Las Vegas lightning storm

July 17, 2006

Welcome home, Discovery

Space shuttle Discovery and its crew of six returned to Earth through thick clouds Monday, ending an impressive mission that put NASA's space program back on a solid, safer course.

Discovery landed at Kennedy Space Center at 9:14 a.m. in only the second shuttle flight since the 2003 Columbia disaster killed seven astronauts.

"Welcome back, Discovery, and congratulations on a great mission," Mission Control told shuttle commander Steven Lindsey after Discovery rolled to a stop.

more

NASA's shuttle landing blog

Laughs for a Monday morning.

Love him, or hate him, Bill Maher's latest "New Rules" segment is pretty damned funny.

Top 10 viral videos, including the must-see "Grape Smasher" news report.

Via GorillaMask.net

brrreeeport

An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth [By Bruce Mau]

Written in 1998, the Incomplete Manifesto is an articulation of statements that exemplify Bruce Mau's beliefs, motivations and strategies. It also articulates how the BMD studio works.

1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

6. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

7. Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

10. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

11. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

12. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

13. Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

15. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

16. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

17. ____________________. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

18. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.

19. Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

20. Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

21. Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

22. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

23. Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

24. Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it.

25. Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

26. Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

27. Read only left-hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our "noodle."

28. Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

29. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

30. Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between "creatives" and "suits" is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.'

31. Don’t borrow money. Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

32. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

33. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

34. Make mistakes faster. This isn’t my idea -- I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

35. Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

36. Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else ... but not words.

37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

38. Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces -- what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference -- the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

40. Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

41. Laugh. People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I've become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

42. Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

43. Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free agents if we’re not free.

How 'bout a Miner's Burger?

How 'bout a Miner's Burger?

For years I had heard my wife tell stories of one of her teenage haunts, Miner's Drive Inn in Yakima, Washington.

The stories told of incredibly large, juicy, tasty hamburgers, massive portions of crispy french fries, and luscious, rich shakes.

These are my kind of stories!

So, what better way to work off Thanksgiving dinner than to confirm the veracity of these stories the next day after getting stuffed on turkey?

According to their website, and a comprehensive display inside the restaurant, Miner's begn in April 1948 when Ed Miner bought the old Pete Agor home and built the Miner's Drive In. Today, Miner's has a staff of 70 and a third- family generation is continuing the family tradition.

Miner's is, simply put, the largest quick-service operation I've ever seen, and I grew up in southern California, birthplace of the famous In-N-Out Burger chain. Even before I ordered the rumored-to-be-huge burger, I noticed a number of massive things at Miner's:

-- Two long drive-up lanes with multiple menu boards so several cars could order simultaneously.

-- An expansive kitchen with an assembly line not unlike In-N-Out, only larger.

-- Two dining rooms which must've been a total of 5 or 6 thousand square feet.

Onto the food. While you can order everything from a double chili cheese dog, to a BBQ beef sandwich, there really is only one thing to order on a first visit to eastern Washington's fabled burger joint.

The Big Miner Burger measures nearly 7 inches in diameter, both bun and patty. By default, it comes loaded with a large fresh tomato slice, shredded lettuce, sliced white onions (grilled on request), pickles, mayo, and hamburger relish. You order at one of several cashier stations, then receive a table number on a tall metal stand, so the servers can find your table amidst the sea of tables in one of the two auditorium-size dining rooms.

The order took long enough to arrive so you know they're cooking your food to order, but not so long so the food arrives less than hot. I'd say the order-to-eat wait time is about the same as In-N-Out, around 12 minutes.

The burger is quite good, but the patty, while extraordinarily wide, isn't as thick as I had expected. The overall taste makes up for the patty-size shortcomings, however. The fresh condiments really work with the super-size bun to make a complete meal that (nearly) fits into one's mouth.

Update: On a subsequent visit, I ordered a "Taco Burger" but was disappointed when it arrived as a patty-based burger with salsa and sour cream, and not a "bun taco" with taco meat like Del Taco used to make. Oh well.

The fries are crisp and bountiful, you'll only need one order for a group of three. And the chocolate shake was the perfect accompaniment to the meal: rich, thick, and appropriately tough to suck through the straw.

Now I've got my own tales to spin about the gargantuan burgers and tasty fries at the place called "Miner's" east of the Cascade Mountains.

Miner's Drive-In Restaurant
2415 S. 1st Street
Yakima, WA 98903
(509) 457-8194
Open 8:30 a.m. 7 days a week
Closing times vary

From Fragments from Floyd:

Yes, it concerns me that while this page once had something almost every day about the real world of ridge and meadow, it now contains something almost every day about my doings, my complaints, my things or potential things. Baggage.

It bothers me too how much of my day is spent sitting watching letters appear as my fingers lift and fall; I read the words—my words like chewed cud—to myself silently while the world turns colors and blooms the other side of window panes that might as well be the bars of a cage.

I am trapped in an ergonomic chair. Self-condemned to a sedentary day of pointing, clicking, cutting and pasting. I’ve been banished from the island, and I was the only one who voted.

What ever happened to the balanced life? Where will I find the path that carries me back? And he answered:

For every hour typing, walk an hour.

For every page written, read one in a book.

For every hour inside, spend one under the sun.

For every minute indugled in self, help someone else.

For every dollar spent on (un)necessary toys, give one away.

For every minute blogging, read a blog.

Past your prime? You can’t know that. Bloom late.

For every hour of sitting, stand-walk-run-climb-lift-push-pull an hour.

For every whining want, give thanks for blessings owned.

For every pain, find something that doesn’t hurt. Surely there’s something.

For each day that dawns, be awake. And caffeine can’t help here. Awake. Now.

In all the parts, see the whole.

And don’t stop having these conversations with yourself. You are your best audience.

Listen. Do what’s needed. Do what’s right.

Amen to that, Floyd!

Why I always check in on Rebecca Blood:

"Things I have learned:

• Someone loves me.
• It always gets better.
• Take a chance.
• Everyone can make a difference; everyone does make a difference.
• The map is not the territory.
• Embrace the unexpected; cherish the routine.
• I am blessed."

This is an ugly, smoggy, hot day in Seattle. Beautiful.

Web Sites That Shorten Long URLs: "The following free web sites can take a long URL and give you back a shorter URL without requiring registration. Any of these services will do a good job, but if you want to study them before you pick one, here is an informal survey of the competitive landscape."