The complete list of Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs of All Time are @ http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/500songs
A few of my favorites:
- Like a Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan
- A Change Is Gonna Come, Sam Cooke
- Blowin' in the Wind, Bob Dylan
- Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen
- Stairway To Heaven, Led Zeppelin
- One, U2
- No Woman, No Cry, Bob Marley and the Wailers
- That'll Be the Day, Buddy Holly and the Crickets
- Georgia on My Mind, Ray Charles
- Hotel California, The Eagles
- Billie Jean, Michael Jackson
- I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, U2
- You Can't Always Get What You Want, The Rolling Stones
- Losing My Religion, R.E.M.
- Blue Eyes Crying In the Rain, Willie Nelson
- Candle in the Wind, Elton John
- Tears in Heaven, Eric Clapton
- C'mon Everybody, Eddie Cochran
- The Boys of Summer, Don Henley
- Piano Man, Billy Joel
- Love Me Tender, Elvis Presley
Useful link:
www.rollingstone.com
Saturday, May 03, 2008
Friday, May 02, 2008
Knowing Your Opponent
How to get inside your opponents' heads rather than their hearts? The article Inside a deal was brilliant. http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11288484
Useful link:
www.psychologicalscience.org
Useful link:
www.psychologicalscience.org
Stephen Gregory
I really liked Steven Gregory's unique skull embedded with precious stones + I think it's one-of-a-kind art form with its own beauty and luster with a precious message.
Useful links:
www.opus-art.com
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2277561,00.html
Useful links:
www.opus-art.com
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2277561,00.html
Forevermark
De Beers says it plans to launch the world’s leading diamond brand Forevermark via carefully selected jewelers in Asia/South Africa + it's own independent grading laboratories in Belgium and England using proprietary technology exclusively for Forevermark diamonds.
I think this concept will definitely re-assure diamond consumers of all ages at a cost (if they don't care).
Useful links:
www.forevermark.com
www.debeersgroup.com
www.dtc.com
I think this concept will definitely re-assure diamond consumers of all ages at a cost (if they don't care).
Useful links:
www.forevermark.com
www.debeersgroup.com
www.dtc.com
Twilight Becomes Night: A New Documentary
In her new documentary, Twilight Becomes Night, filmmaker Virginie-Alvine Perrette shows why America should fear a chain store takeover. Brilliant! I liked it.
Useful link:
www.twilightbecomesnight.com
Useful link:
www.twilightbecomesnight.com
Art During The Great War
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
The versatility of Mr Nevinson and the way in which he alters his style to suit his subject is seen in ‘A Group of Soldiers’. The great truth about the English ‘Tommy’ after 1915 was that he was the British working man in disguise, and here with unerring accuracy Mr Nevinson has penetrated to the man behind the uniform, and unveiled the man of toil, the unit of the machine. Some have demurred that in the foremost figures the hands are exaggerated but, while the point is open to debate, a slight exaggeration is permissible as emphasising the fact that these men belong to the horny-handed class. In this group, where there is no movement to be registered, Futurist devices would be out of place and they are avoided, but there is still a faint trace of Cubism in the definite angles of the simple modelling, and this helps to give a monumental sense of strength and doggedness to the sturdy figures.
In landscape, as well as in his figure paintings, Mr Nevinson contrived to get at the reality behind te thing seen. ‘The Road from Arras to Bapaume’ is neither impressionistic nor photographic, but it gives the essential truth of a scene acutely remembered. All the inessential details have been suppressed, with the result that the main recollections of the truth—the white, switchback track of Roman straightness, the lopped-down tree-trunks, the stream of moving traffic, and the limitless expanse—are recorded with increased strength and intensity. This is one of Mr Nevinson’s later war pictures, and while he no doubt enjoyed greater facilities and privileges when he returned to France in July 1917 as an ‘official artist’ than he had done in 1914-15 as a motor mechanic, the essential qualities in his pictures remained the same. His reputation was made with the earlier pictures, in which the mannerisms were most marked; in the later works these mannerisms were pruned to a vanishing point, and realities were stated without any serious loss in strength and with increased clarity.
