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Hobble skirt
The history of the hobble skirt.
The term 'hobble skirt' came into popular use in the early 1910s, when a European fashion trend started by French designer Paul Poiret introduced long skirts that were narrow at the hem, thus 'hobbling' the wearer. Some attribute one of Poiret's inspiration to Mrs. Hart Berg, the first American woman to join the Wright Brothers in air. To keep her skirts from flying out of control while airborne, she tied a rope around them below the knees (Katherine Wright, sister of the flight innovators the Wright brothers, also did the same shortly afterwards).
For a short while, the tighter the skirt, the more fashionable it was. This also brought about accessories such as the hobble garter (you can see one in tbe PBS series The Manor House) designed to limit the wearer's stride so that she would not cause the skirt to rip. This trend died shortly afterwards due to the impracticality of such a garment, particularly with the introduction of cars (the skirts making getting in and out of one a bit of an adventure).
Bill Cunningham casually mentioned the hobble skirt in a recent On the Street feature about pencil skirts.
The new issue of "This is not
The new issue of "This is not a Magazine" is a 5 MB Powerpoint presentation. Highlights include an analysis of the perfect Vogue Italia photograph and the political career of George W. Bush as high-calibre contemporary performance art.
Mirrored mirror shots
This mirror shot by Alison reminded me of a shot I took in Berlin at the Camper store. (Hmm...the Web site has been redesigned recently...)
It will take you literally hours to
It will take you literally hours to get through this list of the 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time (video often included). (thx, miguel)
A New Sheriff in Town?
Attributor, a copyright monitoring service, launched today. It's currently available only to enterprise subscribers, but they'll be launching a service for small publishers and bloggers next year. Of special note is the (purported) use to which publishers want to put the service—link credits:
Attributor splits up the world between sites that exhibit extensive copying (more than half of an article, for instance, and just some copying. It shows which sites have linked back to the original source and which have not. "Often, that's all they want—a link," says Brock. Below is a typical dashboard view of what a customer would see. In this case, the content from People.com is being analyzed (based on its feed). Of the 265,000 matches, 103,000 don't link back to People.com.)
(via techcrunch)
Sasha Frere-Jones on Auto-Tune
Sasha Frere-Jones on Auto-Tune, the studio gizmo responsible for the cool/cheesy voice effects in Cher's Believe and, more recently, most of T-Pain's work.
T-Pain, who is currently working on his third album, "Thr33 Ringz," spoke to me on the phone from his studio in Miami. He first heard the Auto-Tune effect on a song by Jennifer Lopez -- he doesn't remember which one -- and borrowed it for a mixtape appearance in 2003. He says it's no trade secret that he uses Auto-Tune with the retune speed set to zero, and likes to recall a time he spent selling fish out of a truck with his father in Tallahassee: "My dad said, 'They can know what you're using, but they'll never know how to use it. They can see that we're using salt and pepper.'"
Frere-Jones demonstrates how Auto-Tune works in a short audio segment. Anil Dash wrote about Auto-Tune in the context of Snoop Dogg's recent Sensual Seduction video. A free Auto-Tune clone called GSnap is available for free.
I uploaded a few of Auto-Tune's greatest hits to my Muxtape: have a listen.
Regarding the debate over copyrights and food,
Regarding the debate over copyrights and food, people in fashion are having the same discussion. "In an industry where many designers come out with similar looks each season -- and where inspiration is said to be 'in the air' -- designers and the thriving knockoff industry are hotly debating the issue." (thx, richard)
Continual fools
Today's posts have nothing whatsoever to do with April Fools Day. We're foolish here every day.
Video of a Charlie Rose interview with
Video of a Charlie Rose interview with Pixar's John Lasseter and Steve Jobs. This was about a year after Toy Story had been released and a few months before Apple bought Jobs' NeXT.
WindMaker adds motion to a web site
WindMaker adds motion to a web site based on the current wind conditions at a place of your choosing. Here's kottke.org with NYC wind and with Chicago wind. (thx, jim)
Projected climate map of Europe in 2071. The
Projected climate map of Europe in 2071. The map is a bit confusing...the cities are placed on the map according to their projected new climate, not their geographical location. So, in 2071, Berlin will find itself in the same climate as circa-2007 North Africa.
