16 March 06
In The Long Run
I’ve been reading up on global warming lately, having just finished Thin Ice, by Mark Bowen, and The Discovery of Global Warming, by Spencer Weart (the latter author has an excellent website covering the same ground as the book, but with three times the content). For those of you who encounter climate change denialists, Coby Beck has been blogging a series on how to talk to a global warming skeptic.
15 March 06
Illustration Friday: Insect
I’m a week late for this theme, but I wanted to include a sketch I did of a David Smith sculpture I saw last week at the Guggenheim. The title of the piece is False Peace Spectre (1945). It looks like a wasp crossed with a fighter plane.
14 March 06
A Blog From Troy
Eurylochus, who is the lead officer under Odysseus, is keeping a blog of his experiences in the Trojan War.
13 March 06
Recovering from Overstimulation
I will leave you with a drawing of butterflies and a pair of mating Atlas moths while I catch up on some badly-needed sleep…
12 March 06
Tracking Sea Critters
The OBIS-SEAMAP site is a repository for observation and tracking data for marine mammals, sea turtles, and seabirds. What is neat is that the site lets anyone go in and look at maps of the observation data, so if you want to see where a short-tailed albatross can cruise to, you can.
11 March 06
Teapots and Bras
Not the first two things that probably roll into people’s heads when they think about New York.
We went to Ripplu, a place Barbara Anderson put me onto: the Japanese bra store. My friend Sue was brave enough to get herself manhandled into a size she’d never even heard of… but they did let me sketch and actually set up a chair for me. Next, Takashimaya, a Japanese department store on 5th Avenue, more museum than shop. We walked all the way down east 59th past the Tassel Store to Terrence Conran’s, where my sister loaded up on Pantone colors and kids’ toys, and where I drew teapots and Phillipe Stark’s alien lemon squeezers. On to Zabar’s on Broadway for cheese and cinammon rolls. Then a different kind of bra fitting experience at Victoria’s Secret. I volunteered for this one. Jeez. We were glad to get home for a cup of tea and a game of Monopoly (we all got creamed by Richard, who didn’t join us on this excursion, lucky for him).
9 March 06
Four Hundred Billion Pixels Of California
In the next week or so the State of California will make available for free download color aerial photography covering the entire state at a 1-meter resolution. Watch the California Spatial Information Library for details. This is a massive dataset—the mosaic for Yolo County alone is 1.5 gigabytes in size. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it but I’m already salivating over getting bits and pieces of this imagery on my computer.
8 March 06
Full Days in New York
Yesterday, the Guggenheim, the Empire State Building (a great sketching location), lunch at Otto's, the New York Public Library; today, the American Museum of Natural History. All day. I have had tropical butterflies fluttering around my person as I tried to sketch them (the atlas moths were easy because they were locked in a prolonged embrace, immobile); heard Kenneth Branagh tell me about the Galapagos, Harrison Ford tell me about extraterrestrial life, and Maya Angelou tell me about the Big Bang; sketched birds and skeletons and generally tried to avoid the large crowds of obnoxious schoolchildren. Tonight I'm going to go and stay with a friend from uni for the next few days. My sister joins us tomorrow. Different gear set required...7 March 06
Oscars With Kitten
Sunday, before Pica hopped on the redeye flight to New York, we went over to Susan’s to watch the Oscars. I’m not a big fan of the Oscars but I tagged along since a) Jon Stewart was hosting and b) Susan has a sweet several-month old kitten named McCovey. McCovey was very mellow this evening and spent much of the time dozing on Pica’s lap, as in the sketch here.