rica, features one of the most unique hotel rooms I’ve ever encountered. A two bedroom, fully retrofitted, vintage 1965 Boeing 727 fuselage, available on your next vacation!
more pics here:
Crab Cakes
Light, fluffy crabcakes and a peppery salad with an Asian twist.
Makes about 6
Cooking time: 20 miunutes
1 cup* cooked crabmeat
1/2 cup* mashed potatoes
3 spring onions
2 tbsp finely chopped parsley
1 tsp each ground black pepper and cayenne pepper
1 beaten egg
Salt
Flour, for dusting
Olive oil, for frying
Watercress and tartare sauce, to serve
In a bowl, combine the crabmeat, potatoes, onion, parsley, pepper, cayenne, egg and a little salt (use your hands to ensure it's all well mixed). Refrigerate for 30 minutes, then shape into 6cm cakes.
Dust with flour and shallow-fry in olive oil over a medium heat for about five minutes on each side, until golden-brown.
Serve with a salad of spring onions, wild mizuna or rocket, coriander dressed in a little soy and lime juice, then serve lime wedges alongside.
via:
*approximate metric conversions
Cooking time: 20 miunutes
1 cup* cooked crabmeat
1/2 cup* mashed potatoes
3 spring onions
2 tbsp finely chopped parsley
1 tsp each ground black pepper and cayenne pepper
1 beaten egg
Salt
Flour, for dusting
Olive oil, for frying
Watercress and tartare sauce, to serve
In a bowl, combine the crabmeat, potatoes, onion, parsley, pepper, cayenne, egg and a little salt (use your hands to ensure it's all well mixed). Refrigerate for 30 minutes, then shape into 6cm cakes.
Dust with flour and shallow-fry in olive oil over a medium heat for about five minutes on each side, until golden-brown.
Serve with a salad of spring onions, wild mizuna or rocket, coriander dressed in a little soy and lime juice, then serve lime wedges alongside.
via:
*approximate metric conversions
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Investing Like It's 1999
by Evelyn M. Rusli and Verne G. Kopytoff
Banks pouring money into technology funds, wealthy clients and institutions clamoring to get pieces of start-ups, expectations of stock market debuts building — as Wall Street’s machinery kicks into second gear, some investors with memories of the Internet bust a decade earlier are wondering whether this sudden burst of activity spells danger for the industry once again.
With all this exuberance, valuations are soaring. Investments in Facebook and Zynga have more than quintupled the implied worth of each company in the last two years. The social shopping site Groupon is said to be considering an initial public offering that would value the company at $25 billion. Less than a year ago, the company was valued at $1.4 billion.
“I worry that investors think every social company will be as good as Facebook,” said Roger McNamee, a managing director of Elevation Partners and an investor in Facebook, who co-founded the private equity fund Silver Lake Partners in 1999 at the height of the boom. “You have an attractive set of companies right now, but it would be surprising if the next wave of social companies had as much impact as the first.”
Read more:
Lonely Together
by Lydialyle Gibson
Two years ago, Chicago psychologist John Cacioppo cowrote the book Loneliness, which advances a novel theory for this elusive emotional state. Loneliness, Cacioppo argues, isn’t some personality defect or sign of weakness—it’s a survival impulse like hunger or thirst, a trigger pushing us toward the nourishment of human companionship. Furthermore, he writes, “people who get stuck in loneliness have not done anything wrong. None of us is immune to feelings of isolation, any more than we are immune to feelings of hunger or physical pain.”
Being lonely isn’t the same as being alone, Cacioppo is careful to clarify. Lonely people can be surrounded by coworkers, neighbors, friends, and family. They’re no less attractive or intelligent or popular. What sets the lonely apart is a sense that their relationships do not meet their social needs.
That uneasy feeling goes back aeons. Loneliness was, Cacioppo believes, a powerful evolutionary force binding prehistoric people to those they relied on for food, shelter, and protection, to help them raise their young and carry on their genetic legacy. Cacioppo also points to the long years children spend utterly dependent on their parents. “It’s a good decade before they’re going to be able to survive on their own,” he says. Small wonder that isolation makes people feel not only unhappy but also unsafe.
Which is why loneliness can work: It prods people to reach out to those around them. “Some people get stuck,” Cacioppo says, “but on average, when you get lonely you do something to get out of that aversive state.”
Like other evolutionary adaptations, loneliness varies from person to person. There are extroverts and introverts. There are those who don’t seem to need friends at all. “That makes great sense because those are the explorers,” Cacioppo says. “We need them.” But for those who feel warmer near the communal fire, isolation works as a civilizing influence. “When children are acting selfish and narcissistic, you put them by themselves,” Cacioppo explains. “Well, that’s not a dramatic punishment, is it? And yet it’s painful.” Children cry; they beg to be allowed back into the group. When they do come back, “they’re better social citizens. They’ll now take the other child’s perspective; they’ll share their toys.”
Read more:
Two years ago, Chicago psychologist John Cacioppo cowrote the book Loneliness, which advances a novel theory for this elusive emotional state. Loneliness, Cacioppo argues, isn’t some personality defect or sign of weakness—it’s a survival impulse like hunger or thirst, a trigger pushing us toward the nourishment of human companionship. Furthermore, he writes, “people who get stuck in loneliness have not done anything wrong. None of us is immune to feelings of isolation, any more than we are immune to feelings of hunger or physical pain.”
Being lonely isn’t the same as being alone, Cacioppo is careful to clarify. Lonely people can be surrounded by coworkers, neighbors, friends, and family. They’re no less attractive or intelligent or popular. What sets the lonely apart is a sense that their relationships do not meet their social needs.That uneasy feeling goes back aeons. Loneliness was, Cacioppo believes, a powerful evolutionary force binding prehistoric people to those they relied on for food, shelter, and protection, to help them raise their young and carry on their genetic legacy. Cacioppo also points to the long years children spend utterly dependent on their parents. “It’s a good decade before they’re going to be able to survive on their own,” he says. Small wonder that isolation makes people feel not only unhappy but also unsafe.
Which is why loneliness can work: It prods people to reach out to those around them. “Some people get stuck,” Cacioppo says, “but on average, when you get lonely you do something to get out of that aversive state.”
Like other evolutionary adaptations, loneliness varies from person to person. There are extroverts and introverts. There are those who don’t seem to need friends at all. “That makes great sense because those are the explorers,” Cacioppo says. “We need them.” But for those who feel warmer near the communal fire, isolation works as a civilizing influence. “When children are acting selfish and narcissistic, you put them by themselves,” Cacioppo explains. “Well, that’s not a dramatic punishment, is it? And yet it’s painful.” Children cry; they beg to be allowed back into the group. When they do come back, “they’re better social citizens. They’ll now take the other child’s perspective; they’ll share their toys.”
Read more:
The Sweet Spot
BY aDAM sACHs
“are you dyin’ on me, old man?” the girl says with a sweet, cruel smile.
I am not dyin’. I am coughing.
Trying to muffle another, I spit out a hacking hee-hawish sound: KARGHHA-HAAA! The laugh-cough is an unconvincing piece of theater, like someone trying to brightly yodel their way through a bout of diarrhea. “Don’t die, old man,” she purrs soothingly, “not right now.…”
Yes, please, not now. Not while she is, unaccountably, here in my bed, making jokes at my expense. She’s lovely. Naked. Twenty-two. She could read to me from Mein Kampf or throw pebbles at my head and I would still consider this an excellent morning to be alive. It occurs to me that I have lived a full 1.5 decades’ more mornings than she has. When she was born, I already had a driver’s license and beginner’s beard. Now I’m a 38-year-old, newly unmarried, formerly baby-tracked bachelor whose friends have summer homes and pictures of pink-cheeked toddlers posted in their Facebook profiles.
How did our paths cross here? The answer is a hitherto uncharted territory in the life of a man, the Sweet Spot, when suddenly you find yourself free to date anyone from recent college graduates to near re-tirees. It begins sometime after your thirty-fifth birthday, though the precise moment is impossible to identify. Suddenly, the pool of available women you can feasibly sleep with expands to include everyone—and her mother. If you are a female born sometime between the launch of Sputnik 1 and the release of Evil Dead II, we could conceivably be getting a drink later.
