You know about that charming European idea of putting bikes out on the street for anybody to use, reducing the amount of automobile traffic and encouraging the citizens to get some exercise as they go about their business? Free city bikes in some places, I've heard (Amsterdam?), bikes for hire linked to your Metro subscription in Paris. The contract between the city of Paris and J-C Decaux, the company that builds bus shelters and public toile...

Like many another defacer of clean white paper, I've bought inkjet printers (low price tag; one day I might want to use color) and been amazed at how fast the little cartridges run out and how expensive they are to replace. An HP 2600 that had been my home printer for a couple of years has recently been chopping off the tops of letters printed in black (OK, said I, the nozzles need cleaning or maybe the heads need adjusting). Now the belt tha...

Back in grad school I read Anne McClintock’s book Imperial Leather, which begins, if memory serves (the book is in storage in the U.S.) with a map. A map may seem like a neutral tool, but it is also a code, a decipherer of geography, and this particular one was imbued with the hopes and fears of a generation of explorers and colonizers. This tool draws its power – its ability to speak to and restructure our perception of space—from the potent...

I’ve been working on a photo essay of public service announcements for today, but the week went by faster than I expected and I haven’t finished it. So I’ll save that for next week, with just this teaser image from the National Intelligence Service, asking people to report suspicious behavior (in other words, North Korean spies). It says, “We also need an antenna for national security,” and “111, we’re waiting for your report,” which has a spo...

Many moons ago, I wrote here on printculture about the prospect of joining Facebook and seeing what my students were up to in their virtual social milieu (at the time, I referred to it as “the Facebook,” that’s how in the know I was). Well, I got as far as signing up—getting a username and establishing a password—but I never did get around to signing on. So, in fact, I still don’t know what Facebook looks or feels like as a social space. Now,...

Our Prius just hit fifteen thousand miles. Until last year we had been driving my mom’s old Camry, the only car in the neighborhood held together by tape, and I tried to take some pride in the idea we were going to run it into the ground.

K Klingensmith’s post “Pictures of You.,” on medical images of the body, asks the question, “For the person who sees a copy of their X-ray, MRI, or sonogram, how can it seem like their body?” I’m fascinated with this complicated sense of dissonance between the body that we experience and the image that we see — between the body that we experience and the mystery of its inner workings, proceeding without our knowledge or control. What stories ...

I'll just say it: questions 1, 3, 10 and especially 7 are the questions of either an idiot or an asshole. Which one Thomas Mallon is is a question we will leave in abeyance till the end of this week and maybe even beyond, humbly remembering all the while that any postulation of the great chain of being defined by assholes and idiots ought to be revised towards other, more geometric possibilities. That said, I'll be taking on question 6, which ...

As I start this list, I can’t be sure what it will look like. Reader, you are seeing me examine my conscience and memory in real-time. I was going to list my ten favorite books of 2006, but a few other things began to obtrude that weren’t books, but had become part of my thinking during this year. So I assimilate them all, in the spirit of multimedia, to things “ripped” to my operating memory: scans lodged on the hard disk, items of mental fur...

Sometime in the last few years, I developed a strong and undeniable aversion to making phone calls. I have no problem picking up the phone when it rings, whether in my office or at home. And using the cell phone as a walkie-talkie to coordinate meetings with friends or family is easy. But having to initiate a phone conversation with someone is something I do reluctantly, something I put off doing until absolutely necessary or try to avoid alt...

A week ago, like a minor celebrity, the St. Matthews Church Prayer Rug appeared at our house. And by prayer rug, I mean a sheet of paper with a picture of Jesus on it.

When Immanuel Kant failed to take his habitual, rigorously scheduled walk along the walls of Königsberg, people just knew that something big had happened. That day, he’d read news of the beginning of the French Revolution. When I have my date with Printculture and miss it, you know something has happened. What? Let’s say it started with the books.

Printculture was shut down for a time today because our site “was using 99 percent of server processes.” I’m not entirely sure what that means. What are processes? I understand server “space”; I recently got a courtesy notice that told me my email account was nearing its capacity. But I’m not sure what server “processes” mean in terms of using too much of them. This reminds me of how my mother is unable to rely on metaphors to understand compu...

When I was a child I was often on television. I even had a catch phrase. Most people won't remember this, and you will never see me on "Where are they now?", but for a brief period in the early 80s, I was a (local) icon. My catch phrase, which I was expected to give on command, was "I'm gonna save my brother's wife." You see, I apparently, at age 3, could not make the L sound very easily. My speech impediment, combined with unavoidably adorabl...

Following E Wesp's review last week of Lionhead Studio's new game, The Movies, I picked the game up over the weekend. As a game, it's not especially interesting--fairly fun, but also a fairly generic rendering of the "tycoon" genre. But the game comes with--and I'm not sure this was completely clear in E Wesp's piece--a program that effectively allows players to make their own films which is in and of itself far more interesting and--I believe...

In the last week or so both Nikon and Minolta announced that they will discontinue the manufacture of film cameras and focus on their more profitable, more popular digital lines. Minolta also plans to stop making 35mm film. Reading this news in the press the situation for photography seems dire. One writer sees in Minolta’s decision the “demise of traditional film photography gather[ing] pace,” while another accuses Nikon of putting “anothe...

In 1969, a young British woman named Vashti Bunyan recorded a modest folk album called "Just Another Diamond Day." About 25 years old at the time, she had dropped out of art school at Oxford to try to become a pop singer, hooked up with the Stones' manager and released a few decent singles that went nowhere, including a Jagger-Richards cover. I thought Vashti was a Hindu name, but it is in fact an Elamite name from the Book of Esther. Queen ...

Ringtones are perhaps the smallest works of art in existence. I don't consider them songs in themselves but rather miniature representations of the works they are adapted from, like portraits reduced for a stamp or coin. Without words the song must at last stand naked and be judged purely as melody and rhythm, an instrumental unable to hide behind the alibi of Muzak schmaltz and saccharine. At best ringtones have ten seconds to do their wor...

Dear Printculture readers: Since I started my new administrative position three weeks ago, my email traffic has increased exponentially. I write to inform you that because the bulk of my waking hours are occupied by sending and receiving emails, I have not had occasion to read or hear or see or do anything of much interest. Much of the email traffic is about meetings to come and meetings just past. When I am not attending to my email, I am a...