Oh, for Happy Accidents

clipped from www.fontayne.com  "... only he is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things." Anton Chekhov  "It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous." Robert Benchley "I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again." Oscar Wilde "A writer is working when he's staring out of the window." Burton Rascoe "Nothing you write, if you hope to be any good, will ever come out as you first hoped." Lillian Helman "Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better." "The first draft of anything is sh*t." Ernest Hemingway Donald M. Murray "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." Somerset Maugham Bernard Malamud "…therein is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident." H.L. Mencken

How to get blown

clipped from www.awea.org Small Wind Turbine Equipment Providers The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) has compiled the following list of U.S. manufacturers and suppliers of wind turbines for use in residential, farm, and commercial/industrial applications. Many have Web sites or are accessible through E-mail links. Links are also provided to the company listings on the AWEA Industry Member Directory. Commercially proven U.S. equipment providers*include:

Whimsical Wind

clipped from tech.blorge.com Looking more like a whirly gig than a wind turbine, the Energy Ball is a new Swedish wind turbine specifically designed to be quiet and efficient.  Home Energy, the company that created the Energy Ball, primarily designs green energy systems for the home. This new wind turbine utilizes the Venturi effect.  One example of the Venturi effect is the increased wind speed of winds funneled between buildings.  The unique design of the Energy Ball funnels the wind through the spherical blades increasing the energy harvested.  Taking advantage of this principle allows this wind turbine to generate at wind speeds as low as 2 m/s or 4 mph. The Energy Ball is also extremely quiet making it more acceptable to neighbors and zoning boards.  Since this wind turbine is not your typical three bladed giant, it may also gain points in the looks department.  The design looks fun and whimsical rather than utilitarian.

Energy Center

I stumbled upon this "Green Technology Tower with Wind Turbines" and immediately connected the concept to my vision of converting David's Island, off the coast of New Rochelle, NY in the Long Island Sound, into both an energy farm and environmental energy education center. Now I'm not advocating an eight story structure on the island, but I do believe a self-sustaining structure can be designed to harvest the free energy from the Sun, the wind, and possibly the tides. The building can serve as both a model of cutting edge clean energy technology and a public education center.

clipped from www.tuvie.com

Elegant Wind

Who says wind turbines are ugly?

clipped from www.idsa.org   Natura Levo Natura Levo is a small, vertical-axis wind turbine with two non-traditional blades that can catch wind from any direction. The center axis is a beautifully formed stationary shape that mounts to existing structures, such as a telephone pole, an old chimney mount or a flag pole in a person’s backyard. Natura Levo is intended to raise awareness of natural energy by peacefully coexisting with its natural surroundings. Contact: Laura Sink: laurasink@gmail.com Credit: Laura Sink of The Art Institute of Pittsburgh Client:

The Art of Subversion

There's a story "floatin' 'round" in my head, and in bits and pieces on paper, about a former art forger who becomes a wealthy private art detective. What that has to do with the article below I have no idea... I think I just liked the title. Well, it's not really an article, it's somebody's blog posting, but I found it humorous nonetheless.

The Art of Subversion

Monica and I had our once every three or so months hour long phone conversation yesterday. And one of the topics, along with a Newsweek article I read recently, decided me to get going on a topic that I don't normally talk about:
The part of the conversation between Monica and I that swayed towards art leads me to a conversational opinion that I have. We were talking about smoking pot (granted neither of us have ever done it, being D 1 athletes and all), and that got me to thinking about the biggest pothead I know, who, for the sake of civility, will remain nameless. I will say this much about the guy: he is an absolutely amazing artist. However, that got us onto the subject of smoking up while being creative. I've heard (but never really seen any proof) of the fact that you become much more creative when you're high. This seems to me to cause many artists to smoke up in an effort to become more creative, more inspired, or just plain weirder. I, in my personal opinion, don't think this is fair. I see it as a form of cheating. If you create something while you're high, is that really you there on the paper, in the stone, or on the screen? Could you reproduce that style, that feeling, that aura, if you were to do it again while sober? I'm going to use a controversial analogy here: I see it as kind of like taking steroids while playing professional baseball (which has been in the news lately because of that). It's a performance enhancer: you get more benefit while still doing less work. The next argument that I hear coming is: If the art more inspiring, thought provoking, or imaginative when someone is high, why don't all artists get high, because that is the point of art, right? Yes, I would agree that the point of art is indeed to be inspiring, thought provoking, and imaginative. But the answer to your question is the same as to why drugs are illegal in sports: when you use drugs you're giving yourself an unfair advantage over the guy who works his tail off and still can't create a piece as imaginative, thought-provoking, or inspiring at you. There are professional artists just the same as there are professional sports players, and the ones who use drugs are giving themselves an unfair advantage, if indeed you do get a creative boost from pot.The funny thing about this is I'm sure alot of influential art out there has been created while the artist/s were high. Granted, that cannot be taken back, but I believe that natural human ingenuity and creativity should be valued above drug enhanced creativity and ingenuity any day. Speaking of natural human ingenuity, alot of the most inspirational pieces of art are also the oldest, when there were no drug enhancements. The article in Newsweek dealt with a family in England that was arrested for selling more than $20 million in fake artistic pieces over the past 10 or so years, many of which were modeled as ancient pieces of art. They managed to sell a painting relatively recently, by a deceased painter whose name currently escapes me, to a museum for $900,000. $900,000? Really? The best part about it was, obviously, the people didn't notice. It still inspired and hopefully made people think just as much as the original would have, because people believed it was the original. I just find it funny that the art market puts so much value on gleaning the originals when a forgery can achieve in essence what is the same effect. Now I am certainly not condoning art forgery: forgery of any kind is certainly an evil deed. This was all just a random musing that I thought I might share.Un-Ordinary: Halo party tonight with the first intermingling of work friends (Rick) and home friends (at least Wade and Curry). We'll see how that works out.

Random Quote:

"Any great work of art ... revives and adapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world -- the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air."- Leonard Bernstein*Exeunt All*

Frank Cine-atra

I think I'll use this as my new film rating. I give it 4 hats off!!

clipped from haha.nu