Pixel Harbor

Jason Mraz’s new song, I Won’t Give Up, speaks to us as individuals and as a Nation. — Robert

CLICK HERE to visit YouTube for his video.

Thanks to Cathy B. for bringing this link to our attention.

Here’s to the Sane Ones. The people who use their brains, question dogma, don’t accept sound bytes as “reality” and want to see our country thrive. Here’s to the people who know that solutions are full of complexity, compromise and balance. Here’s to a year we can vote for people of character, statesmanship, vision and imagination. Stick a pin in the blow hards and reward the heros and heroines. Here’s to the bright ones who want to make a positive difference, and that’s everyone I list as friends. Happy New Year to all of you.

Pixel Harbor is back for a new year of sharing what’s interesting, notable and qualifies as some of the better examples of excellence.

I hope you’ll find value in what you see here and keep coming back for more. I’ve received a number of good pieces from the collective “you” during the downtime while we’ve been moving to Reno. These contribution will find their way to the screen in the coming months. I plan to post less often and let Facebook and Google+ continue to be THE social nets they’re intended to be. Pixel Harbor is more like a digital magazine focused on inspiration and brain food.

Your feedback is encouraged. Your comments and contributions help us all. Please invite your friends to subscribe. The more the merrier. — Robert

“We’ve all seen SO much tsunami footage of late and you may not want to see more, but I found this mesmerizing – surreal.” – N

Thanks to Nettie O. for bringing this to our attention.

Note: if you got this posting via an email subscription or RSS and the video doesn’t appear to be an active link… Click the read more button to visit Pixel Harbor and watch it there direct off the web site. – Robert

Update: If you would like to contribute to the relief efforts in Japan CLICK HERE.

Only one of many efforts to help. Google Japan Relief for more.

The Grateful Dead Archive, scheduled to open soon at the University of California at Santa Cruz, will be a mecca for academics of all stripes: from ethno musicologists to philosophers, sociologists to historians. But the biggest beneficiaries may prove to be business scholars and management theorists, who are discovering that the Dead were visionary geniuses in the way they created “customer value,” promoted social networking, and did strategic business planning.

Click Here for the complete story in the Atlantic.

Juxtaposed items for your consideration.

“For All Our Failings, Despite Our Limitations and Fallibilities, We Humans Are Capable of Greatness”.

Thanks to Joe O. for this link. He writes: “Today seems like the right time to relink this wonderful short film by Michael Marantz, based on an excerpt from Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot.”
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“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke

Picturesque Journeys:
An Evolving Digital Narrative

On the Road with Candide uses The New York Public Library’s on-site exhibition Candide at 250: Scandal and Success as a jumping-off point for a unique online journey … inviting the involvement of students, scholars, artists, and more. Check out a new kind of pick-and-choose visual storytelling, plus a “Candide Journey” project created in Google Maps by Brooklyn 10th graders. One of the first journeys you can choose takes you through the great American illustrator Rockwell Kent’s edition of Candide from 1928 (the first book published under the Random House imprint). See how the Internet helps bring to life this 250-year-old text, with all its raciness, for today’s audiences.

Other highlights of this digital project include:

Do-It-Yourself Candide, in which visual artists and writers contribute their own visions of Voltaire’s brilliant satire.

A multimedia section, including a video of NYPL President Paul LeClerc discussing Voltaire’s relevance today.

All Possible Worlds, featuring blog posts from a rotating all-star roster of NYPL curators and guest writers discussing the many paths Candide has taken through the popular and scholarly imagination.

Candide Digital Edition, a full electronic edition of the book in which commissioned readers and the general public can post digital marginalia alongside Voltaire’s text.

Click Here to visit the web site.

Disorienteering Merit Badge

Blister Building Merit Badge

Adult Beverage Drinking Merit Badge

If you didn’t quite make it to the rank of Eagle Scout because you were a few merit badges short of the requirements… This might be the store for you.

Plenty of real merit badges, sashes, patches, National Jamboree and Philmont items, plus a whole bunch of spoofs for you to give as a gift to that certain someone this coming holiday season.

Click Here to visit the “unofficial” Boy Scout Store.

Actors talking about Random Roles.

Katey Sagal The Sons Of Anarchy star talks about bikers, Futurama, and the lasting legacy of Married With Children.

That’s just ONE example of what you’ll find at the A.V. Club with more than 100 interviews with great actors. The list includes Elisabeth Shue, CCH Pounder, Oliver Platt, Lilly Taylor and Richard Dreyfuss.

