bookmarks « WordPress.com Tag Feed

Libeskind's Machines

MadNihilist — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:09:34 +0000

By the mid-1980s, the reputation of Daniel Libeskind as a leading avant-garde figure in architecture was rapidly rising. This was based on his work as a teacher—he was director and principal teacher at the Cranbrook Academy School of Architecture from 1978 to 1985, establishing it as one of the most creative schools in the world—and on the publication and exhibition of a number of projects that, on their face, seemed to have little to do with architecture. Notable among these were his Memory Machine, Reading Machine, and Writing Machine.

Elaborately constructed and enigmatic in purpose, Libeskind’s machines are striking and sumptuous manifestations of ideas that were, at the time he made them, of obsessive interest to academics, critics and avant-gardists in architecture and out. Principal among these was the idea that architecture must be read, that is, understood, in the same way as a written text.

The chief structural features of written language, grammar and syntax, which organize the ways words are put together into a coherent, meaningful ensemble, clearly relate to architecture. Indeed, so traditional a modernist as Mies van der Rohe was fond of speaking of architecture’s ‘grammar’ and declaring that an understanding of it was essential to design. However, when it comes to the meaning of word constructions—texts—it was believed, by the 70s and 80s, by leading linguistic and literary theorists, that written texts do not have a fixed meaning established by what its author intended to say, but rather multiple meanings that readers have to interpret for themselves by using various cultural codes and references. Peter Eisenman and the circle of architects and critics gathered around him, applied this to architecture, with the consequence that the ‘meaning’ of architecture—symbolically and in terms of human purposes—was in their view not to be found in either the architects’ or their clients’ intentions. In short, form does not follow any a priori function but has autonomous existence that must, in the end, be ‘read’ on its own terms. In short, the meaning of architecture is to be found only in architecture itself.

This is a radical position that has not had an impact on most architects who, like it or not, must follow their clients’, if not their own, desires and intentions. However, it is possible to imagine that the idea of architecture’s autonomy liberated architects to design ever more idiosyncratically expressive forms having little to do with the client-programmed spaces wrapped by them. What began as a radical concept affecting the very core of architecture, is compromised, we might say reduced, to commercially marketable and client-acceptable styles—a fate much the same as idealistic modernism suffered in its time.

(…)

Exportar automáticamente marcadores - Firefox 3

stadistikos — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:10:02 +0000

A diferencia de Firefox 2 en el 3 ya no se guerdan dentro del archivo Bookmarks, ahora lo hace en la base de datos SQLite (places.sqlite).

Se puede hacer que Firefox exporte automáticamente los marcadores a bookmarks.html.

En la barra de direcciones de Firefox 3, escribe: about:config (aceptar en ¡Tendré cuidado, lo prometo!)
En el campo Filtro, escribe autoexport
Hacer doble clic en la línea que aparezca “browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML” para que pase a true.

Ahora ya esta en un archivo bookmarks.html (buscarlo en C:\Documents and Settings\tu_nombre_de_usuario).

Daily Bookmarks 11/25/2009

Christy Tucker — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:30:04 +0000

Why you want to use scenarios in your elearning » Making Change

A great slideshow showing (not just explaining!) the value of scenarios to change behavior in e-learning

tags: instructionaldesign, scenarios, e-learning
Learning Visions: Accidental Instructional Designers #dl09

Notes on a DevLearn session on how people got into instructional design and what they feel are the important skills. Out of 25+ IDs, only 2 had advanced degrees in ID.

tags: instructionaldesign, career

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The Architect as Totalitarian

Maurice — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:14:24 +0000

The Architect as Totalitarian: Le Corbusier’s baleful influence (T. Dalrymple, The City Journal)

Le Corbusier was to architecture what Pol Pot was to social reform. In one sense, he had less excuse for his activities than Pol Pot: for unlike the Cambodian, he possessed great talent, even genius. Unfortunately, he turned his gifts to destructive ends, and it is no coincidence that he willingly served both Stalin and Vichy. Like Pol Pot, he wanted to start from Year Zero: before me, nothing; after me, everything. By their very presence, the raw-concrete-clad rectangular towers that obsessed him canceled out centuries of architecture. Hardly any town or city in Britain (to take just one nation) has not had its composition wrecked by architects and planners inspired by his ideas.

