Guilty admission: I can’t remember which of the Google founders is which. Terrible, I know, but true. Ever refer to a person by the wrong name? What a faux pas. I almost did it yesterday.

I was in a meeting with both of them. Me, them, and just a couple others. I was talking to one and had to refer to the other, who’d already left. “He” or “him” would no longer work. I said, “yeah, Larry had mentioned that earlier”, held my breath, the gods of luck smiled, and conversation continued as usual.

Next time I’m bringing a cheat sheet…

The building that houses the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon sits at the bottom of a hill. The apartment complex where Mister Rogers lived is at the top. I walked by the place a couple of times and always hoped he’d exit the lobby wearing a nice cardigan, checking the sky for rain, about to head out for a walk.

A political assessment of the past year in global affairs.

From the always excellent Viridian Design.

It somehow slipped my mind, but this site does have an RSS feed. I’ll post one of those XML/RSS buttons that’ll serve as a permanent link when I get a chance, but this week is likely going to be a bit rough, so it may have to wait.

I’ve been using NetNewsWire Lite for OS X as my RSS newsreader. If you visit a lot of the same sites often, you might want to check it out.

Salon is featuring a short story by Richard Powers that’s worth reading. It’s called Literary Devices. If you like it, you might want to check out Gattaca 2.2 and Plowing the Dark as well. He’s a fine writer.

Happy Thanksgiving to those reading from the U.S. Pittsburgh is quiet and snowy, and there’s a slowly cooking pot of lentil soup keeping me company.

Mark Osborne’s mixed-media, stop animation short MORE tells the story of an old, tired inventor as he struggles through joyless life in a drab and passionless society, leading the same cold and colorless existence accepted by the identical drones around him. At once tortured and inspired by his dreaming of and yearning for his younger carefree days, he struggles to finish the invention he hopes will give his life meaning and worth. His world, and the world of those around him, is transformed when his secret invention is completed. His subsequent success, however, does not come without sacrifice. The inventor realizes that the true essence of his inspiration cannot be manufactured.

I’m blanking on where I found this, but I watched it this morning and enjoyed it. The short’s reference to VR makes it a good little fable for those of us who spend our days crafting the latest and greatest in inter/info-design/architecture/whatever.

More on More

Interview at Salon with Neil Young (not the musician), creator of Majestic, which is described as “an interactive, immersive and invasive online mystery that combines fiction with (debatable) reality in a very Webby way”.

What’s interesting is how the game creates an environment that transcends the computer screen. It relies on multiple modes of communication (phone, fax, email, IM, websites), and leverages existing internet content: “the Internet is such a fabulous medium to blur those lines between fact and fiction and conspiracy, because you begin to make connections between things. It’s a natural human reaction — we connect these dots around our fears.”

As Leonard himself tells Teddy fairly early on, “Memory’s unreliable … Memory’s not perfect. It’s not even that good. Ask the police; eyewitness testimony is unreliable … Memory can change the shape of a room or the color of a car. It’s an interpretation, not a record. Memories can be changed or distorted, and they’re irrelevant if you have the facts.” This is the very heart of the film. “Memento” is a movie largely about memory — the ways in which it defines identity, how it’s necessary to determine moral behavior and yet how terribly unreliable it is, despite its crucial role in our experience of the world.

Wow, what a great analysis of a brilliant movie. I’m a pretty bright kid, but there’s obviously a ton of stuff that I missed when I saw this. I’ll definitely need to see this again.

Amnesia seems to be in the air these days — “Memento”, Radiohead’s “Amnesiac”, and “The Vintage Book of Amnesia” are all masterpieces put out within the last year (though to be quite honest, “Memento” is much more about amnesia than the other two). What’s the obsession?

Speaking of Radiohead, I went to the show last night, and it was as good as I’d hoped. That concert coupled with The New Pornographers show that I saw on Tuesday made up for the poor showings in recent weeks by both Tortoise (postrockers posing as 70’s jazz-rock) and Built to Spill (otherwise good indie rock that morphs into hippy jam-band rock when they’re on stage).

Hi my name is sam, i draw pictures, from your titles.

Gripe: yeah, a flash movie of stick figures killing each other is just grrrreat. But let’s stop linking to it like it’s the greatest animation you’ve seen in weeks.This is.
via Textism