lol: Library of Links

The Big Picture offers, well, really big pictures

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 21:58:00 +0000

The Big Picture section of the Boston Globe's Boston.com offers truly awesome high resolution photographs from the news, mostly drawn from the Associated Press. This photo of a solar flare was released by Nasa Earth Observatory on June 7, 2011 and taken from Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Music: The National Jukebox

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Wed, 11 May 2011 16:09:00 +0000

The Library of Congress' National Jukebox makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. As it began operations, the "jukebox" already listed more than 10,000 78rpm disc sides issued by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1900 and 1925. The playlist includes popular recorded selections of the beginning of the 20th century years—band music, novelty tunes, humorous monologues, hits from the season's new musical theater productions, the latest dance rhythms, and opera arias. As of this posting, upcoming releases include early Victor discs from National Jukebox partners David Giovannoni and Mark Lynch, many more selections from the 1919 edition of the Victor Book of the Opera, and thousands more Victrola 78s from the collections of the University of California Santa Barbara. Later this year, the library will begin digitizing recordings from additional record labels, including Columbia and Okeh, along with selected master recordings from the Library of Congress Universal Music Group Collection. -- adapted from the website.

Modeling: New York City in Miniature

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 23:19:00 +0000

The Panorama of the City of New York is the jewel in the crown of the collection of the Queens Museum of Art. Built by Robert Moses for the 1964 World’s Fair, in part as a celebration of the City’s municipal infrastructure, this 9,335 square foot architectural model includes every single building constructed before 1992 in all five boroughs; that is a total of 895,000 individual structures.

The Panorama was built by a team of 100 people working for the great architectural model makers Raymond Lester Associates in the three years before the opening of the 1964 World’s Fair. In planning the model, Lester Associates referred to aerial photographs, insurance maps, and a range of other City material; the Panorama had to be accurate, indeed the initial contract demanded less than one percent margin of error between reality and the model. Until 1970 all of the changes in the City were accurately recreated in the model by Lester’s team. After 1970 very few changes were made until 1992, when again Lester Associates changed over 60,000 structures to bring it up-to-date. In 2006 an up-grade of the lighting system - the first change to the model since 1992 - allowed for the Panorama to be displayed in different light conditions; highlight different buildings or areas of the City; and even recreate the sounds of the city. -- from the website.

Art: The Johnny Cash Project

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 17:51:00 +0000

The Johnny Cash Project is a global collective art project. Working with a single image as a template, and using a custom drawing tool, visitors to the site create an individual, personal portrait of the late singer. The new drawing is then combined with art from participants around the world, and integrated into a collective whole: a music video for "Ain’t No Grave", from the country star's last album.

Strung together and played in sequence over the song, the portraits create a moving, ever evolving homage to the beloved musical icon. What’s more, as new people discover and contribute to the project, this living portrait will continue to transform and grow, so it’s virtually never the same video twice.

The Johnny Cash Project

Möbius Story: "Wind and Mr. Ug" by Vi Hart

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 18:26:00 +0000

Transportation: New York City Subway

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 19:13:00 +0000

100 years of photographs of New York City's subway system from the morgue at the New York Times.

Nature: Portrait of John Muir as a Young Man

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 22:11:00 +0000

John Muir (1838-1914) was America's most famous and influential naturalist and conservationist, and founder of the Sierra Club. The John Muir Exhibit features his life and contributions.
Visit the John Muir Exhibit.

Laurel & Hardy Meet Santana

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 23:06:00 +0000

Museums: Going Postal

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 12:18:00 +0000

The National Philatelic Collection was established at the Smithsonian in 1886 with the donation of a sheet of 10-cent Confederate postage stamps. Generous gifts from individuals and foreign governments, transfers from government agencies and occasional purchases have increased the collection to today's total of more than 5.9 million items.

From 1908 until 1963, the collection was housed in the Smithsonian's Arts and Industries Building on the National Mall. In 1964, the collection was moved to the museum that is now known as the National Museum of American History. There, the collection expanded to include postal history and stamp production. The collection was then moved to its present location and the National Postal Museum opened on July 30, 1993.

In addition to one of the world's largest collections of stamps and philatelic materials, the National Postal Museum has postal history material that pre-dates stamps, vehicles used to transport the mail, mailboxes and mailbags, postal uniforms and equipment. -- from the website.

Transportation: The Subway Page

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 00:20:00 +0000

Maps, maps & more maps: Links to World Subway and Other Transportation Information Resources.

Stories: Larry King shows you how it's done

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 21:49:00 +0000

Astronomy: It's all relative

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 19:15:00 +0000

This is from Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog:

Anthems: Is Lin Yu Chun the next Susan Boyle?

