A friend working at an unnamed company told me about the (widely unloved) CEO bringing in yet another IT consultant, probably on a search and destroy mission to get more control over their tech people. He hired them to come in while the CIO was away on vacation. Nice.

Here is what they had to say:

The web site is fine, technically and architecturally. Your IT guys are quite competent — save you a great deal of money — and are ‘probably more competent than you deserve.’

The good guys (and gals) should win more often.

Yeah! The Arts Journal blogs now all have RSS feeds.

Remember when Spontaneous Human Combustion was a big deal, I think in the 80s? Why do we never hear about it anymore?

We saw this painting at the Metropolitan Museum’s El Greco exhibit yesterday. Among the best works in the show, this was one of the few I had never seen before, even in reproduction. It’s haunting and so human, not “iconic” even though it was inspired by his early career as a Byzantine icon painter.

The show ends on the 11th, and is definitely worth a visit. Take a day off and do not try to go on the weekend. It was pretty crowded even on a Tuesday afternoon with a crowd of all ages. I really liked hearing all of the secular Jewish New Yorkers asking each other questions. Given that El Greco’s career was mainly spent in Philip II’s Spain, it is mostly religious and filled with Catholic themes. Not exactly the area of expertise for a lot of people in the crowd. I wasn’t raised Catholic, so most of what I know about Catholicism is from European art too.

Go read what James had to say on the exhibit.

You know it’s time to get nervous when Warren Buffett starts warning about our trade deficit and says

Through the spring of 2002, I had lived nearly 72 years without purchasing a foreign currency. Since then Berkshire has made significant investments in—and today holds—several currencies. I won’t give you particulars; in fact, it is largely irrelevant which currencies they are. What does matter is the underlying point: To hold other currencies is to believe that the dollar will decline.

Both as an American and as an investor, I actually hope these commitments prove to be a mistake. Any profits Berkshire might make from currency trading would pale against the losses the company and our shareholders, in other aspects of their lives, would incur from a plunging dollar.

But as head of Berkshire Hathaway, I am in charge of investing its money in ways that make sense. And my reason for finally putting my money where my mouth has been so long is that our trade deficit has greatly worsened, to the point that our country’s “net worth,” so to speak, is now being transferred abroad at an alarming rate.

The Morning News has a sweet interview with Witold Riedel, accompanied by a gallery.

In my latest Amnesty International magazine, there is a brief article about the fact that Patrick Stewart funds scholarships for students interested in working on human rights issues. For eight years he as funded about 20 students annually, with grants up to $1800. Cool.

We went to a preview today of Big Art Group’s House of No More at P.S.122. Disclaimer: I got comp tickets from Andy at P.S.122, as someone who attends a lot of shows there. It was sort of a friends/press/tastemakers kind of preview event.

I chose my post’s title from the fact that Big Art Group uses technology in a way that makes me think of the Wooster Group, but their work is even more about mediating reality. You can see the actors working on stage, doing what you watch on the three screens, but you’re supposed to watch just the screens, sort of. In a world where New Yorkers used TV to confirm what was happening before their eyes on 9/11, it’s an approach that makes sense. I referred to the Glamericans, with whom I marched on February 15, 2003, because some of the them are involved in the production, including Machine, who did the costumes.

Like Wooster Group, and many other interesting theatre groups, their works are “works in progress” basically forever. When I asked a question about one of the more baffling characters in the talkback afterward (moderated by the lovely Mike Albo), I was told, “she’ll make more sense on Thursday.” As in a lot of theatre that interests me, I was confused by the disjointed aspect of the work for the first third or so, but I was really into it, and the mystery of the plot, by the end.

I’ve been known to go to Wooster Group productions more than once during a run to watch how things evolve. I suspect Big Art Group warrants a similar approach.

I’ve been doing more work on Meredith’s web page as the “guinea pig” for my artist web hosting business. Now that she can add her own stuff, there are a lot more images.