In a typical summer filled with high-cost blockbuster productions, the documentary “Sweetgrass” was a welcome break from the normalcy of film. Described by the Washington Post as “part documentary, part western and part anthropological study,” it is the un-narrated story of Montana sheepherders who take their herd up the Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains for summer grazing — the last Montana ranchers took their sheep through the Absaroka-Beartooth Pass on a federal grazing permit in 2005, signifying the waning of a traditional way of life. After eight years of filming and development (begun in 2001), it premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2009.

Although some critics complained of the long scenes of the Montana landscape (The New Yorker commented that the directors “hold the camera on a ruminating beast, or a noisy shearing, dare you to get bored, wait for you to grow hypnotized, and then, just as you enter a sort of trance, abruptly cut”), media were generally positive on the film’s “classic observational documentary style” and “breathtaking panoramas.”

At the end of the showing, I couldn’t help comparing it to the 2005 (non-documentary) Ang Lee film “Brokeback Mountain,” which focused more on the relationship between the main characters Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist than the fictional Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming. Clearly, the stars of Brokeback are its characters and their lives, while those of Sweetgrass are the sheep and the Montana landscape — two completely different genres of film and two unique takes on the dying sheepherding lifestyle out West. (One thing to note is that Brokeback is set from 1964-1983, while Sweetgrass was filmed in the 21st century — still, the process of summering sheep up in the mountains looks remarkably unchanged).

“During the cold and dark Berlin winter days, I spend a lot of time with my boys in their room. And as I look at the toys scattered on the floor, my mind inevitably wanders back to New York….”

(Niemann creates a series of highly-imaginative NYC-related items using legos. Follow the link to view the images)

The Kindle by Amazon.com with its wireless Whispernet is definitely a compelling choice, but I can’t get beyond its physical design. Even though it looks better in person than in pictures, it just looks really retro and clunky compared to other devices currently on the market. I mean, look at the Sony PRS-700 reader. Sleek and shiny with lovely curves and six-inch touchscreen E-Ink display… I like how the line of buttons was switched to horizontal, compared to the earlier PRS-505 model.

And while it would be useful to be able to download books straight from the internet onto the device, I admit that I’m a compulsive book buyer, and it might be good for my bank account to require an extra step between the “I’d like a book” thought and the actual purchase.

Additionally, no matter what device you use, the fact remains that many non-fiction books still aren’t available in e-book format. For example, what about the Strategic Asia series by The National Bureau of Asian Research? The newest edition, Strategic Asia 2008–09: Challenges and Choices was launched in September 2008 but isn’t even available on amazon.com in print form (none of the earlier editions are available in e-book format). Or there was an interesting book I read a while back called Koizumi Diplomacy: Japan’s Kantei Approach to Foreign and Defense Affairs–nope, not a chance that one’s been digitalized. So bottom line: the weak link for all digital readers is the content that you can purchase for them. If you want to read fiction and mainstream non-fiction, then it shouldn’t be an issue. For others, book availability is definitely a problem.

Anyone who’s heard my schpeel on suburbs knows that I despise suburbia with a passion. But with America on a relative economic decline compared to much of the world, there are strong reasons why (besides personal preference) we need to repopulate our cities and curb our energy consumption.

I watched the documentary “The End of Suburbia,” which is to some extent an alarmist film that assumes that our whole way of living is going to change with the decline of fosile fuels — but though I don’t think everything the film warms of will actually come to pass, we’re definitely going to have to wake up and truly start to reduce of reliance on cheap oil.

Suburbia is an amazing inefficient way of life that sprung up in 20th century America and relies inseparably on the personal automobile. Unfortunately, it’s not a good way forward if we, as a country, want to maintain economic growth in the decades ahead. The solution is not to procure more petroleum. It’s to reign in our consumption.

In short, I have a car, and I commute farther to work that I would like, but I’m strongly in favor of gas prices rising. America needs a wake up shock, despite any near term economic consequences. We need to realize that we need to change our lifestyles because it’s not sustainable. In other countries where energy prices are higher, average consumers are much better about conservation — but although “green” is now a concept that’s beginning to catch on among young professionals who wish to be cool, we need to embrace conservation for its own benefits (not just the coolness factor) if we want to break our addiction to oil.

1) We need better public transportation. If we’ve learned anything from this summer’s gas prices, it’s that America needs more options for mass transit. DC residents are papered with a decent subway and bus network that networks the city and several miles into the suburbs, but there are so many places were there are frankly no mass transit options. This isn’t to say, of course, that DC’s subway is ideal. Tokyo, for one, puts us firmly to shame.

