New SLAM Expansion: Ew.

The beloved St. Louis Art Museum is expanding and building a new Modern Art Wing.

Gross. I think it clashes with the beautiful architecture for the rest of the building. Why oh why?

SLAM website on the expansion (here).
Horribly written St. Louis Post-Dispatch article on it (here).

Check out the artist's renderings:

When People Have 2000's-Themed Parties in the Future, They Will Dress Like This:

Pink parodying the Olsen Twins in 'Stupid Girls'


facehunter


by the way, what is the correct word for the 2000s? twenty-hundreds? oughts? oh-ohs?

Classes That Should Exist

Mizzou has a massive amount of classes that are offered each semester. I tried scrolling through all of the classes for next semester and there are literally thousands. I just found out that there are riding classes you can take at Mizzou - like horses. Who knew? But anyways, if I could invent classes at Mizzou that they would teach, these would be them.

Well, first of all, I would have them make a real Cultural Studies major (named after me - in the style of Stephen Colbert naming things after himself - Canadian hockey team mascot and Hungarian bridge). Having a real Cultural Studies major would make things a lot easier, who knows, it might happen in the future. But here are my classes:

Philosophy of Advertising
Sociology of Fashion and Trends
Sociology of Blue and Red States
Intro to Cultural Studies
Cyclical History
Postmodern Literature
MTV and Modern Media
Globalization
Geography for Americans
Current Events
Generational Interactions
Cultural Movements
Collective Behavior (as in, actual crowd behavior, not the sociology class on 'how to protest stuff' under this title currently)

That's all I can think of right now, I'm sure there's more. I've already taken most of the ridiculous I-can't-believe-this-is-a-real-class classes so far. Conspiracy Theory, the Amish one, I almost took a class called Grapes and Wines of the World where you do wine tastings a lot but I heard it's actually pretty hard and you have to do chemistry. Boo. I'm pretty excited about my Home Horticulture class next semester.

'Learn Something New Everyday' Department

In my Social Change and Trends class yesterday a grad student gave a presentation on wind mills/turbines/huge pinwheels. It was fascinating. Overall, I found out, Missouri is not a very windy state, in fact we rank 43rd in wind production. Too bad. But we also have 2 (and a 3rd coming before 2008) wind farms that are on the electricity grid! Way to go Ameren UE for doing it too. Here's the site for the developers (Wind Capital Group) Woohoo!
I love Rural Sociology majors. They're so cool and offer such a different perspective on issues. It seems like its so uncool to worry about entrepreneurship in small towns, but they do. I think it's great. Also classes in the Rural Sociology department are always taught by people who only teach like one or two classes and have actually done what they're teaching for decades. I took an Amish class by a guy who was raised Mennonite and like 102 years old and it was terrific.
Well, anyway, back to wind turbines.


Windmills are HUGE!


This was taken at Bluegrass Ridge wind farm in northwest Missouri.

If I met Jean
Baudrillard
I would make
him a sandwich

...like a daughter.

and talk to him
in the backstage
saying 'Good
job, man'

Zeitgeist

TV on the Internet

Well, as I mentioned before, my friends and my favorite illegal TV/Movie website got shut down (TV Links) and so I have been shopping for a new one since. Here are a couple promising (and legal!) candidates:

Veoh - A little clunky. It's mostly a flashy guide to all videos currently on the internet through YouTube, Google Video, etc.

Joost - my favorite so far. Joost has bought rights to some TV shows, especially old ones like 'Charlie's Angels' but I haven't quite figured out the system yet.

Hulu - very flashy and secretive. They're only in the beta stage right now and won't even let me get on. They bought more rights to TV shows (actually the ones you want) like the Office and Scrubs. Cool. But according to the NYtimes article on it (here) there will be tons of advertisements. Boo. But, hey, it's the future.
And, reason #2 that Hulu is the future? This vision: "Hulu has a unique agenda: to marry the largest collection of professionally-produced video to the widest audience possible. “We don’t have to worry about showing TV schedules or letting fans get to know the actors,” he said. “All we have to worry about is the video.”
In the age of TiVo, this is all that a TV provider can do.