6:05 am

It’s enough to give a tugboat captain angina. So when Bob Henry, captain of the Rachel Marie, who is in charge of towing Smithson’s island, looked out across the East River Thursday afternoon and saw another piece of conceptual art gaining on him, he did not view the development kindly.

Randy Kennedy, writer for the NY Times, describing a 2005 event in which one motorboat-mounted piece of high-concept art pursued another built on a tugboat. (Re-blogged from kottke.org.) (#)

7:36 am

John Oates wants people to know that he is nothing like what he was when he had a mustache. The Hall & Oates principal is firm about the distinction, because if things go as planned, his mustachioed image could appear on TV in cartoon form kicking ass, rocking out and wearing tight pink pants.

Independent publisher Primary Wave Music Publishing, which owns a majority stake in most of the biggest hits in the Hall & Oates catalog, is shopping a cartoon titled “J-Stache” that further illustrates the dichotomy. As laid out in a two-minute trailer, Oates is portrayed as a modern-day family man and finds himself enticed back to the rock star life by his mustache, which is voiced by comedian Dave Attell.

A billboard.com article outlining the specifics of John Oates' most recent project. (Via Ethan.) (#)

1:41 pm

The absence of any right to the substantive recovery means that respondents cannot benefit from the judgment they seek and thus lack Article III standing. “When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.” Bob Dylan, “Like A Rolling Stone,” on Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia Records, 1965).

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, in his dissenting opinion on Sprint Communications v. APCC Services. (Via Slate.) (#)

10:15 am

In Google’s regular line of business, the strategy has always been to unveil innovative, occasionally flawed products – like Google Docs – then keep them in beta for months or years. But people don’t want to buy a phone in beta. Android products have to work right from the start. Is this really the phone that’s going to change everything?

Daniel Roth, writer for Wired Magazine, on pitfalls Google might face in the realization of their Android mobile device platform. (#)

6:20 pm

Style tells us, in a second, what substance couldn’t tell us in a year. It’s silly to downplay the importance of verbal intelligence to a job that makes you the mouthpiece of arguably the most influential nation in the world.

Sam Andersen, writer for New York Magazine, on the importance and promise of Obama's eloquence. (#)

8:22 am

That’s why things change, Doc. Because what folks claim is right is always just a couple of jumps short of what they need to do business. Now an individual, one fellow he will stop doing business because he’s got a notion of what is right, and he is a hero. But folks in general, which is society, Doc, is never going to stop doing business. Society is just going to cook up a new notion of what is right. Society is sure not ever going to commit suicide.

Governor Stark, from Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, making the quintessential relativist argument. (#)

9:58 am

We at Clearleft have a pre-defined process. User-centred design demands it, and potential clients like to see a process before hiring their agency. But what we’re starting to enjoy more and more is deviating from the process to achieve the same goal. Skipping steps, changing the order, adding extra steps, using different tools. This all keeps us fresh, but it also helps eliminate the production line approach it’s so easy to fall into.

Richard Rutter on how Clearleft mixes up their design process to keep things fresh. (#)

7:17 am

I think most people who maintain blogs are doing it for some of the same reasons I do: they like the idea that there’s a place where a record of their existence is kept – a house with an always-open door where people who are looking for you can check on you, compare notes with you and tell you what they think of you. Sometimes that house is messy, sometimes horrifyingly so. In real life, we wouldn’t invite any passing stranger into these situations, but the remove of the Internet makes it seem O.K.

Emily Gould on why anyone keeps a blog. (Via Wistar.) (#)

7:41 am

Afterwards we invite you to join Paul Otellini and Arvind Sodhani for our evening reception in the Venetian Room followed by dinner in the Grand Ballroom. After dinner, MC Hammer will deliver the final keynote of the day. The Hub will remain open for after hours networking.

