• Microsoft Withdraws Its Bid for Yahoo – New York Times
  “Microsoft said Saturday that it was abandoning its blockbuster bid to acquire Yahoo after it raised its offer by $5 billion but Yahoo rejected it as still too low.”
  (tags: microsoft Yahoo! technology)
• Changing Face of Face-changing
  “As a national treasure, the secret skills of face-changing cannot be revealed just to anyone. Today, approximately 100 people in the country have inherited authentic skills, with certificates issued by an institute of the Sichuan Opera in that province.”
  (tags: china asia culture bian_lian face_changing)
• Beautiful mask-changer
  “Although it is taboo for a girl to practise mask-changing, 19-year-old Candy Chong from Cheras has been thrilling the crowds with her mastery of the ancient Chinese art form.”
  (tags: china asia culture bian_lian face_changing)
• Bian Lian – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  “Bian Lian (literally ‘Face-Changing’) is an ancient Chinese dramatic art …[Performers'] faces are vividly colored, for they are wearing masks…. [Within] a fraction of a second, their masks’ change — revealing completely new and vibrant visages.”
• Face-changing trick hawked online
  “The secret “Bianlian”, or face-changing, Sichuan Opera technique is being sold for only 3,000 yuan (US$385.85) on taobao.com, a major auction website in China, the Beijing Morning Post reported Wednesday.”
  (tags: china asia bian_lian face_changing)
• Chengdu Journal: Chinese Man of a Thousand Faces Planning to Share a Few
  “Magical effects have long set Sichuan’s provincial opera apart from China’s dozens of other local opera styles…. None of Sichuan opera’s special effects are as popular as bian lian, literally “face changing,” of which Mr. Peng is a master.”
  (tags: china asia bian_lian face_changing)
• Film Review: Bridging Loneliness Despite the Disguises – New York Times
  Review of “The King of Masks from the New York Times on April 28, 1999
  (tags: china asia bian_lian face_changing film)
• Masked man (from China Daily)
  “Face changing, better known as Bian Lian, is considered one of the most mysterious of China’s traditional performing arts. Originally a trick of the Sichuan Opera, only a few Chinese opera masters have been able to grasp the skill.”
  (tags: china asia bian_lian face_changing)

• Bohemian Crafts Company
  Czech-made specialty toys
  (tags: house home_improvement)

• if:book: tomorrow and tomorrow
  “The future has only been a topic of interest for a relatively short while.”
  (tags: history intellectual_history quotations)
• if:book: a new blog format avoids the tyranny of chronology
  “[If] you know of other sites which are exploring new directions for the blog, please put the URL into a comment on this post.”
  (tags: blogging)
• Hariman, Robert: No Caption Needed
  “A gaunt woman stares into the bleakness of the Great Depression. An exuberant sailor plants a kiss on a nurse in the heart of Times Square. A naked Vietnamese girl runs in terror from a napalm attack. An unarmed man stops a tank in Tiananmen Square….”
  (tags: books book_reviews)

• By The Copper Gutter Shop – Rain Chains Product Review – Oldhouseweb.com
  “Typically used in place of downspouts, these brass rain chains allow water to cascade through each vessel, creating a soothing sound and a lovely visual.”
  (tags: house home_improvement)
• Home Remodeling, Repair and Improvement – Products, Ideas and How-To Tips – OldHouseWeb.com
  “Explore the exciting world of old house remodeling and restoration with the Old House Web home improvement site.”
  (tags: house home_improvement)

• Blog Power – Why You Should Consider Setting up a Photoblog
  “Here are 10 reasons you may want to consider getting a photo blog of your own, particularly if you really are serious about becoming a notable photographer and/or making the jump to the status of professional.”
  (tags: photography blogging photoblogging)
• Building Your Blog: 10 things to consider when building your rockin’ photoblog
  “Natalie Norton recently authored a post entitled Blog Power: Why you should consider setting up a photoblog. This post is a follow up to that article.”
  (tags: photography blogging photoblogging)

• Orwell did not guess the worse half of it – Network World
  When private organizations are required by law to install security cameras or other monitoring devices, they are no longer acting as private organizations. The author misses this point.
  (tags: privacy security technology society culture)
• Opinion: Telling Google and others to do less evil
  “Left to their own devices, the search engine companies would keep the data they collect about you forever, but they are slowly waking up to the fact that the Orwellian aspects of their business are beginning to get to people.”
  (tags: privacy security technology society)

