Thursday, February 10, 2011

Bits and pieces from the internet, D edition

Some more wanderings around the internet, with stops linked by D....

Dips, Chips, Wings, and Things:  It has been Superbowl Sunday here in the USA, which is something the rest of the world and certainly this household could care less about (well, AREA watched it a friends).  People (about 150 million) watch the two top football teams fight over the Superbowl award on TV, while eating snack food in enormous amounts (ALL the food magazines and food websites had special recipes just for this Sunday).  One of the most anticipated events are the special ads that are made for this event, which cost each advertiser about $3 million dollars for 1 min or so. We didn't see the Superbowl, but we did see some of the ads on the internet afterwards, and these two stood out...

Detroit: A city in northern USA ravaged by the manufacturing crisis during the last 30 years at least, and home to many famous car brands, many now defunct.  It is high crime, high unemployment, and has many social and infrastructure problems.  But it has seen a great revival, and Chrysler showed it off in their ad.
From a blogpost about the ad: "...Chrysler managed — in just two minutes — to make me cry, think, feel proud, question my Toyota, and want to hug the entire city of Detroit while screaming the lyrics to I’m Proud to Be an American. That roller coaster of emotion aside, the spot also managed to reaffirm my values and beliefs as a preservationist. " (link to whole blog post by Jason Clement on PreservationNation).  And some more about Detroit here if you like.

Darth Vader: A toddler-sized Darth Vader was the best ad during the Superbowl, I think.  Another car they (Volkswagen) wanted us to buy, but who cares? it made you laugh, especially the parody of the ad, which was online in less than an hour, I bet.  These ads are like when you went to Swedish movies and you made sure you never missed the ads in the beginning because they were fun and cool and different...and one reason you went to the movies (true!). This was before there were ads on Swedish TV channels, so the only moving ads you ever saw were at the movie theater or in newspapers and magazines.  I still remember some of the classic Swedish movie ads from 30-40 years ago. Oh, and Volkswagen's second Superbowl commercial is perfect for the entomologists! See the black beetle here.

Design in old biological diaramas at The Biological Museum (Biologiska Museet) in Sweden - how about a nice chair in the middle of the forest with a bear?  Quite great, unexpected, and fun! I bet this old-fashioned museum are getting some new visitors based on this exhibit. Look at the last picture too, it shows the museum building from the outside in its great national-romanticism glory around the end of the 1800s. I think it is supposed to be reminiscient of an old, old stav church from Western Scandinavia.

Drag something new around your arm:  "Sixteen ways to use your arm now when watches are obsolete"  My favorite was the small game trophy and the cross stitch, which is yours?

And, there is more Dust in the world than ever.  

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