bookofjoe

Sushi Pillow

So cool.

[via redferret]

japanese-name-translation.com

Very cool site: you put your name in the box and voila, it comes right back - in Japanese katakana symbols.

Push the speaker icon and the site says your new Nipponese handle.

And that's not all: they'll sell you a t-shirt, car decal, or scroll with your Japanese name.

Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto.

[via redferret]

Beauty's Magic Tricks - by E. M. Cioran

Man's sensitivity to beauty grows as he gets closer to happiness. In beauty, all things find their justification, their raison d'être. We conceive a beautiful thing such as it is. A painting or a landscape delights us to such an extent that we can not imagine them in any other way but what they are. To place the world under the sign of beauty is to assert that it is as it should be. Then all is glorious harmony, and even the negative aspects of existence do nothing but increase its glory and charm. Beauty will not bring us salvation, but it will bring us closer to happiness. In a world of antinomies, can beauty be spared? Its specific nature and attraction lie in the fact that is is paradoxical only from an objective point of view. The esthetic expresses this paradox: to represent the absolute through form, to give infinity objective, finite shape. The absolute-in-the-form, that is, embodied in limited expressions, reveals itself only to him who is overcome by esthetic emotion; from any other point of view it is a contradictio in adjecto. For this reason, there is an incalculable amount of illusion in any ideal of beauty. But even worse is the fact that the fundamental premise of any ideal beauty—that the world is the way it should be—does not hold up under investigation. The world could be any way except the way it is.

After 350 years, Vermeer's studio is found

After more than three centuries, the mystery of Vermeer's studio has been solved.

Amazingly, the man who discovered it, Dutch art restorer Daan Hartmann (above, in front of the studio), has been working in that very building for over two decades.

Here's the Reuters story, by Marcel Michelson.

Dutch Discover Vermeer Studio in Delft Garden

An art restorer says he has solved a centuries-old mystery with the discovery of the studio of the 17th-century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer.

Ironically, Daan Hartmann had been working in the same studio for over two decades before he made the Vermeer link.

Hartmann started working in the building in 1980 with the late Dutch artist Anton Pieck and another friend.

"Anton was delighted by the good lighting and he said that we must have had predecessors working in that same room, but I did not follow it up and make the Vermeer connection," he said.

The second best-known Dutch painter of the period after Rembrandt, Vermeer lived in Delft until his death in 1675.

He painted some 35 to 40 works, most of which are now in museums around the word, and he lived modestly from art dealing.

Archive research confirmed Vermeer rented the studio that once belonged to a brewery and looks out on the famous Old Church of Delft, which is one of the oldest towns in the Netherlands.

Hartmann wants to open the studio to the public to take advantage of the growing number of tourists who have been coming to Delft since the success of the book and film "Girl with A Pearl Earring,"



a fictional account of Vermeer's inspiration for the painting of the same name.

Currently, visitors interested in Vermeer can see only a plaque on the site of the house where he lived and buy postcards and books in a gallery in the place where he was born in 1632.

Hartmann also wants the studio put on the UNESCO World Heritage List to preserve it for posterity.

Vermeer is best known for his meticulously realistic paintings of simple domestic scenes such as "The

Mirrored images on paintings have allowed Philip Steadman, a professor at University College, London, to reconstruct the studio as part of his research of Vermeer's techniques.

Hartmann says he has found the real thing.

And it is just next to one of his other finds - the little alleyway painted on Vermeer's "The Little Street" that is in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Hartmann, 60, is one of the few experts who can tell a real Vermeer from a fake.

The art world was scandalized in 1945 when art dealer Han van Meegeren confessed to forging some Vermeers which museums had declared genuine.

Hartmann said his father had always believed that one Vermeer in a Rotterdam museum was fake but had not dared to speak out.

Earlier this year Hartmann, who runs the small gallery and Vermeer museum shop near Delft's central square, was contacted by a rich American family to check the authenticity of a Vermeer that was coming up for auction at Sotheby's in London.

"Young Woman Seated at the Virginals" was sold for some $30 million in July, 10 times the auctioneer's estimate.



During his research into the history of the painting Hartmann stumbled on clues to the location of the studio and checks in the local registry clinched the find.

Records showed Vermeer had rented the building which has three large bay windows that are seen on several of his paintings.

The penny dropped.

A visit to the Voorstraat street, along one of the many canals in Delft, shows there is still a building with the name of the brewery from which Vermeer rented the studio.

At first the likeness with "The Little Street" is not obvious.



Both buildings in the painting have been renovated and cars are parked outside where children played.

But on closer inspection, the dimensions and position of doors and windows and the outlines of houses in the distance show similarities with the masterpiece.

Hartmann says the girl playing in the street in the painting is the same daughter, probably Elisabeth, who is depicted in "The Girl with A Pearl Earring" - not the maid Griet who the novel and film suggested was in love with Vermeer.

At close scrutiny both girls have a small hunchback.

"An artist, especially a detail-conscious one like Vermeer, cannot paint a daughter differently than she is. He can obscure a handicap but not make it disappear because then it would no longer be a painting of his daughter," Hartmann said.

A walk through a small alleyway leads to the studio which is situated in an overgrown garden.

The small white building with a pointed and tiled roof is set at the back of a bigger one that has an entrance on the street.

Hartmann has put the deeds into a foundation and enlisted the help of the local mayor for his bid to get the place classified as a world heritage site and turn the building into a real museum to honor one of Delft's most-famous inhabitants.

A visitation from the future?

Remember how back in the 90s, they used to say string theory was 21st century physics that accidentally showed up early?

For a moment, I thought I'd opened the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog for the year 2231.

'Cause darned if the thing in the picture doesn't look like it could be providing life support for human corpsicles lying in state during a centuries-long interstellar journey.

But the description's nothing like that at all; rather, it's an automatic plant-watering system ($99.95), designed to water up to 20 plants for up to 40 days while you're away.

Ha.

I guarantee that if you try this at home, when you return you'll wish you'd had flood insurance.

Note: flood insurance covers acts of God, not your own stupidity.

So unless you're able to put on a very convincing demonstration, you're gonna be paying the Servicemaster tab yourself.

What I don't understand is how the thing works for a year without electricity, on one measly 9-volt battery.

That's impressive.

Italian-designed, if that sort of thing is important to you.

Those Italians - will their wonders never cease?

Skate the Eiffel Tower

On an observation deck 188 feet up, the Eiffel Tower's new ice-skating rink, which made its debut last month, will stay open for another two weeks, through January 23.

The rink, a little larger than a tennis court, is open every day from 9:30 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Lodged between two of the 115-year old tower's immense steel legs, it holds up to 80 skaters at a time.

Admission and skate rental is free after paying the Tower's admission fee ($5.30 for adults and $3 for children).

A bar sells hot tea and spiced wine.

G5 laptop?

That's what I was hoping when I saw the picture above, but alas, just another tease.

It sure made my heart flutter for a second there.

It's a Verilux™ light therapy box, to mitigate your SAD.

I need the box now 'cause I'm so down that it's not the G5 laptop.

'In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed'

So wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson.

In November I brought you Yaktrax (below)

and STABILicers, attachments to let you make your way surefootedly on ice.

Not cheap, those devices: $19.95 for Yaktrax ($27.95 for the Yaktrax Pro), $49.95 for STABILicers (below).

Well, now comes a low-cost alternative: Ice Treads (top of this post).

No fancy name, no tricked-out design, just "lightweight, heavy-duty" rubber treads with four stainless-steel cleats under each shoe to grip the frost and snow and keep you upright.

Nice price, too: $4.99 a pair.