• interview Pixar Brad Bird – Innovation lessons from Pixar Director Brad Bird – Strategy – Innovation – The McKinsey Quarterly
  “Brad Bird: I think the best leaders are somewhat subversive, because they see something a different way.”
  (tags: creativity innovation film media work life work_life)
• Web Worker Daily » Archive Procrastination Can Be Your Ally «
  “Procrastination [may feel] like a weakness, but you can use it as an opportunity to learn more about your working habits and improve them.” — Nice article!
  (tags: work life)
• http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/08/04/14/
  No comment is possible….
  (tags: photography politics)

• Deep Jive Interests » Getting Back To Blogging’s Origins
  “… I discovered I needed a place to leave thoughts, reminders, and notes for myself and only myself….” — Great idea!
  (tags: blogging notes_to_myself)
• Why Do You Write?
  “The reason why you write actually has a big impact on how you write and what you write about, and understand that identifying this reason can actually help you write better and work faster towards achieving that goal.”
  (tags: blogging writing)
• 20 Types of Pages that Every Blogger Should Consider
  Darren Rowse provides a 20-item list of different types of pages for a blog, and the reasons why those pages are important.
  (tags: blogging)
• Gartner Says Vista Will Collapse. And That’s Why The Yahoo Deal Must Happen
  “Gartner analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald told a conference audience yesterday that Microsoft’s Windows product is collapsing and must make radical changes to its operating system or risk becoming a has-been.”
  (tags: technology economics microsoft yahoo)
• Feature: Stitch Photos Into Panoramas with Free Software
  “Shooting for panoramas: With Hugin’s software, you can blend two side-by-side photos together, or you can cram 138 multi-angle Grand Canyon shots into one mega-vista.”
  (tags: photography)
• Dante’s Gates of Hell | Stuck In Customs
  “This is Rodin’s huge famous La Porte de l’Enfer, also known as the Gates of Hell….The sculpture depicts a scene from Dante’s ‘The Inferno’”.
  (tags: photography culture history)
• Why China is the REAL master of the universe | the Daily Mail
  “The global power shift from the West to the East is no longer just a matter of debate confined to learned journals and newspaper columns – it is a reality that is beginning to have a huge impact on our daily lives.”
  (tags: economics culture society asia)

• Total Recall: Storing every life memory in a surrogate brain
  "With memories piling up and continually slipping away, Bell is working to capture every moment of his life, so he can store it on his computer…."
  (tags: technology society life brain_research)
• MyLifeBits Project – Microsoft BARC Media Presence Group
  "MyLifeBits is a lifetime store of everything. It is the fulfillment of Vannevar Bush’s 1945 Memex vision…. There are two parts to MyLifeBits: an experiment in lifetime storage, and a software research effort."
  (tags: technology society life brain_research)
• Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think" (1945)
  "A record, if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be consulted."
  (tags: technology society life brain_research)
• CNN.com – Brain downloads ‘possible by 2050′ – May 23, 2005
  "By the middle of the 21st century it will be possible to download your brain to a supercomputer, according to a leading thinker on the future."
  (tags: technology society life brain_research)
• The Chronicle: 2/9/2007: On The Record, All the Time
  "Researchers digitally capture the daily flow of life. Should they?"
  (tags: technology society life)
• Lifeblogging: Is a virtual brain good for the real one?
  "Would you record your life—all of it—for posterity? That’s what some intrepid lifebloggers are attempting, using digital voice recorders, cameras, and scanners."
  (tags: technology society life)

