Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Friday, August 23, 2013

The Legend of Jadeveon Clowney


















NYT - "The Legend of Jadeveon Clowney"

"Clowney’s father also lived in Rock Hill his entire life. He described his sport of choice, though, as “the streets.” He met Josenna Clowney at a house party in 1991 — “She was an Amazon,” he says — and they started a brief romance.

Morgan said he told her, “You’ve got to get me a baby."

 -----

"The hysteria grew exponentially the next season, after Clowney was named the nation’s consensus No. 1 recruit. Carroll’s phone rang 40 times a day. Mail piled up in the school offices, thousands and thousands of letters, enough to fill the bed of a pickup truck four times. All the best programs — Alabama, Florida, Louisiana State — wrote regularly. Colorado wrote the most, even sent a box of fake money — total pretend value $1 million — with the team’s mascot, a Buffalo, in place of the usual picture of a president. Harvard, oddly, corresponded."

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"Last season against Florida, the defensive coordinator Lorenzo Ward watched as the Gators ran the zone-read option. Clowney stuffed a hole, forced the quarterback to pitch the ball and ran down the tailback who received the pitch. There were three options on the play. He somehow eliminated all of them."

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"Clowney became more than a football player, more than a 6-foot-6, 274-pound defensive end at South Carolina almost certain to be chosen first over all in the next N.F.L. draft. Clowney, instead, became a superhero, a cartoon character, fast as a cheetah, strong as a diamond, capable of decapitating running backs and traveling through time. Stories of his athletic exploits ballooned into tall tales.

The tallest: a single tackle last season against Michigan, replayed a few gazillion times over the last eight months, where Clowney shot into the backfield and dislodged a helmet from a head. The play resembled a car crash, its impact so forceful, so jarring, it became known simply as The Hit — or less simply as The Greatest Hit Ever Delivered."



"The Hit changed everything, catapulting an already oversize level of attention into another stratosphere. It made Clowney bigger than he already was, bigger than Bigfoot. Every step, every Twitter message and every tackle now seem to qualify as news."

Jason Sudeikis in "An American Coach in London"

Sunday, August 18, 2013

The American Hundred Dollar Bill

























Esquire - "How Money Is Made: The Benjamin"

"[Brian] Thompson likes money that tells a story — something that, despite the constraints of a note's size and technological necessities, could pass for narrative, for art. He's constantly looking at the cash of other countries for inspiration (current favorites include the Danish krone and the Botswana pula), but he cites two principal influences: Georgia O'Keeffe, whose paintings of landscapes and flowers taught him how to combine balance with flow, and Escher, whose intricate, mathematical drawings showed Thompson the importance of precision and the power of illusion. "He would have been an incredible banknote designer," Thompson says. "He would have freaked people out."


"A man named Edward Lowery is the special agent in charge of the Secret Service's Criminal Investigative Division. He looks and sounds exactly like a special agent, put-together and deep-voiced. Asked about the North Korean supernote, he won't say a word, refusing to acknowledge that it even exists. But he will acknowledge that the Secret Service shut down more than three hundred counterfeiting plants around the world in 2012, and for the agency, each one was a kind of school."

Modern Day Tycoons


















Yesterday, The New York Times broke down Amazon.com Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos's many different personal business ventures including his most recent $250 million purchase of the Washington Post.

New York Times - "Expecting the Unexpected From Jeff Bezos"
Washington Post - "For Jeff Bezos, a new frontier"

Related,
NYMag - "How 44 Washington Post Staffers Reacted to Being Bought by Jeff Bezos"






















Monday, PayPal Co-Founder, SpaceX Founder and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk debuted his high-speed transportation concept, the Hyperloop.

Bloomberg Businessweek - "Revealed: Elon Musk Explains the Hyperloop, the Solar-Powered High-Speed Future of Inter-City Transportation"
New Yorker - "IS ELON MUSK’S HYPERLOOP A PIPE DREAM?"

Previously,
Businessmen Tweets





Saturday, August 10, 2013

The Monuments Men Trailer



December 18, 2013
Directed by George Clooney
Written by George Clooney and Grant Heslov
Starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman and Cate Blanchett

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Tinker Hatfield's Most Satisfying Shoe Projects

DesignBoom: what has been the most satisfying project you have worked on during your time at NIKE?

Tinker Hatfield: that's a difficult question to answer without upsetting someone! (laughs) but some of the ones that stand out in my mind are the AIR JORDAN 11, the AIR MAX ONE and the NIKE AIR HUARACHE.















the AIR MAX ONE was a sort of revelation on how to design a shoe and tell stories through design and of course it sold very well.
















the NIKE AIR HUARACHE was special because it came straight out of left field. I designed that shoe after a water-skiing experience, the use of neoprene got me thinking how it could be used on a shoe. I loved that project because it wasn't typical of my work at the time, in that I wasn't working with an athlete but basing the design on my own direct experience of water-skiing. that was a provocative shoe because people weren't sure about it - most people at NIKE didn't want to produce it but the marketing director at the time did. he manufactured 5000 of them and took them to the new york marathon and sold them all in just three days. that validated the design. we sold well over half a million pairs of that shoe over the next year.















I also really enjoyed the AIR JORDAN 11. everyone told me to stop designing AIR JORDANs because michael had decided to retire but I said no, it doesn't matter and continued with the project. of course he came back and ended up winning a championship in that shoe.

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Her - Trailer



November 20, 2013
Written and Directed by Spike Jonze
Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde and Scarlett Johansson

The Counselor - Trailer



October 25, 2013
Directed by Ridley Scott
Written by Cormac McCarthy (his first original screenplay)
Starring Michael Fassbender, Penélope Cruz, Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz and Javier Bardem