sundance

Golden State Warriors practice facility goes solar

From players’ salaries (and egos) to stadiums and arenas, pretty much everything about professional sports is big… including the carbon footprint. You likely only need to take a look at huge, climate-controlled facilities with acres and acres of parking to figure that even single events are responsible for massive greenhouse gas emissions. Genuine reductions in that footprints will likely require major shifts in how fans experience the play of their favorite teams… for now, though, a number of pro franchises are doing what they can with LEED building standards, renewable energy installations, and fan education.

The Golden State Warriors basketball team will join that group tomorrow with the unveiling of a 9,641 sq. ft., 143.5kW solar installation on its practice facility in downtown Oakland.

Olaf Hajek, Flowerhead

What does it say about the state of art today when we’re almost shocked when an artist says that their process does not involve digital media? Olaf Hajek, who’s more comfortable working in a hands-on “analog style,” is one such artist. Or is he an illustrator? Certainly he belongs to the school of artists who walk the line between client-driven work that is so true to his natural style that it’s difficult to label him as a commercial artist. Illustrative fine art? Honestly, who cares.

Korean Police Arrest Protesters Against Jeju Island Naval Base

Once it was known as an eco-paradise, a resort island of peace, but today hundreds of police clashed with villagers protesting construction of a Korean naval base on Jeju Island.

Florida First State for EPA Nutrient Limits in Surface Waters

The U.S. EPA is planning to impose limits on phosphorus and nitrogen in Florida waters that will be the first federal standards for nutrient pollution in the waters of a state.

And the Sundance Film Festival judges are…

Actor David Hyde Pierce will be announcing the awards at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

The Sundance Film Festival has announced the names of the jurors who will determine which films competing in five different categories will take home awards from Park City this year. The awards will be announced at a ceremony hosted by actor David Hyde Pierce on January 30. The winners in the Short Film category will also be announced earlier, at a separate event on January 26.

Disaster Declared: Alaska’s Yukon River Chinook Salmon Run Fails

There has been a commercial “fishery failure” for Alaska’s Yukon River Chinook salmon due to low salmon returns, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke has formally determined.

Our new sex tape is out! Hi Mom!

About a year and a half ago, we lost our innocence as hosts of a 10-episode UK TV series called “SEX: How to Do Everything.” We consider ourselves fairly prudish sex writers, so you can imagine our shock when the series turned out to be way more explicit than we (or our parents) would have ever had hoped for.

Raindrop melody maker

Here’s your today’s bit of procrastinating fun: Click on over to Lullatone, a “raindrop melody maker” and create your own soothing ambient music by selecting different rain drops, each which produces its own sound that loops every six seconds.

Algae Research Expected to Yield Green Jet Fuel, Diesel, Gas

To create green aviation fuels, diesel, and gasoline that can be transported and sold using existing fueling infrastructure, the Obama administration is investing up to $78 million of economic stimulus money in biomass technologies, including algae, says Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

Sundance environmental films: materials, waste, and pollution

If you regularly recycle household materials, you’re likely moved by a spirit of doing something good for the environment. For many residents of the developing world, though, “recycling” materials thrown out by others is an act of survival. There’s likely no better place to witness this dynamic than Rio de Janeiro’s Jardim Gramacho, the world’s largest landfill, and photographer Vik Muniz made the landfill, and the catadores that reclaim materials from it, the subject of a series of photographs (shown as a part of his The Beautiful Earth exhibit).

I.M. Pei rubbed out

In the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art the names of those responsible for its construction are etched in stone. Enter now, however, and you’ll see that architect I.M. Pei’s name has been, quite intentionally, rubbed out. The psychics of rubbing down stone aside, could it, perhaps, have something to do with the (estimated) $85-million renovation of the building’s “systemic structural failure?” The National Gallery, which was completed in 1978, has a facade composed of 16,200 panels of pink Tennessee marble, and all of these panels are currently being removed and remounted.

The Wisdom of John Mayer, Tweeted

photo by Patty Keigan

Say what you will about John Mayer’s music — here marks the spot where Lo censored Em’s compliments about “Your Body Is a Wonderland” as a matter of principle — his Tweets are some of the funniest in the biz. (Okay, so he doesn’t have a lot of competition. Britney Spears: “How’s everyone’s 2010 going so far?”) Anyway, love him or hate him — or, most likely, a combination of the two — we thought you’d appreciate some of his Tweet-wisdom (twisdom?) on the topics of love, sex, bodily functions, and other important stuff. Here are a dozen of our favorites from the last month or so — you can follow him yourself at Twitter.com/JohnCMayer:

1. What 1 area of your body gets touched the least? I’m going to guess sub-scrotal flange, but it could also be knee cleavage.
2. If you call a girl 62 times and she’s sleeping, does it read in the morning as one missed call or 62? Asking for a friend.

