David Hlynsky’s Communist-Era Store Windows depicts advertising (or the lack thereof) in East European countries in the late 1980s. This kind of cleanliness is now unseen, Mac stores being the exception (I knew there was something totalitarian about Apple!). But cynicism aside, what strikes me is not so much the difference between the then and the now, but how similar in fact the windowdressings depicted in the series are to my own memories of Portugal (a non-communist country) in the 80s. Perhaps it’s wrong to see these images set in a capitalism vs communism context. I see them in a rampant-capitalism vs whatever-else context. Advertising just wasn’t such a big part of the overall economy back then.
So it’s actually Fifty Things Restaurant Staffer Should Never Do. Oh man, where to start? Some advice seems directed at high-end restaurants I can’t afford to go to, but in a nutshell this lists tells us what we’ve always knew: portuguese restaurants are pretty crap. And so are the bars, and the coffeeshops. Some highlights:
2. Do not make a singleton feel bad.
8. Do not interrupt a conversation. For any reason.
17. Do not take an empty plate from one guest while others are still eating the same course.
18. Know before approaching a table who has ordered what. Do not ask, “Who’s having the shrimp?”
25. Make sure the glasses are clean.
33. Do not bang into chairs or tables when passing by.
Most restaurants I’ve been to, even the more expensive ones, easily break twenty of the fifty recommendations. (via Kottke)
Update (Nov.5): And here’s part two. So one hundred things it is.
Cory Doctorow has a new novel out called Makers, which you can, as usual, download for free from his website.
I have a colossal number of pages to read as part of my Master’s thesis investigations, but I’ll read this as soon as I feel I need a break from those readings.
“ 892: Sigurd the Mighty of Orkney strapped the head of a defeated foe to his leg, the tooth of which grazed against him as he rode his horse, causing the infection which killed him. ”
The Wikipedia’s List of unusual deaths, ranging from the funny and stupid to the appaling and gruesome. Some are all that. (via The Null Device)
“ It’s true that my romantic life has produced some humorous anecdotes, but good stories seldom come from happy experiences. ”
Tim Kreidler - The Referendum. There are so many quotable sentences in this article, I just picked one. I may be still thirty, but totally identify with the writer - and the fact that Portugal is still a conservative society doesn’t help either. (via Kottke)
Yesterday I attended an academic conference at the Future Places festival that’s happening right now right here in Porto. I normally tend to be wary of such conferences, having previously seen my fair share of the “I’m a genius who knows magic and you’re not” attitude, so I was very pleased by the “Just do it, things do get easy when broken down in small problems!” message that prevailed in today’s presentations, which included, among others, a very interesting and entertaining keynote presentation by Golan Levin. However, by that time I was already dumbstruck by the relatively small presentation by Zach Smith of Thingiverse and Makerbot, about the subject of 3D printing - that is, desktop factories.
For now (and probably for a few decades still), 3D printers only ‘print’ plastic, but still - I held objects that felt right out of the fucking Diamond Age. Need a plug for your bath? Print it! A toy train for your nephew? Print it! A coat hanger? Print it! In time, no doubt people will be sharing the 3D models that will allow you to print more complicated things. Right now, everything that is made of plastic can be ‘printed’ (wouldn’t ‘sculpted’ be a better word?) right there on your desktop. At the moment the Makerbot 3D printer is sold as a kit you have to assemble, but so did the MITS Altair in 1975, and it only took a couple of years after that for ready-to-use microcomputers to hit the retail shelves. I’m only wondering how much will HP ask for a plastic ‘refill’…
A beautiful Missions to Mars infographic, related to this report that argues for a manned mission. I personally think space exploration is probably better left off to robots for the time being, as the resources needed to make a mission possible for us nimble humans are better spent on other stuff down here on Earth. On the other hand: I loved the Mars Trilogy, so astronauts on Mars would be infinitely cool. (via CGR)
A scary xkcd. Next week, I’m about to start teaching Editing to people born after the breakup of the Soviet Union. I teach at an University.
