Caili in wonderland

2012-02-12T15:00:00.001-08:00

2012-02-12T14:59:00.000-08:00

2012-02-11T13:38:00.001-08:00

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Yang Yongliang is a Chinese photographer and painter from Shanghai. He originally studied traditional art at a young age and this training has greatly informed his current practice. The images above come from a series based on Shan shui paintings. These type of paintings stem from a history that goes back more than 1,500 years ago and the images often depict scenes of natural landscapes and beautiful scenery. It’s a tradition that demands a rigorous set of requirements in the hopes of creating the perfect combination of balance, composition, and form.

2012-02-11T13:32:00.001-08:00

2012-02-03T19:01:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time,a tiny story with great soul. Created by Sebas & Clim

2012-02-03T18:58:00.000-08:00

artistBRAM

2012-02-02T20:33:00.000-08:00

There's a sad sort of clanging

From the clock in the hall

And the bells in the steeple, too

And up in the nursery

An absurd little bird

Is popping out to say coo-coo

(Coo-coo, coo-coo)

coo-coo Regretfully they tell us

coo-coo But firmly they compel us

to say goodnight

coo-coo

To you...

2012-02-01T12:37:00.000-08:00

Looking forward to watch this movie.

2012-02-01T12:33:00.001-08:00

hahaha...

2012-01-28T20:22:00.001-08:00

An unexpected side effect of the 2010 flooding in parts of Sindh, Pakistan, was that millions of spiders climbed up into the trees to escape the rising flood waters; because of the scale of the flooding and the fact that the water took so long to recede, many trees became cocooned in spiderwebs. People in the area had never seen this phenomenon before. (Courtesy: National Geographic)

2012-01-28T20:11:00.000-08:00

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2012-01-27T21:02:00.000-08:00

Jim Woodring

2012-01-27T20:59:00.000-08:00

2012-01-27T12:43:00.000-08:00

DAVID OGILVY ON COPYWRITING →

April 19, 1955

Dear Mr. Calt:

On March 22nd you wrote to me asking for some notes on my work habits as a copywriter. They are appalling, as you are about to see:

1. I have never written an advertisement in the office. Too many interruptions. I do all my writing at home.

2. I spend a long time studying the precedents. I look at every advertisement which has appeared for competing products during the past 20 years.

3. I am helpless without research material—and the more “motivational” the better.

4. I write out a definition of the problem and a statement of the purpose which I wish the campaign to achieve. Then I go no further until the statement and its principles have been accepted by the client.

5. Before actually writing the copy, I write down every concievable fact and selling idea. Then I get them organized and relate them to research and the copy platform.

6. Then I write the headline. As a matter of fact I try to write 20 alternative headlines for every advertisement. And I never select the final headline without asking the opinion of other people in the agency. In some cases I seek the help of the research department and get them to do a split-run on a battery of headlines.

7. At this point I can no longer postpone the actual copy. So I go home and sit down at my desk. I find myself entirely without ideas. I get bad-tempered. If my wife comes into the room I growl at her. (This has gotten worse since I gave up smoking.)

8. I am terrified of producing a lousy advertisement. This causes me to throw away the first 20 attempts.

9. If all else fails, I drink half a bottle of rum and play a Handel oratorio on the gramophone. This generally produces an uncontrollable gush of copy.

10. The next morning I get up early and edit the gush.

11. Then I take the train to New York and my secretary types a draft. (I cannot type, which is very inconvenient.)

12. I am a lousy copywriter, but I am a good editor. So I go to work editing my own draft. After four or five editings, it looks good enough to show to the client. If the client changes the copy, I get angry—because I took a lot of trouble writing it, and what I wrote I wrote on purpose.

Altogether it is a slow and laborious business. I understand that some copywriters have much greater facility.

Yours sincerely,

D.O.

2012-01-22T07:25:00.001-08:00

Happy Chinese New Year You!