The Sweet Spot isn’t about love or even happiness. It’s just an observation of fact: For a presumably brief but glorious spell, the man in his late thirties can date more women of more fascinating types and circumstances than at any other time in his life. The discovery is like waking one day to read in the science section of the Times about the existence of a new planet made of salted caramel with rivers of flowing bourbon. For once, good news about getting older! In fact, it’s a fucking miracle.
Read more:
“are you dyin’ on me, old man?” the girl says with a sweet, cruel smile.
I am not dyin’. I am coughing.
Trying to muffle another, I spit out a hacking hee-hawish sound: KARGHHA-HAAA! The laugh-cough is an unconvincing piece of theater, like someone trying to brightly yodel their way through a bout of diarrhea. “Don’t die, old man,” she purrs soothingly, “not right now.…”
Yes, please, not now. Not while she is, unaccountably, here in my bed, making jokes at my expense. She’s lovely. Naked. Twenty-two. She could read to me from Mein Kampf or throw pebbles at my head and I would still consider this an excellent morning to be alive. It occurs to me that I have lived a full 1.5 decades’ more mornings than she has. When she was born, I already had a driver’s license and beginner’s beard. Now I’m a 38-year-old, newly unmarried, formerly baby-tracked bachelor whose friends have summer homes and pictures of pink-cheeked toddlers posted in their Facebook profiles.How did our paths cross here? The answer is a hitherto uncharted territory in the life of a man, the Sweet Spot, when suddenly you find yourself free to date anyone from recent college graduates to near re-tirees. It begins sometime after your thirty-fifth birthday, though the precise moment is impossible to identify. Suddenly, the pool of available women you can feasibly sleep with expands to include everyone—and her mother. If you are a female born sometime between the launch of Sputnik 1 and the release of Evil Dead II, we could conceivably be getting a drink later.
The Sweet Spot isn’t about love or even happiness. It’s just an observation of fact: For a presumably brief but glorious spell, the man in his late thirties can date more women of more fascinating types and circumstances than at any other time in his life. The discovery is like waking one day to read in the science section of the Times about the existence of a new planet made of salted caramel with rivers of flowing bourbon. For once, good news about getting older! In fact, it’s a fucking miracle.
Read more:
Kickstarter
by Carlye Adler
Build a better mousetrap and the world is supposed to beat a path to your door. It’s a lovely thought, one that has inspired generations of American inventors. Reality, though, has fallen somewhat short of this promise: Build a better mousetrap and, if you’re extremely lucky, some corporation will take a look at it, send it through dozens of committees, tweak the design to make it cheaper to manufacture, and let the marketing team decide whether it can be priced to return a profit. By the time your mousetrap makes it to store shelves, it is likely to have been fine-tuned and compromised beyond recognition.
But now some inventors are finding that promise rekindled, thanks to Kickstarter. The site launched in 2009 as a way to crowdsource the funding of idiosyncratic arts projects. Rather than run a gauntlet of agents, studios, producers, publishers, gallery owners, foundations, and philanthropists, applicants simply uploaded a description of their idea. Kickstarter empowered creators, who had a new, no-strings source of funding, as well as audiences, who had the opportunity to help realize the kind of art they wanted to see, rather than what some suit thought would be profitable. “It has changed who the gatekeepers are,” says Douglas Rushkoff, author of the anticorporate manifesto Life Inc. “It has opened up the things you want to do to the free market.”
More than 14,000 people have posted projects on Kickstarter, and more than 400,000 people have supported them, contributing a total of more than $35 million. Eighty new projects are launched every day, and $1 million is pledged every week. The site has tapped a source of patronage that was all but nonexistent before. The result, says cofounder and CEO Perry Chen, has been the realization of thousands of passion projects—a lone sailor who wanted to travel the world and send Polaroids and origami boats to backers, a designer who created a free online library of symbols, a vegan food truck in Louisville—that might never have found funding otherwise. “Kickstarter has the potential to jump-start—I guess the word would be kick-start—an explosion of creation and invention,” says Caterina Fake, cofounder of Flickr and an investor in the site. “There was a compelling need for something like this.”
