Exposition Monet 2010 – All I have to say is wow.

Simply poetic – the execution, transitions, music and obviously Monet’s work.

As my good friend Jory says, try doing this with HTML5 and Javascript.

(via Forgotten Hopes)

Paul Krugman on the Angry Rich:

These are terrible times for many people in this country. Poverty, especially acute poverty, has soared in the economic slump; millions of people have lost their homes. Young people can’t find jobs; laid-off 50-somethings fear that they’ll never work again.

Yet if you want to find real political rage — the kind of rage that makes people compare President Obama to Hitler, or accuse him of treason — you won’t find it among these suffering Americans. You’ll find it instead among the very privileged, people who don’t have to worry about losing their jobs, their homes, or their health insurance, but who are outraged, outraged, at the thought of paying modestly higher taxes.

NYTimes: The Evolution of Classroom Technology

All of the devices they feature are beautiful, but I was particularly interested in how similar the shape of the school slate is to the iPad:

And I always find, yeah, I always find somethin’ wrong
You been puttin’ up wit’ my shit just way too long
I’m so gifted at findin’ what I don’t like the most
So I think it’s time for us to have a toast

Let’s have a toast for the douchebags,
Let’s have a toast for the assholes,
Let’s have a toast for the scumbags,
Every one of them that I know
Let’s have a toast to the jerkoffs
That’ll never take work off
Baby, I got a plan
Run away fast as you can

–Kanye West, “Runaway”
I watched the MTV Video Music Awards on my DVR the other night. It was the normal MTV crap that reminds me of why I don’t watch MTV (I’ll spare you the standard, 30-something guy tirade of MTV-doesn’t-play-music-anymore).
But something came at the very end that hit me in the brain. It was Kanye West’s performance of his new track, “Runaway”. Somehow he performed magic, at least on me. I started singing along to the song around the second chorus. I work with a ‘jerkoff that’ll never take work off’ and by toasting this guy, I experienced a pop-infused, fleeting catharsis.
Why the hell am I toasting the douchebags, assholes, scumbags and jerkoffs while I chuckle and smile?
This post isn’t about me trying to put Kayne on a pedestal, but whether you like him or hate him doesn’t matter – the dude is smart. Mark my words, but you’re not just going to find me singing this song. You’re going to be seeing people sing this all over the place.
If you’ll indulge me a bit more, I’ll give you the backstory. At last year’s VMAs, Kanye jumped up on stage in the middle of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for Best Female Video. This created a good meaty meme, a meme my friend and I were more than happy to run with.
So now 2010 rolls around and everyone’s speculating what will go down. Will Taylor fire back? What will Kanye do?
Not only did he admit fault, but he also admitted, ‘we’ve been putting up with his shit way too long’ AND made a great track out of it. Did I mention the performance and stage design was off the chain too? From the lonely piano key dings to the red suit and red sneakers to the white stage, it was hip-hop meets Kubrick.
As Richard Dreyfus told us in Apple’s “Crazy Ones” commercial:

Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things…

Again, I’m hardly saying Kanye is up there with Gandhi and Jim Henson, I’m just saying he’s crazy, a troublemaker and you can’t ignore him.

Innovation is almost insane by definition: most people view any truly innovative idea as stupid, because if it was a good idea, somebody would have already done it. So, the innovator is guaranteed to have more natural initial detractors than followers.

–Ben Horowitz in “Why We Prefer Founding CEOs”
via 37Signals

Foreign Policy: The Global Cities Index 2010

We are at a global inflection point. Half the world’s population is now urban — and half the world’s most global cities are Asian. The 2010 Global Cities Index, a collaboration between Foreign Policy, management consulting firm A.T. Kearney, and The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, reveals a snapshot of this pivotal moment. In 2010, five of the world’s 10 most global cities are in Asia and the Pacific: Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, and Seoul. Three — New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles — are American cities. Only two, London and Paris, are European. And there’s no question which way the momentum is headed: Just as more people will continue to migrate from farms to cities, more global clout will move from West to East.

via my mother-in-law, thanks mom 🙂

And I think that good actors always–or if you’re being good, anyway–you’re making it better than the script. That’s your fucking job. It’s like, Okay, the script says this? Well, watch this. Let’s just roar a little bit. Let’s see how high we can go.

–Bill Murray

via GQ: Bill Murray Is Ready To See You Now

via How to be a Retronaut

Yahoo: 1,270 Architects/Engineers Reveal Hard Evidence of Explosive Demolition at World Trade Center on 9/11:

On Thursday September 9, 2010, Gravel and Gage will host a central press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, presenting hard evidence that all three WTC skyscrapers on September 11, 2001, in NYC were destroyed by explosive controlled demolition.

Wow.

Asymco: It takes nearly $1 billion/yr to run iTunes

Maybe there’s a reason no one can beat iTunes.

For the last few months my team and I at Roundarch have been working with Bloomberg Sports on Decision Maker for iPad.We’re happy to announce it’s now live and available for purchase from Apple’s App Store.
Decision Maker is an application that lets you analyze any two NFL players using custom algorithms that determine who the optimal choice is.The player with the higher B-Score is the better bet that week. B-Score, the ‘Bloomberg’ Score, is based on factors that include his Performance, Opponent Matchup, Team Support and Game Conditions for that week.

We tackled the project holistically, from concept and Human Experience flow down to the user interface design, iconography and branding. One of the goals throughout the project was balancing simplicity and complexity. It had to be simple enough for novice fantasy players but also provide the complexity and details advanced fantasy players look for.
We encounter this simplicity as soon as the application loads – select a player from column 1 and one from column 2 (or use the auto-complete fields in the middle) and click ‘Run The Numbers’. Alternatively, you can refine your search from All NFL to just a position or team through the settings button at the top of each table.
Once we Run The Numbers, we’re taken to a head-to-head view of the results of our player comparison. Once again, we’re start out in the top half of the interface with the most essential information – do I sit this player or do I start this player?

As we move down to the lower half of the screen, we can view the details that make up the scores. Even for those who might not initially want to see or understand the data presented below, the interface is designed to encourage users to drill down and explore the various factors. Everything is tap-friendly and provides more context and information – from the risk/reward chart overlay to info tool tips, to radar chart tips.


A big thank you to everyone from Roundarch and Bloomberg Sports who made this application a reality.
iTunes App Store: Decision Maker – Football 2010 for iPad

The NYTimes asks, What Is It About 20-Somethings?

It’s happening all over, in all sorts of families, not just young people moving back home but also young people taking longer to reach adulthood overall. It’s a development that predates the current economic doldrums, and no one knows yet what the impact will be — on the prospects of the young men and women; on the parents on whom so many of them depend; on society, built on the expectation of an orderly progression in which kids finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and eventually retire to live on pensions supported by the next crop of kids who finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and on and on. The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain un­tethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life.

This is a trap, right?

Microsoft is baiting me with their new commercial for Windows Phone 7.

Because they wouldn’t deliberately be presenting their new phone/phone OS as a mirage in the desert that declares, “The Revolution is coming”, right?

(via Electronista)