bookofjoe

'Beware of seriousness: it is a form of stupidity' — Alexander Waugh

It's my new favorite quotation, from a letter of Alexander Waugh to his 6-year-old son, and appears toward the end of his new book (above).

I happened on the epigram in Michiko Kakutani's June 19, 2007 rave review of Waugh's book.

Alexander Waugh (below)

is the son of the satirist Auberon Waugh and grandson of the novelist Evelyn Waugh.

Mini GPS Car Tracker

Ever wonder where your car goes when you're not driving it?

Now you can find out.

From the website:

Mini GPS Car Tracker

If you're concerned about where your vehicle is being driven, how fast it's being driven, or need a record of your vehicle's travel, then you need GPS tracking.

SkyTRX™ Mini GPS Tracker records driving activity so you can review detailed information about where your vehicle has traveled.

Tiny unit picks up signals from GPS satellites and accurately determines its location within 8 feet and records this data every second.

Using this data and the included software, you can accurately determine where the vehicle traveled, how fast it was driven, where it stopped, and for how long.

This recorded data can be displayed over a street map, satellite images, and in a text report.

It’s ideal for tracking teenage drivers, vehicles operated by employees, employers needing precise vehicle use records, and anyone concerned about improper use of their vehicle.

Because Mini Tracker is recording data (not showing it in real time) there's no installation fee or monthly user fee.



It has a strong magnet for mounting on a steel vehicle body and a water-resistant design if attached outside the vehicle.

Its enhanced GPS receiver can pick up satellite signals almost anywhere in the vehicle — even when concealed.

It stores up to 100 hours of driving data but only needs 2 "AAA" batteries (not included).

Data is downloaded from the Mini Tracker using your computer's USB connection.

The included software displays the vehicle's travel on a street map and creates a detailed report.

Features auto-power-saver, power indicator, and signal indicator.

This tracking device may not be used to violate privacy rights of others, or in violation of local, county, state, or federal statutes.

Consult legal counsel for the interpretation of any applicable laws.

Only 3.75" long.

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The way I see it, everyone else seems to know where your car's going, so why shouldn't you join the party?

$279.98.

43 dancers at 1000 frames/second on three 50-foot screens presenting a 5-second movement phrase that lasts 10 minutes

But wait, there's more!

It's free.

"Slow Dancing" runs nightly through July 29, 2007 from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. on the facade of the New York State Theater in Lincoln Center.

Claudia La Rocco's article in yesterday's New York Times can tell you more.

Not in the mood for words?

I can understand how that could happen.

For you, here's a link to one of the videos.

For everyone else, here's the Times story.

A Lens That Captures Dance’s Every Facet: Grace, Muscles and Even Cellulite

Overheard at Thursday night’s premiere of “Slow Dancing”:

“He looks like God!”

“Every one of them is its own little poem.”

“He should be wincing, looking at that.”

“It’s not poetry in motion. It’s absolute and merciless exposure.”

“She moved. She don’t move. They move slowly. Look, look, look, look!”

Like much public art, “Slow Dancing,” David Michalek’s multichannel video installation of 43 dancers at the Lincoln Center Festival, is as much about the experience of watching (read: commenting) with your fellow man as it is about the work itself. And because, in this case, each roughly 10-minute video depicts the unfolding of a five-second movement phrase, in solo performances hovering eerily between still photography and slow motion, there is plenty of time to both sink into and dissect each portrait.

Mr. Michalek used a high-definition, high-speed camera, shooting at 1,000 frames per second and sometimes slowing the action even further. Everything is caught on the three 50-foot screens attached to the State Theater’s facade: the perfectly taut, rigidly extended leg of the Taiwanese dancer Wu Hsing-Kuo sweeping upward toward his fiercely concentrating face, along with others’ flaws in form and expanses of cellulite-pocked limbs, highlighted against black backgrounds.

On Thursday, a good chunk of the silent installation overlapped with a typically festive session of Midsummer Night Swing. The juxtaposition produced several serendipitous moments, as when Trisha Brown landed on the ground from a floating leap to hearty applause for the band. It also highlighted the wonderfully central place social dancing holds in American life, as opposed to the marginality suffered by the art form; as the swingers jostled merrily in the bustling plaza, some of dance’s most important performers and choreographers hovered above like rarefied, mournful ghosts.

The groupings were largely random. But it’s no surprise that Wendy Whelan, the New York City Ballet star who is married to Mr. Michalek, was in the first trio on Thursday, her typically spooky magic augmented to almost frightening levels. Ms. Whelan stuck out the entire two-hour-plus cycle, though, watching with a few dozen observers as many of the other dancers, amusingly, disappeared soon after their videos had faded into black.

Perhaps, as one dancer muttered, it was “just too much” to stick around after such epic self-encounters. The best performers are both exalted and vulnerable, offering audiences amplified versions of themselves; in revealing their characters, they reveal those of their watchers, too.

For this reason, the artists this watcher knew best were the ones who made the most compelling portraits. They were like lovers, or children, caught in moments of complete inward concentration, from the blissful, effort-laden smile on Holley Farmer’s face as she executed Merce Cunningham’s odd, tilting balances to Eiko and Koma — captured and shown separately, they seemed even more a singular pair, their slow-motion portraits largely indistinguishable from their glacially paced live performances.

Still, portraits distort as much as they divulge, and there is something sinister to the captured beauty on display in “Slow Dancing.” True, pinned butterflies are easier to study. But study is no substitute for seeing them move through the world.

Egg Cuber

Amaze your family and friends.

From the website:

Egg Cuber

What kind of a chicken lays a cubic egg?

Use this nifty egg cuber to transform a typical egg into a cube.

Sturdy, clear plastic design.

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$2.99 (egg not included).

