the big picture

Jan 13th, 2010 Posted in arts, currents | no comment »

If you are an information geek, check out Jess Bachman’s wallstats.com. He has created a number of graphics to illustrate things, including the cool one below of the federal budget (view it in fullscreen mode to get the full effect) and a history of Black people in the U.S. Some other projects include several graphics explaining different aspects of the financial crisis.

ciudades de oro

Dec 23rd, 2009 Posted in arts, cultures | no comment »

The latest update to the blog software has brought support for embedded Hulu videos.  To celebrate, here’s the pilot episode of one of my favorite childhood cartoons, The Mysterious Cities of Gold.  Enjoy!

worth a thousand words

Jul 19th, 2009 Posted in arts, travel | 2 comments »

Instead of ruminating here about the ability of photographs to educate, entertain, inspire, and remind (which other people have done a much better job of anyway), we’ll just let these photos speak for themselves:

And in case you are now inspired, here are some pointers for taking your own great photos.

light and shadows

Feb 15th, 2008 Posted in arts | no comment »

My favorite European painter is Caravaggio, whom I discovered a few years ago while visiting the San Luigi dei Francesi church in Rome. He was a master of the use of chiaroscuro, and produced some really dramatic (and sometimes graphic) works. Another artist that I just discovered a few months ago that also makes good use of the technique is Dutch painter Gerrit Dou, in particular his Astronomer by Candlelight on display at the Getty Museum in L.A.