Didactic

Saturday, May 5, 2012

Is Warren Buffett still the world's greatest investor?

Friday, May 4, 2012

"The secret to acting is speaking the lines as though you've never thought of them before. On the 17th take."
- Dame Judi Dench

"If you haven't thought about murder, you ain't been in love."
- Chris Rock

on gay marriage

"It made me nervous, until I was told it's not mandatory."
- Jon Stewart

Thursday, May 3, 2012

nature mastered

In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin discovered that lightening was electrical and that electricity was a force of nature waiting to be tapped.

A piece on what else the London Olympics would have bought, here.

dead or alive

"The only artists I've known are dead."
- Glenn Ligon's mother reflecting on the death of Picasso in 1973

"[Photographer Mike Disfarmer] just didn't bother with a lot of talk. If he knew you real well, he'd open up more. But if he didn't know you, he just said what he needed to say and that was it."

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

"Considered a design classic, the Backenzahn Stool has become an identifying icon from Philipp Mainzer. The stool gives a strong impression with its four identical legs made of solid oak. The reveal between the legs suggest that all four parts are still clearly recognizable and the slightly concave seat provides sitting comfort. During the seasoning of the solid European oak, the wood forms its characteristic cracks, which makes each stool unique. $1,254"

http://luminaire.com

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

"At my lunch break, I'd buy a sandwich from the machine in our vendeteria. Apparently it used to be a real cafeteria with 'the greatest fries,' but then someone decided that wasn't quite sad enough and it was grim-ovated into a room full of vending machines."
- Tina Fey on her first post UVA job in Bossypants, p. 74

Zelda & Scott

"To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life."

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Monday, April 30, 2012

"It's well established that people tend to run for cover until fortunes recover."

- Conrad Black

Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920). Elvira Resting at a Table, 1919. Saint Louis Museum of Art, St Louis, Missouri.

"Wouldn't take nothing for my journey now."
- Maya Angelou

Sunday, April 29, 2012

quota

At the Toyota Hollywood dealership, each sales person is expected to sell 10 cars per month. To do that, each sales person must make at least 50 outbound prospecting telephone sales calls daily.

"Artists live dangerously [because at any given moment they could make that extra stroke that kills the painting.]"
- Isabella Stefanescu, Globe Studios, Kitchener, Ontario

coping with bipolar disorder

Canadian First Lady Margaret Trudeau at Studio 54

"It wasn't until I had gotten help that I realized how sick I had been."

Saturday, April 28, 2012

"a dark bitter hatred"

"I have to work very hard not to appear to dread it as much as I do. And it's not about the between 'action' and 'cut' stuff, so much. It's about emoting on some economically based schedule."
- Sean Penn on acting