FOT Forum
FOT Community => Links => Topic started by: Matthew_S on September 28, 2007, 11:54:53 AM
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I could easily be behind the curve, but I only saw this recently and it wowed me:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129
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Ho Hum....
I think his t-shirt says it all - "sooooft serrrrrve".
Also, if he talked a little faster, he could animate his moustache even more, thus making it jump up and down and around (tee hee). I'd like to see that.
On the other hand, this technology could have a practical application in the viewing of the best show poster--yes, actually, it is useful!
Now I'm wowed, too!
Thanks, Matthew S
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This is incredible - the idea of creating a metaverse of semantic information through linked images and relating the images spatially, so you can "dive in" and explore is blowing my mind and reminding me of why I actually do love the internet - a nice counterpoint to "Australian Emo Girl" in the YouTube thread - thanks for sharing this, Matthew!
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This kinda reminds me of some stuff going on at Carnegie Mellon, using photos to determine 3d space.
(http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dhoiem/projects/popup/CMU.gif) (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dhoiem/projects/popup/index.html)
(press release (http://www.cmu.edu/PR/releases06/060613_3d.html)/websight (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~efros/ImageInterpretation/))
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Metaverses eat it. I don't see the point. I like that he said they'd get 3D thingers of all the "interesting places" on earth. Translation: Over-photographed tourist traps. How dare you. What would Guy Deboard say?
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Metaverses eat it. I don't see the point. I like that he said they'd get 3D thingers of all the "interesting places" on earth. Translation: Over-photographed tourist traps. How dare you. What would Guy Deboard say?
Eat MY metaverse. The "Society of Spectacle" will always make "interesting places" "over-photographed tourist traps," and you don't need Guy Debord to tell you that; but I think this is the most interesting leap in how to present and gather information that I've seen in a long time, buck-o.
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no more pop-ups? its a sad day for Trip Whiting.
ps: TL I think you like it so much b/c its named TED.
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Metaverses eat it. I don't see the point. I like that he said they'd get 3D thingers of all the "interesting places" on earth. Translation: Over-photographed tourist traps. How dare you. What would Guy Deboard say?
Eat MY metaverse. The "Society of Spectacle" will always make "interesting places" "over-photographed tourist traps," and you don't need Guy Debord to tell you that; but I think this is the most interesting leap in how to present and gather information that I've seen in a long time, buck-o.
That's the dilemma, innit? I'm finding myself torn between my love of interesting contraptions and my distrust of late capitalism more and more these days. For every techno-utopian impulse I have, there's a counter-impulse that makes me want to trash all of my gadgets just to escape the hyper-indexed surveillance society.
I don't know what DeBord would say (and probably still wouldn't be able to decipher it even after I'd read it), but Baudrillard would say that TED is speeding up the destruction of actual landmarks and their replacement with indexed images of them.
It is pretty damn neat though.
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Metaverses eat it. I don't see the point. I like that he said they'd get 3D thingers of all the "interesting places" on earth. Translation: Over-photographed tourist traps. How dare you. What would Guy Deboard say?
Eat MY metaverse. The "Society of Spectacle" will always make "interesting places" "over-photographed tourist traps," and you don't need Guy Debord to tell you that; but I think this is the most interesting leap in how to present and gather information that I've seen in a long time, buck-o.
That's the dilemma, innit? I'm finding myself torn between my love of interesting contraptions and my distrust of late capitalism more and more these days. For every techno-utopian impulse I have, there's a counter-impulse that makes me want to trash all of my gadgets just to escape the hyper-indexed surveillance society.
I don't know what DeBord would say (and probably still wouldn't be able to decipher it even after I'd read it), but Baudrillard would say that TED is speeding up the destruction of actual landmarks and their replacement with indexed images of the,.
It is pretty damn neat though.
I agree with you on some counts, including the last one. But I see this more as simply a sort of new kind of encyclopedia, and it aggregates info/images already available - it's not asking people to go create a database of new images. But even if it DID, it's not like Tron, or something, where these things will actually disappear and become part of CPU's non-existant "metaverse." Also, at the risk of sounding completely elitist, this is a great tool for those who can use it, and if the virutal world supplants the real world for the idiots who can't tell or handle the difference, then that's their problem. I've been to Notre Dame, and guess what? It's still there. But cities all over ARE disappearing and being supplanted by the Disney/Whole Foods version, and it's been going on for 20 years, and it's got nothing to do with this technology that seems to me to finally be a pretty good realization of "the web's" capabilities for merging image and text, individual knowledge and collective knowledge, and providing a path through that knowledge that is much more in line with the non-linear way that we, as humans, tend to think.
