Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Disney, masters of theme park operations
Disney has theme park logistics down to a nimble operation that monitors all aspects of a park. They use a combination of weather reports, historical records, airline and hotel reservations to predict park capacity, but once the Magic Kindom opens, ride queues, cash registers at in park restaurants, foot traffic in particular areas are all […]
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Joe McNally knows sugar plums
Ballerinas are all the rage at the moment. Black Swan, New York Times critic Alastair Maccaulay stating that one dancer, Jenifer Ringer, “eaten one sugar plum too many” for a recent production of the Nutcracker. And now Joe McNally, famed photographer, comes to her defense. Joe took portraits of Jenifer with a giant, 40×80 Polaroid […]
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True Grit (2010)
True Grit, as remade by the Coen Brothers, is ok. It’s less hokey than the original with John Wayne, but plods along with a series of events strung together. Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn works well as he fully embraces the character, and Hailee Steinfeld plays the spunky Mattie Ross with conviction. I think the […]
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My songs of 2010
Below is the track listing for my 2010 songs. By no means is it exhaustive, but I focused on the songs and albums I listened to. I also left out quite a bit of music I did listen to, notably Arcade Fire, Band of Horses and Sufjan. The ordering is only a track listing and […]
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My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy – Kanye West
Kanye’s got the beats, the rhymes the ego and the vision to pull off an album like My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy full of so many themes. From the self introspection (Monster, Lost in the World), to class (Power, Runaway), to misogyny (So Appalled, Hell of a Life) to politics (Who Will Survive in America). […]
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Those Were the Days – Dolly Parton
Those Were the Days by Dolly Parton is a trubute/cover album of Dolly performing other artists’ songs. At 12 tracks, all have countrified, Dolly arrangements that play well with her style toe tapping music. Me and Bobby McGee (with Kris Kristofferson), Crimson and Clover (with Tommy Jones) and Turn, Turn, Turn are stand outs.
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Don’t Take My Picture – Craig Alesse
Don’t Take My Picture by Craig Alesse is a good photography 101 for the family shutterbug who likes to take snapshots at all the family events, but get a little better at getting those shots. Topics covered include composition, lighting, group shots and how to put all these tools together to see a good shot. […]
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Emma Donoghue – Room
Room: A Novel, by Emma Donoghue, tells the story of a boy named Jack, who lived the first five years of his life in an isolated shed. The circumstances for his sheltered life stem from his mother being kidnapped and imprisoned and bearing the kidnapper’s child, Jack. Jack narrates the story in four acts: life […]
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A physicist solves the City equation
Geoffrey West, a physicist, set out to study cities and urban growth and find variables for growth and decline. Consuming massive amounts of data, he discovered cities are governed by Laws, just like physics. After two years of analysis, West and Bettencourt discovered that all of these urban variables could be described by a few […]
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An Intimate Portrait of the Carousel Horse
An intimate portrait of the carousel horse. Vol. 1 — Southern California is a vintage, specialized photography book from 1982. John R. Cook photographed carousel horses. The copy I looked through contained no forward or afterward to detail what the intimate portraits were attempting to achieve. Most of the photos appear to be snapshots and […]
Got any book recommendations?