And Stay Curious! <3

2012-01-22T07:23:00.000-08:00

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2012-01-20T21:22:00.001-08:00

I think this is brilliant, hilarious and awesome all at the same time.

2012-01-20T21:20:00.000-08:00

Derek Lam Pre-Fall 2012

Photo: Courtesy of Derek Lam

2012-01-20T21:18:00.000-08:00

A Pink Tentacle Classic

2012-01-20T10:36:00.000-08:00

The Shins first new single since 2007.

2012-01-20T06:43:00.000-08:00

He sits down, he's havin' a bowl of soup. He says to the waiter; "Waiter, come taste the soup." Waiter says; "Is there something wrong with the soup?" He says; "Taste the soup." He says; "Is there something wrong with the soup? Is the soup too hot?" He says; "Will you taste the soup?", "What's wrong is the soup too cold?", "Will you just taste the soup?", "All right, I'll taste the soup. Where's the spoon?", "Ah-ha!" - Coming to America

2012-01-11T19:17:00.000-08:00

Tampopo (1985, Juzo Itami)

“First, caress the surface with the chopstick tips. To express affection. Then, poke the pork. Just touch it. Caress it with the chopstick tips. Gently pick it up, and dip it into the soup on the right of the bowl. What’s important here is to apologize to the pork by saying, ‘See you soon.’”

2012-01-11T19:15:00.000-08:00

Wow, Coachella ain’t messin’ around this year.

2012-01-11T19:12:00.001-08:00

THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE SMILE →

Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert is widely known for his 2006 best seller, Stumbling on Happiness. His work reveals, among other things, the systematic mistakes we all make in imagining how happy (or miserable) we’ll be. In this edited interview with HBR’s Gardiner Morse, Gilbert surveys the field of happiness research and explores its frontiers.

HBR: Happiness research has become a hot topic in the past 20 years. Why?

Gilbert: It’s only recently that we realized we could marry one of our oldest questions—“What is the nature of human happiness?”—to our newest way of getting answers: science. Until just a few decades ago, the problem of happiness was mainly in the hands of philosophers and poets.

Psychologists have always been interested in emotion, but in the past two decades the study of emotion has exploded, and one of the emotions that psychologists have studied most intensively is happiness. Recently economists and neuroscientists joined the party. All these disciplines have distinct but intersecting interests: Psychologists want to understand what people feel, economists want to know what people value, and neuroscientists want to know how people’s brains respond to rewards. Having three separate disciplines all interested in a single topic has put that topic on the scientific map. Papers on happiness are published in Science, people who study happiness win Nobel prizes, and governments all over the world are rushing to figure out how to measure and increase the happiness of their citizens.

How is it possible to measure something as subjective as happiness?

Measuring subjective experiences is a lot easier than you think. It’s what your eye doctor does when she fits you for glasses. She puts a lens in front of your eye and asks you to report your experience, and then she puts another lens up, and then another. She uses your reports as data, submits the data to scientific analysis, and designs a lens that will give you perfect vision—all on the basis of your reports of your subjective experience. People’s real-time reports are very good approximations of their experiences, and they make it possible for us to see the world through their eyes. People may not be able to tell us how happy they were yesterday or how happy they will be tomorrow, but they can tell us how they’re feeling at the moment we ask them. “How are you?” may be the world’s most frequently asked question, and nobody’s stumped by it.

There are many ways to measure happiness. We can ask people “How happy are you right now?” and have them rate it on a scale. We can use magnetic resonance imaging to measure cerebral blood flow, or electromyography to measure the activity of the “smile muscles” in the face. But in most circumstances those measures are highly correlated, and you’d have to be the federal government to prefer the complicated, expensive measures over the simple, inexpensive one.

But isn’t the scale itself subjective? Your five might be my six.