Writings about Le Corbusier often begin with an encomium to his importance, something like: “He was the most important architect of the twentieth century.” Friend and foe would agree with this judgment, but importance is, of course, morally and aesthetically ambiguous. After all, Lenin was one of the most important politicians of the twentieth century, but it was his influence on history, not his merits, that made him so: likewise Le Corbusier. Yet just as Lenin was revered long after his monstrosity should have been obvious to all, so Le Corbusier continues to be revered.

[...]

Le Corbusier managed to communicate this elitist attitude to his followers, apologists, and hierophants. Here, for example, is a passage from a book about him by the architect Stephen Gardiner:

Le Corbusier remains, for many people, an enigma. Probably the chief [reason] is the vastness of architecture, for this means that it is an art that is difficult to comprehend. . . . And, while buildings are large, cities are even larger: here, before us, is an immensely elaborate patchwork threaded with a multiplicity of strands that lead in from all directions. At first it seems quite impossible to see a clear picture where there is, in fact, order, shape and continuity: all we see is a jumble. Yet it is at this point that one may make the discovery that the pattern is not possible to follow because a crucial piece of the jigsaw is missing. . . . In the twentieth century, Le Corbusier provides it.

__________________________________________________________

[Read the complete article here]

Bookmarks

kotirovkivalyut — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:53:56 +0000

Daily Bookmarks 11/24/2009

Christy Tucker — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:30:04 +0000

Bunchberry & Fern: Learning Styles: fable-ous and tragic

Long post on learning styles, the controversies, and why we keep talking about them even when the research isn’t solid

tags: learningstyles, research
My conversation with academics

A 2007 post from the Learning Circuits blog about different views of the value of theories, research, and results in academia and corporate environments. Definitely takes the anti-academic POV. I like Mitch Owen’s response in the comments: “Effective work is always blended.. theory and application.. “

tags: instructionaldesign, education, research, theory

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Warhol Inc.

MadNihilist — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:55:26 +0000

Warhol Inc.

Two decades after the artist’s death, the Andy Warhol brand is stronger than ever, as collectors continue to pay top prices for his work, curators study obscure aspects of his career, and consumers snap up products—from candy to condoms—plastered with his imagery
by Eileen Kinsella

When the Campbell Soup Company wanted to pay tribute to Andy Warhol—the Pop artist who single-handedly transformed the brand’s red and white label into a symbol of wealth and power—the company offered a series of limited-edition tomato soup cans with colored labels based on the artist’s silkscreen combinations: green and red, pink and orange, aqua and indigo, gold and yellow.

The line was unveiled in 2004 at the western Pennsylvania and Ohio stores of the Giant Eagle supermarket chain. Customers who bought the four-packs, priced at $2 a pack, were also entitled to purchase a limited-edition set of four Warhol Campbell’s soup can magnets and, by showing their Giant Eagle Advantage cards, could get a dollar discount off the admission fee to the Andy Warhol Museum in the artist’s native Pittsburgh.

Campbell’s director of brand communications, John Faulkner, told ARTnews that the company has, ever since, fielded calls from all over the United States, as well as Canada and Europe, from buyers who wanted to get their hands on the Warhol soup cans. However, under the terms of the agreement, the promotion was limited to the participating stores.

Then, in 2006 Simon Doonan, creative director of Barneys New York, the luxury department store, incorporated nearly identical limited-edition Warhol soup cans (the labels were printed on higher-quality paper) into the store’s holiday display, entitled “Happy Andy War-Holidays!”

