The proprietor of Limestone Roof doesn’t want to stay a monk forever and is prone to look at pretty dresses from time-to-time (and not for myself) AND the Bike Lane Dress from Antropolgie is gorgeous.
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Yeah. I’ve added a category for tires/tyres because of my obsession with vulcanized rubber. Photographs of tires/tyres for me are like hi-res food shots to foodies.
I watched Tokyo Story last night and Noriko [Setsuko Hara] was employed by the Yoneyama Trading Company whose business was tires apparently (?).
Speaking of pron; here is some new bike pron! The first is an illustration/drawing by Scott White from Bermuda Journey. The second is from another movie with Setsuko Hara called Late Spring.
(1) Get-Tough Policy on Chinese Tires Falls Flat (WSJ)
(1a) The reincarnation of the Playmobil Classic Car (6240) with accompanying tire pron!
This has nothing to do with tires but was part of my weekend reading:
(2) Boardroom Conquerors (WSJ)
“The good life, Mr. Kluth suggests, is not to be found by trying to imitate those we consider leaders and successes, who are rarely all they seem. It consists of doing what we must, as well as we are able, perceptions and consequences be damned.”
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“What [modern man] wants is a monk’s cell, well lit and heated, with a corner from which he can look at the stars.” – Charles-Édouard Jeanneret
(1) #30 / CHRIS WARE: A SENSE OF THERENESS
(1a) Periodic Table of Storytelling
(2) ‘Building Stories’: Chris Ware series coming from Pantheon
(2a) Critical Cities: Modernism: Designing a New World, 1914-1939
(3) There and Back Again: How writers’ fictional worlds have colonized real life (WSJ)
Paratext — Supplementary material like maps, footnotes, glossaries, appendices in books. (e.g. Kipling had his futuristic “Aerial Board of Control” stories printed with mock-up ads for airships.)
A great example of paratext is the cloth map of Britannia from Ultima IV. Many of those titles from Origin Systems included supplemental materials like coins and books (The History of Britannia). The metal ankh from Ultima IV is still popular with collectors.
(4) Blowing Up the Book (WSJ)
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(1) Ten Remarkable U.S. Bridges
(2) Bermuda Journey, Fourth Impression 1958, William Zuill
“For many years Front Street was the only business street in the town and here were situated the warehouses of the merchants, many of whom lived on the upper floors of their premises, enjoying, from pleasant verandas facing the harbor, the prevailing breeze and the bustle of the port.”
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(1) Message From God: Be Patient (WSJ)
(2) How Google & Co. Will Rule Your Rep (WSJ)
“‘Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.’ Honest old Abraham Lincoln knew what he was talking about. Just imagine his reputation score. But today, even his shadow would look longer.”
(3) A Dramatic Enlightenment (WSJ)
“Even at the awkward angle from which we view the picture, we read it from left to right, as we do the sequence of the three paintings, but we also read from right to left, from the source of illumination above to its objects below. The drama entails a move between darkness and light, flesh and spirit, an old life and a new one.”
(4) Modern Architecture, Being the Kahn Lectures by Frank Lloyd Wright
“Shadows were the ‘brushwork’ of the ancient architect. Let the ‘modern’ now work with light, light diffused, light reflected, light refracted–light for its own sake, shadows gratuitous. It is the machine that makes modern these rare new opportunities in glass; new experience that architects so recent as the great Italian forebears, plucked even of their shrouds, frowning upon our ‘renaissance,’ would have considered magical. They would have thrown down their tools with the despair of the true artist. Then they would have transformed their cabinets into a realm, their halls into bewildering vistas and avenues of light–their modest units into unlimited wealth of color patterns and delicate forms, rivaling the frostwork upon the windowpanes, perhaps. They were creative enough to have found a world of illusion and brilliance, with jewels themselves only modest contributions to the splendor of their effects.”
(5) Quote from St. Thérèse of Lisieux
“When I want to rest my heart, wearied by the darkness which surrounds it, by the memory of the luminous country to which I aspire, my torment redoubles; it seems to me that the darkness, borrowing the voice of sinners, says mockingly to me, ‘You are dreaming about the light, about a country fragrant with the sweetest perfumes; you are dreaming about the eternal possession of the Creator of all these things; you believe that one day you will walk out of this fog which surrounds you…’”
(6) The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton
“It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.”