Imagine that a drugstore sold a bunch of cheap thermometers that weren’t very well calibrated. People with normal temperatures might get readings other than 98.6, and two people with the same temperature might get different readings. These inaccuracies could cause people to seek medical treatment they didn’t need or to miss getting treatment they did need. So buggy thermometers are sometimes a problem—but not always. For example, if I brought 100 people to my lab, exposed half of them to a flu virus, and then used those buggy thermometers to take their temperatures a week later, the average temperature of the people who’d been exposed would almost surely be higher than the average temperature of the others. Some thermometers would underestimate, some would overestimate, but as long as I measured enough people, the inaccuracies would cancel themselves out. Even with poorly calibrated instruments, we can compare large groups of people.

A rating scale is like a buggy thermometer. Its inaccuracies make it inappropriate for some kinds of measurement (for example, saying exactly how happy John was at 10:42 AM on July 3, 2010), but it’s perfectly appropriate for the kinds of measurements most psychological scientists make.

What did all these happiness researchers discover?

Much of the research confirms things we’ve always suspected. For example, in general people who are in good romantic relationships are happier than those who aren’t. Healthy people are happier than sick people. People who participate in their churches are happier than those who don’t. Rich people are happier than poor people. And so on.

That said, there have been some surprises. For example, while all these things do make people happier, it’s astonishing how little any one of them matters. Yes, a new house or a new spouse will make you happier, but not much and not for long. As it turns out, people are not very good at predicting what will make them happy and how long that happiness will last. They expect positive events to make them much happier than those events actually do, and they expect negative events to make them unhappier than they actually do. In both field and lab studies, we’ve found that winning or losing an election, gaining or losing a romantic partner, getting or not getting a promotion, passing or failing an exam—all have less impact on happiness than people think they will. A recent study showed that very few experiences affect us for more than three months. When good things happen, we celebrate for a while and then sober up. When bad things happen, we weep and whine for a while and then pick ourselves up and get on with it.

2012-01-08T16:33:00.000-08:00

2012-01-08T16:30:00.000-08:00

2012-01-07T21:09:00.000-08:00

2012-01-07T21:01:00.000-08:00

My kinda fashion.

2012-01-05T19:39:00.000-08:00

David Rowan: Welcome to 2012

The Editor of Wired Offers a Glimpse Into Our Hyper-Networked Tomorrow

From social design to person-to-person networking, UK Wired’s David Rowan reveals the big ideas and tech-trends that will define our lives in 2012. With the discovery of the Earth-like planet Kepler-22b, faster-than-light neutrinos, and claims of cold fusion being achieved, a science fiction-esque world of tomorrow has never felt so close. “Wired is about the people and ideas that will be defining what life will be like for the rest of us in six months time,” explains Rowan of the magazine, whose recent cover stars have include tech icons Mark Zuckerberg, James Dyson and the late, lauded Steve Jobs. “The best way to predict the future is to hang out with some of the outliers already living it. We don’t make ‘predictions,’ but instead tell stories about the people and products that are exciting us before they’ve gone mainstream.” The impending mobile internet explosion in Africa, vastly ambitious revolutions in healthcare, and privatized space travel excite Rowan equally, although “getting the tube to run on time” would be his top discovery for 2012, he jokes. Currently working on a sequel to Wired’s inaugural conference in October 2011 and some exciting guest editorships, here Rowan unveils how social technology will re-define our lives in 2012.

Social design

The big push at Facebook right now is to find ways to let businesses build transactions via the social graph [the global mapping of everybody and how they’re related], from discovering your friends’ music through Spotify to planning travel through connected sites like Trippy. If you’re hiring for a job, buying ski gear, or choosing a university, why be swayed by general websites when you will have far greater trust for recommendations through friends, or friends of friends?

Naturalized interfaces

Forget having to get to grips with technology: there’s a big trend towards tech that responds to your normal bodily movements and your voice. It’s called the “natural user interface,” and Microsoft’s Kinect is a great example: a 3D depth-sensing camera that puts you in a computer game without your needing a joystick. Already there are companies like Tobii in Stockholm that are designing laptops with embedded eye-tracking cameras that let you navigate through folders using your eyes; and face-recognition services like Face.com that let you find your friends just by their facial patterns—which you may think is a bit spooky.

