Eurythmics

Murmuration

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

Two friends out in a canoe got to witness one of nature's more spectacular phenomena: a massive group of starlings (a "murmuration" for you Balderdash/Scrabble fiends) in fanciful flight above their heads.

Scientists aren't sure how flocking animals such as starlings and certain species of fish react in such amazing unison. As far as they can tell, the synchronization isn't based off a leader bird, but any individual's movement. Neighboring birds will take a cue, and the movement will ripple onward, creating the morphing shapes that grow and change in waves (rather than instantly across the flock). As for evolution's reason behind flocking behaviors, it comes down to strength in numbers: predators have a hard time focusing on an individual in a group of thousands.

via: Wylie Overstreet at GOOD

Kathleen Garrett.  Mackerel on a Table
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Ani DiFranco

Friday Book Club: The Mosquito Coast

by John Leonard, NY Times (1982)

Wanting to be God makes you crazy. In Paul Theroux's astonishing new novel, Allie Fox - ''the last American'' - tries to invent his own godhood. He will straighten rivers, make ice out of fire and turn volcanos into hibachis. The original God, that ''dead boy with the spinning top,'' did not, after all, ''finish the job.'' We are reading about the Passion of Allie Fox as witnessed and recorded by his 13-year-old son, Charlie, who is hypnotized and terrified.

How much do I like this book? Let me count the ways:

(1) As a text on fathers and sons, it is wonderful. The family is the first ''creation.'' To sons, fathers are automatically gods, not only because they have violent opinions on everything from aerosol cheese spread to pelicans, but especially when they test our faith by forcing us to climb trees or the ''shrouds'' of a banana freighter during a Caribbean storm or the inside plumbing of a huge ''magnification'' of the ''entrails and vitals'' of the human body. Gods, of course, insist that their sons fail.

(2) As a book about growing up to critical intelligence, it devastates. Charlie watches his father from the asparagus farms of Massachusetts to the spider jungles of Honduras. He sees a ''sorcerer'' create a garden out of hardware and destroy it out of pride. He will understand that his father invents ''for his own sake,'' for personal comfort, and that he needs his son's approval, which, ultimately, Charlie will refuse.

(3) As a book of characters, it is unexcelled since Dickens was in business. Allie really is a genius with his tools; and his opinions, however extreme, are persuasive until they hurt. Charlie, before and after he becomes Holden Caulfield, acquaints us with the dangers of love. His mother, who has no other name, is evoked in a series of her own stony one-liners -against the tide of Allie's monologues - that stab the heart. The rest of the Fox children, sniveling Jerry and the twin girls, do their narrative duty with an admirable lack of fuss, and so does everybody else, including the ''mosquitoes,'' in this soured dream.

(4) As literary exhibitionism, it is as magical as Allie. Mr. Theroux writes as well about thermodynamics as he does about Central American weather. His geographies of mind and space are equally compelling. If he mentions a scarecrow or a scavenger early on, we can be sure that each will appear later on, decisively symbolic. Out of English, Spanish, Creole, Pidgin and various Indian dialects, he fashions a dazzling patois full of such pertinent puns as ''nighted stays'' and ''Jove as Wetness. '' Yes, he is showing off; if we could do it, we'd s how off, too.

(5) As an adventure story of ''the first family,'' it scares the socks off the feet. Sure, Mr. Theroux is being ironic about ''Robinson Crusoe'' and ''Swiss Family Robinson,'' not to mention ''Lord of the Flies.'' Allie, in fact, reminds me more of Lord Jim, John Galt, Henderson the Rain-King, Ahab and one of the crazier Buendias in ''One Hundred Years of Solitude.'' (Garcia Marquez, remember, had ice in his tropics.) But it delivers the bloody goods: journey, fear, revelation, manhood, apocalypse.

(6) As parable, allegory, myth, cryptogram on human improbability and metaphysical binge, addressing itself to creation theory, the ages of Stone and Bronze, capitalism, imperialism, science and technology, the postindustrial complex and the hubris of art, ''The Mosquito Coast'' - alas -tends to sag somewhere around the Industrial Revolution. This is not because the ideas aren't interesting, but because Mr. Theroux doesn't trust his readers. He explains and underlines, insisting on God, Prometheus, Faust, Frankenstein, Parsifal, Dr. Strangelove, the latest genetic engineer and the plumber who never arrives to fix the septic tank of the modern mind. He won't let us guess, and he should have. He is a typical father.