I don't think this is life changing, but I've been defending it so strongly because I think that the criticism so far has been way overblown - fer cryin' out loud - EZPass is more frighteneing, surveillance-wise, than this sort of thing is to me (there's already been a Law & Order episode where EZPass records were subpoenaed - the guy was a jerk and deserved to go down, but still...), though for the record, I have no problem using it, as I just assume that if there's a reason that someone wants to find me or find out what I've been (or anyone's been) doing, there are a million ways to do it, and I'm sure it'd be no problem with or without EZPass and the internet, first of all, and second, society may or may not have been going down the terlett for a long time, but misuse of the potentials of internet technology is just a symptom that, like many other symptoms, may hasten our demise, but is not the bugaboo it's made out to be.
I mean, the list of worrisome problems with the world sprawls, to the extent that, in my version, this isn't even on it.
And Jasongrote - you read Baudrillard - you got nothin' to fear from Debord!
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I agree with you on some counts, including the last one. But I see this more as simply a sort of new kind of encyclopedia, and it aggregates info/images already available - it's not asking people to go create a database of new images. But even if it DID, it's not like Tron, or something, where these things will actually disappear and become part of CPU's non-existant "metaverse." Also, at the risk of sounding completely elitist, this is a great tool for those who can use it, and if the virutal world supplants the real world for the idiots who can't tell or handle the difference, then that's their problem. I've been to Notre Dame, and guess what? It's still there. But cities all over ARE disappearing and being supplanted by the Disney/Whole Foods version, and it's been going on for 20 years, and it's got nothing to do with this technology that seems to me to finally be a pretty good realization of "the web's" capabilities for merging image and text, individual knowledge and collective knowledge, and providing a path through that knowledge that is much more in line with the non-linear way that we, as humans, tend to think.
I don't think this is life changing, but I've been defending it so strongly because I think that the criticism so far has been way overblown - fer cryin' out loud - EZPass is more frighteneing, surveillance-wise, than this sort of thing is to me (there's already been a Law & Order episode where EZPass records were subpoenaed - the guy was a jerk and deserved to go down, but still...), though for the record, I have no problem using it, as I just assume that if there's a reason that someone wants to find me or find out what I've been (or anyone's been) doing, there are a million ways to do it, and I'm sure it'd be no problem with or without EZPass and the internet, first of all, and second, society may or may not have been going down the terlett for a long time, but misuse of the potentials of internet technology is just a symptom that, like many other symptoms, may hasten our demise, but is not the bugaboo it's made out to be.
I mean, the list of worrisome problems with the world sprawls, to the extent that, in my version, this isn't even on it.
And Jasongrote - you read Baudrillard - you got nothin' to fear from Debord!
Yeah, and there was the criminal who was convicted when his Metrocard belied his alibi, too. I think that recent events in places like Burma or Jena, Louisiana, have demonstrated that the state doesn't need cool gadgets when the old ways - like firing live ammo into crowd, or Jim Crow-style law enforcement - will do just fine.
My real feeling with this is that both the techno-utopians and the doomsayers are acting out a kind of sci-fi fantasy, and as a lifelong sci-fi/comic nerd myself, I totally get it, in both directions. But I really think that, when anything is gained, something else is lost, and it's important to acknowledge that, even when whatever is being lost (or gained) isn't that big a deal. So totalitarian or democratic governments (or marketers, potential employers, stalkers, or curious friends) don't need technology to do what they do - I buy that. I also buy that the massive collective brain on the internet have provided an amazing resource in the way of knowledge, communication and fun. And it's worth adding that, despite any reservations I might have, I've willingly, eagerly, handed over a huge chunk of personal info to Google, MySpace, Flickr, and so on and so forth. And a big part of me loves to obsessively index certain trivial parts of my life (though I really wish I could be as attentive to my finances as I was to, say, iTunes).
