Thursday, January 29, 2009
Article: Obama signs in his first law: equal pay rights in workplace
I love this man. And how on Earth was this not a law already? Barack Obama yesterday drew a clear line between his presidency and that of George Bush in his support for women's rights, when he signed an equal pay law as his first piece of legislation yesterday
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Google search disappoints sometimes.
It's true, sometimes I can't find what I'm looking for on Google search. For instance, after typing in "why are lime tostitos so addicting?" I get a list of people waxing poetic over lime Tostitos. When I modify my search to "scientific explanation for why lime tostitos are so addicting," I get more of the same.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Today: Change
Third party content on the White House site is protected by a Creative Commons License. The government is finally catching up. High hopes for this term. It's the little things that show.
From the site:
Copyright Notice
Pursuant to federal law, government-produced materials appearing on this site are not copyright protected. The United States Government may receive and hold copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise.
Except where otherwise noted, third-party content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Visitors to this website agree to grant a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free license to the rest of the world for their submissions to Whitehouse.gov under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
From the site:
Copyright Notice
Pursuant to federal law, government-produced materials appearing on this site are not copyright protected. The United States Government may receive and hold copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise.
Except where otherwise noted, third-party content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Visitors to this website agree to grant a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free license to the rest of the world for their submissions to Whitehouse.gov under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Article: The New Team
NY Times' profiles of the members of some of the key members of Obama's new team.
Makes me want to go back to school. I am especially excited for Rahm Emanuael, Dennis C. Blair, Susan E. Rice, and Steven Chu to take their posts. Curious to see how Arne Duncan, Shaun Donovan, Leon E. Panetta, Lawrence H. Summers and Hilda Solis will do.
Extremely excited that Christina Romer will be on the economics team! She taught at Cal!
Makes me want to go back to school. I am especially excited for Rahm Emanuael, Dennis C. Blair, Susan E. Rice, and Steven Chu to take their posts. Curious to see how Arne Duncan, Shaun Donovan, Leon E. Panetta, Lawrence H. Summers and Hilda Solis will do.
Extremely excited that Christina Romer will be on the economics team! She taught at Cal!
Article: An Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief
Michael Pollan's letter to the next President (at the time unknown) on food policy.
It is one of the larger paradoxes of our time that the very same food policies that have contributed to overnutrition in the first world are now contributing to undernutrition in the third.
in the New York Times.
It is one of the larger paradoxes of our time that the very same food policies that have contributed to overnutrition in the first world are now contributing to undernutrition in the third.
in the New York Times.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Article: The Itch
Fascinating article in the New Yorker about itching, phantom limbs, sensory perception and new treatments.
One morning, after she was awakened by her bedside alarm, she sat up and, she recalled, “this fluid came down my face, this greenish liquid.” She pressed a square of gauze to her head and went to see her doctor again. M. showed the doctor the fluid on the dressing. The doctor looked closely at the wound. She shined a light on it and in M.’s eyes. Then she walked out of the room and called an ambulance. Only in the Emergency Department at Massachusetts General Hospital, after the doctors started swarming, and one told her she needed surgery now, did M. learn what had happened. She had scratched through her skull during the night—and all the way into her brain.
...
Doctors have persisted in treating these conditions as nerve or tissue problems—engine failures, as it were. We get under the hood and remove this, replace that, snip some wires. Yet still the sensor keeps going off.
So we get frustrated. “There’s nothing wrong,” we’ll insist. And, the next thing you know, we’re treating the driver instead of the problem. We prescribe tranquillizers, antidepressants, escalating doses of narcotics. And the drugs often do make it easier for people to ignore the sensors, even if they are wired right into the brain. The mirror treatment, by contrast, targets the deranged sensor system itself. It essentially takes a misfiring sensor—a warning system functioning under an illusion that something is terribly wrong out in the world it monitors—and feeds it an alternate set of signals that calm it down. The new signals may even reset the sensor.
One morning, after she was awakened by her bedside alarm, she sat up and, she recalled, “this fluid came down my face, this greenish liquid.” She pressed a square of gauze to her head and went to see her doctor again. M. showed the doctor the fluid on the dressing. The doctor looked closely at the wound. She shined a light on it and in M.’s eyes. Then she walked out of the room and called an ambulance. Only in the Emergency Department at Massachusetts General Hospital, after the doctors started swarming, and one told her she needed surgery now, did M. learn what had happened. She had scratched through her skull during the night—and all the way into her brain.
...
Doctors have persisted in treating these conditions as nerve or tissue problems—engine failures, as it were. We get under the hood and remove this, replace that, snip some wires. Yet still the sensor keeps going off.
So we get frustrated. “There’s nothing wrong,” we’ll insist. And, the next thing you know, we’re treating the driver instead of the problem. We prescribe tranquillizers, antidepressants, escalating doses of narcotics. And the drugs often do make it easier for people to ignore the sensors, even if they are wired right into the brain. The mirror treatment, by contrast, targets the deranged sensor system itself. It essentially takes a misfiring sensor—a warning system functioning under an illusion that something is terribly wrong out in the world it monitors—and feeds it an alternate set of signals that calm it down. The new signals may even reset the sensor.
Artists: James Jean and Kenichi Hoshine
James Jean
Kindling: New Works on Paper and Canvas
Gallery I
Solo Exhibition
Jan 10 thru Feb 7, 2009
Opening Reception—Saturday, January 10th 6pm-9pm
Kenichi Hoshine
The Night Before
Solo Exhibition
Project Room
Jan 10 thru Feb 7, 2009
Opening Reception—Saturday, January 10th 6pm-9pm at
Jonathan Levine Gallery
529 West 20th Street, 9E
New York, NY 10011 ph:212-243-3822
Open Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm
Today: Dickinson
Emily Dickinson (1830–86). Complete Poems. 1924.
Part One: Life
CXXVI
THE BRAIN is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside.
The brain is deeper than the sea, 5
For, hold them, blue to blue,
The one the other will absorb,
As sponges, buckets do.
The brain is just the weight of God,
For, lift them, pound for pound, 10
And they will differ, if they do,
As syllable from sound.
Part One: Life
CXXVI
THE BRAIN is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside.
The brain is deeper than the sea, 5
For, hold them, blue to blue,
The one the other will absorb,
As sponges, buckets do.
The brain is just the weight of God,
For, lift them, pound for pound, 10
And they will differ, if they do,
As syllable from sound.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Art: Masstransiscope
On the Q train through Brooklyn by Bill Brand. I actually sort of loved the graffiti that covered this current (former) piece. There was an element of mystery to it; I always yearned to go behind the rail gates and see the full station space. The restored Masstransiscope is visually appealing as well but feels more...commercial and gratuitous.
Today: Geeky
So my whole theory about the Hobbesian world being driven by sex already exists! Hobbes + sex = Schopenhauer. Of course, I don't learn about this by actually reading Schopenhauer, but by reading this blogpost: The Philosophy of Batman: Schopenhauer Edition.
from my new favorite blog overthinkingit.com
from my new favorite blog overthinkingit.com
Friday, January 2, 2009
Today: Wishful
Don Draper makes me wish I were a cigarette.
Just started watching Mad Men and my eyes are in love with it. There is one shot in one of the first episodes of Peggy standing alone by her desk, rows of fluorescent lights hanging above her, empty desks surrounding her.
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