Doonan told ARTnews that more than 30,000 of those cans were sold, priced at $12 each, or $48 for the four-pack. Demand for the cans actually “cannibalized” the store’s high-end gift business that year, Doonan says. “At the end of the day, all these high-flying people looked for a bargain. Andy would have loved that. Instead of the $1,200 objet d’art or $400 vase, they went for the Warhol cans because it felt cool.”

At around the same time as the Barneys promotion, the highest auction price ever paid for a Warhol Campbell’s soup can painting was realized at Christie’s New York, when a bidder paid $11.8 million for the 1962 Small Torn Campbell’s Soup Can (Pepper Pot) in May 2006.

Did Barneys buyers know that the same cans had previously been offered at rural supermarkets for a fraction of the price? Would they have cared? How could two nearly identical items be in such demand at such wildly divergent prices? “People responded in both high and low culture,” says Michael Hermann, director of licensing at the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in New York.

“If you’re going to study Warhol, it is always about high and low,” says Tom Sokolowski, director of the Andy Warhol Museum. “He was a working-class kid during the Depression who lived in a very stratified city. He saw what the ‘haves’ had, and he wanted that so much—to be able to decide who was real and who was the poseur. He finally became the one who told the world how to become cool.”

(…)

Best Tacos in Vallarta

memorycardfull — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:44:27 +0000

I’ve compiled this list after extensive and exhaustive taco cart research to let you know that there are only three taco carts in Vallarta worth trying. They are bomb. I kept it simple with each nominee representing a different kind of taco.

This list only covers the main tourist drag from Col. Emiliano Zapata in the south to Wal-Mart at the north end. So don’t get offended if I didn’t mention your favorite Pitillal tacos (Mr. Memo’s?). I’m not even sure if Nuevo Vallarta has a taco truck within its limits.

I definitely appreciate more recommendations, so if you got the inside scoop on something new, or old, leave a comment. Just a note, all of the photos were taken with my full-frame, 32.5-megapixel camera phone. The lens is a Carl Zeiss and it shoots HD video. Oh, you didn’t know?

These carts all have two things in common: fresh ingredients and cheap. The ladder is not so hard to find among taco carts but the freshness and quality of ingredients is what turns me off, or on, to a lot of them and in particular to these three.

Tacos de Pescado/Camarón – Marisma

Location – Colonia Emiliano Zapata on Calle Naranjo in between Calle Basilio Badillo and Calle Venustiano Carranza

Cost – About 12-14 pesos a taco

Hours – 10am-4pm daily

Tacos de Asada – I really should know the name. I’ve eaten their many many many times and never once asked or heard what it was called. But I’ve never had to. It’s not like it’s going anywhere. (They might not even have a name)

Location – Col. Emiliano Zapata on Calle Naranjo in between Calle Venustiano Carranza and Calle Lázaro Cárdenas.

Cost – About 8 pesos

Hours – 8:30pm-ish till 2am-ish

Tacos Al Pastor – El Carboncito

Location – Col. 5 de Diciembre on Calle Honduras near Avenida Mexico (down the street from the Pemex)

Cost – About 8 pesos

Hours: 8:30pm-ish – 2am-ish

Delicious Tags - Twitter, and The Back Burner

Jon Aston — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:25:21 +0000

I’m a long-time Delicious.com user.

For anyone not familiar with it, Delicious is a “social bookmarking” site that stores your bookmarks on the web – which makes them accessible from anywhere with internet access. It’s “social” because anyone can see my public bookmarks, just as I can see theirs. You can also see what tags they used to describe the content they’re bookmarking, who and how many people have bookmarked a given web page, and more… all of which can lend a measure of credibility to information sources, and can help you spot trends.

Through the magic of RSS, Delicious also makes it easy to subscribe to bookmarks by user and/or tag, which can be pretty darned handy. For example, I recently subscribed to Chris Brogan’s “CaseStudy” tag… so every time Chris bookmarks a Case Study he finds useful… I will know about it. I’m practically hard-wired to the guy’s ginormous brain! How cool is that? You have to love the social web!

