I am the greatest luckiest photographer ever:
Bulb-Us
In one of those “power of the internet” moments, Instapundit mentioned the One Billion Bulbs movement last week. The idea behind the site is to get one billion incandescent light bulbs replaced with compact fluorescents. The site lets you calculate how much power you save, based on wattage and estimated daily hours of use. His post on it led to hundreds of people signing up on the OBB site, joining the Instapundit group, and documenting the number of bulbs they’ve swapped out.
Now, I’ve held off on buying these things for a while, because I heard they gave off crappy light. But, on Insta’s recommendation, I picked up a pair of 20 watt GE Soft White CF bulbs at a local hardware store (Home Despot only carries a limited selection) and plugged them into the lamp in my office, which is in use 8 hours a day. The light’s just fine (it’s a shaded lamp, which probably helps), and the 20w CFB is the equivalent of 60-70 watts of incandescent light. I haven’t noticed much of a difference in the quality of the light, which I take as a good sign.
So, in the spirit of Instapundit, but with infinitely fewer readers, I’ve started my own group on One Billion Bulbs. If you’re of a mind to start replacing any of the incandescents in your home or office, click on the One Billion Bulbs banner in the sidebar (above the Links section), sign up at the site, and join Byron’s Brigade (it’s a Pynchon reference; sue me).
(But do your due diligence first, or you might find that you’ve spent $5-$8 on a bulb that gives off really crappy light.)
“Good design” = bad cities
I meant to post this James Lileks bleat a while ago. He engaged in some “wretched, slanted cherry-picking of selected quotes” from a newspaper interview with professor Thomas Fisher, the dean of University of Minnesota’s new School of Design. The interview discusses “the Design Economy,” and Lileks uses some of Fisher’s quotes as a springboard to discuss cities (starting with Minneapolis), suburbs, and the economies that are tied to them. Starting point:
[I]f all you have is a degree in Design, everything looks like a design problem.
It’s a long post, but I recommend giving it a read, if only because it helps me justify my own life in the suburbs:
Boring people live everywhere. Interesting people live everywhere. People have reasons for wanting to live in certain places, and if someone wants to live in the city, it’s his business. If he wants to live in the burbs, it’s his business. I could argue that people who confine themselves to the city are removing themselves from the experience of suburbia, which is actually more germaine to understanding America’s future than experiencing some of the lousy blocks I drive through daily.
So there’s some Friday afternoon reading for ya, in case it’s a slow day at the office.
High Times
I finally got to see the new NYTimes building up close this week, during my meanderings to and from the Javits Center. It’s a mighty impressive exterior. NYT design director Khol Vinh just got to move into the building, and has high praise for it:
It’s early yet, but I think I’m completely enraptured by this building. Maybe it’s just my first time being exposed so intimately to fine, contemporary architecture, but the whole structure feels energizing to me. And it makes a certain kind of sense, too; Piano eschewed organic curves and aesthetically suspect design flourishes in favor of a wonderfully, wonderfully rectilinear construction. It’s an ornate, beautiful grid, in essence; of all the buildings in Manhattan, I feel like this is the one that makes the most sense for me to spend my working days. Forgive me, but I feel like a lucky bastard today.
Strange correspondence
This was waiting in my mail when I got back to the office this morning:
At first, I thought it was one of the collage envelopes I receive from official VM buddy Paul Di Filippo. Then I noticed the postmark and thought, “I don’t remember Paul saying he had a trip to India.”
Turned out to contain some circulation renewal forms for my magazine, from a few subscribers who evidently believe that, if the USPS has trouble finding my address (cut out of a page of my magazine), at least they’ll be able to find me from the c. 1999 photo from my From The Editor page.
Unrequired Reading: Apr. 27, 2007
Two Years and Counting
It’s the second anniversary of my dad’s quintuple-bypass! I’d put his e-mail address here so you could send him well-wishes, but I know you’d just write him goofy questions about how strange I was as a kid.
Anyway: best wishes, Dad!
A Chip off the ol’ Doc!
The Polymath, or The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman is debuting tonight at the Tribeca Film Festival! I once helped produce a documentary about Chip Delany, but it was mainly composed of a reading performance, intercut with short interview segments. I haven’t asked Chip what he thinks of this new movie, but maybe I’ll give him a call today when the conference wraps up (it ends at 3pm for its last day).
Whoa,LA
Yesterday, I saw a billboard on the NJ Turnpike:
Forever New Orleans
Open to Just About Anything
Road trip!
Actually, it’s not much of a trip: we have a conference in NYC this week, so I’ll be staying at a little hotel near Times Square for the next couple of nights. Since the exhibit hall doesn’t open till 10am, I should have a little time for blogging in the morning. On the other hand, we’ll also be taking clients out for dinner, etc., so I may be in no shape to write in the morning.
Don’t expect so much outta me, okay?