It is no wonder that the war pictures of Mr Nevinson took London by storm in the early days of the War. He was the first to show the grim inner realities of modern fighting, and others who dealt only with appearances seemed in comparison remote from the heart of the subject. When other young artists were released from the fighting line, a new series of visions of men as automata expressed the new outlook of a new generation, but their work did not begin to appear in exhibitions till nearing the time of the Armistice in 1918.
The first serious rival to Mr Nevinson appeared in April 1916, when a large painting, ‘The Kensington’s at Laventie’ by Mr Eric H Kennington, was exhibited in Regent Street. Mr Kennington, a young painter of promise in whom Mr William Nicholson had taken an interest, was an artist of quite another type. He was untouched by the most modern movements, except that he had a leaning towards simplicity of drawing and emphasis of design: this and a knowledge of the War from within was all he had in common with Mr Nevinson. After only three months training in England as a Territorial, Private Kennington went to France at the beginning of November 1914 with the 13th Battalion of the London Regiment (The Kensingtons). He returned to England in 1915, when he was discharged unfit for further service, and then began to paint this great picture of a typical moment in the life at the Front during the terrible winter of 1914-15. The moment chosen for representation in this picture was when his platoon, after serving for four days and nights in the fire trenches, enduring the piercing cold of twenty degrees of frost and almost continuous snow, had at last been relieved. The men have emerged from the communication trench terminating in a ruined farmyard, and are forming up along the ruined village street. Each figure in the picture is an actual portrait, and the artist has given the following description of his work:
Corporal J Kealey is about to give the order ‘Fall in, No.7 Platoon.’ ....In the first four....reading from right to left—are Pte.Slade, resting wtih both hands on his rifle; Lee—Cpl. Wilson, Pte. Guy, and Pte.McCafferty, who is turning to look at te other men falling in behind....On the extreme left is Pte.H Bristol....Directly behind Pte.Guy are two men in waterproof sheets: Pte.Kennington (the artist) in a blue trench helmet and Pte.W.Harvey....On the ground is Pte. A Todd...He has fallen exhausted by continual sickness, hard work, lack of sleep, long hours of ‘standing—to ,’ and observing.
This picture shows quite another aspect of realism. It is a stately presentation of human endurance, of the quiet heroism of the rank and file. The deadliest enemy here is the piercing cold, which seems to pervade the whole picture. Apart from its human emotional appeal, this large picture—in which the figures are two—thirds life—size—possesses a peculiar technical interest in that it is painted on glass. The advantage of this method is that the pigment is hermetically sealed, and so long as the thick plate—glass endures unbroken the color of the surface will remain for centuries as fresh as on the day which it was painted. The technical difficulties, however, will be apparent even to laymen when it is realized that in order to use this method the whole picture has to be painted backward. Not only has the subject to be reversed on the other side of the glass, but the process of painting has to be reversed also: the upper touches, which on a canvas would have been the last, must be laid first on the glass, and what would have been the first brush stroke on a canvas must be put on the glass last. Looking at the apparent case with which the whole picture has been painted, and remembering the infinite difficulties of the method employed, ‘The Kensingtons at Laventie’ must be pronounced a great technical achievement as well as a noble memorial of British fortitude.
Art During The Great War (continued)
The versatility of Mr Nevinson and the way in which he alters his style to suit his subject is seen in ‘A Group of Soldiers’. The great truth about the English ‘Tommy’ after 1915 was that he was the British working man in disguise, and here with unerring accuracy Mr Nevinson has penetrated to the man behind the uniform, and unveiled the man of toil, the unit of the machine. Some have demurred that in the foremost figures the hands are exaggerated but, while the point is open to debate, a slight exaggeration is permissible as emphasising the fact that these men belong to the horny-handed class. In this group, where there is no movement to be registered, Futurist devices would be out of place and they are avoided, but there is still a faint trace of Cubism in the definite angles of the simple modelling, and this helps to give a monumental sense of strength and doggedness to the sturdy figures.
In landscape, as well as in his figure paintings, Mr Nevinson contrived to get at the reality behind te thing seen. ‘The Road from Arras to Bapaume’ is neither impressionistic nor photographic, but it gives the essential truth of a scene acutely remembered. All the inessential details have been suppressed, with the result that the main recollections of the truth—the white, switchback track of Roman straightness, the lopped-down tree-trunks, the stream of moving traffic, and the limitless expanse—are recorded with increased strength and intensity. This is one of Mr Nevinson’s later war pictures, and while he no doubt enjoyed greater facilities and privileges when he returned to France in July 1917 as an ‘official artist’ than he had done in 1914-15 as a motor mechanic, the essential qualities in his pictures remained the same. His reputation was made with the earlier pictures, in which the mannerisms were most marked; in the later works these mannerisms were pruned to a vanishing point, and realities were stated without any serious loss in strength and with increased clarity.
It is no wonder that the war pictures of Mr Nevinson took London by storm in the early days of the War. He was the first to show the grim inner realities of modern fighting, and others who dealt only with appearances seemed in comparison remote from the heart of the subject. When other young artists were released from the fighting line, a new series of visions of men as automata expressed the new outlook of a new generation, but their work did not begin to appear in exhibitions till nearing the time of the Armistice in 1918.
The first serious rival to Mr Nevinson appeared in April 1916, when a large painting, ‘The Kensington’s at Laventie’ by Mr Eric H Kennington, was exhibited in Regent Street. Mr Kennington, a young painter of promise in whom Mr William Nicholson had taken an interest, was an artist of quite another type. He was untouched by the most modern movements, except that he had a leaning towards simplicity of drawing and emphasis of design: this and a knowledge of the War from within was all he had in common with Mr Nevinson. After only three months training in England as a Territorial, Private Kennington went to France at the beginning of November 1914 with the 13th Battalion of the London Regiment (The Kensingtons). He returned to England in 1915, when he was discharged unfit for further service, and then began to paint this great picture of a typical moment in the life at the Front during the terrible winter of 1914-15. The moment chosen for representation in this picture was when his platoon, after serving for four days and nights in the fire trenches, enduring the piercing cold of twenty degrees of frost and almost continuous snow, had at last been relieved. The men have emerged from the communication trench terminating in a ruined farmyard, and are forming up along the ruined village street. Each figure in the picture is an actual portrait, and the artist has given the following description of his work:
Corporal J Kealey is about to give the order ‘Fall in, No.7 Platoon.’ ....In the first four....reading from right to left—are Pte.Slade, resting wtih both hands on his rifle; Lee—Cpl. Wilson, Pte. Guy, and Pte.McCafferty, who is turning to look at te other men falling in behind....On the extreme left is Pte.H Bristol....Directly behind Pte.Guy are two men in waterproof sheets: Pte.Kennington (the artist) in a blue trench helmet and Pte.W.Harvey....On the ground is Pte. A Todd...He has fallen exhausted by continual sickness, hard work, lack of sleep, long hours of ‘standing—to ,’ and observing.
This picture shows quite another aspect of realism. It is a stately presentation of human endurance, of the quiet heroism of the rank and file. The deadliest enemy here is the piercing cold, which seems to pervade the whole picture. Apart from its human emotional appeal, this large picture—in which the figures are two—thirds life—size—possesses a peculiar technical interest in that it is painted on glass. The advantage of this method is that the pigment is hermetically sealed, and so long as the thick plate—glass endures unbroken the color of the surface will remain for centuries as fresh as on the day which it was painted. The technical difficulties, however, will be apparent even to laymen when it is realized that in order to use this method the whole picture has to be painted backward. Not only has the subject to be reversed on the other side of the glass, but the process of painting has to be reversed also: the upper touches, which on a canvas would have been the last, must be laid first on the glass, and what would have been the first brush stroke on a canvas must be put on the glass last. Looking at the apparent case with which the whole picture has been painted, and remembering the infinite difficulties of the method employed, ‘The Kensingtons at Laventie’ must be pronounced a great technical achievement as well as a noble memorial of British fortitude.
Art During The Great War (continued)
Random Thoughts
'What we wanted to do was once the customer come into our store we wanted to be sure that we are able to hold them for another few minutes, because they say that if you are able to make them sit for 10-15 minutes, they are ready to shop for another 30 minutes, so for us, every minutes is moolah.'
