Start the Funeral, Street Art is Dead.

Adbusters : The Magazine - #77 / Street Art is Dead
I am assuming this is the article referred to by the blog author below where Adbusters writes off the Street Art movement. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted.

The excrement of Action?? Um. Ok.

Is Street Art Dead/You ain’t got no Picasso, yo?!
This is an interesting opinion piece about street art that is well written and worth reading.

I've been thinking...

RE/Search
Boing Boing has linked to an interesting article about Maker culture. Perhaps overly optimistic but Vale talks about an underlying idea that I like. Long has it been true that Knowledge is Power. Being able to MAKE things gives you the kind of creative power that being a consumer does not. How one uses that Power defines the kind of person you are. It makes me think of the Martha Stewart phenomenon. She recognized the frustrated urge to create, the leftover DIY ideas that baby boomers inherited from their wartime parents. She told people how to make cookies that reminded them of their grandmothers and then gave directives on how to be "creative". She brought a renewed sense of (albeit skewed) value to the "handmade". But being an uber-consumer herself, and following the business model of greed, she sold it. Every last scrap. It is how you use your powers that defines you. The internet has been a force for good in the simple way that it has allowed intelligent, creative and generous people to share ideas and skills and allow the consumer to become a participant at every level of the process.
http://makerfaire.com/

Snarky Good Fun

10 Items You Think Make You Cool, But Don’t
via Digg

No Dice

The Canadian Press: Einstein describes religion as 'childish' in letter now up for auction
LONDON — A letter being auctioned in London this week is sure to add fuel to the long-simmering debate about the religious views of Albert Einstein.

Our Universe, Which Art the Heaven....

Stuart Kauffman: Call the universe God - Boing Boing
"Yet what is more awesome: to believe that God created everything in six days, or to believe that the biosphere came into being on its own, with no creator, and partially lawlessly? I find the latter proposition so stunning, so worthy of awe and respect, that I am happy to accept this natural creativity in the universe as a reinvention of "God"."
The essay published at the link Boing gives was very interesting and attempts to clarify some of the similar but wobbly ideas that are out there. The comments section after the boingboing post are also interesting ( a bit).Hey maybe this way you could be an atheist and believe in god at the same time. Cool.

A castle or a one bedroom apartment...hmm?

Same Price: DivineCaroline
"From the rolling green pastures of France, to the sparkling coastline of Mexico, why live in a cramped, rat-infested junior one-bedroom when you can reign high in your very own castle?"
via Digg

Ray Kurzweil Interview Podcast

I was going to post a bunch of nano technology links again but I decided to just let the Ideas interview I have been going on and on about talk about how nano will change the world.
http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/ideas_20080505_5658.mp3

Ray Kurzweil Interview Tonight

CBC Radio | Ideas: "Tuesday, April 29
The prolific inventor, futurist and entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil, anticipates an “Age of Singularity,” when we'll be able to achieve a kind of immortality by downloading all of our essentially human qualities into a computer hard-drive."

Give this kid a medal. Better yet, a job in the US gov't.

Give me the lesson without the spin - Los Angeles Times
Publishing his article in the LA Times is a good start though.
via Digg

It couldnt possibly be the military's fault. No way.

Probing question: Why do whales beach themselves?
Hmm and when your local government is depending on offshore oil to save their skins, do you think they will stop offshore testing like this?
via Digg

Division of Church and State Indeed.

Soldier Sues Army, Saying His Atheism Led to Threats - New York Times
via Digg

Dawkins is not wrong (again).

'Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda' - RichardDawkins.net
In typical Dawkins style. Who can resist anything with the title "victim of lying propaganda" in a blog? Not me.
via Digg

How dare those people eat more than one meal a day, shocking.

Bad policy, not biofuel, drive food prices: Reuters: "

"If you travel to India these days, then a main part of the debate is about the 'second meal'," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said.

"People are eating twice a day, and if a third of one billion people in India do that, it adds up to 300 million people. And if they suddenly consume twice as much food as before and if 100 million Chinese start drinking milk too, then of course our milk quotas become skewed, and much else too," she said.

So food is more expensive because people in other countries want food too? Who could have predicted that situation? Wow.

Youtube movie critic

It is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel but this video cracks the dumb "pro creationist" movie "Expelled" into a few silly pieces.

Unhappy Meals

Michael Pollan - New York Times
This is an article recommended to me a while ago that I have just gotten around to reading. Long but very interesting. I like the opening line; "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Illustration by Leo Jung