What with the traveling and the buying and selling of laptops, I’ve accrued a largish set of open browser tabs I’ve been meaning to mention. I need to get that particularly set of web monkeys off my back, so here they are, in yet another list:
- Via the Fast Company blog, Frog Design staffer Ashley Menger devised a new way to think about the garbage we create: for two weeks, “anything that she couldn’t compost, flush or recycle had to be carried or kept within 5 feet at all times”. Other staff members have apparently joined the project.
- Sarah Lane is yet another attractive host of an American tech show that I don’t recognize. All of my American colleagues know their Morgan Webbs from their Cali Lewis’s, but I got nothing. Regardless, Sarah and her husband traveled around the world in 2006, and she kept a blog. Her FAQ is very informative.
- Anne Mullens is a veteran journalist who’s taken on an interesting project this summer–she’s driving a Kabuki pedal cab and blogging about it. She’s an excellent writer, and it’s a great view into that world. She does suffer from a common ailment of professional journalists who try blogging–each post is too long for my tastes.
- Why we do what we do on eBay? I haven’t read it yet, but it comes highly recommended from, uh, somebody.
- Sarah wrote a great column on birth rates in developed nations and the difficult choices that women face around work and family.
- Tim provides some excellent guidelines for Facebook friend and application requests.
- A bunch of movie bloggers got together and built their own list of the top 100 movies of all time. I sense a science-fiction bias in the Force. And why is The Empire Strikes Back ahead of Star Wars?
DarrenBarefoot.com 
Completely unrelated, but possibly of interest. Have you ever heard of Joe Sacco? Did you know he’s Maltese?
If you haven’t read his work, I suggest you check it out. He’s very, very interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Sacco
That trash entry is interesting. Reminds me of a CBC article I caught wherein a couple had been using a single green garbage bag for three years by composting, recycling, and reusing absolutely every other piece of waste they generated.
Unfortunately I can’t find the damn thing …
SW: TESB is ahead of the original Star Wars because it’s by far the superior movie. 🙂
Travis: I don’t necessarily disagree with you, but I’d like to hear your reasoning.
That said, it’s all about context. “Star Wars” was a ground-breaking science fiction film. “Empire” was a well-constructed sequel.
Miller’s Crossing should be on the list. It is the best Coen film, although the Big Lebowski comes close.
Star Wars is more like a theme park ride. Empire was a huge stride forward in terms of character development and storyline.
I like Anne Mullens blog, I don’t know that it really qualifies as a blog (the posts are too long) but is really more of a traditional diary gone electronic. Well written though, I think it deserves to be print and the format would be more suitable for it.
Empire had stronger effects, fleshed out the classic elements of the story more effectively, and got better acting out of all the stars. It just made about a thousand times more sense to most of the people watching, and serves as a standalone as well as it does as a sequel.
I think that’s the mark of a good installment in a trilogy.