- B S Nagesh, MD
www.shoppersstop.com
- B S Nagesh, MD
www.shoppersstop.com
T- rays
(via Wiki) Electromagnetic waves sent at terahertz frequencies, known as terahertz radiation, terahertz waves, terahertz light, T-rays, T-light, T-lux and THz, are in the region of the electromagnetic spectrum between 300 gigahertz (3x1011 Hz) and 3 terahertz (3x1012 Hz), corresponding to the submillimeter wavelength range between 1 millimeter (high-frequency edge of the microwave band) and 100 micrometer (long-wavelength edge of far-infrared light).
I found the article Detecting T-rays @ http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11286550 interesting because of its wide application in various faculties of science and technology + I also believe T-rays could be useful in detecting unique chemical signatures in sophistcated treated/synthetic colored stones and diamonds.
Useful links:
www.nist.gov
www.ieee.org
I found the article Detecting T-rays @ http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11286550 interesting because of its wide application in various faculties of science and technology + I also believe T-rays could be useful in detecting unique chemical signatures in sophistcated treated/synthetic colored stones and diamonds.
Useful links:
www.nist.gov
www.ieee.org
Thursday, May 01, 2008
The Memory Project
I really liked the O2 Memory Project . Congratulations to Gabby Shawcross + Jason Bruges for designing the Memory Project. It was Brilliant!
Useful link:
www.o2memoryproject.com
Useful link:
www.o2memoryproject.com
The Adventures Of Johnny Bunko
The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need by Daniel H. Pink is a fascinating book with good sense of humor + it's informative.
I liked it.
Useful link:
www.johnnybunko.com
I liked it.
Useful link:
www.johnnybunko.com
The Perth Mint
(via Wiki) The Perth Mint is Australia's oldest operating mint + today the Mint continues to provide refining and other services to the gold industry and manufactures many coin related numismatic items for investors and coin collectors.
Interestingly the mint has become a prime tourist destination for the Asian visitors, especially the Chinese, Malaysian, Indonesian, Japanese and Indian customers because of their passion for gold.
Useful link:
www.perthmint.com.au
Interestingly the mint has become a prime tourist destination for the Asian visitors, especially the Chinese, Malaysian, Indonesian, Japanese and Indian customers because of their passion for gold.
Useful link:
www.perthmint.com.au
Carbon Footprint
I found the carbon footprint analysis (a paper - pdf) by the MIT class @ http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/04/mit-class-calcu.html interesting because I think Timothy Gutowski and his team were spot on + definitely we may have to change our lifestyle to save the environment.
Useful links:
www.mit.edu
www.ieee.org
Useful links:
www.mit.edu
www.ieee.org
Art During The Great War
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
2
Before the War Mr Christopher R W Nevinson was only known to the few as a young artist of promise. After studying at the Slade School of Art, he had formed ties of friendship in Paris with the Italian artist Gino Severini, and so had become influenced by Futurism. He was also interested in Cubism, and though he never definitely adhered to ‘Vorticism,’ he exhibited once with Mr Wyndham Lewis, Mr Edward Wadsworth, Mr William Roberts, and other Vorticists. During the early stages of the War Mr Nevinson was driving a motor ambulance behind the Belgian Front, and being invalided with rheumatic fever early in 1915 he was able to resume painting during his convalscence. Thus he was practically the first artist who had the opportunity to exhibit in London pictures of the War based on personal experience of the realities of modern fighting. It was in the spring of 1915 that Mr Nevinson showed his first three war pictures in the exhibition of the London Group at the Goupil Gallery, and though these betrayed Futurist and Cubist influence, they were perfectly intelligible as illustrations of actual incidents.
