This Old Blog

Crappy, but clean, art What you're looking at is a cheap plastic pan that you can pick up at any Lowes or Home Depot, surrounded by equally cheap lumber that can be picked up at the same locations. What makes this particularly cheap plastic piece unique is that it is a part of a contemporary art [sic] "installation" in Germany titled "When the Roof Begins to Leak" by German artist Martin Kippenberger . It's unfortunate he died at the age of 44 in 1997, or he might have been around to stop a cleaning woman from cleaning part of his "installation" and thus ruining what is valued as a $1 million work of art [sic]. A tall pile of artistic crap It should be noted that the hired help "was unaware of museum rules prohibiting cleaning staff getting with 20 centimetres of pieces or art." That's what you get when you pay minimum €uro for your cleaning help, and fail to invest in decent art education capable of training the hoi polloi...

I live in Florida where the unemployment rate hit 12% in December of last year. As of June it stands at 10.6%, while the national unemployment rate is 9.2%. Meanwhile, political brinkmanship continues in Washington between Republicans and Democrats over raising the debt ceiling and thus allowing the U.S. to continue limping along economically. Listening to and reading the news, it would appear we have only a few more days before we as a nation officially default. The last Borders going out of business in Tallahassee As I travel from Orlando to Tallahassee and back I see more and more empty buildings where there used to be businesses, or buildings about to become empty. As bad as our economy has become, I wonder how much worse it could get post-default. I can't wait to find out. An empty former Blockbuster in Orlando So while we're all waiting for economic Armageddon to officially arrive August 2nd, here's a cheerful little ditty to help us keep our spirits up. I...

Ω Δ Θ Ars Technica has an article stating that the current carbon emissions "dwarf" those the last time the Earth experienced such emissions 56 million years ago. According to the article, while the total quantity matches what was released, the rate of CO 2 emission today is 10 times greater than what it was during the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM. The article's conclusion is the most interesting: "we are altering our environment in an unprecedented (and unpredictable) way." I think the results are going to be predictable in the sense that our world is going to change so rapidly and drastically over the next few decades into a world that it will make the world we were living in before the twentieth century look like paradise. We already live in empty sprawling environments where all that's left at our feet is concrete, asphalt, and the litter of our society. In spite of the current economic mess we're in, our numbers and our corrupt...