Monthly Archive for November, 2009

Page 2 of 8

SuperForest is Grateful

chris published on November 26, 2009 in zeitgeist. 2 Comments Tags: grateful, gratitude, team superforest, Thanksgiving.

Yes, Thanksgiving is a holiday muddled by history, but now we are presented with the opportunity to make something positive of it. Every day could be a day devoted to gratitude, but only one bears its name.

That said, Team SuperForest would like to tell you, our readers,what we’re grateful for:

Jackson: I am grateful for the chance to make every moment a new beginning, a chance to be love.

Drake: I am grateful for love, and the ability to explore it in this world we must take care of.

Julius: I am grateful for the knowledge I receive everyday and for all the love I receive from friends, family and SuperForesters.

April: I am grateful for my folks, Shady and Archie. They are both wise and silly, strong and soft. I’m grateful that I live in Australia. I dig the sunshine, the sprawling coastlines, the kind gestures. I’m grateful for my positive mindset, though I’m not sure if that was bestowed or a choice I made long ago. Either way, it has gotten me through many trying times. I’m grateful for my faith, the practice of which has spurred me to feel gratitude all day, every day. I’m grateful that I have a new family in SuperForest; that the experience of being a SuperForester has meant I now go about my life constantly searching for the good, the uplifting, the smile-inducing. I’m grateful for love. Who knew the answer to so much pain and strife was contained in a teeny four-letter word? I’m also grateful for the chance to share what I’m grateful for with you.

Jackie: I am grateful for Love and Life :)

Patricia: I am grateful for everyday life and its small moments of connection – that I can make someone laugh and laugh with someone (and that someone would take the time to teach me to laugh at myself;) – our capacity for wonder and sense of the absurd – You and Me and Us. And coffee.

Heather: would like me to refer you to the post she did on CANADIAN Thanksgiving day. Rivalry! Just kidding.

Carla: I am grateful for everything that has been, for everything that is, and everything that is yet to come.

Chris: I am grateful for my mom, who is always supportive of my endeavors (although some may be short-lived), and who realizes that success is not the amount of money in your bank account but rather the amount of love and compassion you have in your heart.

There you have it.

What are you grateful for?

(image via Flickr user Lawrence OP)

A Message from Team SuperForest: “Thank You!”

iman published on November 26, 2009 in zeitgeist. 4 Comments Tags: gratitude, holiday, november, team superforest, Thanksgiving.

Dear Reader,

SuperForester Patricia

page_11

On this Thanksgiving day, SuperForest has a lot to be grateful for, namely, YOU!

We’d like to thank you for all your support, enthusiasm, and positive energy, without which we would be nowhere.

Much Love,

Team SuperForest

Movember Reign

april published on November 26, 2009 in zeitgeist. 1 Comment Tags: moustaches, Movember, Super Mario, SuperForester April.

Good afternoon, SuperForest!

Heard of Movember? The month-long celebration which highlights men’s issues during the month of November? Well, it started back in 2003, when two guys decided to grow moustaches starting November 1 through till the 30th, in an effort to raise money, have fun and encourage guys to talk about their health with each other. Although this year’s ‘mo-mania is almost over, and soon all those who ditched their razor will pick it up again in favour of a bald upper lip, I thought we at SuperForest ought to say a big thanks to all you fellas out there who took part. Thank you!

For those keen to grow a ‘mo for Movember 2010, here’s a little inspiration…

And, ladies, you can take part too…

LOL,
April

These Stools Are Deceptively Strong

april published on November 25, 2009 in zeitgeist. 0 Comments Tags: Anthony Dann, cardboard, Cardboard designs, cardboard love, cardboard stools, furniture, SuperForester April, sustainable design.

Hey SuperForesters,

Check out designer Anthony Dann’s cool cardboard stools! From the website: “Taking advantage of the deceptive strength of triangular folding, the designs are engineered to withstand all the rigors of heavy use.” Yes, cardboard stools = deceptively strong!

seat3

These designs won the 2007 Launch Pad award for Sustainability.

seat The materials are chosen for their recycled and recyclable content, and manufacture is local as a social and environmental choice.

seat2 My, don’t those apples look crisp?

PS SuperForester Julius pointed out some DIY ones back in 08 called Foldschool. Check them out here.

Love,
April

Pre-Thanksgiving Reminder- “Food: Waste Not, Want Not”

carla published on November 25, 2009 in food. 0 Comments Tags: Food Waste, Good, Informational Animation, Thanksgiving.

Howdy, SuperForest!

Thanksgiving is only a day away (!!!), and being that the focus of this holiday is as much on food as it is gratitude, we felt it was only fitting to share this great video from our friends at GOOD. The subject is on the food we waste and the facts are staggering. Lucky for us, there is a lot we can do to help.