Dr Johnson maintained that there was some good to be got out of every book, and similarly it may be argued that there is some good to be got out of every artistic theory. It was the peculiar distinction of Mr Nevinson to leave aside all the extravagances of Futurism and Cubism, and snatch from them the two things which helped him to render realistically a new world in a new way. The particlar good thing in the work of the Italian Futurists was their successful suggestion of movement. By a generous use of slanting lines in the composition,Mr Nevinson gave a vivid sense of movement and life to his early painting ‘Returning to the Trenches.’ His French soldiers, with packs on their backs, their bodies and rifles sloping in the direction in which they were marching, were not portrayed as they would be shown in a photograph: the aim here was not to portray a group of individual soldiers, but to express the onward rush of an advancing army, and this impression was vividly and irresistibly conveyed. Further, the use of straight lines and avoidance of curves—characteristics derived from Cubism—suggested that the movement was that of a vast machine rather than of a collection of human beings.
The distinguished art critic, Mr A Clutton Brock, has pointed out in one of his essays that for fifty years or more a belief has been growing on us that man is a machine and ‘should be conscious of the fact that he is one.’ The popular play ‘R.U.R’ was an expression of this consciousness in dramatic form; in painting it was confessed by the Cubist method which, as Mr Clutton Brock has said,
does express, in the most direct way, the sense that in war man behaves like a machine or part of machine, that war is a process in which man is not treated as a human being but as an item in a great instrument of destruction, in which he ceases to be a person and is lost in a process. The cubist method, with its repetition and sharp distinction of planes, expresses this sense of a mechanical process better than any other way of representation.
Familiarity with the working of the ‘war machine’ prepared the mind of the public to accept that vision of the world as a complicated piece of mechanism which is the essence both of Cubism and Futurism. The War offered to the Cubists one of the few subjects which their technique was fitted to express, and the marvel is that this opportunity, missed by the French and Italian inventors of the new method, was seized upon with conspicuous success by a handful of almost unknown British artists.
From the first Mr Nevinson stood out from all previous painters of war by reason of his power in suggesting movement, and the implication in his pictures that modern war was not the affair of human individuals, but the creaking progress of a complicated machine. His remarkable painting of the interior of a hospital, ‘La Patrie’ now the property of Mr Arnold Bennett, is tragical in its intensity, but it is the tragedy of automata crushed and mangled in the revolutions of a pitiless machine. Other artists have painted the interiors of base-hospitals, pictures of men bandaged but smiling, and attended by a bevy of comely nurses, so that the spectator might imagine it was rather pleasant than otherwise to be wounded; but Mr Nevinson permits no falsifying of the facts; he shows us the reality of the thing, the broken débris of the war-machine, the pain and the suffering and, above all, the relative insignificance of the individual pawn in this mighty war game.
Art During The Great War (continued)
2
Before the War Mr Christopher R W Nevinson was only known to the few as a young artist of promise. After studying at the Slade School of Art, he had formed ties of friendship in Paris with the Italian artist Gino Severini, and so had become influenced by Futurism. He was also interested in Cubism, and though he never definitely adhered to ‘Vorticism,’ he exhibited once with Mr Wyndham Lewis, Mr Edward Wadsworth, Mr William Roberts, and other Vorticists. During the early stages of the War Mr Nevinson was driving a motor ambulance behind the Belgian Front, and being invalided with rheumatic fever early in 1915 he was able to resume painting during his convalscence. Thus he was practically the first artist who had the opportunity to exhibit in London pictures of the War based on personal experience of the realities of modern fighting. It was in the spring of 1915 that Mr Nevinson showed his first three war pictures in the exhibition of the London Group at the Goupil Gallery, and though these betrayed Futurist and Cubist influence, they were perfectly intelligible as illustrations of actual incidents.
Dr Johnson maintained that there was some good to be got out of every book, and similarly it may be argued that there is some good to be got out of every artistic theory. It was the peculiar distinction of Mr Nevinson to leave aside all the extravagances of Futurism and Cubism, and snatch from them the two things which helped him to render realistically a new world in a new way. The particlar good thing in the work of the Italian Futurists was their successful suggestion of movement. By a generous use of slanting lines in the composition,Mr Nevinson gave a vivid sense of movement and life to his early painting ‘Returning to the Trenches.’ His French soldiers, with packs on their backs, their bodies and rifles sloping in the direction in which they were marching, were not portrayed as they would be shown in a photograph: the aim here was not to portray a group of individual soldiers, but to express the onward rush of an advancing army, and this impression was vividly and irresistibly conveyed. Further, the use of straight lines and avoidance of curves—characteristics derived from Cubism—suggested that the movement was that of a vast machine rather than of a collection of human beings.