There's a reason they're called 'The Bugs'

From the top down, fashion models Lily Cole,

Gemma Ward and

Tanya Dziahileva.

Man v 'Blade Runner' — Today in Sheffield, England

Oscar Pistorius (in action above), a South African double amputee nicknamed "Blade Runner" because of the appearance of the artificial legs he runs on, today faces off in the 400m against his toughest competition yet: Olympic gold medalist Jeremy Wariner.

The Norwich Union Grand Prix meet at Sheffield's Don Valley stadium will be televised on BBC2 and British Eurosport at 6 p.m. UK time (1 p.m. ET in the US).

Alas, it doesn't appear to be available on any network — major, satellite or cable — in the U.S.

Here's Pat Butcher's report, from this weekend's Financial Times.

‘Blade Runner’ finds controversy at every step

Sport, like life, is in constant need of regeneration. New talent, fresh personalities and role models are regularly required to augment, and eventually replace, the established order.

So there will be plenty of newcomers alongside the champions at the IAAF Super Grand Prix athletics meeting in Sheffield, northern England, on Sunday. Among the neophytes will be Tyson Gay, the latest US sprinting sensation, who will be joining Olympic gold medallists such as Carolina Klüft, Liu Xiang, Kenenisa Bekele and Jeremy Wariner, as well as British stars Phillips Idowu, Becky Lyne and Marlon Devonish.

But the Paralympic champion and world record holder Oscar Pistorius is the most intriguing entry of all, in what he may presage for the future of athletics.

The 20-year-old South African is a double amputee, who runs on artificial legs or “blades”, shaped like springs. He was originally banned from able- bodied competition by the International Association of Athletics Federations, the sport’s governing organisation, on the grounds that the blades were an “artificial aid”, giving him an advantage.

Pistorius argues that bio-mechanical tests prove that the blades provide no more “return” from the track than legs. Accordingly, IAAF officials have given the runner and themselves a period of grace for reflection, during which time he is being allowed to compete in his first open races outside South Africa.

Pistorius was born without fibulae, or calf bones, and had his legs amputated below the knee before his first birthday. But even as a child he had an active sporting life, competing in water polo and rugby at school in Pretoria. He began running while rehabilitating a knee injury in his early teens, and his athletics career took off from there.

The blades, which cost close to $4,000 each, are made by an Icelandic company. He has used them to good effect, winning the Paralympic 200 metres title at Athens 2004, and setting world records for his category of disability in the 100m, 200m and 400m.

It is at that last distance that he competes, against world and Olympic champion Wariner and Britain’s number one Tim Benjamin among others in Sheffield. Pistorius has long been competing in open competition at home, and recently finished second in the South African 400m championship.

He wants to compete in the forthcoming world championships in Osaka next month, and ultimately the Olympic Games, saying: “If they ever found evidence that I was gaining an advantage, then I would stop running, but I have a dream of competing at the Olympic Games in Beijing next year.”

Athletics has long been riven with examples of artificial aids, most notably drugs, but there are others, some accepted, some not.

It may sound counter-intuitive, but long jumpers in the Ancient Olympics reached further distances by carrying small weights in their hands, which propelled them forward in mid-air when they swung their hands back. And who other than a mechanical engineering student, Dick Fosbury, would have even considered, let alone perfected, the art of going backwards over a high-jump bar? No elite jumper nowadays uses anything other than the “Fosbury Flop”.

Implements, too, are regularly modified. The most recent example was the men’s javelin in the mid-1980s, following East German Uwe Hohn’s 104.80m throw, which not only took the world record into the stratosphere, but threatened to take spectators into another world too. On safety grounds, the fulcrum of the spear was moved forward, to induce it to dip earlier. Even so, the incomparable Jan Zelezny of the Czech Republic got the record back up to 98.48m. That’s what top athletes do — they push back the barriers.

While applauding Pistorius’s achievements and commitment, Benjamin is one athlete who thinks the South African should not be competing in Sheffield. “It is a good message, and I really hope he does well,” says Benjamin. “But, with his personal best, he should not be in the race, because he is not fast enough.”

And thereby, for the time being, lies the escape route for the IAAF. Pistorius has run 46.34 sec for 400m, compared, for example with Wariner’s best of 43.62 sec. His times in his other distances are about 10 per cent down on the (able-bodied) world records. As long as Pistorius does not threaten either the world record or first place in a major championship, perhaps he should remain in open competition.

But Pistorius is still a novice. If or when he improves his general strength, those times will fall. In five years, he could be threatening the world records.

Who knows, however, what may be happening by then? Experiments with genetic implants on mice have already produced massive muscle growth, and it is only a matter of time before such (perfected) experiments will be enacted on humans.

Precedent suggests that sports competitors will be the first to try them. Power-to-weight ratios will then go haywire, and world records could be reduced by 10 per cent. And who will know? It is difficult enough at present to test for an excess of naturally occurring body chemicals, such as testosterone.

With respect to Pistorius’s evident humanity, whoever nicknamed him “Blade Runner” was unwittingly suggesting a dystopian future that the film of Philip K. Dick’s novel was describing.

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The video up top shows this past Friday's 400m at the Rome Golden League meet: Pistorius came from behind to take second, continuing to close the gap at the finish.

Got noise? — citysoundproofing.com will sort you out

A comprehensive guide to the science — and art — of blocking noise.

Home, recording studio, conference room, what have you, noise is a never-ending problem.

"Based in Manhattan, serving the world."

A useful resource.

Naoto Fukasawa Hay Chair

Like the 'Suitcase' iteration presented here on July 8, it's one of the nine limited-edition versions of a chair he created this year for Vitra Edition.

The price is not yet set.

Inquire within.

[photograph by Daniel Stier for the New York Times magazine]