(7) Also, it is very funny, unlike fathers. Enough numbers. I've forgotten to say what happens. The Swiss Family Fox decamps to Honduras. Its children, uneasy about the village their father buys and ''improves'' with such machines as Fat Boy - think of Moloch, and the atom bomb at Los Alamos, and Pandora's Box as a ''worm tub'' - these children hide in what is called the ''Acre,'' where they reinvent nakedness, religion, schools, money and secrets. Because they are ''in touch with the seasons,'' they will save their father before they betray him.

Their father, that perpetual motion machine who won't even eat bananas because they make a ''monkey'' out of you, that engineer of love, that would-be God who is picky about his food and his bedroll and his children, that Jeremiah who reviles radio, television, flashlights, formal education and Toyotas - where did he get so smart? - builds a pyramid and digs a hole. He will improve on creation; he experiences guilt; his nerve fails, and nevertheless he speechifies, which may be why the real world tears out his tongue. Only happy ''going against the current'' - surely this is German Romanticism and therefore suspect -he is scavenged. And the scarecrow, unsurprisingly, is Christ.

Fancy with the metaphysics, Mr. Theroux invents a resistance to his own clever dance. Specific with his family romance, he enthralls. Generous in his ''geothermal'' dig, he bores a hole in the head. Grinning, he made me cry. Sly, he makes me wonder why he himself left Massachusetts for England.

via:
Original article via the NY Times

 

Tatiana Plakhova, Complexity Graphics
via:
[ed. Many more  beautiful images.]

My Drunk Kitchen Special: Burning Man

Apple's Supply-Chain Secret? Hoard Lasers

by Adam Satariano and Peter Burrows, Businessweek

About five years ago, Apple design guru Jony Ive decided he wanted a new feature for the next MacBook: a small dot of green light above the screen, shining through the computer’s aluminum casing to indicate when its camera was on. The problem? It’s physically impossible to shine light through metal.

Ive called in a team of manufacturing and materials experts to figure out how to make the impossible possible, according to a former employee familiar with the development who requested anonymity to avoid irking Apple. The team discovered it could use a customized laser to poke holes in the aluminum small enough to be nearly invisible to the human eye but big enough to let light through.

Applying that solution at massive volume was a different matter. Apple needed lasers, and lots of them. The team of experts found a U.S. company that made laser equipment for microchip manufacturing which, after some tweaking, could do the job. Each machine typically goes for about $250,000. Apple convinced the seller to sign an exclusivity agreement and has since bought hundreds of them to make holes for the green lights that now shine on the company’s MacBook Airs, Trackpads, and wireless keyboards.

Most of Apple’s customers have probably never given that green light a second thought, but its creation speaks to a massive competitive advantage for Apple: Operations. This is the world of manufacturing, procurement, and logistics in which the new chief executive officer, Tim Cook, excelled, earning him the trust of Steve Jobs. According to more than a dozen interviews with former employees, executives at suppliers, and management experts familiar with the company’s operations, Apple has built a closed ecosystem where it exerts control over nearly every piece of the supply chain, from design to retail store. Because of its volume—and its occasional ruthlessness—Apple gets big discounts on parts, manufacturing capacity, and air freight. “Operations expertise is as big an asset for Apple as product innovation or marketing,” says Mike Fawkes, the former supply-chain chief at Hewlett-Packard and now a venture capitalist with VantagePoint Capital Partners. “They’ve taken operational excellence to a level never seen before.”

Read more: 
Illustration by Alex Eben Meyer

Pearl Jam

[ed.  Saturday Night Live Rehersals 1994.  Pretty ripping performance.]

Marriage Isn't Sacred

[ed.  I have no idea who this woman is or what she's famous for even though her name keeps popping up in the news from time to time.  But now it's clear:  she's one of America's most successful businesswomen - quite adept at manipulating the media and our celebrity obsession to make millions.  Awesome.   Not only that, but she's apparently very good at making people confront an unspoken truth about marriage, that it's entered into for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is opportunism.  In this case it's just the Madoff-level scale of manipulation that appears to have set everyone off.]

by Cord Jefferson, GOOD

So notorious layabout Kim Kardashian is getting a divorce. After just 72 days of marriage that started with a gaudy $10 million wedding, the most famous Kardashian sister is splitting with professional basketball player Kris Humphries, citing, of course, "irreconcilable differences."