I found out earlier this year that I was surveilled, mostly online, by the NYPD during the Republican convention. It wasn't me they were after, specifically - but I did a lot of emailing and blogging and alt-journalism at that time, and they mined what I posted for information. This doesn't bother me so much, as everything they looked at was meant to be public and the cops are part of the public, too. But on the other hand, they disappeared a buddy of mine for the duration of the convention to get him out of the way. He's a social worker with a wife and daughter, and they showed up at his workplace, held him for as long as they could, and released him with a token charge. Now, they probably didn't need the internet to track him down, but I'm sure it helped. In the end it was no big deal, because we do still live in a democracy and he was (and is) an educated middle-class white guy. And you'd be right to say that the undoing of habeas corpus and the use of torture is a much bigger deal than search aggregators that can connect every activity we do. But, all of that said, I think it's right to feel uneasy about the indexing of absolutely everything, even as I actively participate in it and enjoy it.
So, yes, TED is very cool, and of course it's silly to blame it for all of the problems of late capitalism etc. And I think I find Baudrillard's take on it more interesting than Debord's, because Baudrillard probably would have said that the society of the spectacle, combined with the actual destruction of real landmarks by redevelopment or catastrophe or war/terror, marks the realization of a very, very old human impulse - that is, the replacement of the fixed and physical with the mutable and virtual - a notion that goes back to the ancient Greek philosophers, Buddhist thought, probably St. Augustine and others. Again, cool because, well, it's cool - I think it's a mistake for progressives to abandon the language of fantasy and fetishize the "real world" - but also, not cool, because the more activated and tangible a virtual world is, the less we're likely to notice the unraveling of our physical environments and communities. He says as he types a ridiculously long-winded treatise on a message board, avoiding working on creating a fake NY Times page as part of an alternate reality game based on his Arabian Nights play.
I should revisit Debord. It was one of the first heavy theory books I ever read, so I was probably in way over my head at the time.
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Full disclosure: I was never really able to read the Situationist Manifesto, but from my meagre understanding, I was trying to refer to the act of detournement(??) and the idea of walking around a planned city to find moments of spontaneity and ruptures within a scripted space. Does that make any sense?
Perhaps I overstated my contempt for the idea of a "metaverse". There was just something about that whole flickr-to-3D-virtual-reality aspect of the demo that struck me as superfluous and pointless. The fact that information can be grabbed from the internet and organized in a certain way is definitely interesting, but I'm on the fence as to whether it's actually exciting. I no longer think (as my 21 year old self did) that technology is going to ruin life on earth, but my severe skepticism (if not abandonment) of any notion of technology-dependent "progress" is in no way allayed by TED. All this stuff that makes things faster and more interactive ultimately means that we're expected to produce faster, and do more by ourselves, without the help of an expert, a live technician, a live bank teller, you name it. Also, we all know that the second pop-ups or SPAM are made obsolete, it will be because a new interface design has taken their place, and inevitably this interface will be exploited in ways that its developers probably cannot dream of at the moment.
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clarification:
TED (technology, entertainment, design) is a conference. The talk in question is by one of the people who works on Photosynth for Microsoft.
If a place has meaning because of the individual and collective experiences and memories made there, then isn't a software like this something like creating an oral history of not just a place but the types of activities that occur there and the people who populate it over time? I think Photosynth potentially has far-reaching implications for studying how and why places work for their intended function.
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All this stuff that makes things faster and more interactive ultimately means that we're expected to produce faster, and do more by ourselves, without the help of an expert, a live technician, a live bank teller, you name it.
This has certainly been the case in the publishing industry, and books have suffered as a result. By speeding up certain aspects of book making, technological advances have effectively killed other, human-dependent processes (most notably, proofreading). Have you noticed how many more mistakes there are nowadays even in books released by reputable publishers? This is because mostly they are only proofed by their authors, who are generally neither careful enough to do the job properly and crippled further by their intimacy with the content, which makes them blind to error (they know what they meant to say, so they don't even see mistakes), whereas in the olden days (fifteen years ago) books were proofed by skilled people at the typesetters, by in-house or freelance proofreaders, and by authors. I foresee a time when I will be out of work because copyediting, too, will be dismissed as obsolete, replaced by grammar-checking programs (which are about as useful as spell checkers). In a world where books are referred to as "product," even at university presses, and, but for the pesky human element, can be churned out within a month, the pressure to eliminate the copyediting stage--which generally takes two months--will become irresistible. And I won't even be able to collect unemployment.
