where ogle earth naturally leads. Also, Amsterdam
Massive thing visible on Google Earth is for watching videos and stuff, promises Beijing.
...made me laugh this morning. A bit uncomfortably...
Sometimes you know where you want to go and how to get there, but the city obviously wants to show you something off your route. This happened to me twice yesterday in Amsterdam - the first time it lead me to a chain of Australian-style, infographic-happy coffee shops. The second time...
I haven't walked through Amsterdam's red light district in some years. This time I marveled at (a) how small it is, actually (there can't be more than a couple of hundred women working there, just a couple of streets of windows) and (b) how deeply, deeply unsexy it all is - the women, the pimps, the sex shops, the crowds of tourists, the smell on the street. One effect I hadn't noticed before - it seems to kill sexy advertising stone dead. In Paris or, especially, New York, billboards are all flowing hair and peek-a-boo photography and a hint of thigh. I didn't see any of that in Amsterdam. I'm not sure why (it's possible that political movements are afoot which pass right over the head of a casual visitor like me). But also unlike Paris there are no sexy sexy lingerie shops with just a hint of decadence in the window displays. There are bondage and fetishwear shops, with carelessly thrown together window displays and a smattering of phallic windmill souvenirs or stoner-slogan t-shirts on the side. I guess it's not easy to sell frisson next to that.
I have stuff to say about the newly reopened maritime museum, but I should save it for when I'm not hitting them up for research funding. I can't speak to what it was before its recent 6-year renovation, but what it is now is trying so hard not to be boring that I think it's left the museum bit behind. I came out of there thinking damn, the American Museum of Natural History does a good job, integrating interactive stuff and video with the collection and respecting all of it equally - bits of the scheepvaartmuseum had me wondering what the point was. That said, the video exhibit showing the journey of a shipping container was awesome - both rollercoastery and educational, and I foolishly didn't leave myself enough time to see Voyage at Sea, but it looks like it would appeal to me and the kids equally. The paintings demand a day of their own. And more generous gallery space.
The virtual Etruscan Tomb experience reassured me that, nearly 10 years later, I'm still effectively cutting-edge, as far as museum exhibits go.
Here, have an icon.
And, Amsterdam in 1727. Really, the centre's hardly changed. Suburbs have sprawled, natch, but most European cities were pretty much overwritten in the 19th & 20th centuries. What's gone here is the inner harbour and the VOC buildings (bottom left).
Where I didn't expect to end up today: Marianne and the Lords of the East (pulpsploitation edition)
Finally, an idle thought: is anyone using these sorts of questionnaires for dodgy social sciences work, or is it all just being used for marketing? (the dodgiest of all the social sciences, and directly applied, without the need for ethics boards...) The stats questions definitely measure self-esteem, then there's a bunch of social education questions (some of which betray the social education of the questioner)... makes me wonder if the data are being collected anywhere.
I think it would've decided I was a halfling, but then it asked me about my height. I'll let you know if I suddenly start receiving lots of Prozac spam.
...made me laugh this morning. A bit uncomfortably...
Sometimes you know where you want to go and how to get there, but the city obviously wants to show you something off your route. This happened to me twice yesterday in Amsterdam - the first time it lead me to a chain of Australian-style, infographic-happy coffee shops. The second time...
I haven't walked through Amsterdam's red light district in some years. This time I marveled at (a) how small it is, actually (there can't be more than a couple of hundred women working there, just a couple of streets of windows) and (b) how deeply, deeply unsexy it all is - the women, the pimps, the sex shops, the crowds of tourists, the smell on the street. One effect I hadn't noticed before - it seems to kill sexy advertising stone dead. In Paris or, especially, New York, billboards are all flowing hair and peek-a-boo photography and a hint of thigh. I didn't see any of that in Amsterdam. I'm not sure why (it's possible that political movements are afoot which pass right over the head of a casual visitor like me). But also unlike Paris there are no sexy sexy lingerie shops with just a hint of decadence in the window displays. There are bondage and fetishwear shops, with carelessly thrown together window displays and a smattering of phallic windmill souvenirs or stoner-slogan t-shirts on the side. I guess it's not easy to sell frisson next to that.
I have stuff to say about the newly reopened maritime museum, but I should save it for when I'm not hitting them up for research funding. I can't speak to what it was before its recent 6-year renovation, but what it is now is trying so hard not to be boring that I think it's left the museum bit behind. I came out of there thinking damn, the American Museum of Natural History does a good job, integrating interactive stuff and video with the collection and respecting all of it equally - bits of the scheepvaartmuseum had me wondering what the point was. That said, the video exhibit showing the journey of a shipping container was awesome - both rollercoastery and educational, and I foolishly didn't leave myself enough time to see Voyage at Sea, but it looks like it would appeal to me and the kids equally. The paintings demand a day of their own. And more generous gallery space.
The virtual Etruscan Tomb experience reassured me that, nearly 10 years later, I'm still effectively cutting-edge, as far as museum exhibits go.
Here, have an icon.
And, Amsterdam in 1727. Really, the centre's hardly changed. Suburbs have sprawled, natch, but most European cities were pretty much overwritten in the 19th & 20th centuries. What's gone here is the inner harbour and the VOC buildings (bottom left).
Where I didn't expect to end up today: Marianne and the Lords of the East (pulpsploitation edition)
Finally, an idle thought: is anyone using these sorts of questionnaires for dodgy social sciences work, or is it all just being used for marketing? (the dodgiest of all the social sciences, and directly applied, without the need for ethics boards...) The stats questions definitely measure self-esteem, then there's a bunch of social education questions (some of which betray the social education of the questioner)... makes me wonder if the data are being collected anywhere.
I think it would've decided I was a halfling, but then it asked me about my height. I'll let you know if I suddenly start receiving lots of Prozac spam.