Michael Pollan Speaks on the economies of food

Michael Pollan, author of one of my favorite books,
"The Botany of Desire", Examining the tulip, potato, cannabis, and apple, Pollan studies the relationship between people and the natural world through the history of four plants. He now has a new book called "The Omnivores Dillema", where he explores the implications of modern society's cornucopia of food choices on our health and the health of the planet.

Wednesday, April 26, we saw him speak at the Herbst Theater's City Arts and Lectures Series.

Some notes from this:

• The Slow Food Movement - runs counter to fast food ideas. Makes a case for eating locally produced foods by taking the time to enjoy your food.
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Flip Book Animation Festival? Right on! & Stitchilicious

Of course there should be a flipbook animation festival!
http://www.flipbookfestival.com/

Great place to learn to sew in SF.
http://stitchlounge.com/

Maker Faire makes for good fun

John, Toby Rene and I went to the Maker Faire yesterday. Turned out to be a great time.

Some of the coolest things we saw:

• Shannon O'hare :: Extremely interesting guy working over at the Shipyard building a victorian styled moving house for the playa this year.
  
• Frogwatch :: http://www.nwf.org/frogwatchUSA/ Frogwatch USA is a frog and toad monitoring program that gives YOU the opportunity to help scientists conserve amphibians!
• Because we can :: http://becausewecan.org/ A couple located in Oakland who created a design and production company using an automated CNC fabrication techniques. You bring the ideas, and they'll produce them for you.
• IPswap :: Have an idea for improving your mp3 player, cellphone, pda, etc? Join this community. Post your idea, choose a developer, negotiate terms and make beautiful software together. They've got about 200 developers right now and virtually no community yet, but then, they've just begun.
• Blurb :: For $29.99, you can upload your pix and text and create a real book. The books i saw were very high quality. I met with Samuel Leshnick (sr. designer) who walked me through their process... they've just started off and they haven't released their first product yet (due out in may)
• Eccentric Genius :: Kaden of eccentric genius ...er he is the eccentric genius, describing himself as, "I build antiques from...er...somewhere else. A parallel universe where Leonardo Da Vinci, John Cleese and Jimmy Neutron spend every Tuesday night playing poker with Sherlock Holmes, and the Victorian era 'gentleman inventor' still toils diligently in his potting shed laboratory." He builds everyday modern things based on victorian technologies. Like a guilentine carrot chopper.
• Monome :: Honestly, i still am not sure i understand what this is all about. it seems to be another way to interface with a program.
• Alavs : Autonomous Light Air Vessels :: Through a defined research process we designed objects that behave and respond in specific ways and are part of a networked system that emphasizes autonomous and flocking behavior. There are two main components: feeding and flocking. Somehow this is connected to The Art Center in Pasadena, Ca.
• CalCars :: CalCars is a non-profit startup formed by entrepreneurs, engineers, environmentalists and consumers. Our projects tackle national security, jobs and global warming -- at the same time. We promote plug-in hybrids (PHEVs). PHEVs are like regular hybrids but with larger batteries and the ability to re-charge from a standard outlet (mostly at night). They're the best of both worlds: local travel is electric, yet the vehicle has unlimited gasoline range.
• Onomylabs Inc. :: They're building new ways to interact with visuals. With a table that can be spun, rotated, moved up and down allowing you to interact with the images on the table. This was interesting to a limited degree. I find that Reactrix makes a more interesting way to interact tangibly with images.
• Phill Ross : Artist :: The artworks he makes are created through the design and construction of controlled environmental spaces. In these environments he nurtures and transforms a variety of living species into sculptural artifacts, much as one might train the growth of a Bonsai tree. Wacky musrooms and biospheres in sealed glass.
• Technical Video Rental :: Rent movies on technical or artsy crafty stuff.
• http://www.jenine.net :: This woman makes insanely beautiful glass beads and then strings them into a very large neck piece! They're gorgeous.
  

Things in Miniature

The Art Institute of Chicago's Thorne Miniature rooms

Greatest Natural History Museums of all time

The greatest natural history museums of all time due to their fantastic dioramas, and things in bottles. :)






















The Milwaukee Public Museum

The history of the museum on their site states:
"The tradition of innovative exhibits, dubbed "The Milwaukee Style," began with the work of Carl Akeley, the "father" of modern taxidermy who started his career in Milwaukee. Although others had included props and backgrounds in cases holding taxidermy specimens, Akeley's muskrat colony, completed in 1890, is considered the museum world's first total habitat diorama."

