December 2010
62 posts
AP reporter to Schwarzenegger: Thanks for the... →
O.K., I don’t usually do the music critic thing. But Janelle Monae, an artist I’d never heard of from Atlanta, blew me away this week. Her 2010 release, ArchAndroid, is pretty ambitious. Monae mixes styles, layers sounds upon sounds and alternately croons and screams, rock style, to keep a listener guessing as how to rightly categorize her. On one song she doing the 80s dance thing. On...
This is an outstanding post. It’s easy to forget how tech innovation has happened in just 10 years. http://www.npr.org/2010/12/27/132369256/A-Look-Back-At-A-Decade-In-TechAs a bonus here’s the song NPR uses to close out the story, Gut Feeling,one of my favorite Devo songs of all time.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItEUIG09pYE http://amplify.com/u/jqko
Merry Christmas everyone!!! http://amplify.com/u/ji9r
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Sandia creates world's smallest nanowire battery
Amplify’d from inhabitat.comA team led by Sandia National Laboratories‘ researcher Jianyu Huang has succeeded in creating the world’s smallest battery at a research facility belonging to the Department of Energy. The battery is in fact so small that it was formed inside a transmission electron microscope and consists of a single nanowire (as the battery’s anode) which is one seven-thousandth the...
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Serious food for thought from: The Dangers Of...
An excerpt from this interesting, thought-provoking piece from TechCrunch.
It’s become far easier to acquire expertise — at the cost of insight. There’s a reason, after all, why it’s called insight. Because insight is the result of recombination, hybridizing ideas, internal accidents, emergent properties of ideas we never even knew were related.Amplify’d from techcrunch.com
Contemplating the...
RIP Donald Glen Vliet (Captain Beefheart). I know I’m a day late, but better later than never, right?! The dude charted his own course. He made some nifty music. Thanks to Jen Grover for posting this video. Enjoy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE32tcojArI http://amplify.com/u/itbw
morimoto/tadao ando
cabbagerose:
famed restaurant MORIMOTO in New York’s meat packing district
via: gaileguevara
A really interesting design.
I just read to a class of fifth graders. My choice of reading materials: St. Crispen Day’s speech from Henry V, an excerpt of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s I Have a Dream exhortation of 1963 and part of Winston Churchill’s Never Surrender radio address from 1940. The message of my talk. Words matter. Words can help change the world. MLK’s I Have a Dream...
Virginia judge has declared the new health care law unconstitutional. The ruling comes after judges in other states have declared the law constitutional, ensuring the battle over the new law goes to the U.S. Supreme Court. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/health/policy/14health.html?hp http://amplify.com/u/ib6z
I’ve not paid close attention to the recent protests in Britain beyond reading the headlines and marveling at the shocked faces of Prince Charles and Camilla as angry students attacked their car last week. But a couple of blog posts I read today, admittedly old posts, opened a window into the situation, at least for me. It’s a small window, from a distinct angle. Historical allusions...
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Fastest Rising Google Searches in 2010
wow … 2010 is almost over.Amplify’d from googlesystem.blogspot.comSee more at googlesystem.blogspot.com See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/i64a
Where is human consciousness situated? Is there an incorporeal soul? Or is what we think as individual self-hood just synapses firing? These are questions John Morehead raises in a guest column for Religion Dispatches in which he uses AMC’s zombie TV show The Walking Dead as a starting point for a discussion....
the black apartment/the apartment
cabbagerose:
Amazing living space. I especially like the library space. Books, books, books surrounded by black.
This is a nice piece of writing by Andrew Carvin over at NPR. The column’s elegiac tone, along with the portrait of the elderly couple he saw everyday, not to mention his curiosity about their lives, put flesh on the sense of loss Carvin feels for these strangers who became a part of his life. Carvin’s observations, and his wonderment, also thrust into open view that question that...
The president is mentioning taking up “real” tax reform by which he means, from the scant details I’ve read, lowering income tax rates by closing or eliminating the thousands of exemptions, deductions and incentives strewn through the federal tax code. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/us/politics/10tax.html?hpAs the Times reports, the last time Congress took up something that...