Saturday, March 26, 2011
The Days and Nights of an NBA Groupie
by Lisa Depaulo and Kyla Jones
The Arrival
Check-in at the Doubletree in Houston is extra special on NBA All-Star weekend. First there is the loud parade of women, fresh from their flights into George H. W. Bush airport, some wearing supersize Velcro rollers in their hair, many in the Official Groupie Travel Outfit (hot pink sweat suit, silver high heels, knockoff Louis Vuitton bag). There are the fights at the front desk—"no, we ain't payin' no $400 a night; no, that ain't what you said on the telephone!"—between large pissed-off women and the cowering staff bearing nametags, chocolate-chip cookies, and a list of special additions to the in-room dining menu (buffalo wings and jalapeño poppers). On All-Star weekend, guests of the Doubletree are asked to sign a "no-party policy" form ("If we learn that a party is in progress…we will reserve the right…to IMMEDIATELY evict the occupants"). At the lobby bar, an enormous sign has been erected: welcome nba all-star fans. A few feet beside it, a plaque: firearms are prohibited on these premises
.
It will be here, in the lovely Doubletree Hotel, that the working girls will set up camp for the next three days. By working girls, we don't mean hookers, though these will infiltrate the Doubletree as well. (It gets a little tricky, because the working girls and the "working girls" tend to dress alike. The standard outfit this weekend: a Band-Aid—sized denim miniskirt studded with rhinestones slung low enough to flash ass-cleavage, knee-high shiny white boots, a silver belt that appears to be made of hubcaps, a midriff-baring top that shows off belly tattoos, and enough fake bling and chains to tow a Hummer.) We mean working girls—the hundreds, thousands, who in their real lives have actual jobs, dreary thankless jobs, but in their fantasy lives get to be NBA groupies. All-Star weekend is their mecca. They save all year for this. They put in for their vacation time early. They spring for hair extensions and new boots.
And with a little bit of luck, they might even get to blow a basketball player.
They tumble out in carloads, talkin' shit and demanding respect. One particular group—four ladies from New York—stands out instantly. Because they are already having a blast. They have no time for fights with desk clerks; they gotta get their case of Goose up to their room. "I can't believe we're actually here!" says the ringleader, a New York City cop named Renee. "I'm pinching myself." Though, with any luck, she'll get someone else to do that for her.
The Arrival
Check-in at the Doubletree in Houston is extra special on NBA All-Star weekend. First there is the loud parade of women, fresh from their flights into George H. W. Bush airport, some wearing supersize Velcro rollers in their hair, many in the Official Groupie Travel Outfit (hot pink sweat suit, silver high heels, knockoff Louis Vuitton bag). There are the fights at the front desk—"no, we ain't payin' no $400 a night; no, that ain't what you said on the telephone!"—between large pissed-off women and the cowering staff bearing nametags, chocolate-chip cookies, and a list of special additions to the in-room dining menu (buffalo wings and jalapeño poppers). On All-Star weekend, guests of the Doubletree are asked to sign a "no-party policy" form ("If we learn that a party is in progress…we will reserve the right…to IMMEDIATELY evict the occupants"). At the lobby bar, an enormous sign has been erected: welcome nba all-star fans. A few feet beside it, a plaque: firearms are prohibited on these premises
.
And with a little bit of luck, they might even get to blow a basketball player.
They tumble out in carloads, talkin' shit and demanding respect. One particular group—four ladies from New York—stands out instantly. Because they are already having a blast. They have no time for fights with desk clerks; they gotta get their case of Goose up to their room. "I can't believe we're actually here!" says the ringleader, a New York City cop named Renee. "I'm pinching myself." Though, with any luck, she'll get someone else to do that for her.
Bob Dylan's Curious Dotage
by Tim de Lisle
A few years ago a concert promoter took the BBC television series “Walking with Dinosaurs” and turned it into a stage show that toured the world’s indoor arenas. Seen from one angle, it was an enterprising move. Seen from another, it was quite unnecessary. The world’s arenas were already crawling with dinosaurs, in the form of old rock stars.
