October 2010
25 posts
This is a BIG Deal
From the NYT:
Reversing a longstanding policy, the federal government said on Friday that human and other genes should not be eligible for patents because they are part of nature. The new position could have a huge impact on medicine and on the biotechnology industry.
The new position was declared in a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Department of Justice late Friday in a case involving...
There is so much design inspiration on this site,... →
Steve Martin
nprfreshair:
“Be courteous, kind and forgiving. Be gentle and peaceful each day Be warm and human and grateful And have a good thing to say Be thoughtful and trustful and childlike Be witty and happy and wise Be honest and love all your neighbors Be obsequious, purple and clairvoyant Be pompous, obese and eat cactus Be dull and boring and omnipresent Criticize things you don’t know about Be...
I Want to Be Well
Everyone that knows me would not be surprised to find that I love the new Sufjan album, nor would it shock them that my initial favorite song is the one in which he drops the “f” word. But after wrestling with the lyrics and incessantly playing the song for a week, “I Want to Be Well” is lodged in my brain.
Sufjan is a rare (but thankfully less rare with each passing...
On Collecting
Andy Whitman draws my attention to this wonderful essay about holding on to jazz records, which applies to all art which has been popularized via mass production and easy access:
I, too, once felt the mad desire to own every jazz record ever made, and to have them all shelved in chronological order at arm’s length from my desk. Today I own just two racks, and whenever I acquire a new...
Shooting for the Sun
This article, about how the inventor of the Super Soaker is on the verge of inventing a revolutionary way to harness solar energy, is one of the best articles I’ve read in recent memory. I highly recommend you spend 10 minutes and read it.
“Lonnie’s using temperature differences to create pressure gradients,” says Paul Werbos, an energy expert and program director of the National Science...
“The church is an institution and it’s incredibly corrupt obviously, but that’s...”
– The Quietus | Features | A Quietus Interview | Adz And It Shall Be Given Unto You: Sufjan Stevens Interviewed (via Instapaper)
WatchFrightened Rabbit is never a bad choice.
“Basically, we’re tossing more than a quarter of all the food we grow,...”
– Seven Ways to Stop Wasting Food
Some people in my life know how much of a pet peeve this is to me (the wasting of food). It’s inevitable sometimes, but all too often it’s simply us choosing to ignore leftovers for other food, which in the long run means we waste a lot of food and money....
Regarding Who We Esteem
Today, as we celebrate this holiday (but not holy-day), let us think not towards a rosy picture of the past but of injustices that continue to occur across our land.
All Tohono O’odham are supposed to be US citizens, but citizenship comes with some extra requirements in Arizona—at least if you have brown skin and a tribal ID. The US government now requires documents for the O’odham to cross...
How Sufjan Passes His Time
After his experiences of recent years, I’m almost afraid to ask what’s next. Well, bizarrely, and quite endearingly, Stevens likes to spend his downtime knitting.
“Yes, I still knit,” he says, laughing. “I’m part of a knitting group of mostly women, but there are a couple of guys who crochet. It’s pretty casual, but I like to do hats and scarves. Occasionally I’ll try something harder, like a...
I saw Makuto Fujimara give a lecture last night. I bought his book Refractions.
I have a month or more of thoughts to go think now.
Why there is no competition with internet in the...
From the Scientific American:
A decade ago the U.S. ranked at or near the top of most studies of broadband price and performance. But that was before the FCC made a terrible mistake. In 2002 it reclassified broadband Internet service as an “information service” rather than a “telecommunications service.” In theory, this step implied that broadband was equivalent to a content provider (such as...