I feel strangely open to the universe after reading this column, a tutorial that juxtaposes, compares and contrasts kung fu philosophy with various western approaches to examining life, the search for absolute truth and what is meant by the words to live the good life. Aristotle, Descartes, Rorty, Derrida, Hadot all make cameos. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did....
Apple introduces mobile app sharing
Apple Patenting Phone-to-Phone App Sharing - http://pulsene.ws/tGHS
Hydrogen fuel cells: the forgotten renewable...
Hawaii’s Hydrogen Fueling Plans Expand - http://pulsene.ws/tX0E
A neat exhibit @ the Met: one artist's take on the...
Consumer Culture Camouflage (8 pics) - http://pulsene.ws/trCz
ProPublica and NYU’s Carter Journalism Institute are teaming up to tackle one of the weaknesses in today’s media environment: explaining the news. The premise is the world is a complex place and people need help understanding the issues at the center of any given series of stories before they can truly comprehend the relevancy of what they’re taking in. A lot of news outlets...
WikiLeaks and the documents it has made available to the media in recent days has set off a paroxysm of criticism and derision across the globe, inciting powerful entities — from the U.S. government to mighty corporations — to action.I’m not sure where I stand on WikiLeaks’ mission and how it plays out in the real world. My own experience has reinforced a belief that power...
Stephen Wiltshire: The Human Camera!
Frank Woodman Jr. wrote on Amplify:
The diversity and abilities that exist in this world are a wonder to behold. And how often those considered challenged have powers that the rest of us can only stand and watch in amazement.
WHOA!!! is all I can add.Amplify’d from www.youtube.com
The human Camera - LITERALLY!!!
See more at www.youtube.com See this Amp at...
I’m not a developer, just of user, of Android OS on my Droid. So I’m not a tech savant. Even so, I’m excited by some of the upgrades ReadWriteWeb says are on Gingerbread (Android 2.3). Many seem to have a goal of making apps more efficient and less power greedy. Others are just cool in that gee-whiz, how did they think of that? The main question I have now is when does my HTC...
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Facebook introduces a new profile redesign
To activate the new design now simply click here and then hit the green button on top-right.Amplify’d from blog.facebook.comsome improvements we’ve made to the Facebook profile, so now it’s even easier for you to tell your story and learn about your friends.A New IntroductionThe profile begins with a quick overview of basic information such as where you’re from, where you...
Thanks to @WillReichard for posting this first in a group in which we both participate. This Technology Review story sent my brain into overdrive to try to work through all the implications of gesturing as a language and what it means not only for gamers but for everyday people in the near future. http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/26822/page1/ http://amplify.com/u/ho5b
Where Open Laptops Mean a Buzz of (Quiet) Activity... →
stoweboyd:
The Principal Laws Of Laptopistan!
I love this story re-posted by StoweBoyd. When I left newspapers for an online news site 2 1/2 years ago, I had visions of hanging out @ coffeehouses, where I’d work several days a week, becoming a participating citizen of Laptopistan. (Our site operated w/a virtual newsroom ). Alas, the reality of my life over the past 2 1/2...
Are bankruptcies or defaults by U.S. states, saddled with debt and hidden costs, the next looming subprime crisis, something of catastrophic consequence that can’t occur until it does because most analysts and observers rely on outdated assumptions and ignore the facts as they are. It’s a question posed in this NYTimes story....
Just finished Michael Lewis’ The Big Short and loved it. OK, so maybe it’s a little one-sided, but frankly it’s about time someone wrote this kind of book. It’s pretty clear that many folks on Wall Street didn’t know the CDOs and tranches of subprime mortgages that formed the mortgage bonds being sold at outrageous rates were ticking bombs. So what does that say about...
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Video: Roy Lichtenstein's 'Ohhh...Alright' breaks...
Hmmm … there are some people who have boatloads of money in this down economy. I just don’t know any of them. Don’t get me wrong. I love art, was raised by an artist. I love viewing and experiencing artwork. But $26 million for that Lichtenstein?! Wow!!!Amplify’d from news.google.comSee more at news.google.com See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/hi8z