More Art 'n' Kids: Chris Vasell @ Blum & Poe.

(Christian Marclay's sound installation Shake Rattle & Roll @ the MOCA Los Angeles.)

Serengeti/Escondido:




(I usually have an incredulous attitude about amusement parks, but this one was different.)

(Installation by Choi Jeong-Hwa at LACMA's Your Bright Future show.)

Blasting southward by lovely Clear Lake, CA:

Mom: Ya know, when you wanna do something, ya need to go somewhere where there is something you want to do.
Kid: yeah. I get it...

An Historic Day:

Cocksure: Banks, Battles, and the Psychology of Overconfidence (click here)

This is what social scientists mean when they say that human overconfidence can be an adaptive trait. “In conflicts involving mutual assessment, an exaggerated assessment of the probability of winning increases the probability of winning,” Richard Wrangham, a biological anthropologist at Harvard, writes. “Selection therefore favors this form of overconfidence.” Winners know how to bluff. And who bluffs the best? The person who, instead of pretending to be stronger than he is, actually believes himself to be stronger than he is. According to Wrangham, self-deception reduces the chances of “behavioral leakage”; that is, of “inadvertently revealing the truth through an inappropriate behavior.” This much is in keeping with what some psychologists have been telling us for years—that it can be useful to be especially optimistic about how attractive our spouse is, or how marketable our new idea is. In the words of the social psychologist Roy Baumeister, humans have an “optimal margin of illusion.”

Cuyahoga from Cynthia Hooper on Vimeo.

Ohio’s Cuyahoga River has long maintained the dubious distinction of igniting the U.S. environmental movement in 1969. This fire, however, was unremarkable in its intensity and singularity—for a number of industrial-age waterways (over the course of more than a century) have episodically burst into flames. The Cuyahoga is a generally more tranquil river today, but the remnants of its intensively industrialized past still soberly operate along its shores. This video examines the modest decorum and monumental grace of these remaining waterside enterprises. (2009, running time: 8.5 minutes.)

(Out-takes from the video I'm working on now.)

A new project by SIMPARCH (click here)

Estacion Tijuana (click here)

Sunday boating enthusiasts and the Conrail Bridge from "Shooters":

Catherine Yass at the MOCA Cleveland:




(This meditative two-channel video documents a barge slowly passing through a gigantic lock in China's Three Gorges Dam.)

The Conrail Bridge from the deck of the "Shooters" Bar and Grill:

The mighty Arcelor-Mittel blast furnace:

Herons at the Cargill Salt Works:

The Cuyahoga from the top of Saint Mary's cement silo:

Saint Mary's Cement Company ROCKS!!!! Go to them for all your cement needs!!!!

Here is the image that goes with the text:

(I love my nerdy friends.)

The awesome power of Google Earth...

"it's nice to know there are a lot of things we don't know about."

--Dave Bazard

CHUB (click here)

The awesome Cuyahoga Habitat Underwater Basket Project.

"A sensation of understanding is an aesthetic experience."

--Matt Coolidge

"We attempt to dissolve these notions of what's art and what isn't, or what's the practice and what's the rest of the time, and enter a continuous experience."

--Bill Gilbert in his new book "Land Arts of the American West"

The Fires of the Cuyahoga River (click here)

(This one was in 1952.)

"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."

--Andy Warhol

When Our Brains Short-Circuit (click here)

“What’s important is the threats that were dominant in our evolutionary history,” notes Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard University. In contrast, he says, the kinds of dangers that are most serious today — such as climate change — sneak in under the brain’s radar.

Professor Gilbert argues that the threats that get our attention tend to have four features. First, they are personalized and intentional. The human brain is highly evolved for social behavior (“that’s why we see faces in clouds, not clouds in faces,” says Mr. Gilbert), and, like gazelles, we are instinctively and obsessively on the lookout for predators and enemies.

Second, we respond to threats that we deem disgusting or immoral — characteristics more associated with sex, betrayal or spoiled food than with atmospheric chemistry.

“That’s why people are incensed about flag burning, or about what kind of sex people have in private, even though that doesn’t really affect the rest of us,” Professor Gilbert said. “Yet where we have a real threat to our well-being, like global warming, it doesn’t ring alarm bells.”

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