The Agenda for the 2008 Intel Capital CEO Summit, an event where MC Hammer apparently delivered a mother-effing keynote address. (#)

6:35 am

I’m haunted by that scene in 2001. What makes it so poignant, and so weird, is the computer’s emotional response to the disassembly of its mind: its despair as one circuit after another goes dark, its childlike pleading with the astronaut – “I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m afraid” – and its final reversion to what can only be called a state of innocence. HAL’s outpouring of feeling contrasts with the emotionlessness that characterizes the human figures in the film, who go about their business with an almost robotic efficiency. Their thoughts and actions feel scripted, as if they’re following the steps of an algorithm. In the world of 2001, people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine. That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.

Nicholas Carr, writer for theatlantic.com, from an article on how the internet is shaping human cognition. (Via Darren.) (#)

9:23 am

Just think, little Sally Ann, some day you too can live out your life’s ambition and be painted an emasculating succubus by a press corps that clings almost erotically to the fantasy of your eventual defeat! Yea!

Rebecca Traister, writer for salon.com, musing sarcastically about the impact of Hillary Clinton's historic run on future women leaders. (#)

5:43 am

Bennie Lee Edwards Sr., the uncle of the alleged victim, testifies that he recognized his niece on the video, and that she looked about 14. This testimony is less compelling once you hear Edwards take 10 long seconds to remember his own age, then botch his own son’s date of birth. He also gets in a long dispute with the defense over whether police once found crack rocks under his hat. He contends that the crack was in his truck.

Josh Levin, of Slate Magazine, on Day Two of the R. Kelly trial – what may be the biggest train wreck of a legal defense in U.S. history. (Via Darren.) (#)

7:57 am

And the western world will perish in fifteen years
And then in the year sixteen when the world is clean,
Clean of this hipster scene,
Well all their ghosts will scream for what their souls have seen
And the tapas they could have been eating.

But
The world is in the turlet.

Ted Leo, in a surprisingly catchy (spoof?) song from WFMU's The Best Show. (#)

6:46 pm

The most important thing is to acknowledge that friendship isn’t binary, and that there are people who aren’t your friends that you still want to interact with, and people who are your friends that you wish you could ignore online. Users need these controls to tailor their experiences to what’s useful to them, and abstract these controls from ones that indicate to your friends ‘how much you like them.’

Kevin Cox, suggesting some ways current social networking sites can maintain both vitality and value. (Via Darren.) (#)

11:57 am

The heart wants what the heart wants, even if it’s going to leave you clutching your tummy in a ball of pain. 

The Lactose Intolerant Mouse on his unfortunate condition. (#)

5:06 pm

Your best is an idiot.

Bender Bending Rodriguez, admonishing Amy and the rest of the Planet Express crew for a lackluster performance at his own faux-funeral. (#)

8:18 am

I believe that technology is not a force that is segregating us from real time, real space, and real experience. Technology provides us with a window onto reality, but it is we who narrow that window for fragmentary glimpses — a quick succession of headlines, a video clip, a place on a branch of a social network, a doodle that passes for a design concept — and then we treat these fragments as wholes. Yes, if we sit in front of a computer screen all day, or staple our iPhones to our bodies, we will lose an important dimension of our lives, but it’s not detachment that will be thrust upon us. It’s detachment we will have chosen.

And why shouldn’t we choose it?

Julie Lasky, editor of ID Magazine, in a commencement address to the Cranbrook Academy of Art. (#)

1:06 pm

You cannot be successful if you don’t have the client’s trust. Of course you’ve got to earn that trust in large measure, but before you choose to engage with a client it is best to know whether or not they’re prepared to trust at all. You’ll never be successful if your work is constantly second-guessed and if your ideas are regularly “committeed into shape.”

Andy Rutledge, in an excellent article discussing the kinds of clients you should avoid outright. (#)

7:03 am

Why are we skirting around this issue? Why are we coming up with excuses? It seems as though people are more afraid of being called racist than they are afraid of actually being racist.

A Salon.com letter writer on the extent to which race will hurt Obama's chances in Appalachian states. (#)

7:56 pm

This place, I believe, is called food libraries.

Squisgaar, lead guitarist of Dethklok, on a rare grocery run. (#)