sundance

ETERNAL SUNSHINE house for sale

Although maybe not evoking quite the nostalgia as Cameron’s house from FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF, which briefly ignited the blogosphere after news of its sale, another movie house located on 59 Orient Avenue in Brooklyn, New York is on the market. Kate Winslet’s character Clementine’s apartment from ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND is currently [...]

How’s President Obama doing on his energy and efficiency promises?

The House’s passage of Waxman-Markey (aka the American Clean Energy and Security Act) isn’t just a step forward in moving the United States away from addiction to fossil fuels, and towards a cleaner energy economy; it’s also evidence that President Barack Obama plans to fight for many of the campaign promises he made on energy and the environment. Candidate Obama laid out a very ambitious and comprehensive approach to energy policy, recognizing that it’s intimately tied to environmental concerns and economic growth and development.

Transgender kids say the smartest things

Thanks to a tip from Goodvibes, we just watched this short and sweet clip from Jasmine, a 7-year-old transgender* kid who’s wise beyond her years. It reminded us of an excellent This American Life episode from earlier this year which features a touching story of two 8-year-olds who meet up when their families attend a [...]

Mouth of the Mississippi World’s Dirtiest Coastal Ecosystem

The world’s most imperiled coastal marine ecosystem is at the mouth of the Mississippi River, although coastal marine ecosystems are at risk worldwide as a result of human activities, new research shows.

Locations of High Hazard Coal Ash Waste Impoundments Made Public

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has posted a list of 44 “high hazard potential” impoundments containing coal combustion residuals, commonly referred to as coal ash, at 26 different coal-burning electric utility facilities in 10 states.

Fashion shows: the uninvited

Anyone who is a fashion lover, and really, what good gay isn’t, has been watching Style.com religiously the last month as major fashion weeks have come and gone. The New York Times’ amazing blog The Moment recently spotlighted the men’s fashion week shows in Milan and Paris. But don’t expect to see the clothes.  Those [...]

Five gourmet hot dogs

American Joey Chestnut won the annual Fourth of July Coney Island hot dot eating contest by beating his rival Japanese Takeru Kobayashi for the third year in a row in record setting fashion. Chestnut gut-bustingly consumed 68 hot dogs to Kobayashi’s 64 1/2. Congrats to Chestnut, however if you care more about quality over quantity, [...]

A Dilettante’s Dispatch: Paris Couture

A Dilettante’s Dispatch is a series of posts from a jet-setting friend of ours, Arturo. Watch for more in the coming days.

Just got in to Paris for my first couture, eating a croque monsieur on Charlot, admiring the cute scrawny French boys (though really wanting the fresh, curly haired and slightly brawny youth covering the street in tar).

Lawrence Weiner has something new to say

If you love letterforms and especially love to find them in unexpected places then you already love Lawrence Weiner. One of the first to introduce typography to the world of fine art, Weiner became a major figure in the conceptual scene in the late 60s when he released his “Declaration of Intent” in response to Sol LeWitt’s “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art.” Weiner stated simply that as far as his art goes, he may construct them or someone else must be able to construct them or they need not be constructed at all, existing as text-only recipes for artworks that live in the mind’s eye.

MIT’s Sixth Sense, a wearable interface straight out of MINORITY REPORT

On his excellent blog, the user-experience expert Nick Finck shares a TED video demonstration of Sixth Sense, a wearable gestural interface that grabs data from the Internet and allows you to interact with it in countless real-world ways. You can draw a watch onto your arm to check the time; pull up Amazon ratings for [...]

Onomatopoeic Alphabet

Similar to the previously mentioned trend of creatives designing imaginative typefaces, artist Tom Gauld illustrated this whimsical onomatopoeic alphabet. I highly recommend reading his version of the alphabet out loud in public. Go! You can see more of the artist’s works here. [Thanks Mariya!]

60 Environmental Groups Support Sotomayor for Supreme Court

ixty environmental, conservation and Native American organizations sent a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee members today expressing their support for confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Green tech finds (7/10/09)

Techies rejoice! Here’s your weekly run-down of some of the cooler green tech stories out there…

• Free energy? There’s a ton of it out there — 7 quadrillion BTUs — in the form of wasted heat. The Department of Energy has announced funding opportunities for R&D on how to tap this massive source of energy. (via Cleantechnica)
  
  
• NYC — the wind energy capital? It seems counterintuitive, but the Carnegie Institution and California State University have found that high-altitude winds, which are concentrated over the Big Apple (among other places), “contain enough energy to meet world demand 100 times over.” (via Green Living Ideas)
  
  

SUNfiltered music videos

This week’s top five music videos circulating around the Internet tubes. They all share a certain upbeat sound which is perfect for sunny summer weekends. Enjoy and let me know what you think!