3D printing

What’s happened to digital “bits” is now happening to physical atoms: manufacturing processes are being democratized. This is thanks to the rise of the 3D printer, which can print out your designs layer by layer using steel, titanium, plastics, even chocolate. It will challenge existing notions of copyright: if you can print out someone else’s product design, and maybe alter it to your tastes, will that designer lose all control?

Person to person everything

The internet is empowering a whole range of new businesses that tap into peer-to-peer sharing of resources, for the greater good. For instance, there are foreign-currency services like Transferwise that connect people with dollars to sell with people who want euros for their dollars. Rather than pay bank commissions, you pay a token fee and both buyer and seller get a good deal. There’s also a growing trend for websites that let people rent out their car for hours or days at a time, helping you make money on a resource that’s just lying there. Yet again the internet challenges existing vested interests like the car-rental firms.

Network tracking

We’re heading for an era where there are sensors everywhere––on your skin, in the streets, in your electronic devices, all talking to the network in real time. The good news is the sensors will track your body’s output, alerting you to potential health risks or reminding you to get more sleep. The scarier news is that the network will know ever more about you, where you are, what you’re feeling and where you’ve been.

2012-01-05T19:33:00.000-08:00

This song plays in my head everywhere I walk.

2012-01-04T18:27:00.000-08:00

"What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it." —Andy Warhol

2012-01-04T18:25:00.001-08:00

screenwritingtips: You don’t need to give up what you love in order to be commercial. The trick is to take what you love and make it commercial.

2012-01-04T18:24:00.000-08:00

YES!

2012-01-02T18:13:00.000-08:00

I have never watched children die in front of me before. Watching their last breath as their chest slowly and with long pauses slightly expand and then deflate again. Until, it suddenly stops. The children who arrived at the Banadir hospital in Mogadishu were in bad shape, but they were the lucky ones. Some of them who made it to the hospital early enough managed to pull through, even with limited medical supplies and overworked, unpaid, and tired nurses. However, for most, it was a place they came to die. Almost all the children I photographed on the second floor in the children’s wing ended up dying. With some I did not even have a chance to know their names or ages. I would return to the room a couple of hours later and the bed the child was lying in before was either empty, or full again with a new child and mother. —Dominic Nahr, Magnum for TIME

2012-01-02T11:35:00.000-08:00

Beautiful handwriting.

2012-01-02T11:24:00.000-08:00

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2012-01-01T17:55:00.001-08:00

"We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much. We have multiplied our possessions but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We’ve learned how to make a living but not a life. We’ve added years to life, not life to years."- George Carlin

2011-12-28T18:09:00.000-08:00

The Layover: Singapore

2011-12-28T17:14:00.000-08:00

2011-12-23T19:05:00.000-08:00

THE DARK SIDE OF CREATIVITY →

Creativity is great. In the words of the philosopher Elliot Samuel Paul, “Creativity pervades human life. It is the mark of individuality. The vehicle of self-expression. The engine of progress in every human endeavor.” Still, this doesn’t mean creativity is always ethical. Creativity comes from humans, and humans are complex. Creative people are the most complex of them all. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that creativity has a dark side. You don’t have to look any further than Wall Street to see this!

In a recent study, an all-star cast of creativity researchers — Paul Silvia, James Kaufman, Roni Reiter-Palmon, and Benjamin Wigert — looked at the relationship between creativity and personality. A large sample of adult participants reported their creative achievements and creative activities, as well as their personality. Consistent with prior studies, “Openness to Experience and Extraversion” were significantly related to creativity. But… there was also a dark side. While “Agreeableness” (i.e., hostility) had no effect on creativity, those with lower levels of honesty and humility (i.e., higher levels of arrogance and pretentiousness) reported more creative accomplishments and also reported engaging in more creative activities. This effect was stronger than the relationship between extraversion and creativity, leading the researchers to call for more research on the link between creativity and dishonesty.

