05.26.10
Posted in technology at 9:24 pm by site admin
Saw this article titled The Little Black Piezoelectric Dress. While the idea of embedding high tech features / functions in clothing has been discussed for some time, I think technology is approaching the point where it is becoming realistically feasible.
ON A WEDNESDAY night in February, one week after fashion’s biggest names descended on New York for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, techy designer Diana Eng’s models were strutting a different kind of stuff: the Twinkle Dress, for example. As a striking brunette model slinked by, her flirty frock, embroidered with LEDs, conductive silverized thread, and microphones, lit up in response to tunes from a quartet playing homemade digital instruments. Off the runway, the dress’s microphones can pick up sounds from the wearer’s voice: when she speaks, she lights up in true diva style.
So what happens when these tools are part of our second skin—when instead of carrying our technology, we inhabit it, the way we inhabit a T-shirt? According to Andy Clark, a professor of philosophy and the author of Supersizing the Mind, cognition does not evolve solely from within our epidermal cloak. He argues that the tools we use also help shape our minds.
Take the M-dress, designed by CuteCircuit to solve the problem of digging through a purse in a dark lounge to find a cell phone. With a SIM card embedded in the dress’s tag, a microphone and speaker in the sleeve, and gesture-recognition software, the wearer can answer calls by simply raising her hand to her ear. There is no external device and no button to press—the movement alone activates a sensor that answers and ends calls. Our bodies become part of the communication tool, mediated by little more than fabric. “When our relation to something nonbiological is that close, and we’re secure in our access to information, then we feel the information is part of our mind,” says Clark.
Permalink
Posted in Restaurants at 8:29 pm by site admin
Kinda cool. Check out this article about Congee.
Congee, for the uninitiated, is basically rice boiled with water until it has a porridge-like consistency. I know, it sounds pretty boring. But don’t stop reading yet. The genius is in the garnishes — which can be seafood, sausage, pork, duck, thousand-year-old egg and a kazillion other tidbits. Before digging in with a Chinese soup spoon, you dose your congee(known as jook in Cantonese) with chile paste, soy sauce, cilantro and peanuts.
I’m crazy for dishes in which every bite is slightly different, which is to say, don’t mix up your congee to make a homogenous mass. Those Chinatown congee were mostly seafood, brilliant because the cook adds the bits of squid, fish, shrimp to each bowl just before serving. The rice is so hot it cooks them right in the bowl, and as a result each element has a pure, bright flavor.
And heres a bit about preparation:
It’s laughably easy to make at home. Basically, it involves boiling one cup of rice to eight cups of water. (Use more if you like your porridge looser.) Remember to wash the rice well beforehand until there’s no floury residue. Some aficionados use brown rice or mixed whole grains. Find your preference. Some like the rice cooked until it’s broken down almost into a slurry. Others like to stop while the grains of rice are still intact. (That would be me.) Some like to build in a little flavor by cooking the rice with sliced fresh ginger or a few dried shiitake mushrooms.
Making congee is a great way to use up leftovers too small for anything else. If you have a few slivers of pork, half a chicken breast, shredded duck confit, a little ragù, a couple of shrimp left over from some other meal, put them in a congee. When I went to check out the new McCall’s Meat & Fish in Los Feliz, I picked up a small piece of Kurobuta pork loin, just under half a pound, that was sitting in the case. Stir-fried, it would be enough to garnish congee for four.
Permalink
Posted in technology at 8:45 am by site admin
Check out this BBC interview with Tim O’Reilly about the current state of the web.
“We’re at a point where we are making choices. Back in the mid-1980s, there was this robust developer ecosystem around the PC and Microsoft offered a kind of Faustian bargain: ‘Hey, let us take care of a lot of the hard stuff and it will be great.’
“But over time Microsoft put themselves in a stronger and stronger position and then they started to consume the ecosystem they had built. Early on, Microsoft was creating more value than they captured and then they started capturing more value than they created.
“I think we are seeing that right now with Google, where they built the company by sending traffic to sites and creating mechanisms for sites to get paid, and now more and more of their links point back to Google. And they are competing with developers and I think that is a real problem and their biggest weakness right now.
