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Welcome to the 175th issue of the Cool Tricks and Trinkets Newsletter offering weekly insights into new, cool, useful, fun, unusual and interesting sites on the Internet.
In this issue:
- The Merchants of Cool
- Thinking in the Trenches
- In Pursuit of Tea
- Short Takes
- Breakthrough Books
- Deja Sears
- Dox Thrash: African American Printmaker
- Post Office in Paradise
- Old Computers
- Subscribers' Sites
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The Merchants of Cool
With their piercings, tattoos, giant shoes and sagging jeans, they're just wacky-looking kids to you, but America's teens are walking dollar signs, spending $100 billion each year on what's cool - and it's a moving target.
PBS' Frontline web site, Merchants of Cool, exposes how marketers track the next big thing that will snare the teen dollar through interviews with teens, media executives and market researchers and close looks at the role of media giants like MTV to show how teens manipulate and are manipulated by their own buying power. Go on a videotaped "Cool Hunt," join a discussion or tour the landscape of cool. Then send your kids on the trip, so they can watch for the culture vultures.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/
Thinking in the Trenches
Technology, culture and the interactions between them, all delivered by a community of people who like to think. That's what Kuro5hin is about, with a tolerance for everything but garbage, mind noise and Microsoft "bug" stories.
Hosts Rusty and Inoshiro write many of the pieces. The rest are written by "people who are on the ground in the modern world and who sometimes look around and wonder what they have wrought." Organized like a newspaper with Op-Ed, Features, Culture, Media and News sections, stories are submitted by readers to an open queue to be rated and sent into either expression or oblivion. The site's motto tells it all: more "Freedom" and less
"FreeDumb."
http://www.kuro5hin.org/
In Pursuit of Tea
It may not yet rival coffee, but sipping a cup of tea is catching on in the US, and it's a decidedly different pleasure, bringing calm instead of jitters and a slow, luxurious pace instead of a quick hot swallow.
In Pursuit of Tea is an aid to US tea drinkers, who may find that cultivating their newly acquired taste is a bewildering quest. For those who don't know the difference between oolong and green tea, the site brings rare teas to the states from remote growers worldwide, describes the art of growing teas and their special characteristics. Only "true" loose-leaf teas are here, and the selections are pure and unblended, promising "a new journey, full of wonder and peace."
http://www.inpursuitoftea.com/
SHORT TAKES
Space Station Location
A cool tracking system calculates the approximate location for a list of satellites and spacecraft, each assigned a color to display the ground trace, captions, location and countdown clock. Space Station Location shows where the International Space Station is at any given time, then tells where to stand to see a satellite pass over. Be ready to duck.
http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/temp/StationLoc.html
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Blinkenlights
The Chaos Computer Club of Berlin celebrates its 20th anniversary by turning the front of a building into a giant computer-controlled light display at
Blinkenlights. Using over 100 lamps, the group has created an 18 by 8 pixel display of animations -- and lets you dial up on a mobile phone to play the classic arcade game Pong or create a message for your lover on the side of the building.
http://www.blinkenlights.de/interactive.en.html
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The Phobia List
All of us have fears. If your bank account is sparse, you may have Plutophobia - fear of wealth, or if you're a light sleeper you may suffer from
Oneirophobia- fear of dreams. Whatever your phobia is, you can find it here.
http://phobialist.com
Breakthrough Books
Looking to stimulate your gray matter with something weightier than USA Today in the new year? Check out Lingua Franca's Breakthrough Books, which asks experts to recommend books that have defined a particular area of thought.
The site covers broad territory, from aesthetics to neglected fiction, and here the focus is on books about the media recommended by five academic experts. No Danielle Steele in the list, the titles can be daunting, like Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media - but you want a challenge, right? The entire archive of Breakthrough Books is going online, and tempting titles can be ordered directly through a link to Barnes and Noble.
http://www.linguafranca.com/bookworm/breakthrough/
Deja Sears
It's 1971, and All in the Family premiers on TV, soft contact lenses receive FDA approval and polyester is really, really big. Thumb through the Fall 1971 Sears Catalog for evidence:
Fortrel, Dacron, Orlon, Acrilan, Kodel and Celanese. It Came from the 1971 Sears Catalog is one of those sites that just happens when someone finds something so remarkably weird they just have to share.
The site's creator discovered the catalog - all 1,600 pages of it - at an estate sale and was astounded at the volume of pure ugliness it contained. You can see the ad photos, read the copy and snicker at how far we've come from pullover tunic and pants sets and knee high vinyl socks.
http://toonhead.tripod.com/sears.htm
Dox Thrash: African American Printmaker
Dox Thrash sounds like a punk band, but in fact he was an African American master printmaker whose work spanning the early half of the 20th century was discovered in two volumes produced by the famed WPA between 1936 and 1941.
Created in partnership with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the site reproduces many of the artist's 188 prints, with narratives that equal the art's awesome power. Together, they chronicle the black experience in America, from hobos on the road to 1940s Harlem ladies. They also preserve an amazing body of work and technique, from a pioneering deep relief mezzotint to an aquatint that mimics a soft wash drawing.
http://www.philamuseum-thrash.org/
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Post Office in Paradise
Talk about a specialty site: Post Office in Paradise is the apt name for this comprehensive site dedicated to mail and postage stamps of 19th century Hawaii, before the Aloha State became a territory of the US in 1900.
Philatelists (stamp hobbyists) will go wild over the histories, sheet lay-outs, reproductions, cross references to auction catalogs and recent discoveries detailed here. Others will find the stamps, postcards, mail routes and postal markings -- like the discussion of Hawaii's first stamp, the Missionary Stamp -- a historical revelation. With sections on local and inter-island mail, foreign mail, News & Notes and links to collectors and auctioneers.
http://www.hawaiianstamps.com/index.html
Old Computers
Think you've got the oldest computer on earth? Now you can find out - and feel a little better about that upgrade you've put off.
Old-Computers.com depicts and describes over 500 computers, categorized by year, manufacturer and alphabet.
The site traces personal computers from their introduction in 1973 with the
Micral, the first microprocessor-based computer, to around 1994. Anyone remember the Apricot, or the 1980
SuperBrain? A message board forum connects collectors and an online javachat helps visitors link to others to discuss such topics as emulation and computer museums. Finally, a Fun section shows goofy old computer ads, quizzes and the Hall of Nerds.
http://www.old-computers.com/
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If you're interested in advertising in Cool Tricks and Trinkets,
email info@tricksandtrinkets.com
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SUBSCRIBERS' SITES - Many of our subscribers have fascinating on-line projects. This weekly section will introduce you to some of these sites. Please let me know about your project so that I might mention it in this section. Write me at
info@tricksandtrinkets.com
~Womens Reproductive Rights Assistance Project
~The Hollow Bones Retreat
- Empowering men who have completed the New Warrior Training.
~Teacup Shihtzu Site
~Songs by Sooz
~ Nylon Designs - A full-service Interactive Design & Technology Agency.
~Startup 2 Success
~GuiZone - Viewer submissions of custom desktops.
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OOo-(_)-oOOo--------
The drunk falls from the cart but is not hurt.
You throw hesitation aside but look stupid.
To be truly uninhibited is a rare grace.
~TAO~
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Have a great weekend.
Charles
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