<—insert a battery of boring tests—>

In sum: creativity was a better predictor of dishonesty than intelligence. These results are consistent with the study mentioned above by Silvia and colleagues, but go further by showing that not only is there a relationship between creativity and a dishonest personality, but that there is also a relationship between having a creative personality and actually behaving dishonestly in the context of a psychological experiment.

OK, but is anyone, regardless of their personality, likely to be dishonest if their creative mindset is activated? The correlation between personality and dishonesty is only a correlation. A creative personality could cause dishonesty, but dishonesty could also cause someone to be more creative. Or some sort of different relationship could exist. So the researchers put this to the test in their third and fourth studies. Again, they had participants complete the “visual perception task”. But there were now a few conditions. In one condition, participants constructed grammatically correct sentences (e.g., the sky is blue) from a set of words (e.g., sky, is, the, why, blue). 12 of the 20 sentences included words relating to creativity (e.g., creative, innovative, imagination). The researchers did this so that the concept of creativity would be subconsciously “primed.” They also had a control condition in which none of the sentences includes creativity-related words. Participants also took a widely-administered test of divergent thinking, which required participants to identify common associations between seemingly unrelated words.

The result? Those who were subconsciously primed with creativity-related words were more likely to be dishonest (chose “right” in ambiguous trials more frequently). What’s more, people who entered a creative mindset were more motivated to think outside the box on the divergent thinking test, and it was precisely this motivation that led to the increased levels of dishonesty! It gets worse. In their fourth study, they found that those primed with creativity-related words were again more likely to think outside the box and behave more dishonestly, but they were also more likely to justify their cheating. Not only did the creative mindset increase a justification for cheating, but it was this justification for cheating that led to increased levels of dishonesty. It appears as though activating the creative mindset can be a double-edged sword.

The researchers weren’t done. Apparently, they have some sort of vendetta against creativity! In their fifth and final study, they went into the “real world” and administered surveys online to employees across 17 different departments. The employees read two scenarios which described a person given an opportunity to behave dishonestly, and they reported how likely they would be to behave unethically if they were the person in the scenario. The employees also indicated their department within the company and how much creativity was required on their job. The result? Those in the departments and jobs requiring higher levels of creativity were more likely to report that they’d act unethically in the two scenarios.

Yikes! This all sounds pretty damning for creativity (and for corporations that involve creativity). The researchers propose that creativity

“[H]elps individuals develop original ways to bypass moral rules while allowing them to reinterpret available information in a self-serving way as they attempt to justify their immoral actions. The ability to be creative, combined with the motivation to think outside the box, explains the proposed relationship between creative thinking and dishonesty.”

So what are we to make of these findings? Should we call it quits on creativity, and stop promoting it in education, business, and society? Gosh no. Keep in mind these effects are statistically significant, but not completely predictive. These are just trends. There are plenty of extraordinarily creative people who are incredibly honest and engage in ethical behavior. While these results suggest that in the highest positions involving creativity there may be more Bernie Madoff types than Bill Gates types, let’s not forget that Bill Gates types do exist. Since creativity is so important for the progress of our civilization, we must still nurture it. But at the same time, let’s beware of its dark side. Power does influence creativity, so let’s encourage those in positions of power to use the creative force for good.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]College | A Real Hero (feat. electric youth)

2011-12-22T07:43:00.000-08:00

This is so much fun...!

2011-12-21T20:39:00.000-08:00

The first week of work.

2011-12-19T18:43:00.000-08:00

Heaven? Heaven!

