One of the most densely populated metropolitan areas in the world, Hong Kong has an overall density of nearly 6,700 people per square kilometer. The majority of its citizens live in flats in high-rise buildings. In Architecture of Density, Wolf investigates these vibrant city blocks, finding a mesmerizing abstraction in the buildings' facades.

These are amazing photographs. I wish I could go to the exhibition.

MICHAEL WOLF

He said the natural "arrogance" of second-term presidents is exacerbated by a fundamentalism under Bush that causes many of his supporters and those who work in his administration to believe that "I am right because I am close to God (and) anybody who disagrees with me is inherently wrong, and therefore inferior."

Carter acknowledged that both he and Bush proclaim their Christian faith as part of their governing philosophy, but the similarity ends there.

USATODAY.com - Breaking tradition, Carter rips Bush's policies

I wake up
The world is black
Are my eyes open?
Am I truly awake?
My ears are ringing
My head is pounding
There is silence
I can’t hear anything!
Will I ever hear again?
The room begins to spin
Or am I spinning?
I Scream!
Did anyone hear me?
Did I really scream?
I am in oblivion
Am I scared?
I can’t decide!
What a Rush

Someone recently requested that I post some more of these. This is an older one. Hope you enjoy it.

Questions

This is a making of video about my favorite new commercial where sony launched thousands of balls down several San Francisco streets for advertisements about their new Bravia LCD.

Launching thousands of balls

SOMETIMES, WHEN THINGS GET SUFFICIENTLY WEIRD, SUBTLETY NO longer works, so i'll be blunt: The gleaming device I am staring at in the corner of a machine shop in San Rafael, California, is the most audacious machine ever built. It is a clock, but it is designed to do something no clock has ever been conceived to do—run with perfect accuracy for 10,000 years.

Time Machine - Discover Magazine - science news articles online technology magazine articles Time Machine

The question of the power of the press is more important today that it ever has been because it is so much under pressure from the business side of things.

This is a quote that jumped out at me from an article that a friend sent me on photojournalist and the impact of the photos they take.

Power of the press

Ever since we started the Music Genome Project, our friends would ask:

Can you help me discover more music that I'll like?

Those questions often evolved into great conversations. Each friend told us their favorite artists and songs, explored the music we suggested, gave us feedback, and we in turn made new suggestions. Everybody started joking that we were now their personal DJs.

We created Pandora so that we can have that same kind of conversation with you.

Pandora

Okay, this is a rant...

[rant]
I was really identifying with the people of Galveston and NOLA, and thinking to myself, "What if I had to evacuate from my home? Where would I get information on what to do, where to go, what to pack?" So I decided I'd meme a webpage with a list of Evacuation Instructions.

And that's where I started a descent into hell.

First of all, there are very few "webpages" out there with such info. Mostly they just link to PDFs, which are useless to anyone without the plugins. And even then, the stuff out there is often appalling. For example, this Louisiana Government page: http://www.ohsep.louisiana.gov/evacinfo/stateevacrtes.htm

Now, it's already annoying because of the PDFs. But it adds insult to injury, since the PDF files are enormous 7 Megabyte clunkers *per page*. And to add the cherry on top, the diagrams require non-standard paper, 11x17!

I made an attempt to download the PDF, and was further horrified by how unwieldy it was. It was huge, it was slow, it was displayed sideways, and was so large and zoomed out that my system kept trying to redraw it every time I tried to read it. I finally just gave up in disgust. And keep in mind, this is a situation where I'm sitting here safely in St. Louis, in a nice comfy office with a high-end computer and plenty of bandwidth. For someone who's in an emergency situation, with a low-end computer and a slow dial-up, those files would be completely inaccessible and useless.

I kept looking, and there is *some* useful information out there, but it's difficult to find, and often in a very rough format. For example, this PDF (again, with the PDFs!) from the Houston Red Cross. It has a packing checklist, along with some solid advice about dealing with an emergency situation such as a hurricane or tornado. But it still has typos, gives conflicting information (like about how much water to store), and doesn't have any specific advice like *where* to go or how to find transportation. Even at the FEMA site, it just says, "Contact the local red cross for evacuation information," but without saying *how* to contact them. And www.houstonredcross.org has got nothing on their main page about Rita.

My ranting aside, what is my "constructive criticism" advice?
- Some of our government resources *must* be devoted to providing basic and easily-accessible emergency information on the web.
- This information needs to be searchable by common-sense terms such as "evacuation information" or "How to evacuate".
- The information needs to be available in *non-PDF* format, like a straightforward quick-to-load HTML page with a checklist of what to pack, locatio... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Evacuation Instructions (or lack thereof)

Holy Shit!!!

What do you get if you cross an IPod, a Winter Jacket, and James Bond???!!!

Wow

The Gadgets Page - Gadget news and reviews for the real world

skullaria wrote:

One percent of adults ages 20 to 64 now take the drugs, according to Medco, which administers pharmaceutical benefits for managed care companies.

"I think this shows a clear recognition and new thinking that treatment for A.D.H.D. does not go away for many children after adolescence," said Dr. Robert S. Epstein, the company's chief medical officer.

Theraputic doses of stimulants is indeed preferable to cocaine abuse.

Maybe there is just nothing worth paying attention to for a lot of people. Let's just drug the nation, as long as they are paying into THE SYSTEM.

When people want to pay attention to things that they deam worthy of paying attention to, and can't... its a problem. For some people, a.k.a. those with A.D.H.D. there is a basic ability to focus and this seriously impacts their quality of life. For these people its such a problem that their lives are dramatically improved by stumulants. So yeah, drug em. Make em more effective human beings at whatever they do, be it squarish or subversive. Better living through chemistry.

To be honest, I've never met a well-informed person that actually believed that ADHD was a myth, a creation of a lazy or malformed society, etc. There's good science indicating differences in brain structures and function between typical and ADHD brains: MRIs, EEGs, PET scans, yadda yadda yadda. Its real. In the past these people were relegated to being fuck-ups and under-achievers, are much more likely to wind up in prison, abusing drugs, etc. Now we can do something about it. We should. Even if some people like to take whole LOT of these drugs, just for fun.

Yes it sucks to drug kids that can't pay attention to terrible public school lessons, and cubicle slaves that can't do their mind-numbing drone work. But fixing public schools and cubicle world are really separate issues to physical deficiencies in brain areas that impart selective attention.

Wow... rant triggered

/me applauds

RE: Use of Attention-Deficit Drugs Is Found to Soar Among Adults - New York Times