Judging from the the public's guffawing, it seems like nobody is surprised by the breakup, especially not after reports claimed Kardashian made nearly $18 million auctioning off the media rights to her Big Day (a lump sum she protected with a rock-solid prenuptial agreement, of course). In retrospect, the Kim-Kris union appears to have been less a consecration of love and more an elaborate moneymaking scheme, a lucrative sideshow pawned off to suckers as true love. Now that it's all officially over, let's let Kardashian's loss serve as a lesson gained: Marriage isn't sacred.

For years now, conservatives (and some liberals) fighting against same-sex marriage have done so by defining it thusly: "Marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman." The act's sacrosanct nature was part and parcel with its heterosexual nature, meaning it couldn't be broadened to include the LGBT community because eliminating the man-woman imperative unravels the holiness of the whole thing. But what that definition assumes is that marriage is holy in the first place. What if it isn't?

If marriage is holy, Indiana woman Linda Wolfe, who married (and divorced) 23 times by 2009, should probably be beatified. Late actress Elizabeth Taylor was married eight times to seven different men in her 79 years—was each marriage holier than the last? In 2004, when Britney Spears married her friend, Jason Allen Alexander, for 55 hours, her record label later released a statement claiming that the whole thing had been "a joke." Neither Spears nor her momentary husband were persecuted or prosecuted for treating a wedding, something that's supposed to be sanctified, like some sort of carnival ride. Neither did anyone think to question why it's even legal for two drunk kids partying in Las Vegas, as Spears and Alexander had been, to enter into marriage. We don't even allow people to skydive in America without half a day of preparation and instruction; why are people allowed to get married on whims? Is skydiving as holy as marriage?

Read more:

Mark Brautigam, Wisconsin
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Current Events: Leaving the Euro Carries Massive Costs

by Don Melvin, AP

European leaders have struggled mightily to keep Greece in the eurozone, despite the drag that its economic weakness places on their growth. The reason is this: If Greece abandons the euro, the chaos it would wreak on the global economy can hardly be overstated.

A Greek exit from the euro would almost certainly cause the country to default completely on its debts. A bankrupt Greece would be unable to pay pensions and salaries, and there would be a run on banks, causing them to collapse as people lined up to withdraw euros before the currency changed to drachmas.

Greeks owing money in euros but being paid in drachmas — essentially, a huge currency devaluation — would find their debts suddenly too large to pay, and would go bankrupt themselves. In a country where street violence accompanies even minor civil servant demonstrations, that's a volatile mix.

And for any help, the only place Greece would be able to turn would be the International Monetary Fund, which is already one of its bailout creditors and would insist on even more austerity measures in return for rescue loans, bringing the entire equation full circle.

Beyond Greece, the consequences would be even more dire.

Rather than 50 percent losses on Greek bonds that the banks have already said they can handle, private creditors would see those bonds simply disappear. Eurozone countries, the European Central Bank and the IMF would also give up hope of getting back the money they lent Greece.

Above all, a messy default would trigger massive insurance payouts on those bonds. Because financial groups do not usually disclose how much they hold in sovereign debt, such as Greek bonds, global markets would be seized by a panic over who would collapse.

That would essentially be a repeat of what happened in 2008 after U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers failed — only worse.

The uncertainty would likely push other weak eurozone states like Italy and Spain from chaos into disaster. And failures that size would destroy the euro altogether.

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Pablo Picasso, portrait de Dora Maar, 1937
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Noel Gallagher

Current Events: E-Parasite Act

[ed.  Because copyright issues are killing the industry, right?  Um, no.  But at least there's this bit of good news.]

Protect IP Act Breaks the Internet from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

Powerful House Republicans and Democrats have taken two of the most unpopular bills in the Senate, combined them into one big bill, and amended them to make them even worse. Oh, and they gave the whole thing a new name — the E-PARASITE Act.

The bill combines S.978, opposed by 99% of OpenCongress users (19 in favor/1691 opposed), and S.968, opposed by 96% of users (13 in favor/287 opposed).

S.978 is the bill that would make it a felony to stream unauthorized copyrighted content over the web, with a penalty of up to five years in prison. As many internet rights groups have noted, the bill is so broadly written that it could put people in jail for things like performing cover songs on YouTube or having the wrong song in the background of your video. In the Senate version, illegal streaming of copyrighted content would have to consist of “10 or more public performances.” The new House versions revises that down to “1 or more public performances.” If this becomes law and you accidentally post copyrighted material to YouTube, you better figure it out quick and take it down before you get a single view.

