IN DOG WE TRUST

It's been a busy day for La Guía del Perro so there's no In Dog We Trust this week,

but Carola and Obi-Wan will be back next week with better, faster, harder, stronger post. 

Watch this space!

OUR WEEKLY PROCRASTINATION

Dr. Uwe Krueger. Photo The Procrastinator (some) Times.

This week we attend two great events, the first one, on Tuesday a lecture entitled Imagination: the key to engineering the future, produced by the Royal Society of Engineering and London Science Festival. Atkins' CEO Prof Dr Uwe Krueger talked about how we have to look for grand challenges and face every project, regardless how big or small is our company, in a multicultural / open-minded way using two powerful tools: imagination and collaboration. It was a very insightful evening and a very satisfactory experience to be able to listen to several scientists and heavy-weight executives talk about the future in the same terms some well known entrepreneurs, creative, and artists do. More info in the London Science Festival website and in Atkins website.

Mr. David Power singing and entertaining us while the evening begin.

White Chapel Market image by The Gentle Author.

The Gentle Author and Henrietta Keeper.

On Thrusday we lived a Night in Old London in Antique Beat's Salon No.10 at the Westminster Arts Reference Library. During the night we reviewed some amazing photographs of old London, compiled by the Gentle Author, curator of the blog Spitafields Life, and we had the pleasure on listening stories by singer Henrietta Keeper (87 years old) and pianist and boxer David Power (80 years old). These two also sang and played for us. It was a truly lovely night. Watch out for November's Salon, info is already in their blog.

TO DO (OR NOT TO DO) LIST

Photo: Fireworks at Alexandra Palace via The Guardian.

Remember, remember that Bonfire Night celebrations started this past Friday but there will be some going on until the actual 5th of November. The Guardian lists where you can go to celebrate Guy Fawkes Night. Have a look here.

Screenshot from Internet Week Europe website.

Also, even if Internet Week is not next week, if you want to assist to any of the events you should book your tickets NOW. Go ahead and have a look at the itinerary, venues and speakers of this "week-long festival celebrating Europe's thriving Internet industry & community", clicking here.

Pau Sampera at Beach London via Beach London's Tumblr.

Finally this Thrusday 7th of November is the opening of Spanish illustrator Pau Sampera's Draw a Penis AND Run Away at Beach London. This exhibition will present a body of new painting and sculpture by Sampera, who has recently moved to, and has been working in, London.
Have a look at the expo details in the Facebook event.

PROCRASTINATION PIN OF THE WEEK

 

Check our Pinterest Procrastination Board for more images.

Procrastinator (some) Times Sunday 27th of October Edition

EDITORIAL

This week it's been very political, mostly thanks to Russell Brand (go figure). You may or may not agree with his thoughts and his ways, but he has given us a lot of material to talk about, the real stuff, not celebrity bullshit, and drawing attention to what really needs our attention is already remarkable, is already making our procrastination time meaningful and inspiring.

That on one side. On the other side, we are absolutely delighted to be starting a new photography section curated by our favourite Brooklyn-based photographer, friend, and partner in crime, Andreína Restrepo. Welcome Andre! So, pay close attention at Photoautomat, and if you want you can follow Andre in twitter: @pianpianpian.

Have a nice reading and a super happy Sunday!


NEWS

Knitbombing revolution? Photo: Reuters/Cathal McNaughton via the New Stateman.

You probably heard a lot about Russell Brand this past week. His interview with Jeremy Paxman in BBC's Newsline (E.T.P. 10'46'') about him editing an issue of the New Stateman magazine (E.T.P. 4'), became viral shortly after, firstly because most people still can't get pass Brand's appearance, fame, lightheartedness, (you name it), and fail to consider him a man with something to say. But more importantly because he is absolutely right in almost everything he is saying.

Honestly I started paying attention to him, when I read his article in The Guardian about Margaret Thatcher E.T.P. 4'). Shortly after that he was invited by an American so-called news show (E.T.P. 8'34'') to talk about his play "The Messiah Complex" and he demonstrated that he was the most lucid person in the studio. By far. It was painful to see and I think that those anchormen and women still don't get it.

"I have never voted. Like most people I am utterly disenchanted by politics. Like most people I regard politicians as frauds and liars and the current political system as nothing more than a bureaucratic means for furthering the augmentation and advantages of economic elites." That is a fragment of his article in the latest New Stateman's issue. That along with the Newsline interview had a lot of people saying (in social media at least) that he might have started a revolution, and in that scenario, ironically enough, Brand might be becoming some sort of messiah.

For me the word "revolution" when is not describing the movement of an object in a circular or elliptical course around an axis, is a bit rusty and an amazing way of subtracting value to any proposal, but, hey that's just me. People is free to use words and adjectives however they want. So I ask you, what do you think about Brand's remarks, about this dying pre-existing and quite narrow paradigm and about the possibility of starting a revolution?

It would be awesome to hear from you. Please do leave a comment.

The Trojan horse is the symbol of the Partido de la Red, of course. Photo via Twitter.