Click Here to visit the A.V. Club web site.

Examine Netflix rental patterns, neighborhood by neighborhood, in a dozen cities. Some titles with distinct patterns are Mad Men, Obsessed and Last Chance Harvey.

TIP: Use the Previous and Next buttons above the map and the slider for Most Rented to Least Rented and see the patterns on the maps change.

Click Here to visit the site and explore.

Nothing is ever certain, says the psychologist Ellen Langer. We should make the most of that.

Last summer Ellen J. Langer posted an entry on her Psychology Today blog that caused a minor uproar. A friend had just described a group trip taken to India, many years earlier. “They met a guru and asked a bystander to take a picture of them with him,” wrote Langer, a prominent social psychologist and a professor at Harvard University. “Two pictures were taken, using two different cameras.” Yet when the film was developed, the guru—who had been standing in the middle—was missing from both photographs.

Langer didn’t speculate why—she didn’t propose, say, that the guru had reached a state of such spiritual purity that light passed through him. Her point was this: No amount of evidence would be enough to persuade most scientists of paranormal phenomena, because too many of them were “stuck in soon-to-be-outdated theories.” Rather than ignore data that don’t fit those theories, she said, “we need to open our minds to possibility.”

Commenters scoffed. A fellow Psychology Today blogger, Stanton Peele, was moved to write a long post of his own, headlined, “Ellen, we don’t need more irrationality (you must be a sought-after guest at seances!).” While acknowledging Langer’s “brilliant” career, he urged psychologists to protect their discipline as “a beacon for a commitment to empiricism and reasoning.”

Langer’s response, the next day, was mild: “My last post seems to have upset people,” she wrote. “My intention was to suggest that we keep our minds open to the possibility of new phenomena, but perhaps the example I gave was too far from current beliefs to do the trick.” She sounded a lot like a teacher realizing that she was going too fast for the class.

Click Here to read the rest of the story in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Thanks to Ann R for suggesting this link to us.

From the 1770′s to the 2000′s, You’ll find something that stirs your memories.

Click Here to visit the Vintage Ad Browser

Click on the actual image above to see a full size version.

I confess. I’m a big Noel Neill fan. She won the hearts of many boys and young men when Superman came on each week. She was far better as Lois Lane than Phyllis Coates.

One of the best moments of my career was meeting Noel through work at TBS and sharing a moment that will, for me,  last a lifetime. You can tell from the smile on my face.

But, there is more to her story here. If you are a movie buff at all, read her short biography below and see why I like Ms. Neill so much.

On a more “of the moment” note: Ms. Neill broke her hip last week and is in the hospital in her home town of Tuscon. Please send her your best wishes, vibes, mediations and prayers. — RB

Noel Neill

Date of Birth
25 November 1920, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

Height
5′ 4″ (1.63 m)

Wikipedia Biography

Early life and career

Neill was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota; her father was a journalist, and her mother a dancer on the stage.

In her teens, Noel was a popular photographic model. While Betty Grable‘s pin-up was #1 among GIs during World War II, Noel Neill ranked next.¹ Noel also worked as a professional singer and dancer, signed up by Bing Crosby.

Signing a contract with Paramount Pictures led to appearances in many of the studio’s feature films and short subjects. In the mid-1940s Noel had a leading role in one of Monogram Pictures‘ wayward-youth melodramas, and she became a familiar face in Monogram features for the next several years, especially in the recurring role of Betty Rogers.

Noel appears in the last of the original Charlie Chan movies, Sky Dragon (1949), and also played damsels in distress in Monogram westerns and Republic Pictures serials.

Superman

The film role of Betty Rogers, aggressive reporter for a high-school newspaper, led to the role of Lois Lane. In 1945 producer Sam Katzman gave Noel Neill the recurring role of Betty in his series of “Teen Agers” musical comedies. When Katzman was casting his Superman serial for Columbia Pictures, he remembered Noel Neill’s newshawk portrayals and signed her to playLois Lane. She played the role in the film serials Superman (1948) and Atom Man vs. Superman (1950), with Kirk Alyn portraying Superman/Clark Kent.

When Adventures of Superman came to television in 1951, veteran movie actors George Reeves and Phyllis Coates took the leading roles for the first season. By the time the series found a sponsor and a network time slot, Coates had committed herself to another production, so the producers called on Noel Neill, who had played Lois Lane in the movies. She continued in the role for five seasons until the series went off the air in 1958.