Help with a 9/11 project?
I got an email today from a Danish multimedia design student. He needs some help with a school project: he's looking for someone (age 16-25) that was in New York on September 11th of last year and was an eyewitness to the WTC collapse. That's all I know about the project. If you'd like to offer your assistance, email me and I'll send your contact information along to him. Thanks.
Screw the Shake Shack, if you want
Screw the Shake Shack, if you want burgers, you come to L.A. -- GK
Satugo is a fun little camera that
Satugo is a fun little camera that you can throw in the air or bounce to get some unusual photos. Love the pull-string for the quick but steady shots.
Noise-snuffing snow
It snowed here this morning, a noise-snuffing snow. The city was actually quiet for once. It was kinda eerie...like the world of the future in 12 Monkeys. I felt like Bruce Willis exploring unknown territories. The Bruce Willis in 12 Monkeys, not the Bruce Willis that banged Liv Tyler on the set of Armageddon. I doubt that Liv has any unexplored territories.
So far, the response to
So far, the response to the "redesign" has been about 50/50: some want the old design back while some like the new version. Pretty much what I expected.
Your Dock, if you please
Giles Turnbull wrote a fun piece for O'Reilly showcasing the Docks of some OS X users. This is my Dock (well, as of last week...the one on my new Powerbook looks a bit different now). What does yours look like? Post a screenshot to your site and paste a link (and description if you'd like) to it in the comments.
Interview with the fellows from skinnyCorp. Half
Interview with the fellows from skinnyCorp. Half of my current wardrobe is from Threadless and I haven't had occasion to wear my nifty Naked & Angry tie yet.
Almost three years ago, Joey
Almost three years ago, Joey Anuff wrote about Michael Sippey's hiatus from publishing Stating the Obvious in Net Surf. In it, he notes the lack of independently-written content on the Web. Given today's glut of weblogs and vertical newslog sites like Slashdot and Tomalak's Realm, I wonder if he's changed his tune.
BTW, Joey's book, Dumb Money: Adventures of a Day Trader, has been out for a few months now. It's on the long list of stuff to read.
Warning, spoilers
The Fine Brothers spoil 100 movies in less than 4 minutes. See also the spoilers t-shirt and an extensive text list of spoilers.
Sine-wave speech
Sine-wave speech -- artificially degraded speech that sounds like old Doctor Who sound effects -- can be difficult to understand but becomes clear once the listener knows what to listen for.
Listening to the sine-wave speech sound again produces a very different percept of a fully intelligible spoken sentence. This dramatic change in perception is an example of "perceptual insight" or pop-out. We have argued that this form of pop-out is an example of a top-down perceptual process produced by higher-level knowledge and expectations concerning sounds that can potentially be heard as speech.
(thx, tom)
A list of the top one articles
A list of the top one articles by Neal Pollack about how sportswriters should stop writing about the NBA MVP race and, oh yeah, lists of stuff are dumb:
Sportswriters and pundits, on the other hand, are treating the MVP race with the gravitas of a presidential election. That's because they make up the Electoral College. When they're debating who's going to win the award, they're not really talking about who they think the best player is; they're talking about whom they should pick as the best player. It's the ultimate circle-jerk of sports-guy self-regard.
Carmello Anthony and the Team USA doghouse
Carmello Anthony and the Team USA doghouse. What? A selfish, lazy superstar? Say it ain't so.
The Most Beautiful House in the World
In a short post yesterday about where writers do their business, I mentioned that Witold Rybczynski had written about the writing room of a famous author that was purposely set away from the rest of his house. I grabbed my copy of The Most Beautiful House in the World off the shelf just now and found that I'd turned down the page containing the relevant passage back when I read the book a few years ago. The author I was thinking of was George Bernard Shaw; here is Rybczynski's description of his writing room:
But Shaw too was a builder, and the writing room that he erected in his garden was a Shavian combination of simplicity, convenience, and novelty. He called it "the Shelter," but it was really a shed, only eight feet square. It contained the essentials of the writer's trade -- a plank desk, an electric lamp, a wicker chair, a bookcase, and a wastepaper basket. Beside the desk was a shelf for his Remington portable -- like [Samuel] Clemens, Shaw was an early amateur of the typewriter. There was also a telephone (modified to refuse incoming calls), a thermometer, and an alarm clock (to remind him when it was time for lunch).