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Sarah,
Do you think that there will come a time when books can be printed on a made-to-order basis? I imagine the ability to print small runs of formerly out of print books could be a boon to the publishing industry, but would the price of new books fall to reflect their diminished resale value?
Sincerely,
Off Topic Josh
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Yeah, I could see that happening (vanity presses more or less do this already), although I think it's even more likely that such books will be offered electronically. Even now, many books are published and, especially, revised electronically. (Indeed, it occurs to me that a nice little business might be to scan in out-of-print, out-of-copyright books and then sell downloads for a small fee. Virtually no labor and no overhead. No doubt all kinds of people are already doing this, though. There goes my future source of income.)
Depressingly, I suspect that in the not-too-distant future physical books will become an expensive rarity.
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Josh, I think that happens all the time now - not just vanity presses, but legit small presses as well. All three of the major publishers of acting editions of plays keep a small reserve of their catalogs on hand and just print the rest on demand as needed. I'm too lazy/busy to look thus up in my inbox, but I believe what you just brought up has been discussed a lot at the Small Press Expo and elsewhere. I think Soft Skull and a few other small presses are looking for ways to keep out-of-print books on hand.
But Sarah, I agree with you re. the publishing industry (my wife used to be an editorial assistant at Penguin/Putnam - I think she worked briefly on an early version of Rock, Rot, & Rule - so I hear about this a lot). Obviously this whole desktop publishing thing has had the benefit of making the printing press press available to a large mass, but something has been lost. Then again, I don't think the book per se is going anywhere. It's kind of a perfect technology.
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back of the book indexes have also suffered.
:-(
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Then again, I don't think the book per se is going anywhere.
Oh, but the dictionary is!
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/161
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back of the book indexes have also suffered.
:-(
Yep. They're being left to the authors, too.
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What a great post -- the argument about the publishing world is one that happens often at my house (my fiancee is an editor at a major publisher) and what seems to be killing the industry is the push to cycle things through faster and faster, so that everyone involved is running under the gun, paid less, and mistakes run throughout the process. I think that the lowering of reading levels and grammar will be interesting to see develop, since fewer people may be reading and might care less about typos and sentence construction than we fuddy-duddys do.
The whole print-on-demand idea is interesting, and the guys who run the Internet Archive have been building these $1 a book mobiles that open up the public domain (http://www.archive.org/texts/bookmobile.php#thebookmobile) in both an intriguing and slightly creepy way. But yes, the idea of the physical artifact of a book will not go away until the next generations outgrow it or a suitable facsimile emerges. And the idea of out-of-print books being held under copyright will finally go away when someone realizes they can make money off of it, both fortunately and unfortunately.
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Re the talk here (http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/161), I very much liked "leading lexicographer Erin McKean's" point about the loss of serendipity that results from electronic dictionaries (I've long had the same complaint about online card catalogs), but my regard for her plummeted when she said "ek cetera."
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Sarah, serendipity and happy accidents are totally being lost by the indexing of everything - I try to make my students physically search through the stacks for books, telling them that that's how they'll find their best research (a few of them actually do it). I was a terrible undergraduate student, but I actually learned a great deal (most of it wholly irrelevant) from wasting time in the library, checking out weird books and avoiding homework. I was a much better student by the time I hit grad school, but I still couldn't resist exploring the Bobst Library at NYU for oddities and apocrypha.
Now watch this segue:
John Junk, this relates back to Debord's psychogeography (mirrored in Baudelaire's flaneur and Thoreau's book Walking, probably all over literature in fact) and is why I can't totally embrace this gadget despite the clear cool factor - the hyper-efficiency of indexing all of this information robs us of idleness, aimlessness, wandering. Again, another part of me loves this stuff and uses Google, Wikipedia, and Flickr all of the time - but I still worry about what I'm losing.
I still walk everywhere, all the time, but now that I have an iPod my soundtrack is music or talk radio, and I'm not going to give that up any time soon. But I do often think about the replacement of my inner monologue with a soundtrack.
