Can your Tuba do this?

Thu, 06/22/2006 - 3:36pm by Edith Wharton

David Silverman, director of the Simpsons, has created a sousaphone that spurts flames when you play it. Video

I wonder what Mr. Leach would say...
Via BoingBoing

Zaha Hadid at the Guggenheim

Sat, 06/03/2006 - 12:50pm by muffy

Zaha Hadid is the first woman to be awarded the distinguished Pritzker Architecture Prize, in 2004. The Iraqi-born, London-based architect is internationally known for projects that have literally "shifted the geometry of buildings."

The current exhibition at the Guggenheim is a 30-year retrospective of her work in a wide range of mediums: paintings, sketches, architectural drawings, urban plans, models, relief models, animations, furniture, and design object. It opens today and runs through October 25th, 2006.
The exhibition catalog will be available soon but you can read up on Zaha Hadid in Zaha Hadid : Testing the Boundaries.

Summer's Most Magical Form of Transport: Books

Fri, 06/02/2006 - 11:28am by muffy

Looking for some great summer reading recommendations? You cannot go wrong with NPR’s Alan Cheuse. Here are the excerpts of some of the titles on his 2006 Summer Reading list.

Swell Books for Summer Loafing by Susan Stamberg is another source not to be missed. This morning I heard wonderful suggestions from three independent booksellers. My list is growing and I need to get a bigger beach bag!

And then there is the Talk of the Nation Summer Reading List.

Just to make sure you won’t run out of good reads this summer, we will soon be making some summer reading suggestions too in our Books Blog. Watch for them.

The Dragon King of Hogwarts

Sat, 05/27/2006 - 2:34pm by sstonez

It's true--a recently discovered dinosaur fossil in South Dakota has been named Dracorex hogwartsia after the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In case you've been hiding in a cave for the past ten years, Hogwarts' most famous student is young . Dracorex hogwartsia earned its name because the dinosaur's flattened head looks a lot like a dragon, and dragons play an important role at Hogwarts. (Their Latin motto, in fact, translates to "a sleeping dragon must never be tickled.") Read more about the dragonlike pachycephalosaur or go see it the next time you are in Indianapolis.

Meet Facebook , MySpace, and Other New Online Friends

Tue, 05/23/2006 - 1:27pm by Eartoground

Amazing how many people love to network socially on sites such as Facebook and Myspace - millions of you. John Cassidy nails this trend - and the companies it supports - in his article "The Online Life: Me Media: How hanging out on the Internet became big business," in the May 15 issue of The New Yorker magazine. Read this article - virtually - from General Reference Center Gold electronic database, or actually from the actual May 15 issue of The New Yorker magazine at the library.

They call me COMMANDER Tibbs!

Fri, 05/19/2006 - 2:26pm by Rich

Sidney Poitier was recently named a Commander in France's Order of Arts and Letters during a ceremony at this year's Cannes Film Festival. In presenting Poitier with the title, French culture minister Renaud Donnedieu De Vabres proclaimed, "You are the champion of equality between men."

The library has the following films starring Poitier:
Blackboard Jungle, The Bedford Incident, The Defiant Ones, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Lilies of the Field, A Raisin in the Sun, To Sir, With Love, and my personal favorite, In the Heat of the Night.

E3

Tue, 05/16/2006 - 12:19am by Edith Wharton

Presented by the Entertainment Software Association, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (or Exposition), commonly known as E³ or E3, is the world's largest annual trade show for the computer and video games industry and the third largest gaming convention. The expo is open only to game industry professionals, celebrities and journalists who are over eighteen.

The 2006 E³ show focused on the upcoming releases of Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii, along with the next wave of games for the Nintendo DS and Xbox 360. Several websites such as the Washington Post noted in retrospect that Nintendo clearly dominated and stole the show. They cite as an example the queues; which were approximately half an hour long to play the PlayStation 3 and up to four hours long to play the Wii.

See E3 info from the Washington Post
E3 coverage via Joystiq
Gamespot E3 Blog
(Thank you, Wikipedia)

What's With all the Gossip?

Fri, 05/12/2006 - 10:32am by erin

So the first book in the Gossip Girl series by Cecily Von Ziegesar was published 4 years ago and the 9th book in the series Only in your dreams just came out, but after Naomi Wolf wrote a scathing editorial in the New York Times about this series and their read-alikes Clique and The A-List everyone has been talking about it. Yes, they are basically Sex and The City for teens filled with consumerism and fun without consequences. Are they any worse than anything as popular that came before them? No. Are they flashier and better marketed? Definitely. Any teen who is reading these books - as opposed to watching the rampant fun without consequences on TV or online - is a teen I wouldn't worry about. Because *reading* is what separates the teens you worry about from the ones you don't.

Living in a Virtual Panopticon?

Thu, 05/11/2006 - 3:42pm by Rich

With the recent revelation that three major telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA to collect the phone records of millions of average Americans, the discussion of how to balance civil liberties and national security seems more important now than ever before. Is it safe to say that we are now all living in a virtual panopticon? A surveillance society?

The library has a number of books on this topic for those interested in learning more. Here are some recent titles:
No Place to Hide
Chatter: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping
Civil Liberties: Opposing Viewpoints
The End of Privacy: How Total Surveillance is Becoming a Reality
The Naked Employee: How Technology is Compromising Workplace Privacy
The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America from Slavery to the War on Terror
Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID

So Dark the Con of Man

Wed, 05/10/2006 - 2:41pm by amy

It's still a week away from hitting theaters, but Ron Howard's film version of the controversial blockbuster is making as many waves as Tom Hanks' new hairdo. Churches are trying to debunk the novel; a senior official (and devout Catholic) in the Philippine government hopes his state's censors will ban the film. Others are simply tired of all the hype. But if you can't wait for the film, or you're one of the two remaining people alive who doesn't yet know the 'secret' of 'the code', here are a few videos to tide you over: Unlocking Da Vinci's Code, Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci or Da Vinci Code DeCoded.