1. The theatrical music video for Australian duo Empire of the Sun’s (Luke Steel from The Sleepy Jackson and Nick Littlemore from Pnau) catchy electro-pop tune “Walking on a Dream” was shot in Shanghai and directed by Josh Logue.

Empire Of Sun – Walking On A Dream from Music on Vimeo.

Architects are pigs

My pal, the talented illustrator Steven Guarnaccia, has a new book out. The Three Little Pigs is an illustrated fable about, you guessed it, three little pigs. But, being Steven, these aren’t just any pigs. They’re Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry, the three most famous modern architects. The architects, um, I mean, [...]

Bag for the zeitgeist

This is an addendum to a luxury bag round up from back in April which included a Chanel bag designed to look like their shopping bag. Well here’s a do-it-yourself version that’s even more downtown and definitely more affordable that was spotted in the wild: As photographer Jerome succinctly summarized, “fake it till you make [...]

FAILblog can help mend a broken heart

We were once fond of telling people who’ve been dumped to buy a box of red wine and watch some good mindless action movies. But we’ve now got a better idea: buy a box of rose (it is summer, after all) and spend a few hours scrolling through the archives of FAIL Blog. (If you [...]

Ugliest product of the year

OOPS Design Award is accepting nominees for their Ugliest Product Design of 2009 award. I do have to admit I like some of the designs. If you’re a mule fan, here’s a product for you. Relatedly, a boxer mix named Pabst won this year’s Ugliest Dog contest. [Via]

17 Major Economies Pledge to Set Greenhouse Gas Limit by December

Leaders of the world’s major economies today formally recognized for the first time the scientific view that the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels should not exceed two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F.) to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of global warming.

Stop motion BB King

Female street artist Yseult aka “YZ,” pronounced as “Eyes,” created this meditative stop motion video “Still Alive” of blues icon BB King animated from almost 70 street posters. For more information on this artist check out this interview.

A Public Theater double-hitter

If you spent the beginning of the summer stuck in the Public Theater‘s virtual line for Twelfth Night (has anyone actually gotten tickets this way?) instead of sucking it up and waiting in the physical line all day you have now, like me, arrived at the end of the run without seeing it. And because I’m [...]

Pope Benedict calls for sustainable business, development models

Pope Benedict XVI added to his growing reputation as the “green Pope” yesterday (July 7) with the release of a new encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth). A call for sustainable development in the broadest sense, the Pope’s letter addressed the human and environmental costs of “business as usual,” and established “doing well by doing good” as the business philosophy most consistent with Church doctrine and Biblical teaching.

Not-So-Flat Stanley

photo via Hamburger Morgenpost At first glance, this news story about a German prostitute’s tombstone being deemed “too slutty” seemed like just another one of those “Oddly Enough” stories that every paper traffics in (“Drunken Tractor Driver Leads Police on Slow Chase” et al). Until we got to the part about how the tombstone in [...]

Neill’s A to Z of awesomeness

Cartoonist Neill Cameron has been illustrating the alphabet “awesomely” from A to Z that is a hilarious mix of familiar pop culture icons and informative alliteration. He’s currently at Q. Here are a couple more examples that made me chuckle.

Robert Redford on Paul Newman, Sundance and the Increasingly Crucial Fight to Save the Earth

Speaking about his long-time friend and mentor, Robert Redford told a crowd in New York City that he learned a great deal from the late Paul Newman, especially generosity. “Back then it was really about actors playing roles. It wasn’t until later that it became more about actors’ personalities,” Redford told a packed theater at Lincoln Center.

The crowd enthusiastically hung on Redford’s words. This was no doubt because of the star power of the great actor, director and Sundance Institute creator (particularly because the audience skewed toward his generation), but perhaps even more so because the crowd was packed with committed environmentalists. This was a special, intimate conversation between Redford, a longtime green leader, and veteran radio journalist Bob Edwards (formerly of NPR and now of Sirius radio), hosted by the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council (Watch video of NRDC head Frances Beinecke accepting a 2009 Heart of Green Award).