“We had to create something that never has been done before, but that people can use in an instant, and provides a transformative educational experience.” Peggy Monahan, project director at the Exploratorium, is taking me through the “Geometry Playground” two days before the exhibit opens to the public. Its an interactive math learning wonderland that her team has been working on for the past three years. Read more »

All photos by Erik Anderson

This morning, I wrote this blog post about last night's Commonwealth Club double feature on the authors of the book The Facebook Effect and the Atlantic Monthy article “Is Google Making Us Stupid." I Googled the Commonwealth Club, Peter Norvig, and authors David Kirkpatrick and Nicholas Carr. I Googled “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” (which I felt weird about) in which Carr got some of today's genuises to admit that they can no longer sit and read an entire book. Every once in awhile, my inbox tab would inform me that I had a new email waiting for me, and compelled by a small spur of urgency, I'd spend around 15 seconds reading about the upcoming pie bake-off or exhortation from my editor. Or, you know, Facebook would draw me in like that mean popular girl whose requests you can't quite ignore. Oh yay, Allen posted the photos from Harmony Festival! My ex-boyfriend has changed his relationship status to “married”? What an idiot... and so on, until the irony of the fact I was writing about what social networking and search engines are doing to our brains threatened to explode my cerebellum in a glorious rocket blast of irony. Read more »

“Museums are, historically, piles of loots with a roof on them,” says Kim Shuck as she carefully beads a black raven onto the back of a pow-wow vest in the de Young's Kimball education gallery. I go to touch her intricate stitching, then draw my hand back. Shuck is telling me about her work's cultural significance, the struggle of the Native American community to coexist with the white art world. Am I really about to manhandle her sacred creation? “I appreciate your impulse to touch, and then not be sure if you can,” she says laughing, as she grants her approval for me to poke and prod the curving lines of tiny beads. Moments like these are what her current project's about – exposing folks to indigenous art, and teaching them the limits and guidelines to their interaction with it. Read more »

Jack Daniels and I were hanging out late last week at the 500 Club when in she came. No one was particularly hungry, but when the Tamale Lady's there, the Tamale Lady's there, so we ate. And along with my cheese and rajas 'male, she passed me a flier. “Virginia, it's your birthday next week?” It was, and to celebrate, her traditional fiesta/documentary is going down at Zeitgeist Mon/21. Read more »

General Gordon Granger could hardly have known that by signing General Order No. 3 into effect that sunny June 19th, 1865 in Galveston, Texas, he'd be providing an occasion for San Francisco's young black filmmakers to share their artistic voice. He (most likely) didn't appreciate that Juneteenth - as the day would come to be called - would mark a time for Bay area African Americans to reflect on the past, present, and future of their community. Probably not. But we get it. Read more »