Shaw's writing hut had one other curious feature: the entire building was mounted on a pipe so that it could be rotated to take advantage of the sun's warmth at different times of the day. But the tiny building was so loaded down with books and furniture that the feature was probably never used. Pictures and more on Shaw's writing hut at BBC News, the National Trust, and Cool Tools.
Rybczynski also mentions that Samuel Clemens wrote most often in a hilltop gazebo he'd constructed for that purpose away from his luxurious house..
Favorite posts of 2008
As an appetizer before my annual best links of the year post (coming Monday, I hope), I put together a list of kottke.org posts from 2008 that I liked the most and that may be worth a look if you missed them the first time around.
In January, I liveblogged the Mythbusters episode about the airplane on the conveyor belt. I still get email telling me that the plane won't take off.
Time merge media is a collection of video and photographic works which display multiple time periods at once.
A collection of single serving sites, single-page sites like Barack Obama Is My New Bicycle, Khaaan!, and Is Lost A Repeat?
A liveblog of the Oscars written without actually watching them.
A post about the end of The Wire.
In March, kottke.org turned 10 years old and I collected a bunch of the previous designs together.
One of my all-time favorite threads on kottke.org: saying words wrong on purpose.
My favorite graph which doubles as a picture of my son.
Stanley Kubrick, Pablo Ferro, and Arthur Lipsett.
A photo of Ollie attempting to walk in Turbine Hall in the Tate Modern.
A collection of early movie reviews, including one by Maxim Gorky from 1896.
Survival tips for the Middle Ages, another great thread about how a contemporary person might fend for themselves in 1000 AD.
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is a book printed in 1499 but which looks quite contemporary.
The most beautiful suicide, a photo of Evelyn Hale taken by Robert Wiles a few minutes after she jumped from the Empire State Building
A pair of posts about the Metropolitan Life Tower: the tower's past and future and an unusual death that occurred in the building shortly after it opened.
A collection of election maps from the 2008 US Presidential election.
And finally, the opening space scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey with chickens from The Muppet Show clucking the Blue Danube waltz.
Solar eclipse pic from Mir
An extremely nifty picture of the recent solar eclipse as seen from Mir. Wow.
On editing (photographs)
A photographer talks about how he edits his photos and collects editing approaches from other photographers as well.
You usually have a hunch, but the great thing about photography is that it's so unpredictable, so you never quite understand how and when a good photograph comes about. But when editing, I do contact sheets, then machine prints and then select from that.
And when asked what makes one image stand out more than another, is it emotional or an intellectual reaction he answers: "It must be intuitive. If it were intellectual, I'd be able to explain what happens. That's why I'm a photographer. I express myself visually, not verbally.
Two main themes emerge: 1) take some time off from your images in order to evaluate them more fairly, and 2) edit with an outside party, someone you trust to be tough but fair. (via conscientious)
Book design competition results
The AIGA has posted their 50 Books/50 Covers selections from 2007. It's worth fighting through the stupid Flash interface to check out these covers (click "View the 365:AIGA Year in..." and then on "Book design"). The covers are on display in NYC until 11/26/2008. (via book design review)
Time magazine's decision to name confidential sources
Time magazine's decision to name confidential sources unnerves other journalism outlets.
Wear Palettes takes the outfits showcased in
Wear Palettes takes the outfits showcased in street fashion photos snapped by The Sartorialist and makes color palettes. 1500 different palettes so far.
Huge rooftop farm in Brooklyn
But for some New Yorkers, a vegetable-filled rooftop is far more conceivable and practical than moving to the country. Novak agrees. "When these farmers go in and lecture these inner city kids about dairy farming in upstate New York, it's in one ear and out the other. But I can tell them, I have two farms in the city," and they can take the subway and come help on the weekends.
Update: More on urban farming.
