Mike Arauz Mike Arauz is a strategist at Undercurrent, and lives in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Mike's interested in media, marketing, technology, photography, film, food, and politics. This site is a place for you to discover the things that Mike thinks are interesting enough to pass on. Email: him[at]mikearauz[dot]com
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Blog: Stream of Thoughts

Michel Gondry's big hand thing

After seeing the very exciting preview for Michel Gondry's new film, The Science of Sleep [link], I remembered that I had heard that Gondry had had recurring nightmares as a child about having enormous hands, but I couldn't remember where. So, it turns out, he mentions it in the extra-features on his music video DVD from Palm Pictures [link]. You may recognize the 'big hand' bit from The Foo Fighters' video for 'Everlong.'

Monday, July 31, 2006    |       |    Permalink

Another reason to love Steely Dan

Walter Becker and Donald Fagen have a problem with Owen Wilson and his recent movie 'You, Me, and Dupree'. So they're enlisting the help of his brother, Luke. Read the letter [link]. You'll find some great gems like, "But, hey, Luke, man - there is one petite solid you could do for us at this time..."

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James Turrell room at PS1 in Queens

Sunday, July 30, 2006    |       |    Permalink

roland satterwhite in redhook

Friday, July 28, 2006    |       |    Permalink

Matt in Central Park

Tuesday, July 25, 2006    |       |    Permalink

US Constitution

The US Constitution is very impressive. Have you read it lately [link]? Have you thought lately about the fact that our government leaders are public servants; that is to say that the only power that they have is the power that we have chosen to give them - temporarily, for the duration of their service in office.

Sunday, July 23, 2006    |       |    Permalink

Coudal Partners

Coudal Partners is a design firm in Chicago. They keep a great blog, roughly on the topics of design and culture. I read it religiously [link].

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Kelly enjoying the Fall in Central Park

Thursday, July 20, 2006    |       |    Permalink

Chris Garneau - Video

Chad [link] introduced me to this great singer/songwriter. Go watch his video [link].

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Folksonomy

what's so great about Folksonomy?

...when we start to expand to other groups of related words, like movies, film, and cinema, the case for the thesaurus becomes much less clear. I learned this from Brad Fitzpatrick's design for LiveJournal, which allows user to list their own interests. LiveJournal makes absolutely no attempt to enforce solidarity or a thesaurus or a minimal set of terms, no check-box, no drop-box, just free-text typing. Some people say they're interested in movies. Some people say they're interested in film. Some people say they're interested in cinema.

The cataloguers first reaction to that is, "Oh my god, that means you won't be introducing the movies people to the cinema people!" To which the obvious answer is "Good. The movie people don't want to hang out with the cinema people." Those terms actually encode different things, and the assertion that restricting vocabularies improves signal assumes that that there's no signal in the difference itself, and no value in protecting the user from too many matches.

When we get to really contested terms like queer/gay/homosexual, by this point, all the signal loss is in the collapse, not in the expansion. "Oh, the people talking about 'queer politics' and the people talking about 'the homosexual agenda', they're really talking about the same thing." Oh no they're not. If you think the movies and cinema people were going to have a fight, wait til you get the queer politics and homosexual agenda people in the same room.

from Clay Shirky's paper 'Ontology is Overrated' [link].

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David Moldawer - No Funny Videos Anymore

My 'friend,' Dave Moldawer, used to have some funny little videos posted on his website, now all he has to offer the world is links to articles promoting egalitarian, anti-aesthetic, and un-creative methods of creativity [link].

Tuesday, July 18, 2006    |       |    Permalink

George Washington Bridge before the storm

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Andrew Sloat - art videos

Andrew Sloat has posted a new version of his site. He does great little videos playing with 3D graphic design in a 2D medium. [link]

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Pictures, Videos, and Links