About alexandra_m

alexandra_m

media maven

Location:

Brooklyn, NY (11222, USA)

Joined on:

06/17/08

Contact:

alex.marvar@gmail.com

• 1 vote

  Culture

  

  Let Them Eat Cake (And Other Flippant Remarks Of The Upper Crust)

  In a time where our Republican candidate elect fumbles with the press on how many multi-million dollar homes he owns, Christopher Hitchens introduces some shamefully relevant vocabulary: a tumbrel remark (a phrase originally coined by Irish writer Joyce Cary) is "an unguarded comment by an uncontrollably rich person, of such crass insensitivity that it makes the workers and peasants think of lampposts and guillotines." Keep an ear out.

  Via kottke

  Image: The Duke of Devonshire, who said of the London Times after it had published some criticism of him, that he would no longer have the newspaper "in any of my houses."

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  Posted on September 5, 2008 by - alexandra_m

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  Art & Design

  

  Swoon Tags The Hudson

  The artist Swoon, who we wrote about in Issue 005, set sail down the Hudson last week for her boat voyage-themed performance art piece, "Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea." A flotilla of seven waterbound art installations, each hand-crafted with different materials and manned by a hodgepodge of 40 artists and performers, will travel from Troy, NY to Queens before docking on September 7 for an opening at the Deitch Studios, and remain as part of an exhibition.
  
  It's a follow-up to her 2007 project "Miss Rockaway Armada," in which she floated down the Mississippi to New Orleans in a boat made from trash. That one seemed a little more street-artisty; this current Switchback Sea piece might be more on the "Art for Art's Sake" side, kind of like when Matthew Barney decided it'd be a good plan to traverse the entire Atlantic Ocean in a small boat and draw pictures of dead fish and waves for five months. Then again, ambushing the Hudson with art boats is just another way for her to take public space and make it her canvas.

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  Posted on September 5, 2008 by - alexandra_m

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  Living

  

  Who Doesn't Love A Photobooth

  That's what photographer Nakki Goranin was thinking when she turned her focus to the history of the instant photo machine for her new book American Photobooth.

  Emerging at the beginning of the 20th century, the photobooth was a development that made photography affordable for and accessible to everyone. Today, it's a novelty that makes photography accessible to tipsy hipsters at especially excellent bars and to random mall-goers at a few other select locations around the U.S., where the ~250 remaining authentic chemical booths are still intact.

  Goranin's chronicle and accompanying images are the best PR for the photobooth since its major role in Amélie. And we have to mention, we'd be almost as charmed by this very similar endeavor, Found Polaroids, if we weren't still in denial over the impending extinction of polaroid film...

  Image: left, from American Photobooth; right, from our personal archives.

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  Posted on September 4, 2008 by - alexandra_m

• 1 vote

  Environment

  

  Hail, Africa

  A vast white sheet of ice covered 30 acres in central Kenya this week due to a freak hailstorm that was mistaken by some villagers for the second coming of Jesus—and as it turns out, an ice storm of this ferocity in the region is about as likely.
  
  While locals look to be enjoying their batty weather much more than, say, the Gulf Coast might be right now, there's just something about ice covering African plans on the equator that we find disconcerting. At the very least, it's an odd concurrence with the disappearance of all that ice in the arctic.
  
  Photo: "This is freaking awesome," observed villagers near Nyahururu, Kenya.

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  Posted on September 5, 2008 by - alexandra_m

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  Culture

  

  Wish You Were Here!

  As summer comes to a close, we find ourselves politely enduring stacks of other people's vacation photos. Or, what's the word for "stack of photos" if it's being thumbed through on an iPhone? Either way. These are refreshing: Images from an architectural history professor who toured through the catacombs below a little Baroque church Oratorio di San Lorenzo in Palermo, also known as The Museum of the Dead.

  The author's descryption: "Like the sanatorium in The Magic Mountain, this is one of those places where every casual visitor ends up a patient at the moment when the nervous joking stops and the infection sets in." Would that make a great postcard or what.

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  Posted on September 3, 2008 by - alexandra_m

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  Art & Design

  

  The Old Testament + Astrophysics = New Work By Diana Al-Hadid

  Diana Al-Hadid, a 27-year-old Syrian-born artist based in Brooklyn, opens her first major solo show in New York this week. Her large-scale sculptures are informed by classical and gothic architecture, labyrinths, science, Greek mythology, biblical lore, paintings in the school of Bruegel and Bosch, and—like her previous installations of gloriously macabre organs and staircases—"failed attempts to reach God."

  Here, her crux theme of God-ward ambition refers to the story of the Tower of Babel and what Al-Hadid calls "our Babel": Geneva's Large Hadron Collider, a 27km-wide machine developed to re-create matter that existed at the genesis of the universe by way of slamming particles together in a manmade Big Bang. Among other things, the work in her new exhibition Reverse Collider is informed by these seemingly disparate concepts (an Old Testament tale and a Swiss-Franco quantum physics experiment), and the parallels she's drawn between the two: working at the limits of technology, the analogous effort to explore the origins of the universe, each construction's resemblance to "an architectural telescope to reach God," and their shared impending sense of danger.

  Show: September 4th through October 9th, 2008 at both Perry Rubenstein gallery locations in New York City.

  Image: left, Bruegel, right, Al-Hadid

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  Posted on September 3, 2008 by - alexandra_m

• 1 vote

  Politics

  

  Nemagon, Not Forgotten

  This morning, Wikipedia truly failed us.

  A friend just returned from Nicaragua, and told us about Nemagon, the carcinogenic pesticide used by multinational fruit corporations throughout Latin America, west Africa and the Philippines, starting in the late 60s. (Yet another way the banana industry has brought about abuse, torture and death.)

  Today, a community of about 1000 people are living in tents and lean-tos across from the government offices in Managua, Nicaragua, asking for support from President Ortega's administration after many (ahem) fruitless years of legal battle for recognition and reparations against banana corporations like Del Monte and Dole. These companies have already paid various settlements (ranging between several million and $100, depending on the plaintiffs' lawyers) to Nemagon victims, but it hasn't been nearly enough; nearly 70% of Nicaraguan bananeros suffer serious health problems linked to the chemical, and 1/3 of women who worked on plantations are afflicted by breast or uterine cancer. Many, including those in the Managua settlement, have yet to be acknowledged, much less compensated.

  For a chemical that's been the cornerstone of many a multi-million dollar lawsuit in the past three decades, has killed several thousand people and affected the health of tens of thousands more, and has been covered by major international media sources, the fact that it doesn't at least have a Wikipedia entry is, well, bananas. We guess that's evidence of a marked Lack Of Awareness. If you feel a wave of guilt after your next banana smoothie, try reading more on Nemagon. And sharing what you learn.

  Photo: A woman mourns the death of her husband in Managua, who died of liver cancer caused by exposure to Nemagon; via Getty

  Thanks Madeline!

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  Posted on September 3, 2008 by - alexandra_m

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  Culture

  

  FYI: Silver Jews

  Good news. Nashville-based band Silver Jews has just commenced a national tour. While this is only their second tour ever, they've been around the block; they've released six full-length albums in the past two decades including the seminal American Water, a Pitchfork 9.9. (Trivia: On-again-off-again collaborator and Silver Jews founding member Steve Malkmus went on to start a little band called Pavement.)

  And indie rock aside, Berman is a poet of note. His book, Actual Air, published in 1999 and lauded by the likes of James Tate and Billy Collins, is a maddeningly eloquent exploration of the ins and outs of existence, and in the past decade, it hasn't strayed far from the most accessible spot on our bookshelves. In a recent backstage chat, he told us we could look forward to an upcoming book of drawings, The Portable February, to be released next spring, and possibly a screenplay commissioned by his pal Harmony Korine (Kids, Gummo).

  We highly recommend you sample some of Berman's poetry here while you enjoy this mp3: "Suffering Jukebox"

  Photo David Berman at the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland, Ohio; by Alex

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  Posted on September 2, 2008 by - alexandra_m

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  Politics

  

  RNC: Republican Party. And You're Not Invited.

  Minneapolis does not win the "Best Host" award for its accommodation of out-of-town guests; even prominent journalists, like Amy Goodman, are being shown less than hospitable treatment at the Convention.

  Goodman, investigative journalist and host of Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now! program, was handcuffed and hauled off at the RNC for going to check on her producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar after hearing rumors that they had been detained. All three were covering the anti-war protests, which lead to more than 250 arrests as of last night.

  But the arrests started even before the republican party started partying; many preemptive arrests were made of journalists and activists, like the NYC group I-Witness Video, which gained renown when they used video footage to expose police misconduct and perjury at the 2004 RNC, consequently overturning hundreds of arrests on video evidence. Needless to say, they're not on the Convention's good side, affirmed when police broke into their house from the neighboring duplex on a fishy warrant in order to intimidate and detain them.

  While we're thankful every day for the civil liberties we do have as Americans, we can't help but think, doesn't this whole 'intimidating and arresting journalists who are documenting dissent' thing sound eerily familiar? Beijing Olympics, anyone?

  Photo: Did this happen in Denver? We must have been too busy composting to notice.

  UPDATE: Retrospective report: Protesters at the DNC weren't spared; Amy Goodman herself reported from the convention on 91 arrests and some pepper-spray action.

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  Posted on September 2, 2008 by - alexandra_m

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  Culture

  

  Strange Fruit

  Last Wednesday was Spain's over-ripe tomato food-fight festival, Tomatino. Sad, you missed it, but you can still look at photos, which are somewhere between slapstick and cultural phenomemon.

  In the meantime, plan ahead, and maybe you can catch a different but equally fascinating and incredibly bizarre festival—for example, El Colacho, the baby-jumping festival, where people (can you guess?) jump over babies. Or Up Helly-Aa, which revolves around annually incinerating a 32-foot Viking longship replica. Or the most aesthetically pleasing, Holi, Hindu festival of colors, where people spend a day dousing each other with colored powders and water... far easier on the eyes than a bunch of Spaniards rolling in vegetable juice.

  Via WebEcoist; photo via Espacioblog

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  Posted on September 1, 2008 by - alexandra_m

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  Magazine

  

  Holden On

  Anne Trubek, english professor at Oberlin College, fielded questions about Catcher in the Rye on NPR this weekend. She defended her suggestion in the current issue of GOOD to update the country's standard required reading list and dethrone Catcher from its position as the quintessential adolescent angst and alienation novel.

  While it's a classic, sure, Trubek points out that a novel about an upper-middle class white brat at prep school no longer represents the universal voice of American teens. And she tacks on The Perks of Being a Wallflower to her list of suggestions for a replacement in the literature curriculum.

  Photo: a 1950s portrait of J.D. Salinger, who has nothing to say on the matter, since he's not been interviewed since 1980.

  Thanks Maddie!

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  Posted on September 1, 2008 by - alexandra_m

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  Magazine

  

  GOOD Weekend

  As we post, New Orleans will spend its Labor Day is carrying out its second mandatory evacuation in three years, in anticipation of Gustav.

  But the Gulf isn't alone in navigating natural disasters this weekend—Richter 6.1 earthquakes rocked both China and Vancouver.

  In the thrilling world of politics and modern technology, Wikipedia creates some controversy for McCain and his VP pick. Or, some additional controversy anyway.

  And thankfully, China released the Americans they'd detained after protesting at the Olympics; New Yorker James Powderly discusses his interrogation, and the hacking of his bank account.

  Photo: Republican VP nomination Sarah Palin from Alaska, a state with a total population smaller than that of Baltimore.

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  Posted on August 31, 2008 by - alexandra_m

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  Living

  

  Three Years After Katrina

  Anniversaries are a time for celebrating how we've grown, acknowledging the distances we've traversed, congratulating each other for the obstacles over which we've prevailed.

  But as we mark the third year after Hurricane Katrina made landfall on New Orleans, the words "progress" and "growth" aren't being thrown around too loosely. With good reason. The words scandal and struggle, however, are still in heavy use. And in the midst of all this looking back, the city is busy bracing itself for Gustav. Here's hope against hope that one of the biggest disasters in American history was a learning experience to help it weather yet another storm.

  Photo: Garrett Sussman outside his home two months after Katrina, by Alex

  UPDATE: In the meantime, to stave off pessimism, which has never solved anything, here's a list of 100 of the good things that have happened in New Orleans since Katrina.

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  Posted on August 29, 2008 by - alexandra_m

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  Culture

  

  Indie-pendant Party

  Another good thing about Obama: the music.

  Last night in Denver, Mayor Gavin Newsom reminded us he was really really cool by organizing a legendary indie-rock bash for "young democrats," with a line-up featuring Nada Surf, Cold War Kids, Silversun Pickups and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and climaxing with a superband consisting of Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard, Zooey Deschanel (performing as She & Him minus M. Ward), Jonathan Rice, and Jenny Lewis (of Rilo Kiley, the Watson Twins, and in her younger days, The Wizard) playing subtly political or hopeful recycled material. Comedienne Sarah Silverman was also present, to open the event with some no-doubt insightful ruminations on the convention.

  Any guesses as to whom will rock the RNC? As McCain is such an Usher fan, we'll be interested to see.