HBO nabs Sundance film in early deal

Although the shimmering wave of industry bigwigs and cinematic glitterati won’t roll into Park City for a few more days, the Sundance Film Festival business deals have already begun. Last week, HBO announced that it had acquired the U.S. television rights to New York-based Argentinean filmmaker Nicolas Entel’s feature documentary SINS OF MY FATHER.

Autotuned “I have a dream”

This Monday holiday commemorates Martin Luther King Jr. In rememberance, the musical group behind the extremely popular “Autotune the News” series, Brooklyn based The Gregory Brothers produced a great autotuned version of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech.

Go Johnny, GO! Weir secures a spot on Olympic team

Ladies and gentlemen, the US Olympic team for men’s figure skating: (L to R) Jeremy Abbott, Johnny Weir, and Evan Lysacek. After skating a solid short program and having a few slip ups during his free skate program, Johnny Weir finished an overall third place in the U.S. Nationals for men’s figure skating and secured [...]

Animal Welfare Groups Partner to Help Animals in Haiti

The International Fund for Animal Welfare and the World Society for the Protection of Animals have agreed to head up a coalition of groups to address the needs of the millions of animals in Haiti following the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake on Tuesday.

Rebranding Playboy?

Alex Cornell, the design intern over at ISO50, recently posted a class assignment he completed last year. The design challenge was to reinvigorate a dying brand and he chose Playboy, arguably a brand that is anything but dead. But he did a stellar job and it made me think perhaps Playboy’s bunny is just a [...]

Dayton Castleman’s Bread Bird

I like this small piece made from bread and steel by Dayton Castleman. Titled “Bread Bird,” he succinctly explains: An inquiry as to whether birds would eat bread in the shape of their own. In this case, Chicago pigeons would not. I’m curious to see this experiment repeated with different food types. I hypothesize that [...]

Rauschenberg as printmaker

“No other artist has ever pushed the boundaries of what printmaking could be as much (Robert) Rauschenberg.” Of course, Rauschenberg couldn’t have done it without Gemini G.E.L., the Los Angeles printmaking studio where he produced the bulk of his prints. “He defined what a print multiple was in terms of scale, media, dimension, variation and viewer interaction,” and, according to co-founder Stanley Grinstein, “he taught us what Gemini could be.”

Lady Gaga, creative director at Polaroid

Lady Gaga’s world dominance is not stopping as her world tour roles into Atlantic City this weekend. I am going to the show, 2 hours south of Manhtattan, because the 4 shows at Radio City sold out in record time and I don’t know anyone important enough to get me one. Sundance? Mr. Redford?

Harbin Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival

The Boston Globe’s Big Picture posted some amazing photos of even more fantastic and unbelievable behemoth ice sculptures from the 26th annual International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival held in Harbin, a city in northeaster China. Massive buildings built of ice from the frozen surface of the nearby Songhua River, large scale snow sculptures, ice [...]

Hannah Seligson – A little bit married

We recently spoke with Hannah Seligson about her new book “A Little Bit Married: How to Know When It’s Time to Walk Down the Aisle or Out the Door”:

Why did you write this book? Personal experience?

Of course! I’m my own guinea pig. After my first round of being A Little Bit Married, I became intrigued by this new dating pattern that I saw practically every 20-something friend of mine ebb in and out of. Here were these relationship that fifty or sixty years ago would have most likely culminated in marriage, but today often do not. So the book is an attempt to understand why that’s the case.

An erotic emporium’s menu of services.

Soliciting the services of a sex worker can be tricky work: you may know, in your head, what you want, but communicating that to your hired escort isn’t always easy. And then negotiating the price? Forget about it! If only all bordellos were like Mrs. F.A. Tasse’s Capacious Capsulation Parlors, which offered this very specific [...]

Grindr blocking

While television pundits and lawyers in California continue to keep gay rights and marriage inequality in our minds I’d like to point out that it is not that bad being gay. Especially being a gay man. There is this thing called casual sex. And we’re really good at it. We have bath houses and saunas [...]

Green tech finds (1/14/10)

We’ve still got a ways to go until Spring, but we do have baseball and beer for you at this week’s green tech finds:

• A green Mercedes on the way?: We’ll have to see, but Daimler, the brand’s owner, says it plans to challenge BMW’s supremacy in the “green luxury” market by putting half of its $6.4 R&D budget for 2010 into green tech.
  
  
• Rainwater recycling comes to baseball: The Minnesota Twins’ new stadium will feature a rainwater collection and purification system. The water will be used for washing down stands and irrigating the fields (see the video above). (via CNET Green Tech)