[If you're reading this and don't already know who Chris Brogan is... I like to think of him as the Santa Claus of Social Media. Check out @ChrisBrogan and ChrisBrogan.com.]

I suspect I am a fairly typical Delicious user. I bookmark tons of stuff on Delicious — more often than not — for some kind of ambiguous, unknown, unpredicted “future reference”. When tagging, I try to be as descriptive as possible, while attempting to predict what keywords I will be searching for later on. Over time, my tagging has grown a little sloppy (Typos, changes in the way I tag certain phrases, etc). I’ll get around to cleaning it all up one day. No. Really.

Anyway, to get to the point, my tagging habits have been changing lately, as I continue to strive to become more efficient and more productive. I thought some of you might be interested in the new methods I’ve developed for myself in the process:

Tagging with twitter names: Whether it’s the author of original content, someone I follow on twitter who was mentioned in an article, or the generous tweep who shared the link… I tend to connect good information to people. If they’ve written, inspired or shared good information… they’re bound to do so again.
The Back Burner: Several of my more recent Delicious tags are short-form names for projects I have on the back burner, or am preparing to start at some point in in the not-too-distant future. Unfortunately, tags like “tp360″ “teej” and “s101″ are pretty much meaningless to anyone who might happen to be browsing or searching my bookmarks (sorry!), but they will be invaluable to me when I get to the stage of organizing/planning the project in question.

If you’re a Delicious user, I would love to learn about your tagging habits, or how they are evolving. Please drop me a comment below.

Context! What I'm working on today

niinka — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:03:34 +0000

Half of the mini-bookmarks are complete!!

Wendi — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 04:00:37 +0000

I’ve officially completed 15 of the 30 mini-bookmarks!! YEA!! {bowing to applause} “Thank you!! Thank you!!”

Here’s a pic of 2-the front and the back!! Gotta get ‘em posted here AND at www.thestitchersvillage.com for my bookmark class homework.

Nicolas Sarkozy provokes French left by honouring Albert Camus

MadNihilist — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:44:45 +0000

Nicolas Sarkozy provokes French left by honouring Albert Camus

French intellectuals have heaped scorn on a proposal by Nicolas Sarkozy to bestow the country’s greatest posthumous honour upon the writer Albert Camus, accusing the rightwing president of trying to cash in on the thinker’s popularity with little respect for his politics or personality.

Sarkozy said in Brussels last week that he thought it would be an “extraordinary symbol” to transfer the Algerian-born author’s remains to the Panthéon, the resting place for heroes of France, on the 50th anniversary of his death in January.

“I thought it would be a particularly pertinent choice,” he told journalists, while cautioning that no decision had yet been taken. “[It is] a project which is extraordinarily close to my heart.” An Élysée adviser, Georges-Marc Benamou, told journalists last month that Camus’s “non-conformism in relation to France’s elites” appealed to the president, the son of a Hungarian immigrant who prides himself on not having come from the conventional politician’s background.

But the idea of a rightwing leader often accused of authoritarian tendencies and anti-intellectualism celebrating the life of a man who made a career out of political resistance and literary endeavour has outraged many Camus experts.

They suspect Sarkozy is using a golden opportunity to bask in the reflected glory of a charismatic hero, whose ideas are being feted by the mainstream half a century after he died in a car crash. (…)

(Hat tip: Keith Hart)

_______________________

Photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson

When simplicity rules!

zee — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:30:22 +0000

Another reason why I love Chrome (by Google) so much: the existence of Bookmark Manager – I can import/export my bookmarks effortlessly!

Earlier, I actually Googled for “Chrome bookmarks location” and got into a jungle of confusion. Seriously, why would you want to look for the location if you really cannot locate it? The bookmarks on Chrome are actually almost non-existent on your hard drive. Seriously.

The people at Google has made our lives easier by giving us Chrome, so use it!