  Via Stereogum

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  Posted on August 29, 2008 by - alexandra_m

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  Politics

  

  What's Red Or Blue, And Green All Over

  The DNC and the RNC are respectively making efforts to be the greenest national political conventions in history.

  The DNC isn't just running their cars on biofuel (beer); among a slew of Green practices in place this week in Denver, organizers are aiming to keep 85% of the convention's waste out of landfills by recycling, encouraging its 50,000 attendees to compost. 900 volunteers on hand to undertake explaining to people exactly how that's supposed to happen.

  And over at the RNC, organizers and politicians will be doing a lot of walking, and using old furniture, while their spokespeople remind us that "The Republican Party is home to Theodore Roosevelt who was the first American president to consider the long-term needs for efficient conservation of natural resources."

  Photo via flickr: Back in DC, reps asked convention-goers to ride bikes instead of drive.

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  Posted on August 28, 2008 by - alexandra_m

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  Politics

  response to  Morgan Clendaniel's post Lame McCain The Same

  A picture's worth a thousand words.

  "Does This Look Like Change To You?"...
  Pretty excellent billboard going up in Minneapolis, courtesy of the DNC: Too bad this image couldn't just be the slogan. It says it all.

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  Commented on August 28, 2008 by - alexandra_m

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  Environment

  

  That Sinking Feeling

  Sinkholes are the result of water eating away bedrock and soil underground, causing the earth to drop out from under itself in vast depressions or gaping chasms.
  
  They can form gradually (like that of Berezniki, Russia) or very suddenly (last year in Guatemala City). It's unclear why there aren't more apocalyptic horror films about this sort of event. As evidenced by this collection of images of 13 of the most intense sinkholes on earth, they're terrifying and strange enough in real life.
  
  Photo: Sinkhole in Florida
  
  Via Neatorama

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  Posted on August 28, 2008 by - alexandra_m

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  Technology

  

  Talk To The Hand

  In the days of yore (1989 to be exact), we saw the inception of Mattel's NES controller The Power Glove, the two-decades-old predecessor to the Wii remote, and the choice accoutrement of the antagonist from classic game-nerd film The Wizard ("I love the Power Glove. It's so bad!").

  And a good measure of scientific progress is holding it up to its modern comparison: Today, Georgia Tech researchers are developing the next next generation of remote control technology—a tongue-controlled touch-pad. It's been called "grotesque," but obviously harnesses vast potential for paralytics—users could conceivably manipulate their surroundings entirely by moving their tongue. [Superfluous sexual innuendo omitted.] But there's much work yet to be done, one of the biggest challenges being to trim down the accompanying headgear, which, apparently, "looks like a prop from a 1980s movie."

  Image: From hand to mouth in 20 short years.

  Thanks Timmy

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  Posted on August 27, 2008 by - alexandra_m

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  Culture

  

  Nuclear Warhead + Paper Clip = Problem Solved By MacGyver

  We were bowled over by a wave of shameless nostalgia mixed with a renewed sense of awe when we came across this very extensive (but not yet entirely comprehensive) List of Problems Solved by MacGyver.

  You likely remember the show—or its re-runs, sandwiched between "The Brady Bunch" and "Saved By the Bell" on afternoon TV in the early to mid-90s—"24" meets "How Stuff Works" but with more outstanding hairdo... And the above wiki link lets us relive the magic (ahem, science) without the 22 minutes of plot-driven drama per episode: "MacGyver plugs a sulfuric acid leak with chocolate." "MacGyver fixes a broken fuel line with a ball point pen." "MacGyver attaches the torso of a suit of armor onto the top of a food trolley, and then attaches a makeshift motor with a battery pack and an electric whisk." All with details as to precisely how, and whether it would actually work. Riveting and practical.

  If you don't have time for the wiki, just enjoy this one-minute twelve-second theme-songed montage.

  Image: Richard Dean Anderson doing something remarkable and likely proven possible by Mythbusters.

  Via kottke

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  Posted on August 27, 2008 by - alexandra_m

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  Culture

  

  God Fetish

  "You really think all nuns are old, stunted and sad? This isn't the case anymore," says one Italian Father Antonio Rungi. And to prove this to the world, he's organizing a nuns-only beauty pageant. The sure-to-be-controversial "Miss Sister Italy" online contest will commence on this priest's blog next month.

  This is an even better marketing idea than the summer's inflatable confession booths on beaches. Though the marriage of beach mass and hot nuns (despite that Rungi specifically said, "We are not going to parade nuns in bathing suits") does sound like the answer to a lot of repressed Catholics' prayers...