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the hyper-efficiency of indexing all of this information robs us of idleness, aimlessness, wandering
I'm with you that the gadgetry makes it hard to unplug -- I try to make myself spend time at home without having the computer or stereo going nonstop, but it's hard. However, I would also argue that the "idleness, aimlessness, and wandering" are in some ways more prevalent now because of indexing. Being able to search something and get on to the third or fourth page and wander off into random websites is part of the beauty of the "information age", if you can call it beautiful. The fact that the nerds at boingboing pull up 15 good threads for me to start from doesn't dissuade me. I think the important thing is to try and keep the habit that you're trying to teach with having people troll through the library -- adding a sense of spontaneity to experience and discovering something different. Indexing doesn't HAVE to be about eliminating possibilities but you're right that it could for people who are lazy.
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Depressingly, I suspect that in the not-too-distant future physical books will become an expensive rarity.
Not gonna happen.
The e-book cannot (at this stage) replicate the tactile experience of the average Penguin paperback. There is a certain intimacy to thumbing through a worn copy of Catcher in the Rye that you picked up at a sidewalk sale, and have had tucked in your backpack for 3 months. Even the sound of the page flipping is an essential part of the experience of reading. I love reading a second hand book and wondering who the hell owned it before: whether they finished it, did they like it, did they give up after the introduction and go surf the internet instead?
Regarding all that previous chatter about authenticity/ experience/ simulacra, I can only contribute this (as the subject(s) are quite a bit over my head):
(http://kickthebobo.com//NeoWhoa.jpg)
No, really, wake me up when they've worked the bugs out of the whole "Immersive Virtual Reality" dealio. We've been hearing about it from this clown for the past 15 years:
(http://java.sun.com/features/2003/01/images/JaronLanier.jpg)
I say:
GIMME MY HOLODECK!
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John Junk, this relates back to Debord's psychogeography (mirrored in Baudelaire's flaneur and Thoreau's book Walking, probably all over literature in fact) and is why I can't totally embrace this gadget despite the clear cool factor - the hyper-efficiency of indexing all of this information robs us of idleness, aimlessness, wandering.
THAT'S what I'm TALKING ABOUT!!
Jasongrote: Super-post-er.
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Jeez! You eggheads are killing da party.
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Being able to search something and get on to the third or fourth page and wander off into random websites is part of the beauty of the "information age", if you can call it beautiful.
You're right about that, Senor - and therein lies my ambivalence. But I have to admit that my love of wandering on the web has gradually faded. Even gadgets like StumbleUpon have lost their charm, and instead I am to a daily round of a finite number of sites (this being one of them, lately). But I'm actually building an alternate reality game for that play o' mine that works on exactly those principles, so who am I to talk.
Jasongrote: Super-post-er.
Thanks, John Junk!
No, really, wake me up when they've worked the bugs out of the whole "Immersive Virtual Reality" dealio. We've been hearing about it from this clown for the past 15 years:
(http://java.sun.com/features/2003/01/images/JaronLanier.jpg)
I didn't know the guy from the Insane Clown Posse invented virtual reality!
Jeez! You eggheads are killing da party.
This is the party. And if it was the party 10 years ago we would all be stoned in a kitchen in Belleville or somewhere and I'd be making considerably less sense. But alas, now I'm old. OLD! Gimme my holodeck indeed.
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TL wrote:
Also, at the risk of sounding completely elitist, this is a great tool for those who can use it, and if the virtual world supplants the real world for the idiots who can't tell or handle the difference, then that's their problem. I've been to Notre Dame, and guess what? It's still there. But cities all over ARE disappearing and being supplanted by the Disney/Whole Foods version, and it's been going on for 20 years, and it's got nothing to do with this technology...
Of course Notre Dame is really there. I don't think anyone is arguing that. Baudrillard is a subtle, evasive and free-wheeling kind of writer. Afterall he came up with expressions such as "hyperreality", "cyberblitz", "implosion", etc. He felt that the excessive search for meaning or a total understanding of the world leads to a kind of delusion. He talked about images preceding the real and representation saturating reality to such an extent that experience can only take place at a remove. He felt that the obsession with images has altered perceptions of the world and interactions within it.
This is from his book Simulations
"It is now impossible to isolate the processes of the real or to prove the real...all hold-ups, hijacks and the like are now as it were simulations...inscribed in advance in the decoding and orchestration rituals of the media." pg. 41-2
When I first saw the Mona Lisa at the Louvre I had this commercial jingle running through my head: "when you eat your smarties do you eat the red ones last? do you suck them very slowly, or crunch them very fast?". This jingle is from a commercial featuring Mona eating these candy coated chocolate confections. Really weird.