“The reason it’s crunch time is that we are going to be choosing what platform we use, whether it is Amazon or Apple or Google or whatever, and it seems to me that some of these guys are trying to build the same kind of ‘one ring to rule them all’ platform that Microsoft did. That is a reference to Tolkien; it means ‘We will own this thing’ – and that story doesn’t end well.”
Permalink
05.25.10
Posted in society at 9:58 pm by site admin
Check out this article about the “selling out” and productive versus degenerate culture.
Being a ghetto cracker, regardless of race, is the pursuit of a lifestyle of self-sabotage that undermines human dignity and despises the morality that undergirds civil society. Selling out one’s dignity and future to regressive moral standards is the way of the ghetto cracker.
The author’s intent is better explained at the end of the article:
There is, however, an alternative vision of black American culture that recognizes the dual values of moral and economic responsibility. The July issue of Black Enterprise magazine does not promote misleading racial dichotomies but celebrates living wisely. The pages are filled with articles about investment strategies, starting businesses, homeownership, and a profile of black astrophysicist Neil Tyson, who received a PhD from Columbia University in 1991. There are ads featuring the Harlem Book Fair, the American Black Film Festival, and Morehouse College. Hard work, pursuing education, the virtues of prudence, integrity, self-discipline, humility, and the advantages of marriage and family are all part of the fabric that supports the activities celebrated in this alternative expression of the black community.
This is not “selling out”; it is “buying in.” Buying in to the fact that authentic blackness is not being a ghetto cracker. Buying in embraces a worldview that understands our common human nature and what it means to live in a way that is truly fulfilling–a worldview that promotes dignity, work, marriage, family, and healthy community. The real sell-out is the one who urbanizes counterproductive moral values and behaviors. They are people like Russell Simons, Puff Daddy, 50 Cent, the Ying Yang Twins, and others who encourage minorities to adopt the attitudes of the Southern, redneck cracker culture of the past while claiming authentic blackness. Being a chocolate covered antebellum redneck of the past is not being “black”; it is simply “selling out” disguised as hip hop.
Permalink
05.24.10
Posted in health, society at 9:56 pm by site admin
Check out this article that talks about how people who work 10+ hours a day are much more likely to develop heart disease or have a heart attack than those that don’t. The study seemed to be a bit limited and did not factor in other possibly relevant factors. In any case, bottom line, don’t work so much. Having balance is good.
The study doesn’t say how, exactly, long hours at work might affect heart health. To try to pinpoint the effect of work time, Dr. Virtanen and her colleagues took a range of health factors into account in their analysis, including blood pressure, cholesterol levels, diet and exercise, and whether or not the participants smoked. They also factored in the workers’ rank and salary, since socioeconomic status has been linked to heart health.
In some ways, the people who worked overtime were healthier than those who worked just seven hours a day. They were less likely to drink heavily and smoke, for instance, and they got more exercise. On the other hand, they tended to sleep less and reported experiencing more stress, having more demanding jobs, and having less control over their work.
Permalink
Posted in Environment at 8:47 pm by site admin
Check out this article about the new trend to grow vegetables in your backyard upside-down.
The advantages of upside-down gardening are many: it saves space; there is no need for stakes or cages; it foils pests and fungus; there are fewer, if any, weeds; there is efficient delivery of water and nutrients thanks to gravity; and it allows for greater air circulation and sunlight exposure.
While there are skeptics, proponents say the proof is in the produce.
Tomato and jalapeño seedlings sprout from upside-down planters fashioned out of milk jugs and soda bottles that hang from the fence surrounding the Redmond, Wash., yard of Shawn Verrall, a Microsoft software tester who blogs about gardening at Cheapvegetablegardener.com. Mr. Verrall turned to upside-down gardening last summer as an experiment.
“I put one tomato plant in the ground and one upside down, and the one in the ground died,” he said. The other tomato did so well, he planted a jalapeño upside down, too, and it was more prolific than the one he had in the ground. “The plants seem to stay healthier upside down if you water them enough, and it’s a great way to go if you have limited space,” he said.
The article references briefly the idea of building your own.