• So when are you going to retire? — Ashton Applewhite
  "So When Are You Going to Retire: A book in process about people over 80 who work and what we can learn from them."
  (tags: work life work_life internet_clippings books)
• if:book: so when are you going to retire?: a book in process about age, work and identity
  "So When Are You Going to Retire? is — or will be, or is in the process of becoming — a book exploring questions of age, work and identity through the stories of people over 80 who continue, against the odds, to work for a living…."
  (tags: work life work_life internet_clippings)
• Ben Casnocha: The Blog: The Centenarian Strategy: Life / Career Issues When You Will Live to 100
  "David Mahoney gave a wonderful commencement speech at Rutgers University in 1996. Mahoney … made five compelling points to young people about why they should adopt a ‘Centenarian Strategy’."
  (tags: work life work_life internet_clippings)
• TCS Daily – Inequality and Excess
  "Instead of asking ourselves what we can do about Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, we should be asking ourselves about what we can do about the Clintons and the Spitzers. Those who want more and more power should be our biggest concern."
  (tags: economics politics power)
• The Epic Actor – Charlton Heston (1924-2008)
  "To see Charlton Heston in person was to realize that some people are born to be movie stars."
  (tags: media)
• Picture Doctor – - PopPhotoApril 2008
  "Macro photography can make the most of whatever subject matter you have available. The smallest flower becomes a universe of possibilities."
  (tags: photography)

• In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop – New York Times
  “A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs …are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.”

  (tags: work life work_life technology society culture media)
• Yahoo! Inc. – Press Release
  Yahho says to Microsoft: “We consider your threat to commence an unsolicited offer and proxy contest to displace our independent Board members to be counterproductive and inconsistent with your stated objective of a friendly transaction.”
  (tags: Yahoo!)
• So when are you going to retire? — Ashton Applewhite
  “So When Are You Going to Retire: A book in process about people over 80 who work and what we can learn from them.”
  (tags: work life work_life internet_clippings books)
• if:book: so when are you going to retire?: a book in process about age, work and identity
  “So When Are You Going to Retire? is — or will be, or is in the process of becoming — a book exploring questions of age, work and identity through the stories of people over 80 who continue, against the odds, to work for a living….”
  (tags: work life work_life internet_clippings)
• Ben Casnocha: The Blog: The Centenarian Strategy: Life / Career Issues When You Will Live to 100
  “David Mahoney gave a wonderful commencement speech at Rutgers University in 1996. Mahoney … made five compelling points to young people about why they should adopt a ‘Centenarian Strategy’.”
  (tags: work life work_life internet_clippings)

• Are Newspapers Doomed? (Do We Care?): Newspapers & the Net Forum
  “The tensions created by the new economics of production and consumption are visible today in many media, from music to movies. Nowhere, though, have they been so clearly on display, and so unsettling, as in the newspaper business. Long a mainstay of culture, print journalism is going through a wrenching transformation, and its future is in doubt.”

[Conducting a little test here, giving the del.icio.us daily blog posting function a try.]

(tags: media internet_clippings)

Just a few links to articles on various topics that I found over the past week:

From Dawud Miracle, writing on Lorelle on WordPress, a WordPress tip that will completely change the way I approach updating my blog. In Write Today, Post Tomorrow: Using Post Timestamp, Dawud explains how the “post timestamp” function in WordPress works, and — this is what I didn’t know — that future dating an article causes WordPress to hold the article in a queue and publish it at the specified date and time. Of course, I couldn’t resist trying it, so this article (written at 10:45 AM) is scheduled to appear at 1:00 PM, when I’ll be about 10 miles from here. 

From Hrafn Thorri Thorisson’s fascinating Think Artificial site (a new addition to my blogroll), a great tutorial on RSS, How to Make the Most of RSS Feeds (Redux). While you’re there, take some time to browse his site, and don’t miss his articles on “artificial creativity” — especially An Overview of Artificial Creativity, Artificial Creativity,  and Artificial Creativity and Common Sense in Storytelling.

From the Market-Based Management Institute team weblog, a short introduction to cognitive biases, specifically one kind of bias called anchoring. The article prompted me to learn a little more about cognitive biases by reading (or at least, starting to read) the  Cognitive bias and List of cognitive biases articles on Wikipedia. 

From Civil War Memory, a nice tribute to Luciano Pavarotti, who, sadly, passed away last week. Notice the quotation from Pavarotti at the end of the article, a nice way to sum up the meaning of one person’s life. For more on the great tenor, go here.

From one of my favorite sites, Steven Poole’s Unspeak, a typically sharp and appropriate deconstruction of yet another article assailing blogging as the end of civilization, Its remoteness from the cash nexus.

From if:book, a fine discussion of the state of e-book technology and the publishing industry,  e-book developments at amazon, google (and rambly thoughts thereon) and a short discussion (with some excellent comments) on the place of blogs in academics, the place of blogs in the academy.