The early years of the 21st century have been the age of the veteran in rock and pop. Records are now trumped by live music, a field where the oldies can dominate. The golden age of popular music, the Sixties, is just close enough for the central figures from it to be still on the road. The Rolling Stones do a world tour every few years; Paul McCartney, with a small child to think about, does a short tour every few months. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, now a doddery old teddy bear propped up by a dazzling young band, turns out every other year. Simon & Garfunkel, not always on the best of terms, manage a month here and a month there. And then there is Bob Dylan.
Dylan tours even more than the others. In the 20 years to 2010, he gave 2,045 concerts, according to the fan site ExpectingRain.com, where you can study the setlist for every one of those nights. In April he will play in Singapore, Australasia and—if Beijing lets him in, after rebuffing him last year—China. In the summer he is expected in Europe. Not for nothing are his wanderings known as the Never Ending Tour.
Dylan’s gigs are unlike those of all his peers. If a show by McCartney or the Stones has a fault—apart from some creaking on the high notes—it is that it can be predictable. The Stones always play “Satisfaction”, “Brown Sugar”, “Jumping Jack Flash”; McCartney always does the Beatles classics he wrote himself—“Let It Be”, “Get Back”, “Hey Jude”. With Dylan, the only sure thing is “Like a Rolling Stone”, locked in as the first encore. Otherwise, he reserves the right to leave out any song. And often it’s a relief when he does, given the way he treats the songs he does play, which veers between indifference and outright sabotage.
Read more:
A few years ago a concert promoter took the BBC television series “Walking with Dinosaurs” and turned it into a stage show that toured the world’s indoor arenas. Seen from one angle, it was an enterprising move. Seen from another, it was quite unnecessary. The world’s arenas were already crawling with dinosaurs, in the form of old rock stars.
The early years of the 21st century have been the age of the veteran in rock and pop. Records are now trumped by live music, a field where the oldies can dominate. The golden age of popular music, the Sixties, is just close enough for the central figures from it to be still on the road. The Rolling Stones do a world tour every few years; Paul McCartney, with a small child to think about, does a short tour every few months. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, now a doddery old teddy bear propped up by a dazzling young band, turns out every other year. Simon & Garfunkel, not always on the best of terms, manage a month here and a month there. And then there is Bob Dylan. Dylan tours even more than the others. In the 20 years to 2010, he gave 2,045 concerts, according to the fan site ExpectingRain.com, where you can study the setlist for every one of those nights. In April he will play in Singapore, Australasia and—if Beijing lets him in, after rebuffing him last year—China. In the summer he is expected in Europe. Not for nothing are his wanderings known as the Never Ending Tour.
Dylan’s gigs are unlike those of all his peers. If a show by McCartney or the Stones has a fault—apart from some creaking on the high notes—it is that it can be predictable. The Stones always play “Satisfaction”, “Brown Sugar”, “Jumping Jack Flash”; McCartney always does the Beatles classics he wrote himself—“Let It Be”, “Get Back”, “Hey Jude”. With Dylan, the only sure thing is “Like a Rolling Stone”, locked in as the first encore. Otherwise, he reserves the right to leave out any song. And often it’s a relief when he does, given the way he treats the songs he does play, which veers between indifference and outright sabotage.
Read more:
Keitai Shosetsu: The Cell Phone Novel
"Sunday Morning"
by Barry Yourgrau
It’s Sunday morning. A dog wakes me up. I hear it barking under the window, I open the window and yell at it. The lady who owns the dog is gardening. She shouts at me to quit yelling at her dog. I shout at her, so knock off the noise!, and slam down the window.
I go downstairs later, it’s quiet, she is sitting in her kitchen. She’s crying. Her breasts are exposed. I feel guilty (because I actually like the dog) and lustful too, at the way she sits there, bent so intimately over a cup of tea. Inspired, I get down on all fours and bounce into her kitchen, barking “Bow wow! Bow wow!” The lady keeps on crying, she doesn’t want to smile but I can see the corners of her mouth begin to turn up. I crawl under her chair and turn over on my back and wag my tail. That does it, she’s really grinning now, and I get up behind her and slide my hands down over her breasts, they have the dark, spongy feel of soil.