In the same order of ideas, in a highly political, deeply serendipitous afternoon, I came across "El Partido de la Red" (The Net's Party), an Argentinean party created by Santiago Siri, a developer, coder, gamer, that believes that in one of the most bureaucratic countries of the world (I lived in Argentina for 5 years, I know what I'm taking about), change is possible through technology.

Weirdly enough I read about Siri and El Partido de la Red thanks to a tweet from BuzzFeed, that I didn't know where producing original content. You really, really, really have to love the Internet. This is a fragment of that article:

At the heart of his new program is a piece of software: DemocraciaOS, a mobile web application that offers, right now, easy access to the doings of the Argentine Congress, and an easy way to comment on them. It’s a small taste of the digital governance Net Party candidates promise. And Siri is operating on the counterintuitive theory that Argentina, with its ossified and corrupt politics, is actually particularly ready for the revolution. “The first thing you get told when you’re proposing online democracy in a place like this is those are things for Sweden or Iceland — countries that are very rich in resources, it would never happen here,” he said. “But innovation usually happens in the place where nobody is innovating.”

Read the full article in BuzzFeed (E.T.P. 3'30''). And please, again, any comment on this subject would be highly appreciated.

SCIENCE

Image via Fast Company.

Can casual ergonomics have a rather important influence on our thoughts and behaviors? Did my mother was right when she made me stand straight? M.I.T. management scholar Andy J. Yap, asked himself that question (the first one, not the one about my mother) and you can read some of the insights of the studies he contributed to in Fast Company. being a very important one, this: "everyday ergonomics can, in fact, make us feel powerful, but not necessarily in a good way." Read full article here. E.T.P. 3'.

Illustration via The Economist.

The article Starship Troupers in the Economist starts quoting Douglas Adams in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" saying: "Space is big, really big". Then it goes on pointing out that it's so big that even science fiction struggles to make sense of it. "But there are scientists, engineers and science-fiction writers out there who like a challenge. On October 22nd a small but dedicated audience gathered at the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) in London to hear some of them discuss the latest ideas about how interstellar travel might be made to work in the real world." Read full article in The Economist. E.T.P.: 5'

DESIGN, BUSINESS & INNOVATION

Image: The Wind Portal via Dezeen.

Have a look at this lovely movie that Lebanese designer Najla El Zein has sent Dezeen showing her 5000 spinning paper windmills being installed in a doorway at the V&A museum in London, The Wind Portal, a walk-through installation that represents a transition space from an inside to an outside area. To watch the movie and read full article in Dezeen click here. E.T.P.: 7'

Photo via Fast Company.

After promising to never run banner ads in Serch Results, Google does just that. That's the article in Fast Company that tell us how Google has broken a major promise. The problem is, Google said it was never going to do this. In a 2005 blog post written by none other than Marissa Mayer, Google promised "there will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or Web search results pages,” and also said there wouldn't be "crazy, flashy, graphical doodads" on the site to distract users. And then there's the keyword: "Ever." Read full article here. E.T.P. 2'

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Illustration: Maximillian Bode via The New Yorker

What if the poetic has left the poem in the same way that Elvis has left the building? Long after the limo pulled away, the audience was still in the arena screaming for more, but poetry escaped out the backdoor and onto the Internet, where it is taking on new forms that look nothing like poetry." That is the beginning of Kenneth Goldsmith's article in The New Yorker titled: The Writer as a Meme Machine, about the interesting reflections on art, poetry, memes and "conceptualism in the wild" made by Canadian Media Scholar Darren Wershler. Read full article here. E.T.P. 5'

Photo via The New Yorker.

If like me you were waiting to see 'Blue is the Warmest Color' the movie that won the Palm d'Or this year in Cannes, this article will leave you very much surprised. "The 2013 Cannes jury, presided over by Steven Spielberg, awarded the top prize not only to the director, Abdellatif Kechiche, but to the lead actresses, too. “Three artists,” Spielberg said that May day. . . the red carpet was witness to a symphony of happy symmetry as the established Léa Seydoux, twenty-eight, and the newcomer Adèle Exarchopoulos, nineteen, flanked their director and kissed him. Then, later in summer, Seydoux and Exarchopoulos said that the shooting had been unbearable and they would never again work with Kechiche". Emily Greenhouse share the details of this story in her article Did a Director Push Too Far? in The New Yorker. E.T.P. 4'30''

PHOTOAUTOMAT

 

 

PHOTO # 1: Barry Underwood

 

Luminescent Landscapes by Barry Underwood is actually more a multimedia piece than traditional photography, so to start the "photography section" I though we could establish how wide photography has become in the past decades.

This staged photos have been all over the web, this artist finds a spot, takes the angle and then highlights the space with the use of artificial light, the result are amazing images that looks like clips from some sci-fi movie. He defines his work as "The resulting images are surreal images, given that they result from this cross-pollination between traditional photography and theater". I think he nails it.

More info: http://www.barryunderwood.com/portfolio.html

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The Photo section is curated by the Brooklyn-based photographer Andreína Restrepo.