Massive Change

Went to a really interesting lecture earlier this week. The speaker was Bruce Mau - introduced as "arguably Canada's best designer." Don't know about that, but he was very thought provoking.

I've added a new saying to my "is this a hill I want to die on?" - "What do I need to get over this hill." Love it!

Mau worked with his studio and a series of grad students to produce an exhibition called "Massive Change" that ran at the Vancouver Art Gallery back in 2004. Hard to distill eactly what the exhibit was about down to a sentence so check out the website.

"Now that we can do anything, what will we do?"

A bit too "Utopia building"? You tell me.

Bored?

I love the name of this site - I Am Bored. An entire site dedicated to stupid things to do when you're bored.

Like Punch the Ice, for instance....

Got you stumped?

What? No guesses about this week's word of the week - brummagem.

Come on people, peel off your apple skin and see what you can come up with!

Rick Mercer Report

I'm a fan of the Rick Mercer Report - I loved the season finale of a couple of weeks ago that had Rick and Jan Arden riding a bull. Or his report prior to the Turin Olympics - brave man tried the bobsled, luge and ski jumping. Funny stuff.

I appreciate his irreverant take on the current state of Canadian politics. Sometimes you just have to laugh.

Check out his website and make sure you visit the Photo Challenge page. I may just have to rev up the PhotoShop and submit myself something myself.

Word of the Week - April 24

Congrats to Nicole for coming closest to the correct definition of "choler" - it sort of does mean "hot under the collar." The actual definition is:

noun: In medieval science or medicine - one of the four bodily humors, identified with bile, believed to be associated with a peevish or irascible temperment.



THIS WEEK'S WORD IS....

brummagem - it's an adjective. Good luck!

Magscapes

Magnet receptive wallpaper - really. So you can put up the wallpaper and then buy magnets to "accessorize". I'm not entirely sure why you'd want to do that but it does look pretty neat.

MagScapes

Naked and Angry

No - not me! It's a line of very cool ties for your guy. Brought to you by the folks from SkinnyCorp. Also responsible for Threadless. The idea is that designers can submit their own t-shirt designs and the best ones actually get made.

Kristina - I think you should submit the "I'm Awesome" t-shirt...

Webby Awards

The nominations are in for the 2006 Webby Awards - awards for the best of the web. Way too much Flash for my taste but there are some interesting sites to check out.

Word of the Week - April 17

Thanks to everyone for participating last week. Some inventive suggestions for 'stripling". A stripling is actually a young man just heading out on an adventure. But you were close...

This week's word is "choler". As usual, please add your suggested definitions as a comment. Would it help if I told you it was a noun?

Word of the Week - April 10

Make sure you check last week's post to see what people came up with for "real estate" - check the comments section.

Kristina wins most inventive for her highly hyphenated entry. Rita wins "least likely to actually answer the question", and the rest tie for "best use of resource materials" for checking dictionaries, WikiPedia, etc. (That's cheating, by the way, but we'll let it slide since this was the inaugural attempt at this game.)

OK - this week's word is:

stripling

Let's see what you can come up with! Please post your answers by adding a comment - you'll see "# comments" in orange (naturally!) after this post. Click on that and you'll be taken to a page where you can add your comment. Do it anonymously, with your Blogger username (if you have one) or sign up for a usename and take it from there!

Good luck!

BoKlok

Now you can get a house to go with all that IKEA furniture. BoKlok is a house in a box - flat packed and ready to assemble. This is apparently big in Sweden and the UK where they suffer from a lack of mass construction. Given the boom in Calgary, could BoKlok be coming here?

Stamping fanatics unite

Here's a site for those stamp/card making fanatics amongst us. This one was brought to my attention by my good friend and soon-to-be-former-sister-in-law (trying saying that one three times fast!) who is definitely a stampfan.

www.splitcoaststampers.com

Reality TV t-shirts

Pre-pixelated t-shirts - just in case you ever decide to go on a reality TV show. (Heaven help you...)

Museum of Bad Art

I'd forgotten that this existed. This is truly bad art - so bad it's funny. Enjoy!

Word of the week

Ever look at a word or phrase and think - what the heck does that mean? Time to have a little fun. Each week I'll post a word or phrase that either must have interesting etymology or is just plain peculiar. Then you post your best guess at what the word or phrase actually means. Or, be creative and see if you can come up with a plausible but completely wrong answer to throw us all off track. If you have suggestions for the "Word of the week", please email me.

OK - this week's question is, "why is it called 'real estate'?"

We've had two people weigh in with their answers so far:

Kerri:
real (adj.)
1448, "relating to things" (esp. property), from O.Fr. reel, from L.L. realis "actual," from L. res "matter, thing," of unknown origin. Meaning "genuine" is recorded from 1559; that of "actually existing" is attested from 1597; sense of "unaffected, no-nonsense" is from 1847. Real estate is first recorded 1666 and retains the oldest Eng. sense of the word; Realistic "true to reality" (in art, etc.) is from 1856; meaning "having a practical view of life" is attested from 1862. Noun phrase real time is from 1953; get real, usually an interjection, was U.S. college slang in 1960s, reached wide popularity c.1987.

Lynzey:
Because it's a tangible (real) inheritance within a person's will (estate).

Obviously, these two are vying to see who can come up with the right answer. Let's see some creative alternatives!

Stirring Culture lecture series

This lecture series has been sponsored by ACAD. The last in the series is coming up on April 26 - Bruce Mau of Bruce Mau Design. I posted a link to his "Incomplete Manifesto" back in the early days of this blog. He should be interesting - he's a bit of a rebel in the design world. Tickets are free if you pick them up at ACAD or the Epcor Centre for the Performing Arts.

Photography exhibit

Here's a submission from Kerri. She tells me that this exhibit cost an obscene though undisclosed amount of money. Looks really interesting!

Ryerson's Black Star Historical