The distinguished art critic, Mr A Clutton Brock, has pointed out in one of his essays that for fifty years or more a belief has been growing on us that man is a machine and ‘should be conscious of the fact that he is one.’ The popular play ‘R.U.R’ was an expression of this consciousness in dramatic form; in painting it was confessed by the Cubist method which, as Mr Clutton Brock has said,
does express, in the most direct way, the sense that in war man behaves like a machine or part of machine, that war is a process in which man is not treated as a human being but as an item in a great instrument of destruction, in which he ceases to be a person and is lost in a process. The cubist method, with its repetition and sharp distinction of planes, expresses this sense of a mechanical process better than any other way of representation.
Familiarity with the working of the ‘war machine’ prepared the mind of the public to accept that vision of the world as a complicated piece of mechanism which is the essence both of Cubism and Futurism. The War offered to the Cubists one of the few subjects which their technique was fitted to express, and the marvel is that this opportunity, missed by the French and Italian inventors of the new method, was seized upon with conspicuous success by a handful of almost unknown British artists.
From the first Mr Nevinson stood out from all previous painters of war by reason of his power in suggesting movement, and the implication in his pictures that modern war was not the affair of human individuals, but the creaking progress of a complicated machine. His remarkable painting of the interior of a hospital, ‘La Patrie’ now the property of Mr Arnold Bennett, is tragical in its intensity, but it is the tragedy of automata crushed and mangled in the revolutions of a pitiless machine. Other artists have painted the interiors of base-hospitals, pictures of men bandaged but smiling, and attended by a bevy of comely nurses, so that the spectator might imagine it was rather pleasant than otherwise to be wounded; but Mr Nevinson permits no falsifying of the facts; he shows us the reality of the thing, the broken débris of the war-machine, the pain and the suffering and, above all, the relative insignificance of the individual pawn in this mighty war game.
Art During The Great War (continued)
Wiener Werkstätte
The first exhibition devoted to Wiener Werkstätte Jewelry, now open at the Neue Galerie on Fifth Avenue in New York, includes 40 pieces, many made by Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser, founders of the firm. Wiener Werkstätte Jewelry is open until June 30, 2008.
Useful links:
http://wiener-werkstaette.com
www.neuegalerie.org
Useful links:
http://wiener-werkstaette.com
www.neuegalerie.org
Random Thoughts
It is important to understand your own fortitude and zone of comfort. The worst thing is to be intrinsically uncomfortable. It means you are likely to jump and make the wrong decision and be panicked out of something for no good reason. You will never hold a strong position in something when you will be the first out of it. Remember that events are by definition in the public consciousness, and if you react to what is in the newspapers, you are probably going to be doing the same thing at the same time as everyone else. If it initiates the same activity as others, then you're not applying any superior knowledge.
- Colin McLean
- Colin McLean
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Graphic Novel Update
I found nbc.com/heroes online comic-book concept interesting. I liked it. Great idea!
Useful links:
http://www.nbc.com/Heroes
www.gameloft.com
www.heroestheseries.com
Useful links:
http://www.nbc.com/Heroes
www.gameloft.com
www.heroestheseries.com
Celebrating Sixties
(via budgettravel) A new museum celebrating Sixties' counterculture and music is set to open this summer on the site of the 1969 Woodstock festival (bethelwoodscenter.org.museum).
A must-visit.
Useful link:
www.bethelwoodscenter.org
A must-visit.
Useful link:
www.bethelwoodscenter.org
Diamond Promotion Service Update
I really liked the Diamond Promotion Service (DPS) microsite @ http://www.dps.org/promotingyourreputation/index.html because it provides excellent reference materials on consumer confidence issues + customer loyalty. Brilliant!
Useful link:
www.dps.org
Useful link:
www.dps.org
Lean Lexicon
Lean Lexicon by Lean Enterprise Institute + Chet Marchwinski + John Shook is a great reference book + it explains A3 lean methodology perfectly.
Useful link:
www.lean.org
Useful link:
www.lean.org
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