Tuesday, September 29, 2015

A Lot of Happy Trees

FiveThirtyEight analyzes the work of painter Bob Ross on "The Joy of Painting":


The Jefferson Grid

Bridgeport, Wisconsin

Wired highlights an anonymous artist's Instagram account:
Artists like to say they think outside the box. The anonymous photographer behind The Jefferson Grid is all about the box.
Well, the square, actually. His oddly addicting Instagram account is a steady stream of Google Earth screengrabs, each revealing an area covering exactly one square mile. It provides a riveting glimpse of landscapes that may look ordinary, even boring, from the ground while providing an easily grasped sense of scale.
The title is inspired by the top-down planning system established by the Land Ordinance Survey of 1785, which divvied up the vast prairies of the midwest into a neatly ordered checkerboard. Each parcel of land, suddenly defined by unnatural borders, began taking on a life all its own. “It’s fascinating that a survey system invented more than 200 years ago still affects the way things are organized and the way people live,” the photographer says.
Yes, the rectangular survey system has definitely left its mark on America.

Lenny's Garage

Lenny's Garage from Peter Crosby on Vimeo.

A Night Off

After nine days of work, the rain held up harvest.  I guess I'll try to catch up on the weekend's work with a few stories you can check out:

The Reckoning: Football, Love, and Remembering Paul Oliver - SBNation

The Last Years of Ernie Banks - Chicago Magazine

This Pest Has Shut Down South Florida's $700 Million Fruit Industry - The Salt

Farmers Flooded From Homes 'Like Pests' as Asia Plans 500 Dams - Bloomberg

Investors are Mining for Water, the Next Hot Commodity - New York Times

One Company Is Making A Killing on Brazil's Sinking Real - Bloomberg.  Meat-packing king JBS.

How A Little Lab In West Virginia Caught Volkswagen's Big Cheat - NPR

The Art of Handling a PR Implosion - Priceonomics

On Eve of Pope Francis's Visit, U.S. Catholic Church Grapples With Growth and Decline - Wall Street Journal

America's Most Admired Lawbreaker - Huffington Post

How the DMCA may have let carmakers cheat clean air standards - ComputerWorld

The West is on fire - and the U.S. taxpayer is subsidizing it - The Conversation

Oh Canada! Four in Ten Americans Want Wall on Northern Border - Bloomberg.  Damn, there are a shit-ton of stupid people out there.

The Hard-Line Republicans Who Pushed John Boehner Out - FiveThirtyEight.  Speaking of stupid people, here's a long list.  Of course Jim Jordan and Tim Huelskamp make that list.

The Fight for the Soul of the Republican Party - Bloomberg.  What soul? Good thing idiots wasn't a category in this poll: