Another round of animation from my daughter Danielle courtesy of Penciltopia:
The interesting thing is that Ian, the teaching artist for the class, loves a certain kind of clay for these animations. And that clay is no longer made. It’s become a real issue, trying to find a really good substitute.
Anyway, enjoy some 4th grade animation…
A repost of a classic 37signals post. Most wisdom doesn’t age…
John Cleese does a 30 minute discussion on creativity. Now if you had no idea who John Cleese was, this would come off initially as a corporate lecture. Then you’d notice the humor. And then you’d realize that despite the British deadpan (or perhaps because of it) he’s dead on.
It’s 30 minutes, so make sure you have time. But if you really want some advice on being creative, make the time.
Or if you don’t have time, just watch this:
Actually, it’s not, it just sounds like it. It’s CIO.com, a web site for Chief Information Officers. The headline:
I’d rather read The Onion, it’s more accurate…
At the Kennedy Center Honors celebrating Led Zeppelin, Heart performed Stairway to Heaven with a full choir and orchestra. You see the reaction from the members of Led Zeppelin in attendance.
You may need to be old to appreciate this, but wow:
If you want to see Led Zeppelin performing this live almost 40 years ago:
From the NY Times, a story about a government audit of ARPANet, the forerunner to the internet.
Dr. Hart, it says here that you’ve received 2,493,786,916 packets of bits. Is that correct?
And did all the packets arrive in good condition? Was there any corrosion or tarnish on any of the packets?
The NY Times does some great interactive web graphics. But this is the coolest thing I’ve seen. Read the story, but if nothing else just scroll down to see the amazing design. The mountain fly-over in the middle of the story is awesome. Talk about making a story come alive…
As a jazz fan with daughters 10 and 6 years old, my playlist is not typically the popular one. The sole exception is around Christmas. I have the best Christmas music.
I would argue that simply having the Ella Fitzgerald Swinging Christmas Album dramatically improves your holiday playlist. Add some Diana Krall, Nat King Cole and some classics by Eartha Kitt (Santa Baby), The Pointer Sisters (Santa Clause is Coming to Town), Springsteen (Merry Christmas Baby), Mellencamp (I saw Mommy Kissing Santa) and a few others, and you have some serious Christmas music.
So that playlist has been going like crazy the past week.
In 4th Grade, Danielle is reading more non-fiction, particularly biographies. She just finished one on Elvis. So I said, “wait, I have a Christmas song by him” (Here comes Santa Claus). She likes it but says, “I thought he was more rock and roll”.
Well, it’s not in the Christmas playlist, but I do have the album they released with all Elvis’s #1 hits. So I crank out Heartbreak Hotel, Hound Dog and Jailhouse Rock.
Picture me and my two daughters dancing crazily on a Tuesday night to Elvis Presley music released before I was born. It really doesn’t get any better…
That seems to be the gun lobby’s response to Newtown. Guns aren’t the issue, video games are.
Here’s an interesting graph:
Courtesy of Barry Ritholtz of The Big Picture.
The vertical axis is guns per 100 people. The horizontal axis is homicides-by-guns per 100,000 people. That light green dot in the upper right corner is the United States.
Now I’ll be the first to say that correlation doesn’t prove causation, but we appear to be a bit of an outlier.
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