While Phyllis Coates generally distanced herself from the role, Noel Neill embraced her association with Lois Lane, giving frequent talks on college campuses during the 1970s, when interest in the series was revived, endearing herself to audiences with her warmth and humor.

Noel Neill has continued to appear in Superman related productions. She played Lois Lane’s mother in a cameo for the 1978 film Superman, with Kirk Alyn as Lois’ father. In an episode of the TV series Superboy she appeared alongside her former cast-mate Jack Larson, who had played Jimmy Olsen on TV. Her personal appearance at the Metropolis, Illinois, Superman Festival was featured on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. As “Aunt Lois”she has a guest appearance in the independent superhero film Surge of Power: The Stuff of Heroes, and she plays the role of Gertrude Vanderworth (the dying elderly wife of Lex Luthor) in Superman Returns (2006).

In 2003, an authorized biography of Neill was published. It was entitled Truth, Justice, & The American Way: The Life And Times Of Noel Neill, The Original Lois Lane by Larry Thomas Ward (Nicholas Lawrence Books, softcover, ISBN 0-9729466-0-8). A limited-edition, expanded version of the book was released in 2006.

Noel Neill and Jack Larson donated their time to record commentaries for the DVD releases of the Superman TV episodes. Noel remarked on the documentary Look, Up in the Sky: The Amazing Story of Superman that a frequent question she would get from children at the time was, “Why don’t you know that Clark Kent was Superman, just wearing a pair of those darn eyeglasses?” And Neill replied to the children (and later to college audiences), “I don’t want to lose my job!”

On June 15, 2010, the southern Illinois city of Metropolis, Illinois (the city that calls itself the “official home of Superman”) unveiled a statue of Lois Lane. The Lois Lane statue is modelled on Noel Neill. Neill stated that she was honored to be memorialized with the statue.

On July 23, 2010, Neill fell in her home in Tucson, Arizona and broke her hip. She was hospitalized for surgery at Tucson Medical Center.  Neill’s friend and biographer, Larry Ward said. “At this point, all we can do is keep her comfortable and hope the pain subsides soon.”

What has more pixels than a continuous recording of a 7 1/2 hour scenic train ride in HD?

If you were to strap yourself to the cowcatcher of the train that runs from Bergen, Norway, across the mountains to the capital of Oslo, here’s what you would see — all seven hours of every scenic mile (here’s a 10-minute sample from the Finse area, which stood in for the snowy planet Hoth in “Star Wars”).

Warning – if you decide to download the full length HD train ride, you’ll need 256 Gigabytes of disk space. The “smaller” 720×1280 version is only 22 Gigabytes.

Click here to visit the website.

Click here to see the 10-minute sample.

Something To Think About

Imagine that you had won the following prize in a contest:

Each morning your bank would deposit $86,400.00 in your private account for your use. However, this prize had rules, just as any game has certain rules.

The first set of rules would be:

The MAGICAL BANK is TIME!

Here’s wishing you a wonderfully beautiful day!!!

Thanks for Cathy B and Lani S for passing this along. – R

I finally got to see Clint Eastwood’s latest directorial triumph, INVICTUS. Thank you NetFlix.

What a great movie, I heartily recommend it to you. Beyond the fact that it’s a very good movie, is that Morgan Freeman is one of the Executive Producers. Which leads me to the Morgan Freeman Chain Of Command. – Robert

Click Here to See the Chain Of Command.

Robin Williams as the American Flag. Robin Williams portrays the American flag in “I Love Liberty,” a two-hour television special created by Norman Lear and presented by People For the American Way. Website: http://site.pfaw.org/ “Robin Williams as the American Flag ” Just 5 minutes long.

Celebrating the 4th of July Weekend – Click Here to view this excellent bit.

Squashed Philosophers lets you digest deep thoughts from the likes of Sartre, Descartes and Cicero in about half an hour.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

THE BOOKS WHICH DEFINED THE WAY WE THINK NOW.
Their own ideas, in their own words, neatly honed into little half-hour or so reads.
“Like reading the bible without all the begats” – Jim Curtis

Click here to visit the collection.

Tequila

Thanks to Ann R. for this link to Amusing Planet. -R

A company called Bevshots has produced a series of shots of booze under the microscope at the Florida State University’s chemistry labs.