Finally, on a lighter and slightly gasping note, a breathtaking (and I don’t mean that as a cliche) photograph of  Salzburg, Austria from Daily Dose of Imagery.

Happy Sunday!

UPDATE: Okay, so imagine my surprise to discover that future timestamps don’t exactly work in my version of WordPress. (Question to self: When are you going to upgrade? Yahoo! isn’t ever really going to do it for you, are they???) So after some digging around, I discovered that a plugin called WP-cron is required to use this feature in WordPress 2.0.  I’ve installed the plug-in and will conduct some experiments later on. I expect it will work fine enough.

I’m not disappointed, though, that it turned out this way. I’ve had a problem all along with Yahoo! as my web host (Question to self: When are you going to switch hosts?), where Yahoo! kicks out all comment moderation e-mails with an error message (“From address not in member domain. Message not sent.”). Part of the WP-cron plugin solves that problem: includes a feature to e-mail me when there are unmoderated comments on the site, sending them from my admin e-mail address rather than the comment-writer’s domain, so Yahoo! processes them normally. It’s already worked a couple of times today.  Cool.

Like most of the RSS readers, Newsgator Online has a clippings function, where you can save copies of blog articles and other readings from around the Internet, for future savoring. For a while now, I’ve been clipping things I wanted to write about “lateron” — but in most cases I never got around to doing the work. So, of the fifty or so I’ve accumulated, here’s a set of something-for-everyone links (with free remarks!):

– From the excellent technology site Ars Technica, an exhaustive review of the iPhone — a gadget I’m fascinated by (isn’t everybody?), but I don’t own and don’t plan to buy any time soon, mainly because of the price. There are too many other things I could do with $500 to $600.

– From Popular Photography and Imaging, a review of a new Sony Zeiss lens, something I’d much rather spend my money on than the iPhone (no offense intended against the iPhone cult!). New lenses… mmmmmmmmmm….

– Via Jesse Walker’s article Cartography for the Masses on Reason’s Hit and Run, a link to Google Maps is Changing the Way We See the World on Wired. This article begs for a whole lot more attention from me than this short mention, believe me; I hope to get around to giving it a slow, careful reading … and writing more about it.

– From Scott Yarborough at StorySouth, a discussion of the state of the short-story market and how that market has been affected by other media, including the Internet and electronic publishing. It reminds me of that gnawing sensation in the back of my mind: the question of whether or not I’ll put some fiction writing on this site. When I know the answer, I’ll tell you. Articles like this one, however, make me feel like I should.

– A few articles about the emergence of a blogger’s “code of conduct” — a subject that I thought I would be interested in then completely forgot about. But I might decide to look at these and the articles they link to again: Bloggers React to the Blogger’s Code of Conduct, You are your own code of conduct, and Bloggers Get Civilized?

– From Fusion View, a thoughtful reminder that the virtualization of our lives and our cultures comes at a price.

– From Ben Casnocha, an article and a review — The Expected Value of Being a Fox vs. Hedgehog and Book Review: One Person/Multiple Careers — that introduced me to the idea of “slash careers” and to Marci Alboher’s blog. The timing of Casnocha’s articles and discovering Alboher’s blog was very useful to me; I had right around the same time been working toward my own conclusion that all these different things I’m interested in (namely: writing, history, photography, and technology) don’t have to be treated as mutually exclusive from a career perspective, and that I’ll figure out ways to integrate them all into who I am and what I do. I’ll come back to this topic later; it’s one of the most fascinating technological/cultural (slash!) developments of our time that people are exploring multiple career paths. The things that have made this possible are culturally, technically, and socially very complex, and the potential effects are yet-to-be-understood and enormous.

– From Performancing.com, a Blog Reboot Session with some excellent suggestions. Since I just added Google’s AdSense to this site, I need to take a closer look. But I’m not so sure about the idea of including ads on every post. While I can understand how that would improve ad traffic, I’ve always thought it was visually unappealing and distracting — equally so when the ads are captured by an RSS reader. But I’ll think about it.

– From The Austrian Economists, When Global Cooling Was Upon Us… complete with the image of 1975 Newsweek article announcing the impending disaster. Good to know we survived that one….

Phew! That was exhausting! But that does it, that empties out the clippings file (except for three more that I’ve stuffed in my back pocket). I feel SO CAUGHT UP now! Or should I say … “for now” ….