Do Something This Weekend of June 27, 2008
“Dare to be naïve.”1
Geek Out
Have a buckyball. I found out about Buckminster Fuller in high-school chemistry class, when we studied the carbon molecules known as fullerenes. My science teacher spoke highly of Fuller’s geodesic dome and pimped the inventor/philosopher/architect as one of the 20th Century’s great thinkers. I was intrigued, but when I researched Fuller, I found surprisingly little substance to match the general surfeit of awe.
More recently, I enjoyed Elizabeth Kolbert’s look at Fuller in The New Yorker as it crystallized my vague sense of a disconnect between Fuller’s famed dynamism and his practical output. (Kolbert notes that even the geodesic dome, easily Fuller’s most prominent legacy, turned out to be an impractical piece of junk.)
The promo above for the Whitney Museum’s Buckminster Fuller Exhibit, which opened yesterday, blandly hypes Fuller as an innovator “with ideas way ahead of his time.” Nonsense. Buckminster Fuller was a man very much of his time, a fantastical poster child of the World’s Fair utopias that big industry and magical technology were supposed to create. He fascinates me not because he was some great visionary of the future but rather because so little of what this successful, brilliant person invented and foretold actually came to pass—despite, to this day, legions of willing believers. You can check out the Whitney exhibit through Sept. 21.
Geek In
If you can make it here… It’s been a while since I featured a DIY project in this space. In honor of this week’s Twisted: A Balloonamentary screenings—where I learned for the first time how to make a balloon dog—here’s a how-to for a basic balloon puppy dog. You can get a balloon-twisting kit from the same site or at your local toy store/magic shop/etc. Note: Don’t get just the balloons. You’ll need a pump, too! Those little balloons are really hard to blow up the old-fashioned way.
Also, Instructables has a Top 10 Summer Instructables list up, and while not all the projects are suitable for city living (e.g.,flying a kite), I like the Tetris ice cubes and heat-blocking curtains.
All contents copyright © 2007-2008 John Teti.
