farlane.blog

This is late and you may have already seen it but I don’t care. I wanted to save this so I could come back and see someone who has accomplished something I’ve dreamed of since I was very young. I salute you, Anousheh Ansari, you and everyone else who has dared to dream that humanity is greater than gravity.

or YOUTUBE IS THE LAST REFUGE OF THE LAZY BLOGGER

Produced by miniature-earth.com, this video makes me feel simultaneously  uncomfortable and blessed with the amazing bounty that I take for granted most of the time. I found myself wishing for a soundtrack to ease the blow … also put me in mind of this photo by Bobby Alcott.

Sooo … one part of the job I invented for myself is spending an hour or so every morning looking through Michigan photos on Flickr to find a photo for the Michigan in Pictures photo blog. I stumbled across the above picture of 1961 Studebaker Lark.

Me: I want one of these … I wonder why a car company hasn’t started building cars using old designs with modern hardware.

Leann: I believe this Lark is for sale…

Me: I thought it might be. Then I thought “where would I get parts for it?”

Still, I can’t see why in this age of modular cars the American car companies wouldn’t leverage decades of cutting edge industrial design and roll out updated versions of classics. How about it GM?

Also, via the partial omniscience of the internet (specifically the Institute of Artificial Smartness), here’s a commercial for the Studebaker Lark featuring Mr. Ed.

Sometimes the internet makes me wish that I enjoyed reading (and writing) on the computer more. Since it doesn’t, here’s something 2.5 minutes and totally absurd. If you don’t mind a little reading, here’s 700 words or less on love.

Every so often the news feed washes up something that I don’t have any idea how to file. Strangely, this is the first time I’ve ever come across Porn Sunday and Grand Rapids in the same article.

Seems like someone who spends as much time as me combing the beach would have a photo for this. Maybe, but none I like as well as this. Jen says “best viewed large“.

Somewhere I found this link to an excellent page on early photography.

The picture above is an “Instantaneous flash picture of the Chicago Board of Trade in session by photographic pioneer George R. Lawrence.

The WEEE Man is made from the amount of waste electrical and electronic products that an average UK citizen will throw away in their lifetime - over three tons per person. I can only imagine that the average US citizen could build a larger man. More at the WEEE Man web site.
I came across Tracy’s photo while looking for a pic to illustrate an article about how my county is struggling with funding a recycling initiative. It boggles my mind that people can be so shortsighted about the conservation of resources as to vote down a $30 per YEAR measure. I’m almost wishing for an army of these things to show up.

Flickr has added the ability to geotag your photos and view maps of geotagged photos. It’s darn easy. It took about 5 minutes to tag my photos of Leland, Michigan. You can also view all photos of Leland.

A few notes.

1. I really did look for legends. I think Greece would be hard put to field a team in the Legends of the World One-on-One Tournament.
2. The kid above is not Greek. He merely represents the caliber of player our team was prepared to face.
3. Man, it’s a damn good thing we didn’t take Bruce Bowen - the results could have been humiliating.
4. Say whatever you want about how the NBA is the end-all, be-all of basketball, but I think it’s feeble as hell that the USA can’t put together a competitive team. Tip for the selection committee: “Me First” doesn’t fly on the world stage.

The 6 or 8 people who pay attention to my blog may have thought I died or something. I thought of concocting a tale where I had been imprisoned by someone masquerading as the ghost of the ancient chiefs who used to tie their captives in these caves and let Lake Superior batter them to death. Then I figured that you’d probably guess that in the end, it was bitter old Mr. McReady in a dimestore mask.

If you click the pic, you’ll see some photos of what I was actually doing.