Leanne, you’d love this little story.

Update: As an aside to this story, my mom (Hi!) sent me an email this week reminding me that my Grandpa spent some time in Arnhem during WWII and had a number of friends there. I’m not sure if that speaks more to the smallness of our world, or to the connectedness of my Grandpa. He had friends everywhere.

(Via Hedge Society)

Here are the two books that currently haunt my nightstand:

The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson – I’ve been keeping close tabs on this author since hearing about an earlier book, Everything Bad is Good For You, reading his last book The Ghost Map, and following his fantastic and useful internet startup company, outside.in.

I never quite know where to find his books at the bookstore. Are they history? Biography? Science? Communication and Culture? Technology? They cover all of these things, and show the ways that people in history have taken a broad expertise to solve problems and tackle tough questions.

Here’s a thoughtful review of the book.

The Milk Chicken Bomb by Andrew Wedderburn – From a member of local Calgary band Hot Little Rocket comes this first novel. This was an excellent Christmas gift from my girlfriend, after hearing him share passages at last year’s WordFest. I’m looking forward to getting into this one.

The National Film Board has revamped their website and put a number of films up for free viewing. You could kill a number of hours over there with the depth and quality of the films.

A number of them I remember from my childhood, when they’d show animated shorts to fill the 10 to 15 minutes between the end of an awkwardly timed movie on CBC and whatever was after it. For example, this one taught me what pleases girls completely.

Keep tabs on their blog as well. (Love that owl!)

(via Club Mumble and Said the Gramophone)

Fifty People, One Question

If you’ve never seen these videos, it’s worth taking a look. They’re well produced, have great background music, and ask great questions that get people sharing a bit of their hopes and desires. They have new ones up from people in London and Brooklyn. Have a look at their production photographs too.

As an aside, there’s always something great about talking to people on the street. It was one of my favourite parts of Dose when it was around as a free daily paper and it’s one of the good parts about all these street fashion websites that have sprung up. I still think there’s room for a regular blog that takes photographs and asks good questions of people from the street.

As reference, see The Sartorialist, One In 8 Million, Studs Terkel’s Conversations with America, Simon Hoegsberg’s The Thought Project. Others?

This is my iPhone wallpaper right now. Fantastic, hey?

There is a great desktop wallpaper project over at Kitsune Noir. Head on over and find some other great ones from a number of talented artists and designers. New ones every week.