How not to do them:
Dr. Lorraine Fisher-Katz commits every public presentation blunder and PowerPoint faux-pas known to man while addressing a group of young undergraduates in Boston…before it is revealed that she is an actress hired by their professor to highlight the importance of good presentation skills. Sadly, there remain serious people in the business world who would benefit enormously from sitting through this short “workshop”.
A masterpiece in Comic Sans Serif.
Although it is not brand new, the award for Best Thing Of The Day has to go to a discovery that I only just made – the Lego Architecture Studio set.
Apparently it retails for around $150 USD and looks to be worth every darn penny.
Wired.com reports that the set comes with no instructions for constructing any one specific building, but rather with a hefty user manual that walks you through different architectural styles and practices, enabling the lucky owner to experiment with their own interpretations:
Architecture Studio, a new set from Lego, comes with 1,210 white and translucent bricks. More notable is what it lacks: namely, instructions for any single thing you’re supposed to build with it. Instead, the kit is accompanied by a thick, 277-page guidebook filled with architectural concepts and building techniques alongside real world insights from prominent architecture studios from around the globe. In other words, this box o’ bricks is a little different. Where past Lego products might have had the happy ancillary effect of nurturing youngsters’ interest in architecture, here, that’s the entire point.
Seventy-three different kinds of bricks are included in the set. But bricks are easy to find. It’s the guidebook that’s truly new. Its pages offer accessible overviews of basic architectural concepts, along with illustrated exercises for exploring them in Lego form. Pages on negative space and interior sections, for example, encourage budding builders to think not only about how their miniature creations look from the outside but also in terms of what sorts of spaces they contain within them.
What a brilliant idea. I was already impressed with the initial sets in the Lego Architecture series, such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Fallingwater” house, pictured below:
But even here the user is only following the preordained instructions transcribed from the original architect’s design. With the Lego Architecture Studio set, one is given all manner of different blocks, a thoroughly detailed and useful guide to help get into the architect frame of mind, and a blank slate on which to play. Brilliant.
Definitely one for the Christmas list.
The day cannot pass without mention of today’s excellent Google Doodle – an animated nighttime street scene, set to the music “Claire de Lune” by Claude Debussy:
A nice effort, very well made.
The first and second movements from Symphony no. 2 by Jean Sibelius (1902).
Performed here by Leonard Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
It’s a good version, albeit alternately overwrought and halting on occasions, and not a patch on the LSO/Davis recordings and performances, which remain the best available to date.
By now you have probably already watched the toe-curlingly, excruciatingly embarrassing car crash of an interview between Fox News host Lauren Green and her guest, the author and religious scholar Reza Aslan:
Every website, commenter and pundit has already said their piece, most to the tune of “what do you expect from Fox News, they are the unabashed mouthpiece of the religious, fundamentalist Christian right wing in America”. After awhile, watching and reading the variations-on-a-theme commentary became tiresome.
Until I discovered Glenn Beck’s alternative analysis on Reza Aslan and his book, “Zealot”:
Apparently, Aslan is a phony Muslim and a phony scholar. His true identity – of course – is that of a radical progressive. This is made clear by the fact that Beck sticks the logos of various liberal groups (and, of course, archvillain George Soros) tenuously associated with Aslan on his rotating blackboard:
Oh no! MediaMatters! The Center for American Progress! Beck has torn apart Reza Aslan’s shadowy liberal secret life in only nine minutes.
Because of course in Glenn Beck Land it is impossible to be a Muslim, a scholar and a liberal all at the same time. To acknowledge that fact would be to undermine his entire fear mongering, super profitable worldview.
Semi-Partisan Politics 