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January 27 2012
Dutch drum maestro Han Bennink plays a drumkit made of cheese.
Bennink drums cheese 2 (by squiddity of toronto)
January 26 2012
Totally delightful. Here to hear my friend Nathan talk about his new book _What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank_. (Taken with instagram)
January 25 2012
January 24 2012
“ The insular cortex of the brain, he argues, is the area of our brains where we become our ‘sentient selves,’ consciously aware of the emotions connected to our internal bodily states. It is the core brain region where our sense of being a body gripped by good or bad feelings emerges moment to moment, alone and in complex social interactions with others. And remarkably, Caltech’s Allman proposes, the emotional logic ‘evolved out of the neural circuitry that gave us the ability to make food-relation decisions’–-the circuitry of taste, in other words, is at the core of how we emotionally experience the world around us. ”— “The (Neurobiological) Sweet Spot,” Geoffrey Montgomery in Lucky Peach, Issue 2, Fall/Winter 2011. (via getladle)
And here’s the number itself. Ann Miller can really tap.
Ann Miller in a Busby Berkeley-choreographed dance sequence from Small Town Girl (1953, dir. László Kardos) (via)
Oh, Busby Berkeley.
Mmm, oxford commas
Use it, don’t abuse it.
January 22 2012
Traveling up and down the Australian coast, looking for places to let our creativity run wild, through the art of Parkour. See, unlike most sports, this one in particular, lets us express our essence. It’s unlike anything, yet it makes us who we are; it shows our true colours and it’s a fun way to get around. But here, he symbolized the true meaning of freedom, what it really means to embrace life at its peak without the safety belt.
— By Maxim Quirk (from “Open Theme”)
Submit now to Pictory’s Open Themes
Honestly I do not know where.
Book no.1, my Dante biography. This book was written in Italian, and so I decided that I wanted to represent the fact that as I only speak English, I could not understand this book. If I needed to try and decipher it, I’d have to go through it and pick out any English words I recognised. So using a scalpel I removed all of the text on the page bar the English words.
January 19 2012
Many of you have asked, so here’s what’s going on with me.
WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE
- 8/1979: Born. Grew up in CT, built a killer eraser collection, fell in love with computers.
- Left college to start a company. Fell hard. Fled to India for 3 months.
- Started 2nd company. Learned to be an adult. Fell in love with NYC.
- Moved to SF, discovered burritos & some of my fave people on Earth.
- 9/2011: Got diagnosed with Leukemia!
- Cried. Went through 3 cycles of chemo. Hurt. Thought hard about what I want out of life. Grew up a second time.
TODAY
… After over 100 drives organized by friends, family, and strangers, celebrity call-outs, a bazillion reblogs (7000+!), tweets, and Facebook posts, press, fundraising and international drives organized by tireless friends, and a couple painful false starts, I’ve got a 10/10 matched donor!
You all literally helped save my life. (And the lives of many others.)
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
Tomorrow, I’ll be admitted to Dana Farber in Boston for 4-5 weeks.
First I’ll get a second Hickman line to allow direct access to my heart (for meds and for nutrients if I’m not able to eat). Over the next week, the docs blast my body with a stiff chemo cocktail to try and eradicate all traces of cancer cells. In the process, the immune system I was born with, and my body’s ability to make blood, are destroyed.
Next Friday, I get my donor’s stem cells by IV. I start on immunosuppressants to prevent my body from rejecting them (I’ll be on them for 12-18 months). For these weeks I’ve no immune system, so I’m severely vulnerable to viruses and bacteria. My hospital room and hallway become my world.
Meanwhile, the stem cells make their way to my bone marrow and, with some luck, start producing platelets, red blood cells, and white blood cells. At this point, my blood type changes to the blood type of my donor. And my blood will now have my donor’s DNA, not my own.
This is science fiction stuff. I can hardly believe it’s even possible, and there’s lots of chances for things to go wrong. It’s frightening.
AFTER THE TRANSPLANT
Recovery to a new state of “normal” takes about a year, but there’s a few storm clouds hovering:
- My immune system is new, like a baby’s. I’m prone to getting sick.
- Just as with any organ transplant, there’s a chance of rejection. Except in this case, it’s my blood that’s the foreign body, and it touches every organ. They call it graft-vs-host-disease and it can cause health issues and organ complications for the rest of my life.
- Successful transplant or not, Leukemia can relapse. Stubborn mofo.
Overall, 75% of AML transplant patients survive year one, 50% make it through year five. My odds are a little better since I’m young.
THE GREAT NEWS
I’ve got a long road ahead. But I’ve got a donor & amazing family & friends. A few months ago I didn’t have many options. Today I have a plan.
I am alive. I start tomorrow. Wish me luck!
Thank you.
January 16 2012
Where did “snark” come from? Original illustrations from Lewis Carroll’s “The Hunting of the Snark,” 1876.
January 15 2012
Boda Boda loaded with a passenger and chicken. Kampala, Uganda.
Photograph by gipukan (rob gipman)
Is there anything we Africans can’t do?
See also: transporting your product to market.
January 14 2012
Yves Saint Laurent dress photographed by David Bailey.
French Vogue, 1967.
This is my outfit for every day of 2012. You’ve been warned.
January 11 2012
January 10 2012
2011: the best of a lesser year
As my friend Fil put it yesterday, 2011 had such great heights. And all of the valleys that accompany the peaks. These were my favorite moments of the year, in chronological order:
The year started beautifully in Miami, on hammocks.
February brought a circle of friends to begin the New Year of the Rabbit with Chinese tea eggs, boiled soft, then steeped in tea to reveal, upon cracking, marbleized interiors.
