Allow me to waste a minute and a half of your life

Aimee Mullins is taller than you

I usually have a pretty kneejerk “la dee da” reaction to the idea conference TED–I think a couple lectures with waaay too many buzzwords kind of turned me off of it. But double amputee Aimee Mullins does a great talk on beauty, humanness, and disability, and has some really cool, sculptural prosthetics to show off.

Generative art and delicious brunch

One of my favorite ultra-nerdy niche blogs, FlowingData, just released this totally sweet post about Nokia’s recent collaboration with a couple of generative artists to promote a new smartphone.

Here’s my beautiful message, synthesized from input to my Macbook’s camera, mic, and an on-site text box. For the record, the input included flailing my hands, a coughing fit (thanks bronchitis), and the text take me home tonight!!!!!. I’m about as artistic as a shoe full of pudding.

In addition to creating beautiful messages, I went to brunch at Salut today, which was excellent. The quest for the perfect Twin Cities brunch destination begins. Salut gets good marks for providing a lot of good food for not a lot of money, a cute atmosphere, and a pretty low-effort location.

But the crowd’s a little, well, Edina, and also I can’t really handle the fact that their website asks you if you’d like to view it in French or English. I mean, I get the whole Francophile aesthetic and I think it’s pretty cute, but good god this is Minnesota, please get over yourself.

Can I Yelp about that?

Why hasn’t someone thought of this before?

When my 2nd(ish) grade class went on a field trip to a historic schoolhouse–Cahill School, for local reference, now overlooking Highway 100 from its perch across the street from a Perkins–we learned that its turn-of-the-century students used to heat up potatoes and slip them into their pockets before leaving their homes in the morning.

I have one response to that quaint frontier mindset, and it is heated pants. Marked down from $270 to the low, low price of $121. Forget flying cars; here’s the future we’ve been waiting for.