On their website, be sure to check out their "Exhibitions" section. I particularly love the section entitled "Sense of wonder" which features "More than 1,000 rarely seen specimens from the Museum's collection of 6 million are displayed, ranging in size from a pine cone seed to a 36-foot-long skeleton of a Humpback Whale."

The Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury, Vt.

John and I visited the Fairbanks Museum in 2004, and it was as if it hadn't been touched in 100 years. A fantastic example of Victorian curiosity, collecting and museum exhibition of that era.

On our trip to St. Johnsbury, we also visited The St. Johnsbury Athenaeum a library and art gallery.

The Field Museum of Chicago
This was once the mecca of museums, and in part still remains so. Though many collections have given way to the 'discovery museum' style of curation.

Victorian Age has it's curiosities

Victorian Parlors
"The typical parlour, which, to our way of thinking, was a chaotic arrangement, was crammed to capacity with furniture and ornaments. Leaders of popular taste suggested that this room lent itself to ornamentation more than any other mainly because it offered hospitality and amusement. The objects which it contained advertised lifestyle and social status."

Victorian age literature was influenced by the 'information technology' of the time and became more picturesque.
"At the same time, developments in visual technology made it possible to see more and in new ways. Nineteenth century optical devices, creating illusions of various sorts, were invented near the beginning of the century: the thaumatrope, the phenakistoscope, the zoetrope, the stroboscope, the kaleidoscope, the diorama, and the stereoscope. Other inventions — such as the camera lucida, the graphic telescope, the binocular telescope, the binocular microscope, the stereopticon, and the kinetoscope — projected, recorded, or magnified images. Most important, the photographic camera provided an entirely new way of recording objects and people and transformed many areas of life and work."

The diorama provided people with new and more realistic ways of illustrating worlds many would not see personally. Site devoted to the collection of the victorian diorama.
International Committee for museums and collections of natural history

The Centre for Victorian Studies Resources on victorian age items

Showbooks and Optical Toys from EVE the virtual exhibition

Project Guttenberg

Project Guttenberg

I found this very cool site that hosts a 18,000 book collection online where you can download books - some of them very rare!

I found a book that was mentioned in Orchid Fever called:

The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay by Arthur Phillip

Published in 1789

Ashes and Snow

In February, John and I visited this photography show traveling in a cargo container cathedral that had arrived in Santa Monica.

Ashes and Snow

Great Quotes - Mark Twain

"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."
"Don't let schooling interfere with your education."
"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."
"Golf is a good walk spoiled."
"Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with."
"I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell - you see, I have friends in both places."
"It is easier to stay out than get out."
"It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense."
"Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul."
"Man - a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired."
"Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins."
"Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident."
"Necessity is the mother of taking chances."
"Such is the human race, often it seems a pity that Noah... didn't miss the boat."
"Once you've put one of his [Henry James] books down, you simply can't pick it up again."
"Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
"The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time."
"The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice."
More quotes

Great Quotes - Rudyard Kipling

"San Francisco is a mad city - inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people whose women are of a remarkable beauty."

"For the female of the species is more deadly than the male."

Get more quotes

Orchid Fever

Just finished reading the book:


ORCHID FEVER
A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust, and Lunacy
by Eric Hansen

A fabulously enjoyable read about the fanaticism of orchid collecting and the bizarre 'conservation' policies set forth by CITES.








Some interesting items mentioned in his book:

• Grammatophyllum Speciosum - the largest orchid species. This epiphyte weighs 1/2 ton and can be 40' circumfrence
  
• Sphagnum Moss Strip Mining
• The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay by Arthur Phillip Published in 1789
• Kew Gardens of London
  
• Sir Joseph Banks - the botonist who accompanied Cook on his voyages and would eventually start Kew Gardens
• Dr. Gunnar Seidenfaden Danish diplomat, explorer, naturalist, and expert in tropical Asiatic orchids died on 9 February 2001
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad published 1902