Obesity infographics for several countries, the percentage
Obesity infographics for several countries, the percentage of population older than 15 with a body-mass index greater than 30. That USA man is really fat.
The Case Against Adolescence
Psychology Today talks with psychologist Robert Epstein about his book, The Case Against Adolescence:
In every mammalian species, immediately upon reaching puberty, animals function as adults, often having offspring. We call our offspring "children" well past puberty. The trend started a hundred years ago and now extends childhood well into the 20s. The age at which Americans reach adulthood is increasing -- 30 is the new 20 -- and most Americans now believe a person isn't an adult until age 26.
The whole culture collaborates in artificially extending childhood, primarily through the school system and restrictions on labor. The two systems evolved together in the late 19th-century; the advocates of compulsory-education laws also pushed for child-labor laws, restricting the ways young people could work, in part to protect them from the abuses of the new factories. The juvenile justice system came into being at the same time. All of these systems isolate teens from adults, often in problematic ways.
Epstein says the infantilization of adolescents creates a lot of conflict and isolation on both sides of the divide. Over at Marginal Revolution, economist Tyler Cowen adds:
The problem, of course, is that a contemporary wise and moderate 33 year old is looking to climb the career ladder, find a mate, or raise his babies. He doesn't have a great desire to educate unruly fifteen year olds and indeed he can insulate himself from them almost completely. He doesn't need a teenager to carry his net on the elephant hunt. Efficient capitalist production and rising wage rates lead to an increased sorting by age and the moral education of teens takes a hit.
You can read the first chapter of the book at The Radical Academy.
Update: Bryan writes to recommend Neil Postman's The Disappearance of Childhood, saying that "Postman argues that the idea of childhood is a cultural phenomena that comes and goes through the ages". (thx, bryan)
Human slingshot video. I so want a
Human slingshot video. I so want a four-wheeler and a big backyard! (via cyn-c)
PDF (2.3 Mb) of nifty infoviz graphs that
PDF (2.3 Mb) of nifty infoviz graphs that show different improvisation styles for jazz greats Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley, and John Coltrane. More here. Reminds me a little of Tufte's sparklines.
The walking wounded
During our almost-three weeks in Asia, I suffered some gastrointestinal discomfort from too much soda in a bag and then a weird neck injury where I twisted it the wrong way and it just hurt really bad (and now I can't really look at anything that's not directly in front of me), while Meg sliced her foot open on some glass and got sick (not the bird flu...probably). All this is in addition to our tired & sore feet from three weeks of hardcore walking.
Then this evening we're strolling to dinner and I smacked my head into a metal box hanging off of a pole I totally didn't see (the pole or the box...see my head motion problems above), which actually knocked me off my feet and flat onto my back on the pavement. Luckily, everyone within a 25-foot radius heard/saw this[1] and came right over to see that I was OK (I was), which kinda made it worse because of the embarrassment factor but was also very nice because everyone was so friendly/concerned. The gentleman whose slab of pavement I had horizonatally deposited myself onto produced a tissue and a green liquid of some sort, which I dabbed near-but-not-on the welt on my head just to be polite because of my concern re: the liquid's antiseptic qualities. After I collected my wits, Meg and the shopkeeper brushed me off, got me standing, and we continued onto dinner, a little slower and more in the middle of the sidewalk. I've gotta say, as much as I've enjoyed our trip, I'm happy to be heading home to some familiarity.
[1] The sound that a crowd makes when something strange/bad happens in its vicinity is univerally recognizable no matter the language or culture.
Everything is broken
Email is broken. Google is broken. RSS is broken. Comments are broken. Trackback is broken. Instant messaging is broken. Social networking is broken. Usenet is broken. IPv4 is broken. DNS is broken.
And yet, people seem to be getting lots of things done on the Internet these days. Curious, that.
Cork'd is a community for wine lovers
Cork'd is a community for wine lovers that lets you catalog what's in your wine collection, what your friends are drinking, and discover what you should be drinking. (It's a little like Flickr or del.icio.us for wine.)
Shatner and Ben Folds Five on Conan
I caught William Shatner singing with Ben Folds Five on Conan last night. Well, singing really isn't the right word. It was more like he was talking over music...on the bridge of the Enterprise.