You either do a Ctrl+Shift+B (go to 2. right after) or if you really don’t know what those addition is about, follow these steps:

1. Click on the wrench-icon on your Chrome (this icon is on the top right corner, just sitting below the X where you close your Chrome off)
2. The Bookmark Manager window will pop-up
3. Click on the Tools and choose Export Bookmarks (or Import Bookmarks, which ever suits you heh)

You should be able to achieve whatever you wish to achieve when you did the search to “Chrome bookmark location” earlier. Because, I did!

Don’t make your life harder, it is meant to be simple. SRSLY!

Bookmarks Σελιδοδείκτες

Χαράλαμπος Γιαννακόπουλος — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 16:52:30 +0000

Η φύση απεχθάνεται το κενό (και το κενό απεχθάνεται τον Γιώργο Τσακνιά, όπως γνωρίζουμε κατόπιν δικής του ομολογίας στην πρώτη σελίδα της Bookpress). Γι’ αυτόν τον λόγο όσο περιορίζεται ο αριθμός και ο όγκος και πέφτει, σε κάποιες περιπτώσεις, η ποιότητα των εβδομαδιαίων ένθετων για το βιβλίο που κυκλοφορούν με τις ημερήσιες εφημερίδες τόσο αυξάνεται η ανάγκη της φύσης για νέου τύπου ανάλογα έντυπα. Το ίδιο ακριβώς συμβαίνει και με τις ανάγκες των αναγνωστών και των πάσης κατηγορίας βιβλιοφίλων.

Αυτή την ανάγκη, ενός αξιανάγνωστου εβδομαδιαίου περιοδικού για το βιβλίο, έρχεται τώρα να καλύψει ένα νέο έντυπο που έχει το όνομα Bookmarks. Είναι το πρώτο εβδομαδιαίο free press περιοδικό για το βιβλίο και πρόκειται να κυκλοφορήσει την Τετάρτη 25 Νοεμβρίου, και στη συνέχεια κάθε Τετάρτη, στα βιβλιοπωλεία όλης της Ελλάδας αλλά και σε επιλεγμένα δισκοπωλεία και café.

Διαβάζουμε στο δελτίο τύπου: «Με συνολικό μηνιαίο τιράζ 20.000 αντιτύπων, το Bookmarks θα αποτελεί απαραίτητο εργαλείο ενημέρωσης του αναγνωστικού κοινού. Με φρέσκο σχεδιασμό και 48 σελίδες εξ ολοκλήρου αφιερωμένες στο βιβλίο, θα συμπεριλαμβάνει κριτικές, συνεντεύξεις, αφιερώματα και πρωτότυπες στήλες γραμμένες από νέους ανθρώπους αλλά και αναγνωρισμένους συνεργάτες. Ελληνική, μεταφρασμένη (αλλά και ξενόγλωσση) λογοτεχνία, συνεντεύξεις, άρθρα, εκδηλώσεις, ποίηση, κόμικ, παιδικό βιβλίο. Επίσης, θα συμπεριλαμβάνεται εβδομαδιαίο δελτίο με όλες τις νέες κυκλοφορίες από την ΒΙΒΛΙΟΝΕΤ».

Το Ημερολόγιο Ανάγνωσης με τη μορφή περίπου που έχει ως blog, με τα καθημερινά του διαβάσματα δηλαδή, τις λίστες βιβλίων και ό,τι άλλο υποπίπτει στην αντίληψή του, θα βρίσκεται στο εξής και στις σελίδες του Bookmarks και στο διαδίκτυο.

Από Τετάρτη 25 Νοεμβρίου, λοιπόν, Αικατερίνης της Μεγαλομάρτυρος, και κάθε Τετάρτη στο εξής (ανεξαρτήτως εορτολογίου) το Bookmarks μπαίνει στη ζωή μας. Για να δούμε…

We love le books too! :)

upasnakakroo — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:41:04 +0000

PS: The one thing that keeps us away from growth is when we keep ourselves away from books. I intently believe in this. And for that reason, I believe books are commodities which have to be available anywhere, anytime. You’d say I should probably talk about Kindle, but I say it’s a different world when you read real books- which flesh,and paper which you touch. And this posts exists to talk about the amazing thought of getting ‘em books available anywhere to anyone.

