inkbluesky

penelope cruz's ankle tattoo

What would it be like to go to work everyday in a stack of red cubes that look like children's building blocks, Nicholas Lacey's London offices.

 Having the earth turn into a giant sauna might be a good thing, but then again probably not, Jet streams off track, may affect weather patterns

Seattle researchers have discovered that warming of the Earth's atmosphere seems to be shoving jet streams out of their normal tracks — a change that could expand deserts and profoundly affect the world's weather patterns.

Over the past 27 years, the high-speed air currents that steer storms to temperate zones in both hemispheres have shifted about one degree toward the poles, or about 70 miles, scientists estimate in a paper published today in the journal Science.

"This gives direct, observational evidence of massive atmospheric circulation changes," said University of Washington climate scientist Qiang Fu, the paper's lead author.

Some days I get the feeling that half the country sleep through their science classes in high school so some basic definitions are in order before the next story, What is science as opposed to beliefs. Science and the First Amendment

People ask me, Why pour so much energy into protecting science education? Why not fight for literacy generally or any of a thousand other educational issues? I have two answers. One is easy: I know about evolution, so it makes sense that I would work on what I know best. The second is harder to grasp. And that is that freedom of religion is the bedrock foundation of liberty in this country. If we allow certain special-interest religious groups to co-opt the public school science classroom, to use it as a vehicle for converting children to religious views their parents don't hold, if we allow them to spout outright lies about the nature and content of science, what do we really have left? If you can lie about science and get away with it, you can lie about anything.

Evolution is just the tip of the iceberg or, as the creationists put it, the leading edge of "the wedge." The wedge they are seeking to drive through the heart of American democracy. The lies about science are not limited to evolution. Every day more lies about science seep into public consciousness. Lies about stem cell biology, lies about global warming, about clean air and water, lies about sexuality, about conception and contraception, lies about the effects of hurricanes on metropolitan infrastructure.

The war on science is a war on democracy itself. And the special weapons and tactics are rhetorical.

Just for fun SketchSwap, draw a sketch, press submit and you get to see someone else's  sketch. There are some very clever people out there.

dreaming of blue boats

The Greener Guys

When Timberland, the outdoor clothing company, studied ways to reduce its carbon emissions four years ago, it weighed several options: building a wind farm in the Dominican Republic, buying power generated by renewable resources and setting up a vast bank of solar panels at one of its distribution centers in Ontario, Calif.

It chose to do all those things, but that was the easy part. When Jeffrey B. Swartz, Timberland's president and chief executive, considered how much carbon dioxide was produced in making leather for the company's famous boots…

snip

Not surprisingly, the biggest strides have been achieved by corporations with operations outside the United States. I.B.M. and DuPont, for example, have long had programs to curb their energy use. In doing so, they have managed to cut manufacturing costs while decreasing their emissions.

At DuPont, the savings from energy projects has totaled $2 billion over the last decade and a half. I.B.M. saved $115 million since 1998 by avoiding 1.3 million tons of carbon emissions, or the equivalent of taking 51,600 cars off the road, according to the climate change program at the World Wildlife Fund.

In regards to Timberland, kudos to them for doing so much for running a greener cleaner company, now if they could just shift some of their shoe/boot making jobs back to the U.S. Then there's that second part which I thought was important since we all often hear the argument that what's good for people and the planet is bad for business; apparently Dupont and I.B.M would disagree. - and speaking of some of the insane stuff in the media, where does Faux News find these nuts, Fox News analyst Jonathan Hoenig asserted that global warming was “bogus,”

It’s Hoenig that’s living in a dream land. Science Magazine analyzed 928 peer-reviewed scientific papers on global warming published between 1993 and 2003. Not a single one challenged the scientific consensus the earth’s temperature is rising due to human activity.

BlauGallery

This is a commercial site, but worth a visit for some creative inspiration if nothing else. As you can see from the partial screenshot there is a little of everything- graphic art, photography, fantasy-sci-fi. The illustration in the top center was done in Adobe Illustrator. I suffer from Illustrator skills envy to some degree so I was especially impressed with that particular work.

I found this at Techcrunch, Meet New (Random) Friends at Fo.rtuito.us

and unless you're looking for a chain of pen-pals I don't get it. It is not like sites where you set up a space and share stories, photos or film. Though maybe there is a need for that sought of thing. The site suggests that the point is that you wouldn't be choosing friends by their photo, but by the content of what they have to say. Certainly a virtuous goal to be sure.

Monica Bellucci expressive

Click on the link for a larger version. Some may find the graininess not ot their tatse, but to me it gives the photo a kind of nostalgic look. If the Italian director Fellini was making the film 8 1/2 today Monica would have been perfect for the part originally played by Claudia Cardinale. Belluci's face and hands are so expressive that she manages to be both open and mysterious at the same time. Another conundrum to find someone's openness and mysteriousness equally compelling. - " This sort of mysteriousness, which is always so becoming in a hero, threw a fresh grace in Catherine's imagination around his person and manners, and increased her anxiety to know more of him."
Northanger Abbey by Austen, Jane

Why people are so bad at predicting what will make them feel good

Real estate agents say you should buy the worst house in the toniest neighbourhood rather than the best house on a modest street.

But Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard University psychology professor, believes such a purchase is rarely a prescription for happiness. Before you sign that offer to purchase, consider how you'll feel coming home each day to a dump amidst the mansions.

"It will make you feel bad because the brain is a difference detector; almost everything that it senses, it senses as a comparison," he says in Toronto to talk about his book Stumbling on Happiness.

The capacity to imagine future happiness or unhappiness — called "affective forecasting" — is, Gilbert says, what distinguishes us from other animals.

