It is easier for a pickled shark to pass through the eye of a needle than for a multimillionaire to make good art. This week it was revealed that Damien Hirst, at 40, is worth £100m, a stupendous figure unrivalled by any artist his age, ever, even allowing for inflation and the changing nature of wealth.

Andy Warhol may have been worth $228m when he died aged 59, but two decades earlier he was was spending money like water at his Factory studio. And although Salvador Dalí had already been nicknamed Avida Dollars in his 30s, his mysteriously vast fortune (the IRS never could quite fathom it) grew gradually. Hirst is richer than the two most notoriously money-obsessed modern artists at his age - will his decline be even more grotesque?

Kottke has film critic Jim Emerson's list of 102 movies that you should see before you can consider yourself movie literate. I've got a *long* way to go.

babycakes on broome --

as an adult, I was diagnosed with an allergy to gluten and dairy, and on top of that, gave up sugar. Feeling robbed of the fulfillment that baking once satisfied, I set out to recreate the classic comfort of cakes from my youth. After a lot of experimenting and research, I mastered a few recipes that I began testing on friends. When they started putting in orders, for themselves as well as family and friends with allergies, I knew I was on to something, thus Babycakes was born.

I haven't read it yet, so I'm not sure if it confirms or denies my skeptical take on most alternate energy sources, but Popular Mechanics has a new article that chrunches the numbers. Seems like the right place to start.

His passion of the moment is Totten Inlet Virginicas — oysters native to the East Coast (Crassostrea virginica, to the Latin-spouting crowd), whose ancestors were brought west from the Chesapeake Bay a century ago. Introduced in 2004, they are raised by Taylor Shellfish Farms in a bay that opens off Puget Sound. Mr. Rowley, who helps to market them, gives them his nomination for "the best oyster on the planet."

Gorgeous HDR images of Manhattan. (What's an HDR image?) Probably this is the one if you only have time for one click.

Who is Dave and what has he done with Uncle Bill?

Jim, I would really like to get your thoughts on "net neutrality." I remember at one point you said you wished there *were* priority systems in place where people who used more bandwidth paid more. Hope I'm not misstating that.

Cory Doctorow seems to think government regulation to achieve neutrality isn't the answer. On the other hand, MyDD and others are framing this as "the end of the Net as we know it" and arguing that government regulation is the only thing protecting us from the telecoms busting up the Internet. I'm very confused, partly because i still don't understand how the Net actually works.

this may already have made the rounds / if not, microsoft i-pod vid is here.

food blog aggregator

salam pax -- a few weeks ago in San Jose. Salam said (since he's an Arab) that to visit Kurdistan he has to get a permit equivalent to a visa that allows him to visit for just a few days. It's essentially a different country, and has been for 16 years now.

FoxNews Poll


8. Who do you think should have the final say on U.S. military matters --
civilian leaders or military personnel?

.	Civilian leaders	Military personnel	Depends	Both	Neither	Don’t know
18-19 Apr 06	20%	54	5	14	3	4
Democrats	17%	60	5	12	2	4
Republicans	22%	58	3	11	2	4
Independents	24%	39	6	20	5	6

happy day, harry harryhausen hamlin fans! clash of the titans is on tcm at 8.

holy crap! your liberal media.

must be john waters month for me. just got "invited" to his art opening tonight (6-8) at marianne boesky.

Students from the Danish college of technology (DTU) have develeped a new and innovative fuelsystem which eleminates the loss of hydrogen in a fuel cell.

By eleminating the loss of hydrogen in the fuel cells, the Danish students have made hydrogen power "cost efficient" and have layed a major piece in the hydrogen engine puzzle.

The new fuel system was developed while working on the new hydrogen car "DTU Dynamo". Last year the car set a new world record by driving 15 miles on 0,35 ounces of hydrogen. This equals to the 450 miles per gallon of gas.
This new invention has already been patented, and a new development is said to be underway.

A tiny chemical reactor that can convert vegetable oil directly into biodiesel could help farmers turn some of their crops into homegrown fuel to operate agricultural equipment instead of relying on costly imported oil.

Cool. Stuff like this is important. But as usual the article doesn't mention the problematic stuff, like, we use incredible amounts of oil products in agriculture. So switching to biodiesel may well be part of some solution, but it doesn't replace our dependence on "costly imported oil."

all this saber rattling drives up the price of oil. im sure the bush cronies hate that. i think jon stewart mentioned that an exxon exec had a $400 million retirement package.

bit of inside blogball. steve gilliard refers to digby as "her" in this post and has yet to address queries in his comments. slip of the keyboard?

new level of mobile geekdom -- Yesterday I received a Verizon wireless broadband PCMCIA card for my laptop. It was sustaining a few hundred kpbs and hitting peaks of 1.2 Mbps in my initial tests last night.

is it considered good luck to have a pigeon build a nest and roost on your windowsill? ive got one about two feet from here with two eggs unhatched. guess thats a little more than roosting. whats the word for that? incubating? nesting?

Final death knell of the Lone Star Cafe: the good old "mysterious fire."

just clicking through the firefox extension and i found this multiplayer online pong. ive got winners.

booja scotty quit.

Mr. [Jack] Anderson's son Kevin said that to allow government agents to rifle through the papers would betray his father's principles and intimidate other journalists, and that family members were willing to go to jail to protect the collection.