Posted via web from CatCubed’s Random Snippets

Posted via web from CatCubed’s Random Snippets

The e-zine What’s Up Buenos Aires has more on Tremor here. Also they have a couple mp3s to download:

Calipso

Surco

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More pictures and video are starting to surface on the internet from Balsa Man 2008. I’ve created a Balsa Man 2008 Flickr group to collect all the best shots from the event

Links to Photos & Video (this list will be continuously updated as I receive links):

• EdRabbit’s Balsa Man 2008 photos
• EdRabbit’s videos (Balsa Man Burn, DDI Burn)
• The Temple Burn (video)
• Romzelino’s photos
• ~Jeanne~’s photos
• ebisue’s photos
• Jay Bain’s photos
• Balsa Man 2008 Flickr pool

If you have more photos or video to share please add a comment below with links and I will add it to this list. If you are a Flickr member please tag your photos “BalsaMan2008″ and add your favorites to the Balsa Man Flickr Group pool.

p.s. Also check out EdRabbit’s own blog post wrap up of the event on Geeked Info.

Video of the glorious burn:

Note, yes I failed to raise the arms. Torch in hand, I was too eager to light it. Well the majesty of the burn made up for it and at least now I have at least one way it will be better next year. How else will The Balsa Man be better next year?

• We have a theme for 2009 “Big Dreams Writ Small” — build a small maquette of the huge art project you always dreamed of building.
• We’ll have more time set aside for viewing the fabulous art.
• I’ll be conducting more burn tests, so it can burn even more grand! This burn was pretty amazing but we can make it better.
• I’ll be designing a more impressive platform for next year’s Balsa man that relates to the theme.
• Oh and I’m thinking lasers, cause lasers make everything better.
• And of course the Balsa Man will improve most due to the creativity and spirit of the Balsa Man community!

See you all next year — keep the tiny Balsa Man community spirit alive!

It’s National Science Week — in Australia. The US used to have an official National Science & Technology Week which ran from 1985-1999, but unfortunately our current admin doesn’t seem to think science is all that important to celebrate. Well to be honest, the U.S. Dept. of Education (ED) and NASA attempted to sorta bring the idea back to life once in 2005 with the Excellence in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education (ESTEME) Week — an awkward name birthed by bureaucracy and doomed to die a forgotten death.

But who cares about our lame science hating government! We can celebrate the AWESOME POWER OF SCIENCE Aussie style with Professor Funk!

Like some science-punk crossbreed between Yahoo Serious and Vyvyan Basterd, the Professor Funk drops the science with a hilarious self-aware dorky psuedo-hipness in his YouTube video series Saturday Night Science with Professor Funk: “A video series on the science behind weekend culture. Take a look at the strange, sexy and stupid side of sex, drugs, music, money and fashion.”

Professor Funk uses actual scientific surveys to ask important questions such as Mac or PC Which Makes You Sexier? or Do Stripes Actually Make You Look Taller? The best has to be his video on musical synesthesia where he shows just what the Imperial March from Star Wars might taste like by eating a range of items from tonic water to grass to water to used q-tips!

p.s. For more great Aussie science, I also highly recommend the excellent All In the Mind, the Australian ABC Radio National podcast about neuroscience and psychology. The program is always interesting, each broadcast dedicated to a single topic.

This being San Francisco—which is if not the heart at least the aorta of the intertubes—one would expect all its candidates to have web savvy campaigns. I mean come on this is 2007! If the little town of Medicine Park, OK (pop. ~400) can have a blog, shouldn’t we expect our politicians to be a bit more internet-slick?

Recap of Round I

In Round I, I covered the web campaigns of Chicken John and Gavin Newsom. Neither of them got very many style-points for their web presence, but Chicken John was the winner of that bout with his more personal and direct internet campaign.

The judges reconsider

However, it seems that the judges missed something in their review: as it turns out, the Gavin Newsom campaign, Act Locally SF*, has a flickr account, and they have an active YouTube campaign. Mostly it’s just a bunch of long rambling unedited boring meetings, but I love his Pet Peeves on the Streets series!

The Pet Peeves on the Streets video series have Gavin Newsom himself interviewing random people on the street and in barbershops asking what their pet peeve is with San Francisco. The series is a few months old at this point, but they are a good attempt to reach out to people the way that this new social web is meant to. We need to see more campaign ideas like this.

So with this revelation, I gotta give the YouTube Stardom category over to Gavin Newsom, and I’d say the Web 2.0 Social Aptitude category is now a tie.

With this turnover, Gavin Newsom is now in the lead as the top 21st century political candidate of San Francisco!

A scrappy new contender

However, Gavin Newsom shouldn’t get too cocky. He only won that one by a nose and as Scott Beale of Laughing Squid reports, Josh Wolf seems to be coming out with both guns blazing. He’s got a new blog, Josh Wolf for Mayor and a campaign video. The judges have yet to completely review but they did have this to say:

“Please please next time get a tripod and don’t ever sit in front of a nauseatingly bright greenscreen!!!”**

So stay tuned for Round II where it’s the stiff backed experienced politico Gavin Newsom against the slouched over activist Josh Wolf!

* I gotta say though that Act Locally SF is a terrible campaign name. It sounds more like a generic NGO then a campaign. Why not just Gavin Newsom 2007?

** Bonus Points go to anyone out there who takes Josh Wolf’s video and remixes it using the greenscreen background for something Dumb. Note: that’s Dumb with a capital D—ya know the kind of Dumb that’s actually funny and creative.

Bill Moyers had a special last night called “Buying the War” about the press’s failure leading up to the Iraq war. I don’t watch TV like normal people do so luckliy they posted it, so you can watch the video online.

I started watching it during my lunch break, and it’s really good, detailed, and hard hitting. Of course, little of it surprises me and it’s several years too late, but still I highly recommend it.

p.s. since it’s mostly lots of talking you can also just treat it like radio and listen to it while you work like I’m doing.