Taken from the side of the Charles river on July 4.

Metafilter linked to an interesting video, in which the speaker (Roo Reynolds) posits that Lego toys are “inherently digital.” The “binary form” and “constraints” of Lego pieces force us to think creatively with some constraint, unlike an activity like painting, which you can smear over canvas without any lines or limits.

Toys that we play with when we’re children can affect our future career path, “in the same way that language is supposed to affect thought.” I’ve recently had similar thoughts - the work I do with content inventories and information design seems to follow the same basic thought pattern as assembling a gray, Mark I Iron Man out of Legos without reading any instructions.

Full talk below - beware that only about 1/30 of the talk has anything to do with the ideas above.

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Bonus link to this awesome video of the secret Lego Vault with every Lego set ever made, which shows several sets I remember as a kid.

Photos from today’s Celtics rally are now on Flickr:

The NY Times has a nice article on the childish humor prevalent in today’s comedies:

The male rejection of adulthood is now the dominant attitude in Hollywood comedy, even (or perhaps especially) in movies whose sexual frankness makes them officially unsuitable for children. Occasionally you will see a functioning if beleaguered dad, usually a widower, like Steve Carell’s character in “Dan in Real Life.” And sometimes, as in “Little Miss Sunshine,” a coeducational, multigenerational ensemble will carry the therapeutic and satirical burdens of the genre.

But far more often the center of attention will be a guy, his buddies and his toys. He will, most of the time, be nudged toward responsibility, forgiven for his quirks and nurtured in his needs and neuroses by a woman who represents an ideal amalgam of supermodel and mom.

Full article here.

The last paragraph could be a blow-by-blow description of “Knocked Up,” which I recently caught on cable.

Love this Pixar commercial for the characters in Wall-E.