The process consist of letting a droplet of liquor dry out completely on a slide in an airtight container, and photographing the result with a 35mm camera. The entire process can take up to three months and as many as 200 attempts to properly capture the drink’s constituent parts.

Cocktails can have fruit and soft drinks in them which contain citric acids and complex sugars which dry out well and look great photographed. The incredible shapes and colours of the boozy artwork are highlighted by shining natural light on top and through the bottom of the slide. Just like images of snowflakes, each drink is different.

These images are available for sale at Bevshots. Open for business since August 2009, Bevshots estimate that they have sold over 20,000 examples of their alcoholic art works.

Click here to see the pictures.

We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensible to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.

To learn more… click here.

It is so easy to be cynical, jaded, and worldly – no jump-rope video could be worth a moment of my time. But I would be wrong in saying that. This little video is just short of 8 minutes long. Half way through it, I started grinning. Sometimes people do exceptional things and we owe ourselves the smiles they obviously worked so hard to achieve. This won’t change your life – but you will enjoy it a tiny bit more. – Robert

Click here for the video.

In the last five years, mining companies have expressed the desire to mine on 800 claims within five miles of the Grand Canyon—close enough that the cyanide and other toxic chemicals they use to separate ore from rock could run off into the streams that feed the Colorado River and the trails and wild lands that surround it. According to the EPA, mining waste has polluted 40 percent of the watersheds that provide Western communities with drinking water.

The Obama administration has launched a new initiative to reconnect Americans, especially kids, with our country’s amazing natural beauty. They’re calling the initiative America’s Great Outdoors and they’re looking for public input on the places that need more protection. We think the Grand Canyon should make the list.

If we allow mining near the Grand Canyon, toxic chemicals, including cyanide, could flow into the Colorado River. We can’t let that happen.

That’s why I signed Environment New Mexico’s petition to ask Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar to protect the Grand Canyon through America’s Great Outdoors program. You should sign the petition too!

Check out this page at the Environment New Mexico Web site:

http://www.environmentnewmexico.org/action/great-outdoors/grand-canyon?id4=tafsent

Thanks.
Robert Barnes

The BBC’s Francine Stock is one of the sharpest interviews around, and she gets outstanding guests, including, in recent weeks, Wes Anderson, John Landis, Terry Gilliam and Sam Mendes.

The Film Programme.

NPR: Planet Money Podcast [NPR]

Money makes the world go around, faster and faster every day. On NPR’s Planet Money, you’ll meet high rollers, brainy economists and regular folks — all trying to make sense of our rapidly changing global economy. Visit this podcast’s Web site

Updates: Variable
Duration: approx 25 minutes

June 14th Topic (as an example) : Will Afghanistan Fall Victim To The ‘Natural Resource Curse”?

by JACOB GOLDSTEIN

Afghanistan may be sitting on nearly $1 trillion of gold, copper, lithium and other minerals, the New York Times reports.

It’s an incredible sum — nearly 100 times the size of the country’s gross national product — that could transform Afghanistan’s economic future.

But for many countries, discovering valuable resources in the ground leads to no end of trouble for the people.

“You’d think it’s like winning the lottery, but it’s become associated with all these negative outcomes,” Todd Moss, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, told me this morning.

Economists call this the “natural resource curse.”

At 6 pm this evening, 30 years ago today, I held my breath and crossed my fingers and said a prayer for the people who had just built CNN. We were going live and “never sign off”.

The CNN of today is not the creature we created back in 1979. It is something else and that topic could fill a number of books. The news business became big business and a polarizing tool somewhere along the way, but this too shall pass.

Suffice it to say that we merry band of news junkies yearned to have a forum where “what is going on” mattered in real time. And the viewer could be a witness to history as it happened.

My continuing thanks to Ted Turner, Burt Reinhardt, Reese Shonfeld, Peter Kolstad and Ed Grudzien for the opportunity to be part of the grand adventure.

I’m proud to be one of the fewer than 80 people who were lucky enough to be selected and actually build CNN and take it live on June 1, 1980.

If you can find a copy of “CNN The Inside Story”, it is a great read and I recommend it to you.

-Robert

This blog is closer to being ready for prime time.  You can subscribe via email at the bottom of the Home page.

Anyone who loves color and sound and music… with a healthy mix of good ideas is welcome here.

We seek to celebrate the best in life and “smell the roses” even if it’s just here on line.

Consider this a new watering hole. Drop in to cool your brain and think outside the box.

Life is Short. Art is Eternal.