I stumbled on these tabla lessons by Venkat last night and I am sorely tempted to buy a set. So cool.

I like this idea of ambient Skype, just keeping the line open.

In a New York Times article about the death of encyclopedias, a Britannica guy talks about well-designed books as a luxury item. Content might be everywhere, but good design can still expect an appreciative audience:

He envisioned the print volumes living on as a niche, luxury item, with high-quality paper and glossy photographs---similar to the way some audiophiles still swear by vinyl LPs and turntables. “What you need people to understand,” he said, “is that it is a luxury experience. You want to be able to produce a lot of joy, a paper joy.”

[via michael surtees]

From an interview with Christian Landers, he of Stuff White People Like:

We have a generation of white people who want nothing more than to distance themselves from being white. They need to believe that the earth is being destroyed by evil white people, culture is ruined by the wrong kind of white people, and that history's sins were committed by distant relatives. And so by eating at ethnic restaurants, travelling, trying to save the world, you can say that "I'm part of the solution, if everyone were like me, the world would be so much better." I think that attitude lends itself to pretty easy satire.

I watched Koyaanisqatsi this weekend. It's got a lot of cool footage and overall it was worth watching. But part of the problem with the message (that we live a "crazy life," a "life out of balance") is that it's so dependent on the soundtrack. A lot of it made me think of those time-lapse videos I saw on kids TV when I was little. Seeing a factory in fast motion was cool, not cause for worry. I was glad I found this Koyaanisqatsi: Redux which matches a portion of the film to a goofy, upbeat soundtrack, and contrasts it with a more dramatic string arrangement in the middle (musical transitions are around the 2-minute and 4-minute marks). I like parts of Philip Glass' original soundtrack for the film, and I think it's kind of spooky-cool how the soundtrack can direct your response to what you're seeing. But it's too much of an emotional shortcut.

There are a lot of excerpts from the film on YouTube, like the original trailer, the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe public housing in St. Louis, scenes from New York, and the famous closing scene that reprises the opening.

Recent photos of the Atlanta tornado. I was totally oblivious to the whole thing. I noticed a thunderstorm earlier in the evening, but late at night I was strolling around, returning some overdue library books while other people were picking up the pieces. Crazy.

A farcical English translation, with soundtrack, of O Fortuna from Carmina Burana. This made my day. [via alex ross]

It's almost always the anecdotes that bore me in business books. The Definite Drucker is a sort biography of the ideas of Peter Drucker, the late consultant and management guru. I like a lot of the theory and philosophy, but when we get to the struggles of Motorola's supply chain or decreasing overhead at Colgate-Palmolive, I tune out a little bit. But it's not at all hard to cherry-pick some good stuff, and Drucker is full of good ideas. Here's one line in particular that I'd really like to bust out in a meeting: "What would it take for us to seriously consider this idea?"

There's another interesting bit about specializing in what you're good in, "core competencies" if you must. The analogy is to distinguish between your "front room" and "back room". The last line is great:

The first step in structuring a collaboration is to identify your company's 'front room,' which Peter defiined as your strengths, or the activity that is most important for you to do---that which stirs your passion and shows off your excellence. Everything else is your backroom, and it can be almost everything. One of Peter's famous quotes is, 'the only thing you have to do is marketing and innovation.'

If you're sufficiently focused, "the only thing you have to do is marketing and innovation." What a great goal.

The last little tidbit I really liked is about management style, bureaucracy, and decision-making. Again, the last line is fantastic:

It is part of our basic strategy to maintain the kind of working atmosphere that is attractive to the high-talent people we need to serve our clients well. Such an approach should include a philosophy of relying on autonomy and responsible self-government by the individual just as far as we can. Operationally, this means that the burden of proof should always rest with the proponent of centralized control and bureaucratic rules.

Update: Oh, and one more line that I twittered the other day: "It is good to do one thing right. Don't do too much."

A slideshow of the dented, crumpled, and/or burning wreckage of expensive/exotic cars.

The U.S. terrorist watch list now has over 900,000 people on it. [via funkaoshi]

The earliest known photo of Helen Keller, pictured in 1888 with Anne Sullivan. Things like this remind me that they were actually real people, not just nice little characters in a story.

Customizable graph paper---modify the pattern to your liking, and then it makes a PDF for you to print.

A tour of a 100-square-foot house owned by Jay of the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company.

I watched the Woody Allen film Sleeper this past weekend and still can't get over the scene with the giant food.

About 20 years ago, The Orb released "Little Fluffy Clouds," a great tune that samples a hilarious interview with Rickie Lee Jones and the music of Steve Reich. A friend of mine shared a worthy parody, "Grey Clouds."

The offices of bldgs, a pair of Atlanta architects, was featured in a New York Times slideshow and article. It's a pretty cool space, even though it looks like a bit of a disaster from the outside.

Every season, more paint falls off the walls and more rust develops. It’s like an art installation in there---a slow-motion show.

I was just on their website the other day looking at their work on the Florian-Hart residence. [via magnetbox]

Ozge Samanci's daily comics, ordinary things, are a cool mix of illustration and collage.

In my neighborhood, two areas have a 1000% difference in household income levels. They're barely a mile apart. I think I subconsciously intuited the differences while out on my runs, but seeing the numbers mapped like that is still pretty amazing.

A video of the total lunar eclipse we had a while back.

A recording of Tony Danza reading "The Barber's Unhappiness," a funny story from George Saunders' collection in Pastoralia. The book was quite good, but hearing a story like this makes it even better. [thanks, austin]