Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi is a cult film I think I might enjoy:
The film consists primarily of slow motion and
time-lapse photography of cities and natural landscapes
across the United States. The visual tone poem
contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its
tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music. In
the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi means ‘crazy
life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating,
a state of life that calls for another way of living’, and the
film implies that modern humanity is living in such a way.
Today, online, I saw the most beautiful bike I have ever seen in my life. Before I link to that, a bit about the man who makes these bikes. A certain Joshua Muir in Santa Cruz, California runs a shop called Frances Cycles. He builds your frame. From scratch. By hand. From steel (or something more exotic). The results are stupendous. Consider his innovative Smallhaul design, allowing one to carry large amounts of stuff in a cargo hold between the handlebars and (rather distant) front wheel. Using that design, you can do things like carry your dog with you on your bike (also… click that last link, seriously).
Certainly, introducing novelty into the monotony of bike design is a good thing. But taking the basic lines and functions of a bike and stripping them down to the core, the essence — that’s particularly cool… and it exposes Muir’s brilliant craftsmanship.
With that in mind: back to this bike I mentioned at the outset. The photo of it is titled “Stuyvie’s #3”, which I imagine means the third bike built for Stuyvie… I believe the bike is a “Bici Corta fixed-gear.” Feast your eyes upon the gorgeous simplicity of handcrafted, pedal-powered transportation.
Coachella is a three-day (formerly a one or two-day)
annual music and arts festival held at the Empire Polo Fields
in Indio, California. The event features many genres of
music including alternative rock, hip hop, and electronica
as well as large sculptural art
Now, I don’t know all those bands, but I do know that Slightly Stoopid has a flat-out fantastic song called “Collie Man.” Pull that one up on iTunes (don’t search YouTube, etc… all the live versions and covers of it kinda stink), you won’t be disappointed.
Rates of C-sections have been climbing each year in the
past decade in the U.S., reaching a record high of 31% of
all live births in 2006. That’s a 50% increase since 1996.
Around the world, the procedure is becoming even more
common: in certain hospitals in Brazil, fully 80% of babies
are delivered by caesarean. How did a procedure
originally intended as an emergency measure become
so popular? And is the trend a bad thing?
After Mykala described the ripping and tearing that can happen (ouch ouch ouch), I never really thought about childbirth the same. Compare a woman giving birth (the incredible pain, physical trauma, etc.) to an animal giving birth… I mean baby giraffes literally fall out and everybody keeps on truckin’. Anything that gives the mother more options is a good thing, as far as I can tell, as clearly the “natural” way needs some improvement. Keep in mind that the “natural” way also used to involve dying of all sorts of infectious diseases or making it to 40-something on average.
I wonder if any social stigma around preemptively choosing a C-section was an attempt by the author to fabricate conflict for this article.
The English language has the word happenstance, which is a chance happening or event. I propose a modified version of this word as an addition to the language. When something bad happens, it’s crappenstance.
It was, in fact, as the couple learned only at the closing,
about to be condemned. There were large holes in the
roof, various furry woodland animals in residence, a
barely functional heating and plumbing system. The roof
over the master bedroom leaked so badly that the
previous owner had placed 55 aluminum baking pans on
the floor to catch the rain.
The photo gallery, featuring before and after pictures of the home, offers some more tidbits:
Early in the renovation, Mr. Giffels and the
contractor stumbled upon a treasure, $14,000 in $20
bills, wrapped in bank wrappers stamped March 15,
1930.