Things worth making

Image via Omnomicon.

Cooking crushes from FoodGawker:

King Cake
Chocolate chip cookies
Hot pretzels
Cannoli ice cream
Homemade butter

Good timing

People at work.

Willing ourselves out of February

Diego Stocco - Music From Sand from Diego Stocco on Vimeo.

Via SwissMiss.

Plimpton Prize and latex leggings

Factory photo via Bouncing Red Ball.

Peter Matthiesson loves you, Alistair Morgan.

It's cute that you can write a whole article about letter-writing making a comeback without any evidence to support it. (via The Elegant Variation)

In old news, everyone seems mystified by The Way We'll All Make Billions On the Internet.

MIA might be an apologist for the Tamil Tigers, but she is indubitably pregnant.

Two great links from BoingBoing: photographs of factories in Japan, and of a broken-down hospital in Maryland.

Oh! And one more! I've been meaning to post recipes for making your own toothpaste, laundry detergent, etc., but BoingBoing links to How To Make Your Own Latex Leggings, which seem to be a New York essential these days. You're welcome.

Two things I almost forgot to show you

Wallpaper made from New York Times headlines (photo via WallpaperLab, and link via The Gothamist).

The Guggenheim says coffee is an art.

Things that make you wonder

Art made from money. Some very nice paper hats for our presidents and others'.

The Explainer posts many questions they did not answer in 2008. A few favorites:

"Could you please explain why it is that squirrels are capable of such amazing athletic feats? What is it about their brains and, to a lesser degree, their bodies that allows it? I watch them at my house and have seen some amazing things."

"It is a common baseball prank to give someone a cream pie in the face during a TV interview. Where do these cream pies come from? Do baseball teams keep cream pies in the dugout?"

"My toaster identifies which of the two slots should be used for making a single slice of toast. Why does it make a difference which slot I use?"

The New York Public Library is on Flickr (via C-MONSTER). Flickr is getting some serious institutional action these days. Here's Ruth St. Denis in Yosemite Valley.

The media of the recession

Post-Its by Marc Johns. (via My Love For You Is A Stampede of Horses)



Clockwork Atomics x302 by Scott Wilson. (via C-MONSTER)

Perfectly spectacular uses of scrap paper.

To Eyeballs

This is a really good girlfriend. (via SwissMiss)

Since I chose the picture of lots of eyes, I figured I'd show you this, too (video by ENESS, via CoolHunting):

A tall order

Christoph Niemann has a perfectly adorable collection of napkin illustrations chronicling his relationship with coffee. (via SwissMiss)

You too can browse the internet

Life Magazine contributes its photo archive to Google.

Kafka's handwriting is about to be released as a font. (via BookNinja)

Chad W. Post of Three Percent linked to BookTrib today. A good find: book reviews and links galore.

Investigating nothing in particular

Binoculars from Paraphernalia. (via My Love For You is a Stampede of Horses)

Philadelphia, land of Ben Franklin's free library, is shutting down 11 libraries in order to save money. (via Silliman's blog)

Slate loves Buster Keaton's "The General."

Eavesdropping on Tom Stoppard. (via Maud Newton)

Some beautifully scanned Russian Avant-Garde books. If you're going to go PDF, this is the way to do it right. (also via Silliman's blog)

Miss college? Audit courses from Oxford for free, via podcast. Or check out Oxford's ten most irritating phrases, to remind yourself what your classmates might say. (also via Maud)

Things to read

1) Jonathan Lethem's review of 2666.

2) The women who took care of Marc Chagall and the way they changed his art. (I'll admit I wish I could look at his art without knowing he left his 19-year-old girlfriend for his best friend, and that he cut his daughter out of his life because of his last wife.)

3) The Golden Notebook. I think I've mentioned our project, but Barack Obama liked it, and perhaps you trust his taste.

Things I am into today:

1) Christine Callahan's photos. (via CoolHunting)

2) Charles Schultz's use of ellipses. (via LitKicks)

3) Doing an apartment entirely in Sharpie Marker. Though I am certain that more than $10 worth of Sharpies went into this project.

Itty bitty letters

Today I am rather enamored of the World's Smallest Postal Service. (via CoolHunting) Also, Lea Redmond's blog is adorable.

A short list

Things I'm into lately:

The ongoing Somali pirate drama, and pirate drama in general. (I will be sorry when it's over.)

"Thirteen" by Jason Robert Brown, which I saw in previews last week. It's high-energy and catchy - not something one would remember forever, but just emotionally complex enough to hold itself together, and the kids in it can really dance.

The new film with Greg Kinnear, A Flash of Genius, which I saw in previews the day after that. The whole cast and crew were there, and so was the writer of the original New Yorker article (which felt very glamorous). It's beautifully lit, and a good premise for discussions of intellectual property (though the use of this sort of property was not as relevant to discussions of digitally shared intellectual property, so I would have liked it a bit better if the script had been open to that interpretation). The acting's great, but somehow "the American dream" didn't really resonate with me while the stocks were falling roughly 200 points in the time it took to watch this 90-minute film.

The fake Obama ads The Onion did after McCain (1) refused to look Obama in the eye, and (2) wouldn't shake his hand when they met in person.

Sarah Palin poetry.

This testament to dear neighbors and dedicated readers. (Awww.)

This new video from Alex Itin, taking drawings from his exhibit and some images from "The Little Prince."

Robotic spy planes. Of course.