Love to you all as we kick off this holiday season! Yay!!! <3

Finding LOVE in All The Wrong Places – AMOcoccygia?

patricia published on November 25, 2009 in zeitgeist. 0 Comments Tags: finding love in all the wrong places, pareidolia, random hearts, strange maps, SuperForester Patricia.

Hello hello SuperForest

Facebook is home to a host of groups – some helpful, some not-so, and some just plain weird – but every so often I come across one that gives me a smile. Finding LOVE in all the wrong places is a collection of photos of “love hearts hidden in this world of ours … keep them peeled and see that love is all around” – from tangled cables, to gum on the street, to…a mouth ulcer?

n712137095_1348343_6482 n561607651_856406_2652 n591591215_1693966_7796

Once you’ve looked at a few of these pictures, you start to see random little hearts everywhere!

Pareidolia – the tendency to see meaningful shapes in random arrangements is well documented – from religious icons on toast to a map of Estonia in a doormat. Fascinating cartographic blog Strange Maps has coined the terms “cartocacoethes” and “cartococcygia” for seeing maps everywhere: “Cacoethes is a Greek word used to express uncontrollable urge or desire, especially for something harmful. Strange Maps might be prejudiced, but we think seeing maps everywhere is harmless, if not downright beneficial. A somewhat friendlier term for the condition suggested by one of the commenters in the original post is cartococcygia. Literally: maps built by cuckoos – analogous to nephelococcygia (a term for seeing shapes in clouds, from The Birds by Aristophanes, literally: clouds built by cuckoos)”.

Nice! Is there a term for seeing hearts everywhere? I couldn’t find one… so how about AMOcoccygia? Love built by cuckoos?

n587376427_776523_8505

Love

A Matter Of Trust …

april published on November 24, 2009 in zeitgeist. 1 Comment Tags: Australia, Imagine, John Lennon, Lentil as Anything, SuperForester April, trust.

… ain’t just a Billy Joel song. I was recently told about a not-for-profit vegetarian restaurant in Oz that’s run by volunteers - Lentil As Anything. The cool thing is it’s run on the basis of trust! After you order and eat, you can make an anonymous donation as you leave, giving as much as you feel the meal warrants.

lentil If you’ve ever in town, head to 41 Blessington Street St Kilda, Victoria.

Its philosophy?
Lentil As Anything runs on a model of trust, generosity and inclusion and seeks to have a significant, positive influence on the development of our community.

This got me thinking about trust. How mine, and maybe yours too, has begun to wear thin the older I get. Perhaps it’s a result of having been cheated in the past, or due to all the scary news stories on TV. Maybe we no longer live in a world where it’s appropriate to leave our front doors open at night, but I often like to think about what life would be like if we did.

I also like to think about John Lennon’s Imagine, and how incredible and different things would be if there were no countries, no possessions. The longer I ponder this, I begin to envision people lounging in fertile fields, living off the fruits of the earth, and sleeping under the stars.

May the world live as one,
April

Internet Treasure: La Blogotheque

carla published on November 24, 2009 in art, celebrity and zeitgeist. 1 Comment Tags: internet treasures, Jason Mraz, La Blogotheque, paris, SuperForester Carla, SuperForester Iman, SuperForester Jason, Take Away Shows, The Shins.

Hello, SuperForesters!

Okay so let me start out by saying I feel a bit silly sharing something that I’m pretty sure most of you have heard of. But nevertheless, I figure if we introduce it to a few people here, that’d be a major win. Plus, you can never have too much of a good thing, right?

Ladies and gents, this is La Blogotheque.

La Blogotheque

La Blogotheque is a website that revolves around the “Take-Away Show” concept. One musician or band has about a 3 song video recording session and apart from them all being in Paris, it is usually in an unstaged atmosphere. Today, over 90 artists have contributed to La Blogotheque providing us with access to fresher than fresh performances.

I think I was first introduced to La Blogotheque a little over a year ago, through this video:

Granted, I didn’t know what “La Blogotheque” was but I did appreciate the impromptu style of the video. The melody would stay with me for a while and the sweet simple lyrics served as a kind reminder of the beautiful potency that lies within each day to be truly wonderful.

Months later, “It’s Nice that” featured La Blogotheque on their website and being that the name struck a very familiar chord, I clicked on the site to check it out. What I found was something truly awesome. Tons of videos shot in the same easy-going mannner as the one I had heard before. My heartbeat quickened as I scrolled through the artists; Bon Iver, Vampire Weekend, Animal Collective, Cold War Kids, Grizzly Bear, The Kooks, Jose Gonzalez, aaaahhh! Needless to say, yes, it is amazing and in debating which of the incredible performances to share with you (and after some prodding by SuperForester Iman), I decided to keep it classic and just share a fun one by The Shins. The sweet sweet Shins.