Once upon a time on this unruly July day, I decided to share and “give”. I’m not much of a gift person to my friends- infact half the time I am late or confused, and most of my presents to date have been hand written letters or postcards. Old fashioned, one may assume. On my “give” day however, I noticed that the recipient was a mere 9000 miles (as per the ticket, I’m still pretty much Kms.) away. Now, that is a lot of away I needed to conquer to give. For once (after a pleasant experience on Amazon UK) I bought a book (that’s all I could think of clearly) and sent my friend a gift- for the first time. We all know it’s a great feeling and blah and blah.

Several moons later, when I had been mesmerized by the discussion of this one playwright, I decided to “give” a book to myself. I was pretty much bummed by the fact that Amazon cleverly had decided not to have an India site- I really want to understand why! – and then I decided to look for Indian book shops- online.

As I put it on Twitter (the question), I got suggested several. And several online book stores started following me immediately. The typical thing I do is to check out the follower, which is how I first saw Le Books. For one, it’s a great looking site- albeit it takes time to load (which I haven’t quite understood the reason for). It ‘looks’ like a book site too. The design, and the colours are book-like, and warm, not stark. And it doesn’t look like a half baked effort, which is what most “online buying” sites- especially Indian look like.

That initial “wow” element was only made better as I was able to select, order and pay for a book all in a matter of 5-10 minutes- which is such a relief. But I guess the best part was I was sent emails immediately afterwards, and kept in the loop till I received my book. The books were especially well packed, and had a delightful bookmark. It immediately appealed to the “I love old books” person in me. Infact, looking at the way the book was sent, I decided my next “give” event, was also going to be through lebooks. I sent in a birthday gift to a friend who’s into books and notes just like me, and once she got the book, I got the loveliest message back. It was a great feeling, I say, oh and blah and blah.

But of course, I also have some recommendations for them- one to increase the books they stock- I have sometimes not found the book I was looking for. And if possible, stock videos too? I find myself itching for some videos and there is no decent place to get them.

You could tell me to get off my backside and go enter a “real” shop, hey but on an everyday basis, cravings for books and the written word happen within office hours, and if I were to have the energy to fight Delhi traffic and then go shop, I’d be superwoman (not that I act like one already ). The convenience of a one stop shop off the net is unparalleled especially when they are good people who write to you diligently, and have all the attention for details.

Oh and if word of mouth publicity does any good, then I strongly recommend this site.

The Letters of T S Eliot: review

MadNihilist — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 09:35:38 +0000

The Letters of T S Eliot: review

“Practically, one crucifies oneself and entertains drawing rooms and lounges.” This sentence by T S Eliot on the reception of his extraordinary, agonised poem, The Waste Land (1922), is a thrilling moment in the long-awaited second volume of his letters. It rings like a line from one of his earlier poems, in which suffering figures suddenly see themselves in the absurd light of polite society. “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,” rued Eliot’s alter ego J Alfred Prufrock in 1917. Eight years later, he might have added: “and headed notepaper”.

The first volume of Eliot’s letters, which covered the period from early youth up to both “Prufrock” and The Waste Land, appeared 21 years ago. It was edited, as he requested, by his second wife, Valerie Eliot, formerly his secretary at Faber & Faber. The sequel only covers another three years, up to Eliot’s professional move from Lloyd’s Bank to the publishing house. But it was evidently proving an overwhelming task, and she has now been joined by the scholar Hugh Haughton, who has also revised and expanded the first volume by about 200 pages.

Eliot’s original wish to leave his letters unpublished was unrealistic. The world’s most eminent man of letters could hardly expect his correspondence to be buried with him, not least because this would have required the excavation of a small churchyard. By asking his young widow to oversee their appearance, however, Eliot presumably hoped for some discretion, such as he had already exercised by burning his early letters to his parents. The problem this created was a widespread suspicion that the most revealing material – especially in relation to his unhappy first marriage, and his debated anti-Semitism – was being suppressed.

