All posts by keith

Art, General

Opening lines

Some of my favorite opening lines from novels:

These are the ones I can remember just offhand, the ones that sank their barbs into my brain, and landed me on their green shores. All books that I highly recommend, by the way. (I would also recommend other books, and do so, here and there, but this is about first lines not just great novels.)
What first lines have sucked you in; what ones do you remember the most? What first line made you pick up a book and not put it down.
Comments please.

Art

Caleb Charland

matchfield–silver gelatin print-20×24
Matchfield silver gelatin print 20×24

Caleb Charland is a fine photographer, who happens to work with my wife. From: Aperture Foundation | Caleb Charland

Using the laws of physics as a springboard, Caleb Charland puts elements such as fire, water, and man-made compounds to the artistic test in his series Demonstrations. In these alchemic images, he captures scientific phenomena in moments of still life as well as full-tilt action, calling to mind such forebears as Harold Edgerton and his freeze-frame milk droplets.

He uses a 4×5 camera, and the silver-gelatin print method, and painstakingly arranged compositions, to make his haunting, magical images.
More of his work can be seen at Susan Maasch Fine Art

Art, Politics

Rhizomatic #1

Rhizomatic#1 is about a squatted art and community space that took place in Brighton in January 2001. It was organised by an anarchist … all » collective called SPOR, which developed from the original Spiral Tribe founders with a focus of providing active spaces of freedom within local communities, based on the thought that “without somewhere to be free then freedom is nothing more than an abstract idea”. They base their activities on a method of action that draws inspiration from Hakim Bey’s concept of ‘temporary autonomous zones’ and from a Deleuzian notion of the rhizome which they put into action. They consciously organise a network that does not attempt to maintain a permanent political presence but which rather appears at indeterminate intervals, inspired by the mushroom which fruits intermittently on the basis on an ongoing mycelium. Their experiments inspire and spread this network of ideas, people, connections and actions.

Directed by Matt Lee the film was made by Indifference Productions and Weigh In, Way Out Productions, independent film-makers active in Brighton, UK.

About 23 minutes long. Enjoy

Art

Beatrice Wood on Google Video


Beatrice Wood, called the Mama of Dada, was a renowned ceramicist, lover of Marcel Duchamp, and a prime suspect in the Dada art movement of the early 1910’s. She died in 1998 at 105 years of age. Her ceramics were eccentric (like herself), with strange shapes, and iridescent glazes. She was quite a ticket, and beautiful, even as an older woman.
After Dada she became a follower of Jiddu Krishnamurti, and, in a circuitous way, this brought about her apprenticeship in ceramics.
This is a 5 minute clip from a 55 minute documentary from the Documentary Channel. I’ve seen the whole thing some time ago, and it’s a great documentary–well worth the $.99 that it costs to buy the whole thing from Google Video.
(As an aside, it’s a pain in the but to get it on a Linux machine–but not that big a one–you have to manually download the .gvp file (click the “Manually Download the Video” link) and open up that file with a text editor–gedit worked fine in Gnome–look for the line that starts “url:http://vp.video.google.com/videodownload?…” copy that minus the url: part, paste it in your browser, and it’ll download as an .avi file, which you can play in any media player on Linux. It’s much easier for Windows, and even Macs.) (Or, as I just found out because Firefox crashed while downloading it–close out your browser, and go back to the video, and click on the download for Windows/Mac link, and download it that way–as long as you’re still logged in to your Google account.)

Health

Exercise May Boost ‘Good’ Cholesterol

Exercise May Boost ‘Good’ Cholesterol
We all know the aerobic exercise is good for the heart, and losing weight, and reducing cholesterol levels, but a new study (see the link above for more details) has concluded that it’s how long yiou exercise, and not the intensity, that boosts the HDL (good) cholesterol. Exercising for 2 hours a week in sessions longer than 1/2 hour, get you the HDL benefits.
No word on whether it’s just aerobics, or if medium intensity strength training sessions of over 1/2 hour will help also.
More here and here:

Only exercise duration, and not frequency or intensity, was associated with a change in HDL-C levels in the analysis. When the participants exercised for 23 to 74 minutes per session, each 10-minute increase in exercise duration corresponded to a 1.4-milligram per deciliter increase in HDL-C level. “This suggests that in improving blood HDL-C values, increasing time per session is better than performing multiple brief exercise sessions when total time for exercise is limited, as is the case for many people,” the authors write.