‘Mudtrails’ caused by trawlers revealed – first heard about this from a friend on Saturday; now an old friend is leading the visualization research on its impact!

Pamela Kendall Schiffer – Welcome – my aunt-in-law’s (is there such a thing?) new site showing her amazing paintings, especially of the Santa Barbara area. We’re proud to have a couple hanging in our home.

Temple of the Seven Golden Camels: Carrying a Sketchbook, part one – “Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that a sketchbook is more than a way to improve your drawing, it forces you to focus on the world around you and analyze it. Just trying to record the world on paper makes you observe…more

Temple of the Seven Golden Camels: Carrying a Sketchbook, part one – “The best advice I can give you about becoming a better artist is to carry a sketchbook with you all of them time and to draw in it whenever you can.”

“Reading becomes dangerous when instead of waking us to the personal life of the spirit it tends to substitute itself for it” – Marcel Proust

Paul H. Rubin – Evolution, Immigration and Trade – washingtonpost.com – Another way that we’re unprepared to understand situations on a global scale: “In a group of 100 people, when we observe something that has happened to someone, it is a reasonably likely event. In a society of 300 million, when we learn about something…more

On commuting

As I just posted [a bunch of links](http://www.ryskamp.org/psst-all#2760) to a fascinating recent New Yorker article on commuting in America, [There and Back Again: The soul of the commuter](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_paumgarten?currentPage=all), I thought it might be a good time to chronicle my thoughts about commuting. I haven’t owned a car in more than five years; before that there…more

AlterNet: Blogs: Video: Update: Cartoon Marketing Ignites Bomb Scare [VIDEO] – Years from now, this will still be cited as a turning point, in so many ways. The press conference they gave (video at the site) is especially fascinating. “A guerrilla marketing campaign for a cartoon show about a box of french fries and his…more

Annals of Transport: There and Back Again: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker – “In that kind of life, you have a small refrigerator, because you can get to the store quickly and often. By this logic, the bigger the refrigerator, the lonelier the soul.”