flickering pictures

Following the post on impromptu jam sessions in the backs of London’s black cabs, here’s a much, much better version of Bon Iver’s “Skinny Love,” for those of you who love his music as much as I do. Many thanks to Gen for the link.

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Knowing that this story combines three of my favourite things — beer, Eastern philosophy and neat-o whatnot — a buddy of mine sent me some info about this most postworthy endeavour. Lloyd Alter at Treehugger reports: Fifty years ago the Heineken Beer company looked at reshaping its beer bottle to be useful as a building [...]

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Language is a clumsy inadequate tool, which is all the more reason to celebrate those who wield it well. In The Workings of the Subtle Heart — the “second greatest book ever written” according to Kurt Vonnegut — William Widmer riffs on a Japanese word that seems to have no English equivalent. I am told [...]

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AnnieB — the runaway all-time points leader over at thesixtyone and as dedicated a musicophile as you’ll ever find — has set up her very own music blog: AudioRx. Based in sunny SoCal, Annie has a knack for finding obscure underappreciated tunes that demand to be heard. Give her a listen.

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Husain Amer, a photographer, filmmaker, modelling agent, erstwhile English teacher and good friend of mine has been tromping through China for the last year and is recording his exploits as he goes. Recently he documented a trip from Beijing to Xi’an via the ancient trading city of Pingyao, in China’s northeast. And for all you [...]

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I’m not usually this philosophical in the morning, but watching this video I kept thinking about how incredibly neat it is that humans have created a new circulatory system for the Earth, with ebbs and flows regulated by the planet’s rotation. There’s something beautiful about this. It’s also instructive to see that Africa, with its [...]

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If you’re a regular reader around these parts, you may know that I can sometimes be a little harsh when it comes to the fine city of Toronto. So to restore a bit of balance here at flickeringpictures, and as evidence of my journalistic integrity, here’s a positive post for a change — one that [...]

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I adore this song — don’t know why I didn’t post it earlier. The Mae Shi is a six-man band out of Los Angeles that creates its distinctive sound with a Buchla synthesizer. “Run to the Grave” was selected as NPR’s “Song of the Day” on August 26. Check out their website (though it kinda [...]

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Nina Katchadourian creates very strange art. She does everything from mending tattered spiderwebs to projecting films onto her teeth, and though I don’t always get it, I almost always love it. Have a look at her book spine storytelling series, and then check out the rest of her site for a peek at such endeavours [...]

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Could the most dangerous weapon in the world be charisma? From the Los Angeles Times: Next week the academic journal Language & Communication will publish the poetry of Osama bin Laden, as part of an article by UC Davis Professor Flagg Miller. “Bin Laden is a skilled poet with clever rhymes and meters,” Miller told [...]

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