Smallist

Dawn at Frugal for Life digs up Time’s April 8th 1991 cover story, “The Simple Life“. I particularly liked this part:

The beginnings of the new mind-set probably go back as far as the stock- market crash of 1987, which had little immediate effect on the overall economy but gave many people an uneasy feeling about the Roaring Eighties. The spectacular failures of such ’80s heroes as Michael Milken and Donald Trump have discredited the era’s role models as well.

That’s right kids, before he was a tv star, the Donald was a spectacular failure. Anyway, the article is rich with such ironies and reversals, and definitely worth a read. Maybe it’s time for another look at downsizing, after fifteen years of supersizing.

Intel’s pics of their MID platform are HOT. Like, close to iPhone hot, except as far as I can tell, the MID platform isn’t a phone. But unlike regular UMPCs, the fact that this design isn’t tethered to Windows somehow makes it seem a little more promising. Maybe I’m just being a snob.

Via Engadget.

So I cleaned out my desk yesterday. These items were among the things within the mess. Notice the problem?

That’s right. Unless you’re running a kindergarten, you don’t need multiple scissors and tape. The screwdrivers are both phillips head, both the same size. I suppose the glue’s sort of excusable, since they’re different glues. Except, I’m a flash animator, and as we say in the trade, “If you’re using glue to animate Flash, you probably did something wrong.” They shouldn’t be in the desk at all. And it’s not just the desk: I know for a fact there’s two open Grey Poupons extant in the fridge.

There’s a catch-22 in play. The reason I have multiple items is that there’s so much clutter, I never remember what I have, or I can’t find something when I need it. So I buy another one. More clutter. And so on. It’s like heroin but without the weight loss. So from now on, three simple rules:

1. Supplies are to be kept in a separate area from active duty items. Always. No putting the new bag of disposable razors next to the nearly gone bag of disposable razors. It goes in a separate area. I went so far as to remove all but one pen from my top desk drawer. One day I’d like to use up a pen.
2. If it looks like I don’t have something, I will scour the apartment before buying another. Or resolve that, if I find the original at some point afterwards, I will give it away or sell it.
3. Most controversial: I will try to buy the highest quality items I can, so that I remember I have them. Obviously it didn’t work with the gray poupon, but imagine: if you had a red swingline stapler, would you misplace it?

On this last point I will make an exception for umbrellas, which will be lost no matter what.

HD television, combined with the pausing habits of fans, means that tv shows can’t fill onscreen papers with garbledegook anymore. The production designer of 30 Rock has turned this potential hassle into an opportunity for added gags:

I start devouring the other framed clippings and toward the end of “Jumping Jenna!” (another overcaffeinated example of fake celebrity journalism) find this paragraph: “Greek copy can be good if it’s written well and doesn’t look like you just slammed your hands around the keys making a mess. If there are some sentences and some words, you can get away with doing things like this: nvud or this: cndfund cjidf ckjd. But really you need to be careful. Cameras nowadays can pick up everything!”

That’s from a Wired article. (thanks sjb!)

Apartment therapy demonstrates how to use the space UNDER your kitchen cabinets.

Zeptoliter is not a term you hear very often. Researchers at Brookhaven designed an experiment to see how tiny amounts of liquid freeze, using a device which can produce a droplet one billionth of a trillionth of a liter. At that size, liquids solidify like pudding — a small skin forms around the outside. (at normal sizes, solidification typically crystallizes around an impurity)

The device looks pretty nifty, and if this story gets any traction, BoingBoing will probably call it steampunk. But it’s the miniature “reservoir tip” of the pipette that gets nano enthusiasts going. Or zepto enthusiasts, if they exist. More pics, along with a more technical description, here.

A few days ago, a paper was announced suggesting that photosynthesis makes use of some strange quantum effects to gain maximum efficiency. But it was a little short on detail.

SciAm presents a decent layman’s explanation of happening. Basically, the standard model of photosynthesis suggests that the energy ping-pongs from molecule to molecule until it finds one that will release an electron for energy conversion. But the research suggests that the ping-ponging occurs instantaneously, because the cholorphyll acts as a quantum computer. Every conversion path is tested simultaneously, so no energy is lost to dilly-dallying.

If it’s possible to replicate photosynthesis, super-efficient solar cells could result. Of course, that’s a long way off.

Here’s another tiny garden, via freshome. This one’s designed for edible sprouts, which makes it a little more appealing than the ones featured in this earlier post. It’s available at Delight.com for 30.00, and comes with lettuce, mustard, clover, and cress. That would make a great Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel song.

The Honolulu crooner died today at 76. And we were just talking about tiny bubbles and Kurt Vonnegut…

Speaking of R2D2, I ran across this R2-D2 mailbox on 6th ave, I think at about 50th st. I assume it’s for the new commemorative stamps. Looks perfect for mailing Death Star plans.

On an editorial note, I think long after people forget all about Jedi and Sith and Anakin and Yoda, they’ll probably remember the R2D2 design. Smeared with dirt, slightly broken down, but lively and determined, R2D2 is a shorthand for the look and feel of the original movie, romantic and dystopian in contrast to earlier science fiction’s utopian modernism. The Millenium Falcon’s pretty cool too.