In addition to plastic soda bottles, milk jugs and five-gallon buckets, upside-down planters can be made out of thick heavy-duty plastic trash bags, plastic reusable shopping totes, kitty litter containers, laundry hampers and even used tires. Web sites likeInstructables.com and UpsideDownTomatoPlant.com show how it can be done, and YouTube has several how-to videos. Variations include building a water reservoir either at the top or bottom of planters for irrigation, cutting several openings in the bottom and sides for planting several seedlings and lining the interior with landscape fabric or coconut fiber to help retain moisture.
Permalink
Posted in Religion/Philosophy at 8:15 am by site admin
Check out this article about determining what Jesus really did from the sometimes conflicting accounts / perspectives provided by the Gospels.? The mystery behind an important religious figure like Jesus remains an issue of important discussion, even 2000 years later.
Belief remains a bounce, faith a leap. Still, the appetite for historical study of the New Testament remains a publishing constant and a popular craze. Book after book—this year, ten in one month alone—appears, seeking the Truth. Paul Johnson has a sound believer’s life, “Jesus: A Biography from a Believer,” while Paul Verhoeven, the director of “Basic Instinct,” has a new skeptical-scholar’s book. Verhoeven turns out to be a member of the Jesus Seminar, a collection mostly of scholars devoted to reconstructing the historical Jesus, and much of what he has to say is shrewd and learned. (An odd pull persists between box-office and Biblical study. A few years ago, another big action-film director and producer, James Cameron, put himself at the center of a documentary called “The Lost Tomb of Jesus.”)
Permalink
05.21.10
Posted in Evolution, technology at 7:47 am by site admin
Check out this article talking about the evolution of technology:
Brian Arthur of the Santa Fe Institute believes that Technology evolves over time: “machines started as disparate pieces of seemingly unconnected technologies, but like humans, they also have an origin and a process of evolution.” He is arguably the first person to tackle the question of the origin and evolution of machines, eloquently laid out in his book, The Nature of Technology. Evolution is an increase in maturation and complexity, and does not have to necessarily follow the path of Darwinian evolution, which is modification by descent – nature introduces small variations in an existing form over a long period of time. Granted the results are staggering, but the journey, such as that of the ape’s evolution into mankind, can take millions of years.
Permalink
05.19.10
Posted in Buddhism, Religion/Philosophy at 11:05 pm by site admin
Check out this article Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche discussing the difference between Buddhism the religion and Buddhism the philosophy and why the Buddha wasn’t a Buddhist.
If we want to be free of the pain we inflict on ourselves and each other — in other words, if we want to be happy — then we have to learn to think for ourselves. We need to be responsible for ourselves and examine anything that claims to be the truth. That’s what the Buddha did long ago to free himself from his own discontent and persistent doubts about what he heard, day after day, from his parents, teachers, and the palace priests.
If you search “world religions,” you’ll find “Buddhism” on every list. Does that make Buddhism a religion? Does it mean that because I’m a Buddhist, I’m “religious”? I can argue that Buddhism is a science of mind — a way of exploring how we think, feel and act that leads us to profound truths about who we are. I can also say that Buddhism is a philosophy of life — a way to live that maximizes our chances for happiness.
Personally, I would have to agree with the author. Some of core Buddhist beliefs, such as the Eight Fold Path and the Four Noble Truths, are an analysis of mental thoughts processes in the context of life and do not require any leap of faith by the practitioner. If you are interested in learning more check out these links: Four Noble Truths and The Eight Fold Path
Permalink
05.18.10
Posted in Environment, society at 11:04 pm by site admin
Check out this article talking about the presence of carcinogens all around us in today’s technologically modern era.
Some 41 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, and they include Democrats and Republicans alike. Protecting ourselves and our children from toxins should be an effort that both parties can get behind — if enough members of Congress are willing to put the public interest ahead of corporate interests.
One reason for concern is that some cancers are becoming more common, particularly in children. We don’t know why that is, but the proliferation of chemicals in water, foods, air and household products is widely suspected as a factor. I’m hoping the President’s Cancer Panel report will shine a stronger spotlight on environmental causes of health problems — not only cancer, but perhaps also diabetes, obesity and autism.
Permalink
05.10.10
Posted in technology at 9:55 pm by site admin
Check out this post about a young designer creating a flower that booms using LEDs.
Permalink
