mbf tod@y

Silvio Berlusconi on George Bush

"One time, Bush told me that it is reasonable to have doubts, but not to have so many doubts that you cannot make a decision. It's up to historians to judge his presidency, but whatever fate history holds for him, I am sure that George W. Bush will be remembered as a leader of ideals, courage and sincerity. Personally, I will always remember him as a friend, a true man who loves his family, understands the meaning of friendship and is grateful toward America's allies around the world." (Silvio Berlusconi, Time)

Thanks to B. for the tip = this is the kind of things I would normally try to escape, but nightmares can become reality and what that happens, you just need to face them, right?

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Bruce Sterling on Innovation (March 31, 2007)

Bruce Sterling from Innovationsforum on Vimeo.

How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse

"So you're probably better off with a conventional firearm. At least this is one area where we are spared the interminable debate of 9mm v .45 handguns and 5.56mm v 7.62mm. Unlike living humans, stopping power counts for nothing as far as zombies go; it's all about shot placement. (And reliability – take at least one back-up gun in case you get a jam or run out of ammo at a bad time.) Anything larger than a .22 will do the job, so long as you're capable of putting a round squarely though the head. And this is very much harder than you think." (David Hambling, Wired)

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The Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium: Kota Ezawa

April 7, 2008 | 7:30pm | 160 Kroeber Hall UC Berkeley, California

 

Text, Slides and Videotapes 

 

Kota Ezawa, Artist, California College of the Arts

 

The Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium of the Berkeley Center for New Media presents a talk by the artist Kota Ezawa. Kota Ezawa's practice re-considers images from art-history and popular culture in animated videos, slide projections, lightboxes, collages and prints. His work has been shown is solo exhibitions at Hayward Gallery in London, Artpace in San Antonio, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Murray Guy Gallery in New York and Haines Gallery in San Francisco. He participated in exhibitions at Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, SF MoMA, the Andy Warhol Museum and Musie d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Ezawa is an Assistant Professor of Media Arts at the California College of the Arts.

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Things You Should Not Miss at CCA SF

California College of the Arts
Undergraduate Painting/Drawing Open Studios
Sunday April 6th, 2008
12pm to 5pm

Really good stuff, here. Some of my former students, like Neil Ledoux, Kara Nelson, and Justin Margitich are showcasing their latest artworks.

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Senior Painting/Drawing Studios
San Francisco campus
1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco, CA 94107-2247 
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Videogames and Ideology

"In September 2006 Al-Qaeda became a game developer. Its first release? First-person shooter "Night of Bush Capturing", a game free to anyone with an Internet connection and an open mind. Its six-mission campaign is constructed from genre features familiar to any gamer: work your way deep into enemy territory, shoot enemy soldiers before they shoot you and assassinate the leader." (Simon Parkin, Next Generation)

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Related

The Cities of the Future

"We have more big cities now than at any time in our history. In 1900, only 16 had a population of one million; now it's more than 400. Not only are there more of them, they are larger than ever. In 1851, London had two million people. It was the largest city in the world by a long way, twice the size of Paris, its nearest rival. [...] Successful cities are the ones that allow people to be what they want; unsuccessful ones try to force them to be what others want them to be. A city of freeways like Houston or Los Angeles forces people to be car drivers or else traps them in poverty. A successful city has a public transport system that is easy to use; an unsuccessful city tries to ban cars." (Deyan Sudjic, The Guardian) 

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On The Rivalry Between Spain and Italy

"If there's one thing the Spanish really, really hate, it's the Italians. In fact, it's become an obsession. Not because of the fashion, the impossibly perfect facial hair, or even the crazy driving and rubbish mopeds: Spain has got its own fair share of those. No, the Spanish hate the Italians because of their football. [...] When Real Madrid faced Juventus in the 2003 Champions League quarters, a Spanish television trailer used the music and opening credits from Star Wars to announce an apocalyptic clash between Madrid's galactic superstars and the "miserable football" of the evil empire from across the Alps. TVE waved off Madrid's Jedi knights with an Obi-Wan-esque, "May the goals be with you."" (Sid Lowe, The Guardian)

Truth is: if a Spanish club team beat an Italian club team that is not Juventus, I would not even blink. And if we are talking about A.C. Milan, I would probably cheer. Here is why.

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Renzo Piano on The New York Review of Books

"Renzo Piano, who turned seventy in September, has amply demonstrated organizational and technical skills that have won him prestigious, skyline-altering jobs of the sort once deemed the summit of architectural success--large-scale urban development schemes and high-profile office towers. But during the past three decades, as the museum superseded the skyscraper as an architect's dream, Piano became even more important, as the most sought-after specialist in the defining architectural category of our time. Thus far he has completed a dozen museum buildings or additions, and is now planning another five in the thriving offices he maintains in his native Genoa and in Paris" (Martin Filler, The New York Review of Books)

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Renzo Piano's L.A. museum opens to public

"The Broad Contemporary Art Museum at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art opened to the general public on Saturday: not a new institution, despite its name, but a component of architect Renzo Piano's master plan for remaking LACMA's 20-acre campus in Hancock Park. Visitors who know LACMA will be startled to find that Ogden Drive, which used to run behind LACMA's Ahmanson Building, offering access to a lot atop an underground parking garage, no longer exists. BCAM, as the new facility is known, sits roughly where Ogden formerly intersected Wilshire Boulevard, the thoroughfare fronting the seven pavilions that now make up LACMA." (Kenneth Baker, San Francisco Chronicle)

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