“I’m sorry,” she sniffles, about her tears, “it’s all because—”
“Don’t worry,” I tell her, understanding everything. “I’ll help you repot them this afternoon.”
via:
photo credit and more:
The Geek-Kings of Smut
After once being the best thing that ever happened to porn, the Internet is now wreaking havoc: destroying some fortunes, making bigger ones, and serving as a stimulus plan, in more ways than one.
For one brief moment here at the 2011 Adult Video Awards in Las Vegas, America’s porn performers can forget about the Golden Decade of the Teen Wanker and remember when they were stars. Tonight, all of them, the whole porn carnival, are vamping down the red carpet at the Palms Casino. There are actual midgets. There is self-styled fakir Murrugun the Mystic, who has been nominated for Most Outrageous Sex Scene: swallowing a sword “while she swallows my sword,” as he puts it. There are the Oscar-ishly glammed-up ladies with titanic breasts and twitchy Restylane smiles. There is—yes, here he comes—Ron “The Hedgehog” Jeremy: The starriest living male porn star ambles along the carpet in a sad, grubby collar and with an air of existential depletion. And now, the announcer is introducing Joslyn James as “Tiger Woods’s ex-girlfriend,” fresh from her appearance in the scandal-milking The Eleventh Hole.
Maybe you’ve seen it. Did you pay for it? This evening, if only for a few hours, the industry is doing its best to ignore the explosion of free porn online that has made the early-21st century such a bonanza for masturbators. It’s difficult. The Adult Entertainment Expo taking place simultaneously at the Sands has scaled back dramatically; Vivid and Adam & Eve, two of the best-known companies in the business, didn’t even have booths on the main floor this year. There are no Jenna Jamesons on this red carpet, and even the idea of a porn A-list seems dated. Performers are making less money, working harder for it, getting fewer jobs. “It doesn’t affect me that much—well, I guess less work—but my friends with companies are being put out of business,” Ron Jeremy says, pausing before the media gauntlet. He mentions one who has been forced to diversify into “cookies, penis pills, and a blender.”
full article here:
R. Crumb, The Art of Comics - An Interview
But even this tiny community was too distracting when it came time to draw and ink the extraordinarily detailed illustrations for The Book of Genesis, which was published last year. Like a monastic scribe, he pursued his vision in a desolate shelter in the mountains outside town, working for weeks without human contact. These mountains have harbored many heretics over the centuries, but Crumb’s Genesis was an act of textual devotion, precise to the last “begat.”
Crumb is perhaps the most influential cartoonist of his or any generation, famous for decades of work that reflect an idiosyncratic variety of fascinations—arcane twenties music, everyday street scenes, the female form—yet have proved capable of mass appeal. But “cartoonist” fails to convey the full scope of the Crumb oeuvre, which includes the handmade comics he created as a teenager; the underground periodicals he generated by the score in the sixties; and the increasingly realistic work he has produced since then, probing the lives of twenties bluesmen, authors, biblical patriarchs, and his own family. In all of the places he has lived, Crumb has been a creator of books on his own terms, helping to spawn a thriving DIY print culture of zines and graphic novels that has revived and reinvented the comic form. It is a remarkable achievement for someone who came of age when the comic book was the lowest form of literary life imaginable, attacked by Congress and shunned or ignored by respectable society.
When the weary traveler finally locates Crumb’s house, where he lives with his wife Aline Kominsky-Crumb, a small sign in his unmistakable hand warns the mailman, pas de pub svp—no advertisements, please. Crumb is equally jaundiced toward the media, and remains distrustful of many aspects of contemporary life, including e-mail and the Internet. But modernity is not much of a threat inside his seventeenth-century home. Books are packed in everywhere, and in his collections the centuries begin to crowd each other out—a Brueghel print from the fifteen hundreds hangs on the wall next to a racy ad from the nineteen forties. When the tape was not rolling, we listened to many of Crumb’s favorites from a library of more than five thousand 78-rpm records—including Blind Mamie Forehand, Chubby Parker, and Skip James—witnesses to a past that never ceases to exist as long as the record is intact and the turntable spins.
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