Photo by ©JBOT 2.0 2012
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“It seems reasonable to suppose that people will possess some of the qualities of the buildings they are drawn to: to expect that if they are alive to the charm of an ancient farmhouse with walls made of irregular chiselled stones set in light mortar, if they can appreciate the play of candelight against hand-decorated tiles, can be seduced by libraries with shelves filled from floor to ceiling with books that emit a sweet dusty smell and are content to lie on the floor tracing the knotted border of an intricate Turkoman rug, then they will know something about patience and stability, tenderness and sweetness, intelligence and worldliness, scepticism and trust. We expect that such enthusiasts will be committed to infusing their whole lives with the values embodied in the objects of their appreciation.”
– The Architecture of Happiness, Alain de Botton
Related
Tatsuro Kiuchi
The Joy of Books
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“We seem divided between an urge to override our senses and numb ourselves to our settings and a contradictory impulse to acknowledge the extent to which our identities are indelibly connected to, and will shift along with, our locations. An ugly room can coagulate and loose suspicions as to the incompleteness of life, while a sun-lit one set with honey-coloured limestone tiles can lend support to whatever is most hopeful within us.
Belief in the significance of architecture is premised on the notion that we are, for better or for worse, different people in different places – and on the conviction that it is architecture’s task to render vivid to us who we might ideally be.”
– The Architecture of Happiness, Alain de Botton
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Still running post holiday errands so blogging is light…In the meantime:
(1) McMahon: Cuomo’s big idea looks like 1970s
I saw this on Instapundit and while I think Cuomo’s BIG idea is tired/old (and a guaranteed boondoggle) the Javits Center is a DUMP and the only business in town. And I’m qualified to post about this because convention center(s) impact my livelihood.
(2) Convention Wisdom: Cities keep squandering money on hotels and meeting facilities
(3) Sovereignty and the Pitiless Passage of Time (WSJ)
“But in today’s secular society, Mr. Davies says, such an awareness no longer exists: The young, ignorant of history, enjoy a false sense of permanence, while our historians are too specialized to appreciate the ultimately fleeting nature of all that man contrives.”
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The three qualities of intelligent people (not exhaustive, subject to change and a work in progress):
(1) Forecasting
“Time and time again, Salazar, for all his lack of his own world vision, or notion of where Portugal fitted into global politics, got it right in forecasting the postwar order of Europe…sitting alone in his office plotting Portugal’s postwar politics, Salazar confided to British and American diplomats that he envisaged little prospect of the Soviet Union conducting itself as a decent member of the European family of nations.”
Source: Lisbon: War in the Shadows of the City of Light, 1939-1945 by Neill Lochery
Forecasting done against the backdrop of war when moods and sentiments changed with news published on the wires.
(2) Intuition
“In articles and books over the past five years, Dr. Gigerenzer has developed the startling claim that intuition makes our decisions not just quicker but better. He rejects the notion that hunches are second best, trading off accuracy for effort to achieve decisions that are “good enough” but not perfect.”
Source: All Hail the Hunch—and Damn the Details by Matt Ridley
(3) Delaying Gratification
“…these and later studies on delayed gratification have shown that self-discipline is a bigger predictor of later success than other factors such as I.Q.”
Source: Hope, Greed, and Fear: The Psychology Behind the Financial Crisis
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Just back from Austin…
(1) China’s Abandoned ‘Wonderland’
(1a) Pictures of the new Fantasyland at Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom
(2) Go analog at Lomography [@lomography]!
(3) Frankincense threatened by conditions in Ethiopia (USA Today)
(3b) A Shift for the Magi? Frankincense Shortage
“But not all vendors are concerned. “I’m not going to worry about the future,” Ms. Thompson said. “God holds the future in his hands. It’s his reality, not ours. If you worry about everything, you’d go crazy.”
(4) Holiday Happiness? Not Under the Tree: Presents fool us easily, research shows. It really is the thought that counts (WSJ)
(5) All Hail the Hunch—and Damn the Details (WSJ)
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