I think Baudrillard's writing became increasing silly in the 80's. He wrote about our bodies becoming weaker because of our obsession with hygiene and health, Disneyland only existing to give the world the impression that America is real, the viral nature of contemporary insecurity and panic with AIDs, terrorism, computer viruses as potentially destabilizing to our systems, growing knowledge of DNA through medical photography as a symptom of the fact that we have lost touch with our bodies, etc.
I think many people abandoned Baudrillard when he infamously asserted that the Gulf War had been a simulation because of the resemblance on TV screens between real war footage and video games. He didn't mean that people hadn't really been killed, he was exploring the loss of the real and the abandonment of truth and evaluation.
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Damn European!
SMARTIES are (fake) fruit-flavored candies. M&Ms are chocolate.
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SMARTIES are (fake) fruit-flavored candies. M&Ms are chocolate.
I wonder what Debord thinks about this.
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Damn European!
SMARTIES are (fake) fruit-flavored candies. M&Ms are chocolate.
hmmm.
British/ Canadian M&M knockoff...
(http://kickthebobo.com//250px-800px-Smarties_Candy_29.jpg)
or D-List Halloween "treat"?
(http://kickthebobo.com//56914776_789e4c8a89_m.jpg)
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I think Baudrillard's writing became increasing silly in the 80's.
I love silly-period Baudrillard. It's some of my favorite theory. I guess it's sort of like copping to preferring 90s-era Aerosmith or 80s-era Yes (for the record, I don't like either, but "Bat Out of Hell III" is the best Meat Loaf album).
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KTB, two words: Coffee Crisp. Read them and salivate :)
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KTB, two words: Coffee Crisp. Read them and salivate :)
oh for sure. on my last flight back from the 'Couv, the Man was quite inquisitive about the half dozen Coffee Crisps packed in my carry-on. "For my Mum", I said, and things went smoothly.
that orange flavour though, not a fan.
orange & chocolate shalln't nev'er mix!
propr eng? huh.
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This is why we had to break up, Bobo: chocolate + orange = a little taste of paradise, and you are just wrong.
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This is why we had to break up, Bobo: chocolate + orange = a little taste of paradise, and you are just wrong.
(http://kickthebobo.com//chocorange.jpg)
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Those look like peyote buttons coated in something that may or may not be chocolate.
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(http://www.candleseh.com/Fragrances/chocolate_orange.jpg)
And here's a cake I'm going to make as soon as I can get my hands on a decent orange:
(http://farm1.static.flickr.com/159/374761392_ac9041e918_o.jpg)
Chocolate Orange Cake
2 small or 1 large thin-skinned orange, approx. 375g total weight
6 eggs
1 heaped teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
200g ground almonds
250g caster sugar (superfine sugar)
50g cocoa
orange peel for decoration if wished
Put the whole orange or oranges in a pan with some cold water, bring to the boil and cook for 2 hours or until soft. Drain and, when cool, cut the oranges in half and remove any big pips. Then pulp everything -- pith, peel and all -- in a food processor, or see below if you're proceeding by hand.
Once the fruit is cold, or near cold (though actually I most often cook the oranges the day before I make the cake), preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180C. Butter and line a 20cm springform tin.
Add the eggs, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, almonds, sugar and cocoa to the orange in the food processor. Run the motor until you have a cohesive cake mixture, but still slightly knobbly with the flecks of pureed orange. Or you could chop the fruit finely by hand, and with a wooden spoon beat the eggs one by one into the sugar, alternating with spoons of mixed ground almond and cocoa, then the oranges, though I have to say I've only ever made this the lazy way.
Pour and scrape into the cake tin and bake for an hour, by which time a cake tester should come out pretty well clean. Check after 45 minutes because you may have to cover it with foil to prevent the cake from burning before it is cooked through, or indeed it may need a little less than an hour; it all depends on your oven.
Leave the cake to get cool in the tin, on a cooling rack. When the cake is cold you can take it out of the tin. Decorate with strips of orange peel or coarsely grated zest if you so wish, but it is darkly beautiful in its plain, unadorned state.
Makes about 8 slices.
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To bring this thread back on topic: WOW!
That cake looks awful!
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Oh, piffle, just ignore the pointless orange rind decoration and read the recipe. It's going to be scrumptious.