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 20:16:00 +0000

The Arts: blog-based archive of fascinating missives

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 06:33:00 +0000

Letters of Note: Correspondence deserving a wider audience "is an attempt to gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos" presented both as facsimiles, such as this one of a letter scribbled by Jack Kerouac about William Burroughs, and as transcriptions. The writers range from Mary Queen of Scots to Kurt Vonnegut. An endlessly fascinating site.

Design: Reinventing the Automobile

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 14:28:00 +0000

Three experts believe we need to update the way we think about modern transportation -- particularly the automobile. William Mitchell, Christopher E. Borroni-Bird, and Lawrence D. Burns have created blueprints for transforming the current automobile landscape into one that's more appropriate for our social, city-based, interactive society. Their book Reinventing the Automobile: Personal Urban Mobility for the 21st Century sees a future of cities filled with smart cars driven by electricity instead of mechanics, and features that emphasize interconnectivity and more efficient mobility.

The rest of the story: Reinventing the Automobile by Sheryl Sulistiawan (Fast Company 2010-03-26)

Science & Technology: Thinking Outside of the Toy Box

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 06:41:00 +0000

Four Children's Gizmos That Inspired Scientific Breakthroughs (Scientific American 2010-03-24)

Advances in science and technology can launch from unassuming springboards. In 1609 Galileo tweaked a toylike spyglass, pointed it at the moon and Jupiter (not the neighbors), and astronomy took a quantum leap. About 150 years later, Benjamin Franklin reportedly used a kite to experiment with one of the earliest-known electrical capacitors. Continuing that tradition, researchers reach back to childhood -- to Etch A Sketch, Lego, Shrinky Dink and Balloon within a Balloon -- to help them develop tiny transistors, study particle separation, make microfluidics devices, and fight cancer.

The Arts: Getty Museum, Los Angeles

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:12:00 +0000

If you're in L.A., take any opportunity to visit the Getty.

Getty from Bill Petropoulos on Vimeo.

Music: OK Go's "This Too Shall Pass"

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:24:00 +0000

Is this the greatest video ever?

The Holocaust: The Auschwitz Album

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 01:18:00 +0000

Visual Evidence of Mass Murder at Auschwitz-Birkenau:

Nature: A universe in one cubic

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 22:53:00 +0000

How much life can you find in one cubic foot?

That's a hunk of ecosystem small enough to fit in your lap. To answer the question, photographer David Liittschwager took a green metal frame, a 12-inch cube, to disparate environments -- land and water, tropical and temperate. At each locale he set down the cube and started watching, counting, and photographing with the help of his assistant and many biologists.

The goal: to represent the creatures that lived in or moved through that space.

The team then sorted through their habitat cubes, coaxing out every inhabitant, down to a size of about a millimeter. Accomplishing that took an average of three weeks at each site. In all, more than a thousand individual organisms were photographed, their diversity represented in this gallery.

"It was like finding little gems," Liittschwager says.

Art & Design: 1975 Artists' Soapbox Derby

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 09:46:00 +0000

The Incredible San Fancisco Artists' Soapbox Derby, 1975. from Mike Haeg on Vimeo.

Astronomy: The Known Universe Scientifically Rendered by the American Museum of Natural History

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 18:59:00 +0000

After hovering over Mount Everest and the gorges that plunge to the Ganges, you are pulled through the Earth’s atmosphere to glimpse the inky black of space over Tibet’s high desert. So begins The Known Universe, a new film produced by the American Museum of Natural History that is part of a new exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City.

The Obameter: Tracking Obama's Campaign Promises

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 07:27:00 +0000

PolitiFact has compiled more than 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign and is tracking their progress on the Obameter. Statuses are rated as No Action, In the Works or Stalled. Once an action is found to be completed, it is rated a Promise Kept, a Compromise or a Promise Broken. The report card at right provides an up-to-the-minute tally of all the promises.

Iconoclasts: Harry Smith

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:57:00 +0000

"Artist, alchemical filmmaker, musical archeologist and avant garde shaman, Harry Smith’s obsessive interests made him an influential, yet not widely known, figure of 20th century Beat culture and beyond. If Smith was only responsible for preserving the folk and blues musical traditions of early America in his Anthology of American Folk Music set from 1952, we would have him to thank for providing a way forward for a young Bob Dylan and the whole of the 60s/70s folk scene." - from Harry Smith: American Magus.

noreply@blogger.com (John Gabree) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:36:00 +0000

Nadine Jarvin is a product designer. One of her projects involves rethinking how we approach death.

In Carbon Copies, for example, pencils are made from the carbon of human cremains. 240 pencils can be made from an average body of ash - a lifetime supply of pencils for those left behind.

Each pencil is foil stamped with the name of the person. Only one pencil can be removed at a time, it is then sharpened back into the box causing the sharpenings to occupy the space of the used pencils. Over time the pencil box fills with sharpenings - a new ash, transforming it into an urn. The window acts as a timeline, showing you the amount of pencils left as time goes by.

This work forms part of a larger research project into post mortem.