  Via Neatorama

  UPDATE: Canceled! Apparently the guys at the top weren't into the Sister Italy idea. Nuns will have to find some other way to showcase their hotness for now.

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  Posted on August 26, 2008 by - alexandra_m

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  Politics

  

  Meet Joe Biden

  To complement GOOD's on-the-ground coverage at the both national conventions, here's a little background on Obama's VP pick. Vanity Fair's Todd S. Purdum and Dee Dee Myers compiled a quick list of "Ten Things You Need To Know About Joe Biden" if you don't know already.

  That ten does not count his winning smile or the friendly asymmetry of his eyes. But it definitely does include a little background on his modest upbringing, his extensive senate experience, his brain aneurysms, and his few-hundred-thousand-dollar personal debt. No handful of multi-million dollar homes to see here, folks.

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  Posted on August 26, 2008 by - alexandra_m

• 1 vote

  Education

  

  The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.

  We noticed this plagued Kottke the other day, and we knew there was a word for it...

  The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is the experience of learning about a word, fact, phrase, or, perhaps, a certain phenomemon for the first time, and then encountering it again soon after.

  It's named after a prominent military left-wing group in postwar West Germany, the Baader Meinhof Group also known as the Red Army Faction, and coined by a reader of the St. Paul Pioneer Press who came across the group's name a couple times in a row and thought 'my goodness, what a... phenomenon.'

  Is it a déjà vu-esque parapsychological event? Evidence of selective attention? Cognitive bias consequent of the recency effect? Or, maybe, just a big coincidence?

  Who knows. But next time it comes up, which it very well may in the next, say, day or two, you'll have the details.

  Thanks Ash "Blackberry" Bennington

  Illustration from S.R. Wells' "New Descriptive Chart," ca. 1869, via Huntington Library

  Comments (1)

  Posted on August 26, 2008 by - alexandra_m

• Choose GOOD Video Spot By Tim And Khushboo

  Authored by Andrew Price - 1 vote

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  Science

  

  Seis Matters

  Not that New Yorkers aren't accustomed to the ground shaking—especially in cheap apartments near the J train. But the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America has effectively reminded us that the 125th St. fault line isn't a cross-town express.

  New research illuminates that the area around NYC is a braid of small fault lines, the added risk of which is greater than previously thought. Scientists say a major quake every century is likely—the last major event was a magnitude 5.2 quake occurred in 1884, off the shore of Far Rockaway, which brought chimneys down and shook the ground Virginia to Maine. But in the past 120 years, only smaller quakes (a handful of 2.0s on the Richter scale) have shaken the city.

  Unlike the seasoned neighbors of the San Andreas in L.A., the infrastructure in NYC isn't intentionally quake-proof, so rattling the Big Apple could really bring the house down. It could also shake things up at the Indian Point nuclear power plant, just north of the city, which, it turns out, was built on a newly-identified seismic zone.

  Hard to imagine sheer acts of nature shaking the nation's biggest metropolis, but after—as unlikely as it seemed— a tornado went tearing through Brooklyn last summer, this earthquake talk might have New Yorkers bracing themselves.

  Via BLDG Blog

  Comments (0)

  Posted on August 25, 2008 by - alexandra_m

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  Magazine

  

  GOOD Weekend

  The 2008 Olympics are over. China took 100 medals, and the NY Times blogs live from the closing ceremony, relaying the performances Olympians, dancers, David Beckham, Jimmy Page.

  Elsewhere across the ocean: the Afghan president calls for accountability in an air strike that killed 89 civilians, and the death toll from the Madrid runway crash keeps rising, to 154.

  A little uplifting news: the U.S. navy arrives in Georgia to deliver humanitarian aid.

  Stateside: Fay moved on from Florida, never having graduated from tropical storm to hurricane status, but still taking 11 lives and bringing new meaning to "raining cats and dogs" when it sprung a lion and a bengal tiger from their cages at a Florida zoo.

  In a moment of staggering unpreparedness, John McCain was caught by the press not knowing how many homes he owns, which you'd think he would've looked into after Brave New Films released that video about his ten multi-million dollar homes last week. (Note: This info will help you further balance out the effects of Obama Fatigue.)

  And, in a hostage situation at a Maryland hotel, police employed some high-tech new negotiation tactics, sending a robot to liaise with a burglary suspect; this backfired when the suspect threatened the robot's... uh... "life." (via Boing Boing)

  Photo: Beijing's closing ceremony, the Memory Tower, ringed in 396 performers.

  Comments (0)

  Posted on August 24, 2008 by - alexandra_m