As he puts it, "We don't have to actually have gall bladder surgery or lounge around on a Caribbean beach to know that one of these is better than another."

Gilbert has spent 15 years at Harvard's Social Cognition and Emotion laboratory investigating how people imagine what will make them happy, and why they so often get it wrong.

He has found that small pleasures like coming home to a house no worse than the neighbour's is more likely to yield long-term joy than inheriting $1 million, getting a big promotion or being elected president.

"It's the frequency and not the intensity of positive events in your life that leads to happiness, like comfortable shoes or single malt scotch," he says.

I've seen this a certain level. Someone is estatic with their new car, then after going without other things to keep up the payments or having to buy some new tires the happiness wears off. new home owners, people that have always rented are elated at first, then comes the maintenance, the grass cutting, roof repairs and property taxes. It does seem like whenever we do something that makes us happy that there is a trade off.

Knowing that absolutely, positively my vote is counted would provide me with a little more happiness, Will Your Vote Count in 2006?

How bad are the problems? Experts are calling them the most serious voting-machine flaws ever documented. Basically the trouble stems from the ease with which the machine's software can be altered. It requires only a few minutes of pre-election access to a Diebold machine to open the machine and insert a PC card that, if it contained malicious code, could reprogram the machine to give control to the violator. The machine could go dead on Election Day or throw votes to the wrong candidate. Worse, it's even possible for such ballot-tampering software to trick authorized technicians into thinking that everything is working fine, an illusion you couldn't pull off with pre-electronic systems.

Join a timeshare island tribe in Fiji?

Today's LA Times has a short article about Tribewanted, a project to recruit 5,000 people from around the world who want to live on an island with 100 other people for a couple of weeks and build a community.

The goal: to build a sustainable eco-community and keep at bay developers with dreams of massive hotel complexes. Memberships — Nomad ($220), Hunter ($440) and Warrior ($660) — entitle members to seven, 14 or 21 days on the palm-fringed 200-acre oasis, 100 at a time. Fees cover food, lodging and local airport transfer.
This is not for the five-star hotel crowd. The tribe will be roughing it, especially the early arrivals, who will have only tents and basic shower and toilet facilities.

I'm not sure this would make me happy, but I'd like to try it. Unfortunately for wage slaves like me its not in the cards right now.

halle berry as storm

There is a larger size at the jump. Mutants Do Epic Battle in X-Men: The Last Stand

One of the most popular film series based on Marvel Comics superheroes becomes a trilogy and raises some interesting real-world issues about diversity and "fitting in."

The X-Men world is filled with mutants: people whose genetic differences give them remarkable abilities. Magneto can control anything made of metal. Storm wields the power of the weather. Wolverine is the perfect warrior, able to inflict terrible damage with his metallic claws and heal his own wounds in seconds. Mystique can change her form to match … or outmatch … any opponent. Professor Xavier has telepathic powers to read minds and project his own thoughts.

Like the original Marvel Comic books, the films - "X-Men" in 2000 and "X-Men: United" three years later - are action-fantasies; but they also deal with prejudice as the X-men mutants are subjected to discrimination and violence. In "X-Men: The Last Stand" they are presented with a solution: a drug that can erase the genetic differences and make them 'normal:'

Hugh Jackman returns as Logan - 'Wolverine' - and the Australian actor believes it is easy to identify with the fictional superheroes' dilemma. "Everything in life is a double-edged sword. Having power is a double-edged sword. Every person's dream can become their nightmare, so even though the X-Men have powers that seem so cool, what sets this comic book and the movie franchise aside is that every one of them, because of their power, is alienated, separated and unhappy with it, too," he says.

Anna Paquin as teenager Rogue looks forward to a 'cure' for her power that kills anyone she touches; but there are no easy answers, according to older and wiser Storm, played by Halle Berry, who says the issue is coming to terms with our differences. "We are all different and at some point in our life we've had to deal with that. We're always forced to deal with who we are and 'is it okay to stay the way we are?' or do we need to change for a lover, a parent, a friend or our work environment? Is it okay to be who we are or do we somehow need to 'fix' ourselves or change ourselves or make ourselves better? Are we not good enough? We are always faced with that question and that's what "The Last Stand" is all about: do we change or do we not change? And is it our problem or is it somebody else's problem? Whose problem is it, really?"

M's Berry puts her finger on the dilemma that we struggle with as individuals and a society. Few people want to be thought of as mediocre wallflowers. On the other hand few people want to be so different that they're social outcasts. How far can we go in expressing our indiviuality before we make others suffer in some way because of our behavior. How much tolerance does society owe us. It seems like much of the daily social upheavals that we read about are people passing judgment on other and feeling threatened by others for some pretty shallow reasons. Maybe that's why so many relate to the mutants in X-Men, we may envy their powers, but we fell bad for them for having to bare the burden of being outcasts.

This guy tried to get a copy of any records that the NSA may have on him. The excerpt from his post is from a letter the NSA sent him in response, Getting My Records from the NSA 

This responds to your Freedom of Information Act (FOJA) request of 11 May 2006, which was received by this office on 12 May 2006, for a list of all phone records collected by the NSA from telecommunications companies under your home and cell phone number and any other information this Agency may maintain on you. Please refer to the case number at the top of the page when contacting us about your request. There are no assessable fees for this request. Your request has been processed under the provisions of the FOIA.

Because of the classified nature of the National Security Agency’s efforts to prevent and protect against terrorist attacks, the fact of whether or not any specific technique or method or activity is employed in that effort is exempt from release pursuant to the exemption provisions of the FOIA.

We can neither confirm nor deny the existence of records responsive to your request.  …..(continued at the link)

One of those things that is both funny and not funny at the same time.

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations — President James Madison