There’s something about these take away shows that make me so appreciative of music. These videos show a side of our favorite musicians that feels so raw and so genuine. Though all of the videos and music styles are pretty different, there is a key feature in all of the videos that ties them all together. Each video contains an artist and his/her instrument, and with that you see an incredible passion. A love for what they are doing. They are making sound and they are having the time of their life. Check out La Blogotheque here, you’ll love it.

Coincidentally enough, just a few days ago the wonderfully talented SuperForester Iman doodled this for me!

Apparently, the magic of take away shows left some sort of effect on her, too. It IS a lovely day. And I thank both her and SuperForester Jason for that beautiful reminder.

Love to all!

The Big Picture: The LHC

chris published on November 24, 2009 in technology. 1 Comment Tags: CERN, Large Hadron Collider, particle physics, science, SuperForester Chris.

From the ever pleasing column, the Big Picture, comes a fabulous set of photos from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. You can see them all HERE. Whatever you may think about the ‘frivolity’ of big science spending, the LHC is impressive. And what we may find out is even more impressive.

l30_0612010

Have a great night,

Chris

Awesome Video: Liam Mitchell’s “Wizard Smoke”!

carla published on November 24, 2009 in art. 0 Comments Tags: Liam Mitchell, Salazar, Skate Video, Wizard Smoke.

Good Morning, SuperForest!

Liam Mitchell’s short film beautifully displays the wicked talent of some skateboarders as they are shrouded in a plume of paint dust. Yes, paint dust! What resulted was probably the most artistic and mystifying skate video ever. It’s a little long, but the music itself is enough to make it worthwhile.

Love!

(via)

And This is How a Bubble Bursts!

patricia published on November 24, 2009 in zeitgeist. 2 Comments Tags: bubbles bursting, Jane Stockdale, photography, Richard Heeks, soap bubbles, SuperForester Patricia.

Good Morning SuperForest!

Have you ever wondered how a soap bubble bursts? SuperForester Jackie recently posted an eyeopening video showing how water drops – Beautiful! And in a similar vein, photographer Richard Heeks used a slow motion camera with super fast shutter speed to capture these moments:

article-1199149-05af03dc000005dc-731_634x574 article-1199149-05af03e0000005dc-989_634x581

article-1199149-05af03e4000005dc-183_634x645 article-1199149-05af02a8000005dc-251_634x524-1

But how about a frozen bubble?! Send a bubble into the sky on a cold cold night…

fence

planet pop (by neatorama)

If you like these, do check out Jane Stockdale’s album art for Simian Mobile Disco – Temporary Pleasures indeed!

Love

Peter Ablinger: If Pianos Could Speak

patricia published on November 23, 2009 in celebrity and technology. 2 Comments Tags: Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Dalai Lama, international environmental criminal court, Peter Ablinger, speaking piano, SuperForester Patricia.

At the World Venice Forum 2009 this summer (a conference on environmental issues and international law, organised by the International Academy of Environmental Sciences, supporting the establishment of an international/European environmental criminal court) Austrian composer Peter Ablinger presented “Deus Cantando” – a player piano ‘reading’ a child’s recitation of the “Declaration of the International Environmental Criminal Court”, written by Nobel Peace Laureates Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and the Dalai Lama:

Ablinger transferred the frequency spectrum of the childs voice to his computer controlled mechanical piano so that “with a little practice, or help or subtitling, we actually can hear a human voice in a piano sound” – and the result is certainly compelling, if weirdly spooky, no? You can see the entire video on Wien Modern’s facebook page.

Much Love, Lovely SuperForest

The Sun Vs. The Wind

joanna published on November 23, 2009 in zeitgeist. 1 Comment

random

Last night during dinner, during a heated political conversation, dad broke into some mythology. In my research, I found that it is also an Aesop’s fable…but you know how us Greeks are. Everything came from ancient Greece. So here we go:

In ancient Greece…the God of the Sun and the God of the Wind wanted to have a contest to see who was stronger and more powerful. As they were looking down upon the earth, there was a man with a jacket on. The two powerful gods decided that they would try and see who could get the man to take his jacket off.

The eager wind said, “I’ll go first.” He mustered up some heavy winds and blew them as hard as he could towards the man. The man covered his face and his jacket blew around, but the man used the jacket to cover his face. The wind only blew harder and thought, “I will blow so hard that he will HAVE to take that jacket off.” The man only wrapped his jacket around himself tighter. Eventually, the frustrated wind gave up, telling the sun that it was impossible.

As the Sun patiently listened, it was his turn. The Sun shined it’s warm smile down upon the man and without any struggle, the man warmed up and took off his jacket.

This is by no means a ground-breaking story, but the moral of the story is that kindness simply works better than violence. I think the wind learned his lesson. So the next time you get frustrated, perhaps shining a warm smile is the best option.

Sun V. Wind