Loosely Assembled

Here is an interesting study about the positive benefits of caffeine on the liver, even reducing the risk of cirrhosis by up to 80% (if you drink 4 cups of coffee per day). The study was huge, following more than 125,000 people for an average of 14 years.

For some reason, my jailbroken iPhone has never played nice with iPhoto or iView Media Pro for downloading photos from the camera, I have just relied on command line scp or finder based afp sharing to get the images off my phone, and to delete them.

But today, I crossed a new threshold, I have shot more than 1000 photos with my iPhone, so a new directory appeared in my /var/mobile/Media/DCIM/ directory, it is 101APPLE/ which just starts the IMG_0001.jpg counting over again. I didn’t want the camera to become confused, so I deleted both 100APPLE & 101APPLE hoping the phone would just create a new directory. Well, it wasn’t so smooth, a new directory didn’t appear, and adding my own, and doing some chmod experiments also failed (new photos simply went off into space, not saved, not accessible).

I was almost ready to freak out. Then success!: just rm -r the whole DCIM/ directory, the phone will then handle the creation of a new structure just fine. phew!

also, just look at this cute thing:

- related post - musical choo choo

What does it mean that English, and other subject-verb-object languages, might have veered off-course from the dominant (hard wired? or simply ancient?) subject-object-verb model? A recent study shows that despite one’s native linguistic model, non-verbal communication will follow the subject-object-verb format, both gesturally, and diagrammatically. Basically, when people try to communicate with just their hands, they will create “sentences” following the “mice cheese eat” model even if their spoken language would follow a “mice eat cheese” format. The study seems to indicate that the English model is a variant of something more automatic. Why would this kind of change happen?

Could this “promotion” of the verb (and the subsequent “demotion” of the subject) be tied to a cultural deficiency in empathy, our imperialist tendencies or even the rise of individualism? The latter being specifically an effect of object/subject polarization. This same polarization can also be tied to differences between Eastern and Western perceptions of “subject in context” images. The Western description being along the lines of, “a fish in a pond”, while the Eastern version would be more like, “a pond with a fish”.

I guess this still leaves us short when it comes to unravelling Master Yoda’s verb-object-subject format, or whatever he does.

Fill this jacket with any kind of on hand insulation

Another piece from Yuri Suzuki

After noticing NYC’s new Ride the City site, I rediscovered bycycle.org for bike route mapping in Portland. To celebrate, I’ve created a little route from Pirate Island to Pirate Town, enjoy the summer by bike!

Designer/musician Yuri Suzuki’s “Sound Chaser” is a fantastically fun mixture of retro nostalgia wrapped in a sleek minimalist package. I’d be really curious to see the track pieces up close, to see how they connect. The other interesting thing that isn’t apparent form the video is that any “left” turns will be playing audio in reverse, enabling a possible “scratching” effect if the track bits were short enough.

Proposal: Yuri Suzuki + Christain Marclay + Tyco

He’s also got lots of other great work here

– related post — trains that don’t stop

If someone lives actively in the two cultures of their bilingual repertoire, they gain the added possibility of hosting divergent (not really independent) personalities. This doesn’t really come as much of a surprise to me though. I wrote a paper years ago showing dramatic personality shifts from relationship to relationship, interaction to interaction, proposing a model that would define individual names to each relationship a person had, a hybrid being comprised of both parties’ traits, needs and expectations.

If someone acts and feels and responds differently when they are in different situations, does that make them a different person? Is their interaction with you any less or more valid? At what threshold of difference would we declare them to be a fully different person ready for psychiatric help?

the link: How switching language can change your personality - being-human - 25 June 2008 - New Scientist

A new study points out the possibility that the universe might spiral out and out and out to much farther reaches than conventional models. The fractal nature of this model could also be thought of as some kind of optical illusion, or quantum mirroring effect, where a small handful of galaxies are replicated infinitely across space, relying on the existence of an observer.

Thinking through a way to fund a free web domain service for art projects. Maybe grant funded and limited to social practices kinds of work, or perhaps a partnership with a registrar/hosting service that acts like a gateway drug?

Or actually, imagine a speculation based service: you get free domains for a year, but the service actually owns the domain, at the end of the year, if the project is going well, you will pay a higher fee to buy the domain from the service.

The service watches stats/traffic on that domain and determines price based on that value.

It’s not even really the issue of paying for a new domain with each idea, it’s the hassle of the process. Maybe a prepaid bundle of domains would be a better way to think about this? Some service offers you domains by the dozen, for cheap, you prepay, and can create/get those dozen in any quantity at any time over the established time period. Like all pre pay models, part of the sustainability of this would be the assumption that not all prepaid domains would be claimed/used.

I simply think more artists need to be on the web, doing work that works well with the web.

see many more pics here

The driver of the art work Shared Propulsion Car was arrested by Toronto Police on October 25 on Queen Street West in Toronto. The revolutionary vehicle is an art work create by the just-announced winner of the 2007 Sobey Art Award Michel de Broin. It was made of a Buick Regal 1986 body stripped of its engine, suspension, transmission and electrical system and propels by the will to power of its passenger. The vehicle retains the illusion of the mass-produced luxury automobile, but is now reduced to a shell with a top speed of 15km per hour. This unique car needs no petrol, produce no toxic emission and is not responsible for the innocents people killed for petrol in the Middle East. Furthermore, in this individualist society, this convivial car was proposed as a good solution to bring people together and take over the street. Dean Baldwin an experience driver, took the steering wheel and with his fellows Elaine, Dave and Dan drove the car carefully on the street. The reaction of the public was enthusiasm, solidarity and sympathy. They drove 9 blocks (from Lisgar to Strachan) before being pulled over by the police.

The driver and passengers were left to wait for 30 minutes in the car while we suspect the cops tried to determine which exact law was broken. They settled on “operating an unsafe vehicle” and a tow-truck was called.

We believe there is noting in the law against this car, the problem is only in the perceptions: police can’t accept a car to be modified and to be moving without petrol. They gave the driver an order to appear before a judge on the 21 of November. The problem for the court will be to argue that the Shared Propulsion Car can be dangerous while we all know that the danger remains in the use of petrol car. It is rather the other car that are obviously dangerous. We believe the court is taking a big risk of bringing our car to spotlight. It is always striking when art become politic and win its right publicly. Our Plan is to tow the car to the courthouse, win our cause and then be able to drive the car freely on the street of Toronto.

watch the video

Some amazingly hilarious little paintings over at royalartlodge.com

coming off the back of a bike

Some people feel tiny, small and insignificant while working on projects that are so huge they require thousands of people (think Chaplin’s Modern Times).

Others feel empowered and proud to be part of something so much larger, they feel grand themselves by association (think WPA).

I’m wrestling with ways to think about microblogging and/or lightning talks (microconferences?) in light of these varying paradigms/responses. Should the individual data nuggets be considered autonomous? or instead as bricks that build up something tremendously massive? Could microblogging be seen as a step towards the ultimate datafication of everything into shuffleable bits? Is this the gateway to the singularity?

read the details about the floating ecopolis for ecological refugees

The question persists and indeed
grows whether the computer will make
it easier or harder for human beings to
know who they really are, to identify
their real problems, to respond more
fully to beauty, to place adequate value
on life, and to make their world safer
than it now is.

Norman Cousins – The Poet and the Computer, 1966