the pod bay door

:: Geoff and I are in NYC. Our flight yesterday via Minneapolis was smooth and uneventful. On the flight from Mpls to NYC, a group of students from a middle school in Reno came aboard, and another passenger and I played cards with two of them for a while. It is warm here, and the humidity is high. The TONY Awards are happening tonight, a few blocks from the conference hotel. We are attending a cabaret tonight, seeing Blossom Dearie perform, then having dinner with representatives from the Institute of Physics.

That’s it for now. I need my morning coffee!

:: In the meantime, 7,000 people got naked in the name of art.

:: One conference down, one still to come. Geoff and I fly to NYC tomorrow to attend SLA. It’s my 12th SLA, and 12th trip to NYC. Coincidence? The EBL conference was a blast – I learned a bit more about evidence based librarianship, and met dozens of fascinating and interesting people from Canada, USA, Norway, the UK, France, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, and Australia. More of the same awaits us in NYC. I’ll try to post during the next few days, but no guarantees. Will write again soon.

:: Oh, and have you heard about the war of word between Roger Ebert and Vincent Gallo? Gallo’s new movie, The Brown Bunny, was screened at Cannes last month, and is now pretty much considered one of the worst film ever shown at the festival.

:: And this is too cool: three 12-year old boys began shooting a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1982. They finished when they were 18, in 1988. Fifteen years later, in 2003, word is out that the film exists, and the RoTLA director Stephen Spielberg has given the trio a big thumbs up. Watch the trailer here: http://www.drafthouse.com/trailers/raiders.mov. An article about the film appears in the Austin Chronicle. (From Slashdot via William Gibson.)

I must see these two movies.

¦¦ Two fish cutters slaughtering live carp in NYC heard one of the fish began speaking in Hebrew about the imminent end of the world. Fact or fiction? You decide.

¦¦ One of the first two blogs I started reading in early 2002 was Laura‘s. The other was Geoff‘s. On Laura’s site I discovered a link to brain-terminal, which “seeks to provide thoughtful analysis of the various political, social, economic and technological trends that affect our daily lives.” It is the brainchild of Evan Coyne Maloney. Why he chose the horrid colour scheme will remain a myster. Whatever. Anyway, you must watch the video of his interviews with various NYC anti-war protesters from earlier this month. It reveals that they are passionate, but it many cases, clueless. Of course, leave us not forget that we are seeing only the interviews he chose to let us see. But it makes for entertaining viewing.

¦¦ Daypop is a search engine that searches “14,600 news site and weblog for current events and breaking news.” You can see the top weblogs, the Amazon top wish list items, top news, and the top 40! The Top 40 “is a list of links that are currently popular with webloggers from around the world”. At the top of the list is ready.gov, the US gov’t site that helps their citizens prepare for terrorist attacks. The site is odd and creepy, and at best, necessary. The top search, sadly I suppose, is currently “great white.”

The second set of my NYC/NH pictures are now up.

A library specializing in the history of artificial intelligence, whose collection was built over a 20 year period by one librarian in particular, together with 150 work stations and equipment worth over £500,000 was destroyed by fire in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Dec 14th. Ouch! As a fellow librarian, I empathize with how hard it must be to come to terms with such a loss.

In Florida, a manufacturer is producing a set of trading cards which feature portraits of victims of the Sept 11 attacks. He apparently has the approval of the families of each victim shown on the individual cards, which will sell for $2.50US each. Families will receive 8% royalties. The manufacturer denies he is cashing in on tragedy, but rather, is “providing a service to these families.” Do you agree? I don’t – I think it’s really difficult to justify this. I might be more amenable if all the profits went to charity after costs, but that isn’t possible when a for-profit enterprise is behind such a product.

Today in NYC, another seven new plans for the rebuilding of the WTC site were unveiled. My first reactions are not that positive, but I believe I need to study the designs further. The design from Richard Meier and Partners appears as an enormous hash mark from a distance, for example. You can see them here, and vote for your choice. Clicking on each entry opens another window with different views of the proposed sites, and each graphic within the new window moves while you are looking at it, a nice touch. (Warning: pop-up windows)