Sadly, Conan did not ask him if he's serious about his singing. Darn darn.
The height of Burj Dubai
Nobody knows how tall Burj Dubai is going to be when completed later this year, only that it will be the world's tallest building by a comfortable margin. Of the mystery height, the builder has only this to say:
If you put the Empire State Building on top of the Sears Tower then it's reasonable to say you'll be in the neighbourhood.
SkyscraperPage.com says it'll top out around 2650 feet...that's 550 feet shorter than the ESB + Sears but still more than half a mile. (via things magazine)
Partying like it's 1999
At 4 minutes 'til midnight, they started playing Prince's 1999, just like I had predicted. And I didn't mind....even though I thought I would have. The dance floor was packed and everyone was jumping and swaying and screaming the words to the song.
"Gonna party like it's 1999!"
Actually, it was probably the most fitting venue for the song, the very same First Avenue nightclub where Purple Rain was filmed and where Prince himself used to play.
I did a small piece for {fray}: my resolution for 1999.
Liar's Poker
Michael Lewis is one of my favorite authors. He's not the smartest or the most clever writer but he weaves deceptively simple stories into larger statements on society and humanity with a skill possessed by very few people doing creative work in any field. I haven't gotten around to reading Moneyball yet, but Liar's Poker is probably his strongest work. It's as hard to put down as any fiction. Great book.
Daniel Coyle travels to Russia's top tennis
Daniel Coyle travels to Russia's top tennis player factory in search of how to grow a super-athlete. "Deliberate practice means working on technique, seeking constant critical feedback and focusing ruthlessly on improving weaknesses." The article starts off a bit slow but gets interesting a few paragraphs in.
Sam Anderson articulates his hatred for Kobe
Sam Anderson articulates his hatred for Kobe Bryant. "Since he's a Jordan-like talent, Kobe clearly thinks that he's entitled to the Jordan mythology, but he doesn't have any of Jordan's charisma or imagination."
In 2005, the EFF informed the American public
In 2005, the EFF informed the American public that the US government persuaded some printer manufacturers to print a code on each page output by their printers. SpiekerBlog has the details on what the code means (it's a timestamp + serial number).
Harold and Maude and The
Harold and Maude and The Dish are both worth checking out, especially The Dish.
The joy of good bread
It's hard to believe, but I think we've discovered the best bakery in Paris right across the street from our apartment. I've inadvertantly become a connoisseur of pain au chocolats (chocolate croissants) and the Boulangerie Malineau sells the best I've ever had...and only 0,90 €. Their bagettes are top-notch as well, better than anything available in San Francisco at a third of the price.
New book by Gladwell: Outliers
The Amazon page for Malcolm Gladwell's new book is up. From here, we learn that the full title is "Outliers: Why Some People Succeed and Some Don't" and what the cover looks like. Here's the description:
In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers" -- the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.
And an excerpt from the Little, Brown catalog:
Outliers is a book about success. It starts with a very simple question: what is the difference between those who do something special with their lives and everyone else? In Outliers, we're going to visit a genius who lives on a horse farm in Northern Missouri. We're going to examine the bizarre histories of professional hockey and soccer players, and look into the peculiar childhood of Bill Gates, and spend time in a Chinese rice paddy, and investigate the world's greatest law firm, and wonder about what distinguishes pilots who crash planes from those who don't. And in examining the lives of the remarkable among us -- the brilliant, the exceptional and the unusual -- I want to convince you that the way we think about success is all wrong.
This doesn't sound exactly what I had heard his new book was going to be.
A few days ago, New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell noted that he's almost finished with his third book. I've learned that the subject of this book is the future of the workplace with subtopics of education and genius.
I guess if you flip those around, that describes Outliers marginally well. According to Amazon, the book is due on November 18, 2008. (thx, kyösti)
Photos of the recession
Slate is organizing its readers in an effort to photographically document the current recession/depression/economic crisis. The 30s had photos of people in soup lines and the 70s had gas lines but what does the economic crisis look like when everyone is online?
You can't take a picture of the unemployed if they never leave the house.