2) We need better urban planning — mid-sized communities connected by mass transit that supply residents with commercial areas and civil services that are walkable to residential areas. Americans need to be able to walk to their grocery stores, their schools, and their offices. Suburbia is, by and large, artificial and soulless. Why is everyone enchanted by old urban villages like Georgetown and Old Town Alexandria? Why then do these same people live out at the end of a cul-de-sac? Why does the “American Dream” involve a cookie-cutter house on a treeless patch of grass down the highway from a Walmart? Look at the housing situation in your area. I bet that the close suburbs (like Arlington) haven’t lost much if any value while the exurb sprawl has declined.

3) The answer is to bulldoze our strip malls and create new mixed-use developments. The suburbs aren’t beautiful. They’re not historic. McMansions beyond the beltway aren’t the future — Theyr’e the foreclosed past. But we need to start redesigning and regrouping before we’re foreclosed, before all the value is lost. I mean, economically, if we switch from SUV’s to Prius’s now, we’ll have more money tomorrow than if we keep driving the SUV hoping that gas prices will decline. Because they won’t. Energy was too cheap. It needs to go up to become the scarce commodity that it really is.

4) Alternative energy is local, not global. The 1990′s and 2000′s have been and still are the age of globalization. Not that globalization didn’t exist in earlier years, but these have been the decades of true globalization. Alternative energy is best positioned to meet the needs of local communities — solar panals on the roofs of houses, wind turbines up on a hill, even hydro-power won’t solve our industrial needs, but it can power communities.

Is it going to far to say that SUV’s are unpatriotic?

When I really think about it, I think I like personality types because it helps my brain group the people I know (loosely) into a matrix of pre-defined categories, and it helps me predict what they’re thinking and how they’re going to react to any given situation. There are other things I’d rather expend brain cells on, so simplifying the world of human reaction is definitely a plus. Plus, I like the guessing game — I’ve a pretty good track record (or something like that).

Anyhow, in my re-discovery of this idle pastime I came across this blog entry that is, perhaps, the best description I’ve seen ever of some of my more random traits. Although you can find countless articles online and in books detailing the traits of different personality types in horribly dry detail, this author uses personal anecdotes to bring the words to life. For example (uh, this is hard, since I’d like to just quote the entire piece):

Disappearing is, perhaps, one of the most annoying things some INTJs do that people dislike. I promise you we are not trying to insult you or to hurt your feelings by leaving. We leave, usually without comment, from groups or meetings or parties or get-togethers because we become interested in something else. It’s that simple. We decide to investigate elsewhere. No malice is intended in disappearing. We don’t see it as disappearing. We see it more like, “moving on…” When I get asked later, You said good-bye before you left, right? and I stammer out an Uhh as an answer, I realize my host probably wondered what happened to me.

I remember being at a social function not too long ago and thinking about an hour and a half in that it was time to move on. It wasn’t that I “wasn’t having fun” but rather that I couldn’t shake the thought from my head that there were other ways that I’d rather be spending my time — and I just sort up picked up and left. Yes, I said goodbye to one or two folks but other than that it was just, woosh.

We generally have strongly-held values about right and wrong and “right and wrong” for many of us are defined in a social sense and not necessarily a religious one. We know the world is grey but doing the right thing — the promises we make to each other kind of morality — is important to us because it helps shape the world into the worthy and the unworthy of our involvement. Seeing Justice done is a vital element for us because it carves the right stake in society.

I have a hard time explaining this to other people, especially those who are strongly religious (personally, I find organized religion rather too confining–most religions claim to have all the answers and if you do x, y, and z then everything will be good. Where’s the mystery, the challenge?). It’s entirely possible to have a strong sense of morality without a strong sense of religiosity. I wonder sometimes, why do you need a book to tell you what’s right and wrong? Shouldn’t it just be intuitive?

We are sometimes accused of being disconnected from the rest of society. We aren’t disconnected to the present. Funerals, for me anyway, are a waste of time because we are not our bodies. That thinking, I have learned, is offensive to many people on a plethora of levels.

The gist of the rest of this excerpted paragraph is that INTJ’s tend to be forward-looking, not backward-looking. This combined with a “different” sense of religiosity and a general disdain for energy-wasting social convention means that they’re not huge fans of funerals. I especially don’t get the appeal of open-casket events. Blech.

The 2008 Toyako G8 Summit (hosted by Japan in Hokkaido) came and went without incident, but what else is to be expected of an archaic Cold War institution whose members reflect a late 20th century balance of power and whose non-binding statements don’t even hold the signatories accountable for the agreements reached? The Economist, in its usual glib style summed it up in the words: “A mountain-top gabfest provided a spectacular show and a long guest list but few answers to the woes of the world” (July 10).

