Russell Davies

urban camoflage

this is a great idea.

Urban camouflage
Public safety gear catalog

My Jeep is camouflaged to look like a commercial fleet vehicle. I made up a fake company name, appropriated a 1950s-era logo that once belonged to a nuclear energy mutual fund, painted safety stripes on the back, and plastered a fake vehicle number all over the place. I also added flashing yellow lights in the rear window, and a police-style spotlight and rubberized push bumper to the front. VERY FUN accessories ... and useful too (when used with discretion). The spotlight is incredibly versatile -- you can point/rotate it while sitting in the driver's seat -- and it's come in handy countless times for roadside emergencies, setting up campsites, or finding house numbers on dark streets.

This urban camouflage guise is very useful for parking in yellow zones, urban/industrial exploration, and crime deterrence. And the thing is... it really works!

The spotlight, bumper, and rear flashers came from my *all-time favorite* mail order catalog: Galls, "The Authority in Public Safety Equipment and Apparel."

It's a gold mine, full of handy things that you didn't think you were allowed to buy.

-- Todd Lapin

lovely, lovely christmas

just walked past richard james on saville row. very nice christmas lights.

clever CIA

"A CIA operative who is assigned to read Soviet newspapers during the Cold War notices that a perennially losing soccer team in a small town suddenly starts winning all its matches. Curious, he asks for detailed photos of the area. Close scrutiny reveals a secret nuclear-weapons plant: the steady infusion of workers, it turns out, has been boosting the team's talent pool. While it would be comforting to think that today's intelligence community is similarly on the ball, that's not the point being made by Bradley Hoyt in his article "Early Warning: The Art of Inference" in the January/February 2002 issue of Competitive Intelligence Magazine. Hoyt's message is for business leaders, and it is this: seismic change often creeps in on little cat's feet, and the best way to spot it is to constantly scan for anomalies. Strategists, he insists, must learn both how to look (spotting change is a largely visual process) and where to look (early indications of change come not from within our companies or our industries but from the world at large -- your local Hallmark store is a good place to start)"

pretentious

from independent saturday mag interview with chapman brothers:

'I'm reminded of hearing the video artist, bill viola, speak in durham cathedral. He said that the romantic idea of the artist, working away in his solitary studio, was an anomaly; that for most of history the artist had worked in a collective, subordinate to an idea, which, in the middle ages, was god.

Like an agency, subordinate to a brand? Working as a collective rather than as heroic creatives. It'd be true if it wasn't so pretentious

sugar truck

arthur did this, but it's a good idea for a sugar bowl

segmentation

demographic segments from Interface by Stephen Bury (really Neal Stephenson and someone else)

irrelevant mouth breather
400-pound tab drinker
stone-faced urban homeboy
burger-flipping history major
squirrelly winnebago jockey
bible-slinging porch monkey
economic roadkill
pent-up corporate lickspittle
high-metabolism world dominator
midamerican knickknack queen
snuff-hawking basement dweller
postadolescent road warrior
depression-haunted can stacker
pretentious urban-lifestyle slave
formerly respectable bankruptcy survivor
frosty-haired coupon snipper
cynical media manipulator
reticent gun nut
ufos ate my brain
mall-hopping corporate concubine
high-fiber duck squeezer
post-confederate gravy eater
manic third-world entrepeneur
overextending young professional
apartment-dwelling mall staff
trade school metal head
orange county book burner
first-generation beltway black
80's junk-bond parvenue
debt-hounded wage slave
activist tube feeder
toilet-scrubbing ex-steelworker
neo-okie
shit-kicking wrestlemaniac
sunbelt condo commando
rust-belt lumpenpaol
reticent gun nut

wisdom

Indeed, his (Berlusconi's) close friend Confalonieri concludes our interview with a rather fetching analysis. "He is the same as an American. He wants everybody to be happy now. For years in Italy, we've been plagued by two philosophies that put off happiness into the distant future. The church says it will come after you die. The Communists say it will come hundreds of years from now when everyone is equal. It isn't difficult to compete against such ideas."

from Joe Klein's articles about Europe for The Guardian and Slate

pokia

I show this to lots of people and tell them it's the future, and they assume I'm joking. But somehow, of course, it is. We want the technology bit small and the interaction bit human-sized and familiar. That's just what we want.

george's dad on the phone

this is a great idea. a walking tour of new york you get via your cellphone. this is symptomatic of the way ubiquitous technology will change/influence things.

manifesto

let's make planning the voice of provocation, rather than the voice of reason.
let's be idea-centric rather than consumer-centric.
let's be make planning something interesting to do, rather than a profession