Just after my March birthday, K and I flew from chilly New York to Barcelona,
the city of Gaudi architecture, and this strange and wonderful cathedral, eternally being built.
My year was to look like this roof on the Santa Caterina Market,
but I didn’t know that yet.
We were then to Cannes, with its crêpes and cider, and my first time with Margalet cheese from the Ceneri cheese shop,
and to the famed La Colombe D’Or.
In the late spring, I joined the designer coworking space Studiomates and dressed all in purple for our Rainbow Parade.Image by Erin Sparling.
May was also my first crawfish boil, part of a road trip that included an amazing family in Madison, Mississippi, who boiled 335 pounds of crawfish.
I was overwhelmed with the abundance of food and the hospitality. To eat a crawfish correctly, you pinch the head and then, well, they chalked instructions for those of us shyer in handling crustaceans.
The weekend helped me remember my steel magnolia roots as I headed back to Atlanta to visit my mother.
June was my sister Kassandra’s wedding,
and this image taken by my sister Kat sums up my role as co-Maid of Honor, chasing down rogue antebellum sunshades in front of a historic plantation. I wrote a Fast Company piece about our use of tech during the wedding week.
But then, all the bridesmaids took our role seriously.
Image by Courtney Rosen.
Late June, K and I traveled to Amsterdam and spent time with wonderful friends Matt and Maia, piloting their boat through afternoon thunderstorms to discover bitterballen,
seeking out herring in season (Hollandse Nieuwe) at special stands, and spending time in our friend Gary’s magnificent kitchen.
We took a day trip to Cologne, with its cathedral and love locks.
From there: London in early July, with so many friends we forgot to take pictures. I remembered to bring the camera for a weekend in a 13th Century country house my dear friend Will engaged for a long weekend.
Shockingly, we spent the time eating the region’s renowned clotted cream,
preparing elaborate meals we took to eating outside,
and touring walled gardens.
I told an Ignite NYC audience why quitting a Ph.D. is the best possible option for some:
In early August, friends from graduate school Andrew and Annie announced they would be married in a week, and I filled the gas tank to drive to Chapel Hill, North Carolina and record the celebration. You see how they do things their own way, with great success. The bride wore blue.
And continuing my drive back up the coast, my friend Keryn let me pretend I lived in Maine for a week or so, opening her house and barn, as she always does. There were ferries and sunflowers and islands to see before returning to New York to teach my graduate class at ITP.
The fall brought considerable moments of quiet, struggles for professional growth as my consulting expanded, and the launch of my food magazine, Saucy.
In November, my sister Kat and I arrived in a former convent in Oaxaca, timing our trip to catch the end of the Day of the Dead celebrations, marvel at the Placido Domingo, puzzle over hand-drawn maps while bartenders poured local mezcal. We relaxed into chilaquiles and chocolate oaxacaquena con leche, then Baja fish tacos in Puerto Escondito. I will not forget the street vendor who drew a Sunday night crowd, pressing squash blossoms into tortillas she rolled out and grilled with Oaxacan string cheese. We traveled to visit my friend David in Mexico City and the Templo Mayor, the center of the Aztec universe. And Kat shared a Portland recipe, filling morels from the mushroom vendor at a local market.
Returning refreshed to NY, I shared my story about delivering bread in the early mornings of last winter, opening the TEDxEast November salon.
K and I began December in the tropical rainforest of Saba, a small Caribbean island with the shortest airport runway in the world. It was a perfect, and perfectly beautiful vacation.
Here’s to a spectacular 2012!
Related posts:
January 08 2012
There’s a French word for someone who’s self-reliant or ingenious: débrouillard. This got sort of mutated in the postcolonial areas of Africa and the Caribbean to refer to the street economy, which is called l’économie de la débrouillardise—the self-reliance economy, or the DIY economy, if you will. I decided to use this term myself—shortening it to System D—because it’s a less pejorative way of referring to what has traditionally been called the informal economy or black market or even underground economy. I’m basically using the term to refer to all the economic activity that flies under the radar of government. So, unregistered, unregulated, untaxed, but not outright criminal—I don’t include gun-running, drugs, human trafficking, or things like that. […]
Procter & Gamble, for instance, realized that although Walmart is its single largest customer, System D outposts, when you total them up, actually account for more business. So Procter & Gamble decided to get its products into those stores. In each country, P&G hires a local distributor—sometimes several layers of local distributors—to get the product from a legal, formal, tax-paying company to a company willing to deal with unlicensed vendors who don’t pay taxes. That’s how Procter & Gamble gets Downy fabric softener, Tide laundry detergent, and all manner of other goods into the squatter communities of the developing world. Today, in aggregate, these markets make up the largest percentage of the company’s sales worldwide.
Why Black Market Entrepreneurs Matter to the World Economy | Magazine, via complexdays
January 07 2012
kthread spins: this will be
This podcast is for my sister Kat, an early birthday present. I took this picture of her in December, when we agreed to make the year ahead count. One of my resolutions is to put a new podcast up every month. Remind me if I forget, okay?
More kthread spins.
Playlist:
“Up Up Up” – The Givers
“Shuffle” – Bombay Bicycle Club
“Colours” (Teen Daze remix) – Young Liars
“Let’s Groove” – Teen Daze remix
“Milk” (Amusement remix) – Theme Park
“Baby I’m Yours” – Breakbot remix
“Sodapop’s Blooze” – Black Oil Brothers
“Steady Steady” – North Highlands
“When We First Kissed” – Hellogoodbye
“Serpents” – Sharon Van Etten
“Video Games” – Bombay Bicycle Club (Lana Del Ray cover)
“This Will Be Our Year” – Memoryhouse (The Zombies cover)
“Youth” – Daughter
Related posts:
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