S.968 is the “internet blacklist” bill that would give the Justice Department new power to block access to websites that they determine to be “dedicated to infringing activities.” Under the new House bill, the language describing which sites the government could shut down is expanded to any sites they think have “only limited purpose or use other than infringing.” Do you trust the government to determine that all the legal sharing on services like Dropbox and Rapidshare is of more than “limited” purpose?

The two Senate bills have already passed the Senate Judiciary Committee and are set for passage on the Senate floor. The new House bill is sponsored by the House Judiciary Committee Chairman, Rep. Lamar Smith [R, TX-21], and co-sponsored by the top Democrat on the committee, Rep. John Conyers [D, MI-14], and a hearing is already scheduled for November 16. Expect this to be given priority rush treatment.

We’ll have more on this bill soon. For now, check out this great video about the bill from Fight for the Future and Kirby Ferguson (btw, the video is about S.968, which intellectual property rights advocates say is less oddensive than the new House bill).

via:  OpenCongress

Landon, Charles Paul - Icarus and Daedalus
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Blueprint for a New American Home

by S. Mitra Kalita, WSJ

The new American home is taking shape.

Tough recent years are leaving their mark on home design, just as the housing-boom years sent square footage soaring and stamped a distinctive "McMansion" style on neighborhoods across the country. Big home builders, smaller architecture firms and even bathroom-fixture makers are adjusting to the shift toward more practical features and away from the aspirational.

The new styles are showing up in the relatively few new homes under construction as well as in the remodeling of older homes. More people are renovating as they stay put longer.

Disappearing are formal living and dining rooms, two-story foyers and second staircases. There are fewer places to stick grandfather clocks, wedding china and bowls of glass balls. Plenty of space is opening up for shoes and sports equipment, schoolwork and textbooks, wrapping paper and scrapbooking supplies. And maybe even an elevator shaft, just in case Grandma moves in or Mom and Dad stay for ages.

That doesn't necessarily mean smaller homes, though median square footage of 2,169 last year remained below the peak of 2,277 hit in 2007, according to 2010 census data.

"The spaces where everybody hangs out and that they use every day are the spaces that families actually want a little bit larger," says Tony Weremeichik, a principal at architectural-design firm Canin Associates in Orlando, Fla. "Buyers are asking, 'Why spend dollars on space I am not going to use?' There's no need for drama anymore."

"Value and need are driving the home purchase decisions, not the potential investment value," says Stephen Melman, an economist for the National Association of Home Builders.

So the soaring cathedral ceiling is out. And it's got company. Here are some fading features and the new designs that are replacing them:

Read more:
Getty Images (foyer); AJ Mast for The Wall Street Joural (2); iStockphoto (nook); Sandy Huffaker for The Wall Street Journal (2)

The Once and Future Way to Run

by Christopher McDougall, NY Times
[excerpt:]

It’s what Alberto Salazar, for a while the world’s dominant marathoner and now the coach of some of America’s top distance runners, describes in mythical-questing terms as the “one best way” — not the fastest, necessarily, but the best: an injury-proof, evolution-tested way to place one foot on the ground and pick it up before the other comes down. Left, right, repeat; that’s all running really is, a movement so natural that babies learn it the first time they rise to their feet. Yet sometime between childhood and adulthood — and between the dawn of our species and today — most of us lose the knack. (...)

Two years ago, in my book, “Born to Run,” I suggested we don’t need smarter shoes; we need smarter feet. I’d gone into Mexico’s Copper Canyon to learn from the Tarahumara Indians, who tackle 100-mile races well into their geriatric years. I was a broken-down, middle-aged, ex-runner when I arrived. Nine months later, I was transformed. After getting rid of my cushioned shoes and adopting the Tarahumaras’ whisper-soft stride, I was able to join them for a 50-mile race through the canyons. I haven’t lost a day of running to injury since. (...)
 
The only way to halt the running-injury epidemic, it seems, is to find a simple, foolproof method to relearn what the Tarahumara never forgot. A one best way to the one best way.

Earlier this year, I may have found it. I was leafing through the back of an out-of-print book, a collection of runners’ biographies called “The Five Kings of Distance,” when I came across a three-page essay from 1908 titled “W. G. George’s Own Account From the 100-Up Exercise.” According to legend, this single drill turned a 16-year-old with almost no running experience into the foremost racer of his day.

I read George’s words: “By its constant practice and regular use alone, I have myself established many records on the running path and won more amateur track-championships than any other individual.” And it was safe, George said: the 100-Up is “incapable of harm when practiced discreetly.”

Could it be that simple? That day, I began experimenting on myself.

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Little Dragon

via:  Click for slideshow.