At any rate, as the event’s host, the biggest task for Japanese Prime Minister Fukuda’s was to not screw things up, and if the avoidance of failure is held as the bar for success, it does appear as though he made the mark — whatever that means for Japanese politics. Predictions that Fukuda may reshuffle his cabinet after the summit have flown back and forth around Japanese media for months, but cabinet reshuffles in Japan are generally calculated PR moves, and who knows when the Kantei will decide that the time is right to get the most out of the announcement?

As far as Japanese PR in general goes, the next G8 summit in Japan won’t occur until 2016, so the country has more than enough time to ponder their next theme…. How about asking world leaders to do a little Yatta?

Or if they find that too difficult, maybe the MDSF could help them out…

I stumbled across another one of those pointless but nonetheless fantastic Japanese inventions: the Rolly by Sony. The video above shows the device in action, the video below is mostly an interview with one of its creators. I’d first heard about the Rolly concept about a year ago and though to myself, ‘Why would anyone want a music player that rolls?!’ But I have to admit that after watching the video clips, it is indeed pretty cute…. I just love the way they programmed it to mimic animals!

If you haven’t heard the recent news, the National Cathedral has, to the dismay of many long-time locals, decided to close its greenhouse. Of course, I oppose the decision. Do I ever shop at the greenhouse? …well, no. But it’s an institution, and the Cathedral close just won’t be quite the same without it. The truth of the matter is, though, if the Cathedral wants to shut the greenhouse, can the neighborhood residents really do anything to stop it?

• WP: National Cathedral In Fiscal Squeeze
• City Paper: National Cathedral’s Greenhouse Closing Shop
• Save the Greenhouse

And if the thought of losing a neighborhood institution stresses you out, how about trying a trip to the new Korean sauna Spa World? Of course, the traffic along the drive from DC all the way out to Centerville could perhaps just add to your stress level… but hey, what would you do for a foot-ball field’s worth of Asian sauna experience? The truth is, though, I don’t really like all the glitz and whatnot of this type of of Korean bathhouse. What I’d really love is a nice little Arlington sento — definitely one of my favorite aspects of Japanese culture!

• WP: A Bathhouse Immersed In Tradition
• WTOP: Sauna and Bathhouse Offer Slice of Korea in VA

The next conclusion to draw from this site is that McCain is fairly old. Of course there’s one thing that you couldn’t add to that site: Yasuo Fukuda, who was born a little more than a month before the Senator. Should the fact that the prime minister of the world’s second largest economy is a septuagenarian inspire us across the Pacific to elect one ourselves? I wouldn’t think so… after all, if Fukuda’s abysmal support ratings are anything to go by, it’s unlikely that his administration will be long-lived.

So what is this moving text thing anyhow? Called sometimes kinetic typography” and sometimes “motion typography,” it’s the art of taking spoken words and manipulating the transcription to match the rhythm, the meaning, the mood, etc. Think of it as the visual version of spoken word poetry or the text version of well-done stop-action photography.

Of course, there are numerous theories about kinetic typology “best practices” and methods. The example above focuses mostly on the cadence of V’s speech — the extended pauses, the crescendos, the rise and fall of his tone — there’s little (if anything) in the presentation of the text itself that is tied to the meaning of the words themselves. Some methods include how the lines of text gradually start to overlap and grow in size as V concocts string upon string of ever-increasingly obscure v-words together, dashing headlong to the apex where he slashes at the poster on the wall. Then a pause. And when he begins to speak again, it’s softer, more viscous, almost sticky like honey — and the words across the screen stick to each other like dribbles of maple syrup…

But what about other examples? I don’t speak Spanish, but this one, based on the song “Ya no sé qué hacer conmigo,” is particularly advanced artistically (I wonder if it’s fan-made or whether it’s actually that song’s music video). Or there’s this one (the rules of Fight Club). If you can get past the “shaking camera” — ie the background behind the text wobbles as though it’s being filmed with a hand-held camera — it’s not bad. And actually, although I can see why the creator may have decided to try to mimic this “grunge” / “amateur” film style, it’s just a little distracting.

I actually haven’t seen Wedding Crashers, but this clip is another good example of some nice typography. This one takes a slightly different approach — instead of displaying each word spoken in text, it uses snippets of a monologue in Oceans Eleven to try to visually (using text) illustrate the plan for the casino break-in. And I’m not sure where the audio of this one comes from, but it’s not half-bad.