2011-12-19T18:39:00.000-08:00

Young-Hae Chang’s Cunnilingus in North Korea

2011-12-16T10:56:00.000-08:00

2011-12-16T09:28:00.000-08:00

2011-12-16T09:27:00.000-08:00

Jurassic Park?

2011-12-11T18:44:00.000-08:00

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

2011-12-11T18:26:00.001-08:00

HOW UNIVERSAL IS THE MIND? →

If someone asked you to describe the psychological aspects of personhood, what would you say? Chances are, you’d describe things like thought, memory, problem-solving, reasoning, maybe emotion. In other words, you probably list the major headings of a cognitive psychology text-book. In cognitive psychology, we seem to take it for granted that these are, objectively, the primary components of “the mind” (even if you reject a mind/body dualism, you probably accept some notion that there are psychological processes similar to the ones listed above). I’ve posted previously about whether the distinction between cognitive and non-cognitive even makes sense. But, here, I want to think about the universality of the “mind” concept and its relationship to the modern view of cognition.

In fact, this conception of the mind is heavily influenced by a particular (Western) cultural background. Other cultures assign different characteristics and abilities to the psychological aspects of personhood. Wierzbicka (2005) delves into this problem in detail. She argues that speakers of a particular language make assumptions about what must be universal based on their own ability to imagine doing without a certain concept. Important cross-cultural differences in meaning become lost in translation. For instance, Piaget’s “The moral judgment of the child” was translated to English by substituting the French “juste” with the English “fair.” So, English readers think they are reading about the development of fairness in children, when this was not the author’s intention.

Translation is a deep problem, but it is often ignored in psychology. Generalisations about cognition must be made in some language, but, language is specific to particular cultures. Our choice of language, then, inevitably will bias how we talk about cognition across cultures.

“If we uncritically formulate some hypothetical universals in one particular natural language, for example, English, we run the risk of distorting them by imposing on them the perspective embedded in that particular language; and the same applies to our description of cultural differences” (Wierzbicka, 2005; p. 257).

So, back to the mind and our current view of cognition. Cross-linguistic research shows that, generally speaking, every culture has a folk model of a person consisting of visible and invisible (psychological) aspects (Wierzbicka, 2005). While there is agreement that the visible part of the person refers to the body, there is considerable variation in how different cultures think about the invisible (psychological) part. In the West, and, specifically, in the English-speaking West, the psychological aspect of personhood is closely related to the concept of “the mind” and the modern view of cognition.But, how universal is this conception? How do speakers of other languages think about the psychological aspect of personhood?

In Korean, the concept “maum” replaces the concept “mind”. “Maum” has no English counterpart, but is sometimes translated as “heart”. Apparently, “maum” is the “seat of emotions, motivation, and “goodness” in a human being” (Wierzbicka, 2005; p. 271). Intellect and cognitive functions are captured by the Korean “meli” (head). But, “maum” is clearly the counterpart to “mind” in terms of the psychological part of the person. For example, there are tons of Korean books about “maum” and body in the same way that there are English texts on “mind” and body.

The Japanese have yet another concept for the invisible part of the person - “kokoro”.”Kokoro” is a “seat of emotion, and also, a source of culturally valued attention to, and empathy with, other people” (Wierzbicka, 2005; p. 272). To illustrate the contrast between “kokoro” and “mind”, Wierzbicka gives the following example: A Japanese television programme proclaims, “The 21st century should be the age of kokoro. Let’s make a point of meeting with other people” (Hasada, 2000: 110). If an English speaker declared the 21st century to be “the age of the mind” then “meeting with other people” probably would not be a priority - thinking and knowing would be. In contrast to the Korean “maum”, “kokoro” is not associated with will and motivation (“hara” meaning belly serves this purpose in Japanese). But, “hara” is not associated with the psychological component of the body, the way “kokoro” is. In other words, “maum” is all about motivation and “kokoro” is all about feelings and “mind” is all about thinking.

