The Rise Industries Blog

Well said, Mr. Obama, well said.

Found this on the Friendly Atheist blog, it's up on the new student blog branch of the Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

I think our forefathers knew what they were doing when they came up with that one. Its getting about time to de-religion our government, and bring a clear separation back.

The other day I was driving past a McDonald's on the way to get dinner with Michele, my niece Sarah and her husband Dan, and I wondered how many chicken McNuggets you could haul out of there if you had them fill a 5 Gallon bucket.
Well, after dropping them off at home later that night, Sarah texts me this:

"1134 chicken McNuggets in 5 Gallons."

I hope she didn't take a bucket in there to figure that out.
So that's 113 10 piece orders and 1 4 pc. Having not been to a McDonald's as far back as my memory works, I have no idea what that would cost. A quick check online tells me its $3.39 for the 10 pc order, and $1 for 4 pc. So we're talking around $384.07. For FIVE GALLONS OF FRIED CHICKEN BITS.

I have to stop, thinking of this further will make me ill. You think they would be able to fill that order with the nuggets they have on hand? Scary thing is, I am sure it would be no problem.

Quite a while ago, two architectural office back in my past, I worked on drawings for a house up in Brentwood. While working on the project, I found out that they could only build the new house once they had settled on what to do with the old house. Seems there was an old Neutra house sitting there on the site, and the owners wanted to build a new, much larger one in its place. While they were working on getting their new house designed, the Neutra house got listed on the Historical Register, making it impossible to demolish. This sort of threw a monkey wrench into their plans. There was a solution however, it could be moved! Only, doing so is not so simple. And so it sat.

Well, I only worked on the project briefly, and as it got held up in all kinds of local, county, and historic preservation shenanigans, I moved on to work on other things. Eventually, I left that office and went on to work in a couple of other offices. Totally forgot about that little Neutra.

Now today, upon browsing the LA Times website, I see that the Maxwell House (as the old Neutra house was originally called) is on the move! Seems the owners found a buyer for the house, and eventually (its been about six years) got everything worked out in order to relocate it. LA Times has a great article with a photo essay showing part of the move, and the house in its original condition. Not a classic example of Neutra, but a sweet little place anyway.
I wish I had been on top of it, as I would have loved to go document the move.. but alas, I am not really in touch with those folks anymore.

Moral of the story. Don't try to tear down a Neutra. It'll cost you six years off your life. Now if only the folks in Gettysburg would get the message.

While changing my user name I found three Jeremy Quinns on flickr.. these are a selection of photos from them. Click on them to be taken to their photostream.

One didn't have any public photos so I used two from one of the other guys.

Hello to all y'all Jeremy Quinns out there!

You can now find me on flickr as JeremyJQuinn

I just got a note from Joey Altruda, of Joey Altruda's Crucial Riddims among other musical ventures, announcing his bi-monthly podcast on the Reserve website. He will be spinning great finds from the 20's and on. I would expect a heavy lean towards Ska and Rockabilly sounds. This week's is good stuff, I am checking it out as I write this. Have yourself a listen right here.

His kick-ass Ska band plays around LA, and is at Bordello in my neighborhood from time to time. I highly recommend checking them out if you are in town.

So there's interventionist art, and there's interventionist sociology. Both require some guts.

Here's an article on a sociologist investigating the effects of bad jokes.

(Just for the record, the chimney joke quoted in the article cracked me up.)

I just got these samples back today from the fabricator, they are a portion of a privacy screen panel that I designed at PMA. The dot pattern is based on the overlapping, rotated halftone grids of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black dots used in offset printing. The pattern is likely going to be integrated into a reception desk, but in aluminum rather than the white plastic we did the test in.

Looking at it now, it reminds me of a synthesis of lace and bullet holes.

I just posted the Circles Necklace I made last year for Michele to wear at our wedding. There are two versions of it, this is the solid one and she ended up wearing the other one which I still need to photograph. It's laser cut from sheet silver.

I really like these improvised ink well/pen holders by Kelly Marklove shown at Dezeen. They look like they are just begging to be used and made all inky.

Seen at Overheard in the Office today (yes, I read it daily.)

"Office lady on phone to son: I don't know, I think we have it on tape... on tape. Video tape. No, not DVD, video tape. It's black and rectangular, and you put it in the VCR to watch movies. The VCR?... It's... look, just wait till I get home, okay?"

Word to obsolete media!

Announcing "Kisses and break-ups"

Lately, I've been mapping and graphing where and when people's kisses and break-ups occur. (Here are the maps I've created so far.)

Specifically, I'm collecting information on:

(1) break-ups; and
(2) the first time you kissed any one of the people you've kissed.

All participants' names and email addresses will be kept confidential. Would you like to participate? I hope so! Just email me at kisses.breakups@gmail.com , or see this page for more details. The final product will include a website; free maps; charts and graphs; and walking tours.

I hope to hear from you. Thanks!

Tim

A few animal thoughts for the week:

The Owlship in the upcoming Watchmen film kicks ass. (Also, the upcoming Watchmen film will kick ass)

Last weekend, at a swimming hole in Malibu Creek State Park, we saw an adult Western Skink. Its a tiny lizard with a bright blue tail.

I was mesmerized last night by a Nova special about Cuttlefish. Cuttlefish are my new heroes. They show their hypno light show around 3:19 in this National Geographic video.

Dena Schwartz and Cate Norian are photo-journalists traveling around the country between now and the election, taking photos and collecting stories from a wide slice of the population in order to gauge the mood of the country.
Their project is called 300 Million Faces of America. Check in on it as it develops, its likely to be one of the more interesting and pleasurable politically related things to read as the noise of the impending election gets louder and more ridiculous all around us.