It's a Shapeways Christmas

In September, I wrote two posts about a company and website called Shapeways. If you're so inclined, you can re-read them here and here. Shapeways is a three-dimensional printer that allows anybody with access to a 3-D renderer to upload a model and they will print it out and ship it back. Three-dimensional model printers have been around for a while, a little while at any rate. Where Shapeways takes it a step beyond is that they have an online rendering program and anybody with a computer can make his or her own fully customized and one-of-a-kind thing.

This kind of technology integration curls my toes. I mean, ten years ago nobody'd ever heard of Google, or a blog, or a 3-D model printer for that matter. Amazing!

Well, just in time for Christmas, Shapeways has come up with a couple of seasonal offerings and the one that I think is just plain cool is a napkin ring that sells for between $5 and $7. This napkin ring is silver and it can be composed of any copy you'd like it to be.

So to prove that anybody can do this, I went through the process and made a set of napkin rings of my own. I mulled over ideas for a couple of days. I wanted to have my rings be both seasonal and related to food. Hmmmm. What to do what to do? Visions of sugarplums danced in their heads? Nah, too precious. So I pulled out my copy of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas and re-read it for the first time in years. I kept coming back to this part of it:

Then the Whos, young and old, would sit down to a feast. 
And they'd feast! And they'd feast! And they'd FEAST! 
FEAST! FEAST! FEAST! 
They would feast on Who-pudding, and rare Who-roast beast. 
Which was something the Grinch couldn't stand in the least!

That's it! So I used the line They would feast on Who-pudding, and rare Who-roast beast. And it came out looking something like this:

Not bad for six bucks apiece. Let me now state for the record that I am ready for Christmas. On second thought, let's make that I'm ready to start getting ready for Christmas. So to quote How the Grinch Stole Christmas again:

Fah who foraze! 

Dah who doraze! 

Welcome Christmas! 

Bring your cheer. 

Wow, wrap your head around this

Last week, the gang over at Consumerist ran a short piece on the amount of money on the line for 2008's historic bailout. The numbers being bandied about are massive to the point of incomprehensibility and all of these numbers are being removed of all context in order to make the whole unseemly thing more palatable. Anyhow, Consumerist put all of it in an inflation-adjusted context and every one needs to see this. Check out this pie chart:

Mind bending. Really. Here's their inflation-adjusted breakdown:

Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion

Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion

Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion

S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion

Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion

The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)

Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion

Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion

NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3,920,000,000,000

2008 BAILOUT TOTAL AS OF NOV 2008: $4,616,000,000,000

This is being undertaken by a Republican administration. Can we please never hear the phrase "tax and spend liberal" in another campaign?

Try being Jackson Pollack for a change

Jackson Pollack was an American abstract-expressionist whose paint dribbles have become icons to the modern art world. Stand in front of one of his paintings at MOMA sometime and you can still feel the man's rages and furies even though he's been dead for 52 years. His work's exhausting, really. But now, thanks to the power of the Internet, you can try your hand at his now-famous painting method. Well, sort of anyway. You can't smear these or grind glass and cigarette ashes into them.

Go to this website, Jackson Pollack.org, and your cursor will turn into one of Pollack's dripping brushes and your screen a blank canvas, ready for an assault. Got a couple of minutes or a couple of hours to kill? Check it out!

Hah! I love a clever package

This was a package designed by a British printer and sent out as a Christmas present last year. Maybe it's from having hung out in art departments for so many years, but this is a hilarious pun. Cheers to Today and Tomorrow, the graphics blog where I found this. Confused? Send me a note and I'll explain.

Christmas cards from Jennifer Squires

Christmas is coming gang, as hard as that is to believe. If you're anything like me, you haven't sent your Christmas cards yet either. Oy, I need to get a move on it.

Anyhow, the great photographer Jennifer Squires dropped me a note this week with a solution to my foot dragging with regard to my Christmas cards. I've blogged about Jennifer's work before. Originally in September under the headline Fresh Photography for Hip Homes, and then again in November under the headline More Great Photography from Jennifer Squires.

Well Jennifer's at it again and this time she's turned her attention to the fact the Christmas is around the corner, and she's come up with two new cards for this year. You can find her cards and the rest of her work on her Etsy shop. Her cards and envelopes are made from 100% recycled paper and what a great way to spread around some cheer. At a loss for gifts? She's got you covered there too. Look over that Etsy shop of hers, I'm telling you.