Interestingly, Russia, which kind of sits between East and West uses “dusa” as the counterpart to the psychological part of the person. “Dusa” is often translated as “soul”, but also sometimes as “heart” or “mind.” “Dusa” is associated with feelings, morality, and spirituality. The “dusa” is responsible for the ability to connect with other people. This meaning seems to lie somewhat more with the Eastern conception than with the highly cognitive concept of “mind.”

In a larger sense, the fact that there seems to be a universal belief that people consist of visible and invisible aspects explains much of the appeal of cognitive psychology over behaviourism. Cognitive psychology allows us to invoke invisible, internal states as causes of behaviour, which fits nicely with the broad, cultural assumption that the mind causes us to act in certain ways.

To the extent that you agree that the modern conception of “cognition” is strongly related to the Western, English-speaking view of “the mind”, it is worth asking what cognitive psychology would look like if it had developed in Japan or Russia. Would text-books have chapter headings on the ability to connect with other people (kokoro) or feelings or morality (dusa) instead of on decision-making and memory? This possibility highlights the potential arbitrariness of how we’ve carved up the psychological realm - what we take for objective reality is revealed to be shaped by culture and language.

2011-12-11T18:23:00.000-08:00

Martin Nicolausson

2011-12-10T11:12:00.000-08:00

2011-12-10T11:10:00.000-08:00

2011-12-07T13:27:00.000-08:00

WHY IS ART SO DAMNED EXPENSIVE? →

“If I can’t sell something, I just double the price.” That’s what Ernst Beyeler, the great Swiss dealer who helped found Art Basel, reportedly said. Some people actually prefer to pay more than makes sense. Zelizer explains that, in all walks of life, we treat the biggest sums -differently, with special respect or even awe, than more-everyday money. “I think very often the price paid for a work is the trophy itself,” says Glimcher, the dealer.

In 2006, the crowds lining up to see a portrait by Gustav Klimt in the private Neue Galerie in New York weren’t there out of any fondness for the artist. They were there because they’d heard that the museum’s founder, cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, had paid a record $135 million for it.

The sociologist Mitch Abolafia, who has made a study of Wall Street financiers, says that sometimes money speaks for itself. “A trader said to me one day, with glee in his eyes, ‘You can’t see it, but money is everywhere in this room. Money is flying around—millions and millions of dollars.’ It was a generalized excitement about money. Even I felt it.” That’s the excitement we all get from expensive art. One collector, who believes deeply that art should be bought for art’s sake, acknowledges basking in the “robust glow of prosperity” that his purchases give off once their value has soared.

The people who are spending record amounts on art buy more than just that glow. (And much more than the pleasure of contemplating pictures, which they could get for $20 at any museum.) They’ve purchased boasting rights. “It’s, ‘You bought the $100 million Picasso?!,’” says Glimcher. Abolafia explains that his financiers were “shameless” in declaring the price of their toys, because in their world, what you buy is less about the object than the cash you threw at it. The uselessness of art makes any spending on it especially potent: buying a yacht is a tiny bit like buying a rowboat, and so retains a taint of practicality, but buying a great Picasso is like no other spending. Olav Velthuis, a Dutch sociologist who wrote Talking Prices, the best study of what art spending means, compares the top of the art market to the potlatches performed by the American Indians of the Pacific Northwest, where the goal was to ostentatiously give away, even destroy, as much of your wealth as possible—to show that you could. In the art-market equivalent, he says, prices keep mounting as collectors compete for this “super-status effect.”

2011-12-06T20:05:00.000-08:00

Click here to watch all the Touch Of Evil videos, some great stuff there.

2011-12-06T19:58:00.000-08:00

2011-12-05T19:49:00.000-08:00

The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom

2011-12-05T19:47:00.000-08:00

A Johnny Cash handwritten “To Do” list

2011-12-04T10:21:00.000-08:00

Sigh....Sunday. =]

2011-12-04T10:10:00.000-08:00

2011-12-04T10:09:00.000-08:00

2011-12-01T18:20:00.000-08:00

2011-11-29T20:58:00.000-08:00

2011-11-26T17:15:00.000-08:00

The perfect sweater.