Interested photographers can upload their photos to Slate's Shoot the Recession group on Flickr.
Grey Gardens
Grey Gardens is a wonderful documentary about the once grand but now impoverished aunt and cousin of Jackie O. The movie is simultaneously poignant, funny, and disturbing...one particular scene had me laughing harder than I have in a long time.
Those great (staged?) Great Depression photos
In his newest multipart essay for the NY Times, Errol Morris examines evidence of photo manipulations by the photographers of the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression, including Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein, and Dorothea Lange. Were they dispassionate observers of American life in the 1930s or employees after a certain type of story?
If one can imagine the political animosity that would have been generated if, as part of the current stimulus package, President Obama introduced a national documentary photography program, then it is possible to understand the opposition that the F.S.A. faced. Fiscal conservatives did not want to see their hard-earned tax dollars spent on relief, let alone a government photography program, of all things.
What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?
To start off each year, a question is asked of the Edge membership. This year's question is: "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?" Here are some favorite responses of mine followed by a couple of my own beliefs.
Rupert Sheldrake is Darwin's man and believes that all natural processes, even physical laws, have evolved through natural selection:
I believe, but cannot prove, that memory is inherent in nature. Most of the so-called laws of nature are more like habits.
The idea that something like the value of Avogadro's number is just a habit that the universe adopted after much practice is quite appealing.
Kevin Kelly thinks the DNA within in our body is slightly different in each cell:
I believe, but cannot prove, that the DNA in your body (and all bodies) varies from part to part. I make this prediction based on what we know about biology, which is that natures abhors uniformity. No where else in nature do we see identity maintained to such exactness. No where else is there such fixity.
Ray Kurzweil is trying to live forever and probably hopes to see the whole of the universe at greater than light speed:
We will find ways to circumvent the speed of light as a limit on the communication of information.
Kurzweil would probably disagree with Todd Feinberg's belief:
I believe the human race will never decide that an advanced computer possesses consciousness. Only in science fiction will a person be charged with murder if they unplug a PC. I believe this because I hold, but cannot yet prove, that in order for an entity to be consciousness and possess a mind, it has to be a living being.
Jonathan Haidt on religion:
I believe, but cannot prove, that religious experience and practice is generated and structured largely by a few emotions that evolved for other reasons, particularly awe, moral elevation, disgust, and attachment-related emotions.
Seth Lloyd on science:
I believe in science. Unlike mathematical theorems, scientific results can't be proved. They can only be tested again and again, until only a fool would not believe them.
I cannot prove that electrons exist, but I believe fervently in their existence. And if you don't believe in them, I have a high voltage cattle prod I'm willing to apply as an argument on their behalf. Electrons speak for themselves.
And George Dyson thinks their may be a connection between the language a raven speaks and the language spoken by the indigenous human population:
Interspecies coevolution of languages on the Northwest Coast.
During the years I spent kayaking along the coast of British Columbia and Southeast Alaska, I observed that the local raven populations spoke in distinct dialects, corresponding surprisingly closely to the geographic divisions between the indigenous human language groups. Ravens from Kwakiutl, Tsimshian, Haida, or Tlingit territory sounded different, especially in their characteristic "tok" and "tlik."
Here's what I believe:
- Human beings are not the only instance of intelligent life in the universe. When I think of how big the universe is, it seems impossible to me that humans are the only ones here to observe it. Also, it's damn arrogant.
- The things we call "the soul" and "consciousness" can be explained scientifically and then could probably be duplicated given the proper technology (i.e. a machine could have a soul). I guess you could say I come down firmly on the Kurzweil side of the Kurzweil/Feinberg continuum.
- Technology will outstrip humanity's ability to control it. I have no idea what form this will actually take. Bill Joy believes technology might endanger humanity to the point of extinction (many prominent thinkers -- Kurzweil, Hans Moravec, Freeman Dyson, John Seely Brown among them -- disagree to various degrees). I don't know if I'd go as far as Joy, but what makes me believe in this is 1) advances in technology consolidate more and more power in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals and, 2) culture moves slower than technology. That is, the potential for danger is rising faster than our ability to respond to it, and that could cause problems.
What do you believe?