Monday, April 27, 2009

Aggregating...

A few things that have crossed my radar recently...



  • From the annals of our current events, here's a frightening view of what is happening to our urban areas. This blogger chronicled the death of a street in Detroit by stitching together a panorama of 60 vacant houses. Harrowing, to say the least.



  • If you're over thirty, I'm willing to bet you remember when you got your first Walkman — or when your friend got the next generation Aiwa, which was smaller and had more functions. I'm also willing to bet you remember the BetaMax players your schools had for movies, the ones that seemed so much more cumbersome than the cheap VCR you'd buy years later. And frighteningly enough, I can remember the CompuServe ad here.



  • Apropos of the current economic climate, this list of brands that might die is its own snapshot of our time and the way things change. Borders? I remember it when it was a kick-ass independent bookstore in Ann Arbor, but I won't be at all surprised if it goes the way of the Dodo. Esquire? For its history alone, this would also be a sad loss, but this pub lost its soul and reason long ago.


  • Rather disturbing news about tuna. As if the possibility of mercury contamination wasn't enough, this is further incentive to consider going on tuna strike for a while. Then again, it's even more disheartening to think that one person's strike won't do a damn thing when entire societies treat resources like this as though they're permanently sustainable.


  • Tech geek moment... This is really cool.



  • New York geek moment... Memories of Central Park in the summer time. But is Beerman still around?



Sources here include Gawker, Neatorama, and Boing Boing...