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Sigur Rós | Ágætis byrjun

2011-11-26T17:02:00.000-08:00

Am I? ...

2011-11-25T21:17:00.000-08:00

Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961).

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Bye Bye Baby | Marilyn Monroe & Jane Russell

2011-11-25T20:42:00.000-08:00

2011-11-25T12:25:00.000-08:00

Awww....I'm lovin' it.

2011-11-25T12:22:00.000-08:00

The Dark Knight Rises Over Occupy Wall Street

2011-11-25T08:50:00.000-08:00

Last night's Yogurt Soju in a Korean Bar with my girls was legit.

2011-11-16T20:25:00.000-08:00

When we look far ahead—10 years, 50 years, 100 years into the future—we have the luxury of assuming that things will be radically different. We are free to take wild guesses and push the imagination without factoring in political and financial and cultural constraints. The distant future is ours to play with. The not-so-distant future? Not so much. The only way to see what’s on the horizon—the next day, the next month, the next year—is to stay firmly grounded in the present. And while the long view will never cease to inspire, there is a certain power in what’s next. It’s where today’s reality meets tomorrow’s potential. -GOOD

2011-11-16T08:27:00.000-08:00

2011-11-16T08:16:00.000-08:00

Double scarf.

2011-11-15T20:45:00.000-08:00

Sing me to sleep.

2011-11-13T06:52:00.000-08:00

I'm addicted to this movie, and the soundtrack.

2011-11-13T06:40:00.000-08:00

2011-11-12T16:00:00.000-08:00

2011-11-12T12:08:00.000-08:00

Need some new tunes. Anyone?

2011-11-12T11:21:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking to cut my hair this short...

2011-11-09T11:00:00.000-08:00

More than just photos, Andrew B. Myers.

2011-11-08T06:58:00.000-08:00

Loving all the typography, colors, graphics in this music video. Happiest song ever. Thank you Shingo for sharing this wonderful video!

2011-11-07T17:35:00.000-08:00

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The Mama’s And The Papa’s | Monday Monday

2011-11-07T17:15:00.000-08:00

RIP style icon, Yves Saint Laurent muse, and designer Loulou de la Falaise

2011-11-07T17:14:00.000-08:00

Lights in the city.

2011-11-05T18:56:00.000-07:00

Andy Mangold

2011-11-04T21:50:00.000-07:00

@ work. I am such a dork. =]

Follower ask:"Can I reblog your post?" My answer: Hell yea! Everything on this site is yours! For free. Pay it forward. Thank you for following!

2011-11-04T07:46:00.000-07:00

2011-11-03T17:52:00.000-07:00

"I come to a red light, tempted to go through it, then stop once I see a billboard sign that I don’t remember seeing and I look up at it. All it says is ‘Disappear Here’ and even though it’s probably an ad for some resort, it still freaks me out a little and I step on the gas really hard and the car screeches as I leave the light."
- Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero

2011-11-02T14:42:00.000-07:00

Nik Christensen, his predominantly monochrome ink and watercolour paintings are like those magic eye pictures, which could well be to do with his clear fascination of dramatic lighting in very dark, almost mythical situations. Lots of umbrellas, dogs, fire and occult imagery makes his portfolio kind of creepy, but fascinating.

2011-11-02T14:00:00.001-07:00

2011-11-02T13:57:00.000-07:00

If you’re looking for me, I’ll be dancing next to this guy for the rest of the night. the black keys - lonely boy

2011-11-02T13:53:00.000-07:00

2011-10-31T13:21:00.000-07:00

2011-10-31T13:20:00.000-07:00

2011-10-31T05:50:00.000-07:00

2011-10-29T20:14:00.000-07:00

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When The Night Comes | Dan Auerbach