Steampunk Moves Between Two Worlds - New York Times
Topic: Society
5:40 am EDT, May 9, 2008
Yes, he owns a flat-screen television, but he has modified it with a burlap frame. He uses an iPhone, but it is encased in burnished brass. Even his clothing — an unlikely fusion of current and neo-Edwardian pieces (polo shirt, gentleman’s waistcoat, paisley bow tie), not unlike those he plans to sell this summer at his own Manhattan haberdashery — is an expression of his keenly romantic worldview.
I think this steampunk movement has much more potential than goths did. I apologize in advance for how admittedly poor this article is. The fact that NYT covered it is more significant than the content of the coverage.
Microsoft’s Failed Yahoo Bid Risks Online Growth - New York Times
Topic: Business
9:11 am EDT, May 5, 2008
Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, walked away from a Yahoo deal on Saturday still looking for an answer to his company’s fundamental problem: its time-tested recipe for success isn’t working against Google, the leader in the current wave of Internet computing.
interesting article but i'm rather dubious about the assertion
as the center of gravity in computing continues to move away from the personal computer, Microsoft’s stronghold, and to the Internet.
i think it's more valid to assert that computing has more than one center of gravity and i would certainly argue that it is of benefit not to have one company dominate all the spheres but rather to continue the metaphor a series of solar systems
For Americans, what is happening each night in the French channel port of Calais is poignantly and shamefully familiar. As Caroline Brothers reported in The Times recently, clusters of poor people wait for darkness and a high-risk chance to crawl inside or beneath a truck to cross to a country that needs and welcomes their labor but refuses to legally recognize their presence.
I take it you already know Of tough and bough and cough and dough? Others may stumble, but not you, On hiccough, thorough, lough and through? Well done! And now you wish, perhaps, To learn of less familiar traps? Beware of heard, a dreadful word That looks like beard and sounds like bird, And dead: it's said like bed, not bead - For goodness sake don't call it deed!
So today while speaking with one of my house-mates who mentioned that polar bears are becoming at risk of extinction, she made a plea that they were so cute.
While I agree, the polar bears we see in commercials are actually cute - real polar bears will eat your face.... much like the ones seen here in the golden compass. (Note: the above bears are alive only because of the coke bottle in their paws)
Why didn't they eat the little girl? I don't know but how fucking awesome was that? Mother fucking bears! At first I thought the movie was going to suck but this scene is worth it. They should have just renamed the movie "Mother Fucking Bears." Why you might ask - because MOTHER FUCKING BEARS, thats why!
Back to my point. Stephen Colbert has it right to be afraid of bears. Bears will eat you. They are not nice and cuddly which tells me that my house-mate would be eaten in the wilderness.
It isn't as though they are that dumb either. May I present exhibit Wojtek (Polish for Soldier Bear). Wojtek would carry heavy artillery shells for the Polish during WWII. That is not the coolest part. The coolest part is the soldiers considered him part of the team and would sit around and smoke cigarettes and drink beer with him.
What kind of jackass play fights with a bear? Wojtek liked water so much he would drain the water supply if they didn't keep the shower locked. Imagine if the Polish had no soldiers and only bears.... it wouldn't matter how much technology the Germans had because no one fights an army of bears. Especially, beer drinking cigarette smoking bears.
In conclusion: If bears had opposable thumbs, we'd be the ones going extinct.
Magnum Photographer Stuart Franklin has spent a decade exploring the beauty of trees and the unique place they occupy in man's world
From the archive:
In 1995, Steve Sillett received a Ph.D. in botany from Oregon State University, in Corvallis. Soon afterward, he took his present job, at Humboldt, and began to explore the old-growth redwood canopy.
No scientist had been there before.
The tallest redwoods were regarded as inaccessible towers, shrouded in foliage and almost impossible to climb, since the lowest branches on a redwood can be twenty-five stories above the ground. From the moment he entered redwood space, Steve Sillett began to see things that no one had imagined. The general opinion among biologists at the time -- this was just eight years ago -- was that the redwood canopy was a so-called "redwood desert" that contained not much more than the branches of redwood trees.
Instead, Sillett discovered a lost world above Northern California.
Re: The Volokh Conspiracy - Ninth Circuit Allows Suspicionless Computer Searches at the Border:
Topic: Society
8:16 pm EDT, Apr 22, 2008
Arnold has failed to distinguish how the search of his laptop and its electronic contents is logically any different from the suspicionless border searches of travelers’ luggage that the Supreme Court and we have allowed.
Its clear that there is a difference. The court may decide that the difference is not constitutionally significant, but it is not helpful for the court to pretend that no difference exists. This is a sort of ignorance that allows the court to reach a comfortable decision without addressing the substantive question...
The Green Issue - Climate Change - Environment - Energy Efficiency - Consumption - New York Times
Topic: Miscellaneous
1:46 pm EDT, Apr 21, 2008
Which brings us back to the “why bother” question and how we might better answer it. The reasons not to bother are many and compelling, at least to the cheap-energy mind. But let me offer a few admittedly tentative reasons that we might put on the other side of the scale:
If you do bother, you will set an example for other people. If enough other people bother, each one influencing yet another in a chain reaction of behavioral change, markets for all manner of green products and alternative technologies will prosper and expand. (Just look at the market for hybrid cars.) Consciousness will be raised, perhaps even changed: new moral imperatives and new taboos might take root in the culture. Driving an S.U.V. or eating a 24-ounce steak or illuminating your McMansion like an airport runway at night might come to be regarded as outrages to human conscience. Not having things might become cooler than having them. And those who did change the way they live would acquire the moral standing to demand changes in behavior from others — from other people, other corporations, even other countries.
All of this could, theoretically, happen. What I’m describing (imagining would probably be more accurate) is a process of viral social change, and change of this kind, which is nonlinear, is never something anyone can plan or predict or count on. Who knows, maybe the virus will reach all the way to Chongqing and infect my Chinese evil twin. Or not. Maybe going green will prove a passing fad and will lose steam after a few years, just as it did in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan took down Jimmy Carter’s solar panels from the roof of the White House.
An idealistic though thought-provoking take on "going green." Be more proactive -- consume less and plant a garden.