(…)

Manhê mindá?!

.:Convicta:. — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:10:52 +0000

A Pah ta se saindo ótima! Dessa vez ela apareceu com uns bookmarks e vo falar: EU QUERO UM DE CADAAAAAAA

menos o do cachorro ^^

Vou colocar aqui os mais fofos!

Vou parar se não coloco todos aqui!

Gente, tem de todos os livros \o/

e eu quero um de cada! mãe mindá?!

clique aqui pra ver os outros bookmarks e ficar babando como eu!

The oil we eat: Following the food chain back to Iraq

Maurice — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:42:33 +0000

The oil we eat: Following the food chain back to Iraq
or why each calorie we eat uses one hundred oil calories; gluttony redefined

(Harpers, Richard Manning)

About two thirds of U.S. grain corn is labeled “processed,” meaning it is milled and otherwise refined for food or industrial uses. More than 45 percent of that becomes sugar, especially high-fructose corn sweeteners, the keystone ingredient in three quarters of all processed foods, especially soft drinks, the food of America’s poor and working classes. It is not a coincidence that the American pandemic of obesity tracks rather nicely with the fivefold increase in corn-syrup production since Archer Daniels Midland developed a high-fructose version of the stuff in the early seventies. Nor is it a coincidence that the plague selects the poor, who eat the most processed food.

It began with the industrialization of Victorian England. The empire was then flush with sugar from plantations in the colonies. Meantime the cities were flush with factory workers. There was no good way to feed them. And thus was born the afternoon tea break, the tea consisting primarily of warm water and sugar. If the workers were well off, they could also afford bread with heavily sugared jam—sugar-powered industrialization. There was a 500 percent increase in per capita sugar consumption in Britain between 1860 and 1890, around the time when the life expectancy of a male factory worker was seventeen years. By the end of the century the average Brit was getting about one sixth of his total nutrition from sugar, exactly the same percentage Americans get today—double what nutritionists recommend.About two thirds of U.S. grain corn is labeled “processed,” meaning it is milled and otherwise refined for food or industrial uses. More than 45 percent of that becomes sugar, especially high-fructose corn sweeteners, the keystone ingredient in three quarters of all processed foods, especially soft drinks, the food of America’s poor and working classes. It is not a coincidence that the American pandemic of obesity tracks rather nicely with the fivefold increase in corn-syrup production since Archer Daniels Midland developed a high-fructose version of the stuff in the early seventies. Nor is it a coincidence that the plague selects the poor, who eat the most processed food.

It began with the industrialization of Victorian England. The empire was then flush with sugar from plantations in the colonies. Meantime the cities were flush with factory workers. There was no good way to feed them. And thus was born the afternoon tea break, the tea consisting primarily of warm water and sugar. If the workers were well off, they could also afford bread with heavily sugared jam—sugar-powered industrialization. There was a 500 percent increase in per capita sugar consumption in Britain between 1860 and 1890, around the time when the life expectancy of a male factory worker was seventeen years. By the end of the century the average Brit was getting about one sixth of his total nutrition from sugar, exactly the same percentage Americans get today—double what nutritionists recommend.

(…)

Let It Bleed

MadNihilist — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:09:45 +0000

Let It Bleed

In 1969, we were very free. I turned twenty-seven—too old to be a hippie, after having been too young to pull off being a beatnik—and was so free as to be practically useless, writing just enough to finance days abed in a tiny Sullivan Street apartment, where I convalesced from many drugs, a broken marriage, and other ills of frenetic years on the downtown poetry and art scenes. I almost roused myself to attend Woodstock. Nixon became President. Vietnam churned on. Tidings of the Manson family and the Weathermen intensified a sense of concatenating disaster. Black Power, nascent feminism, and Stonewall discomfited straight white guys like me. (Being on the side of the angels is hard when the angels are mad at you.) In the art world, “New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970,” which opened in 1969, at the Metropolitan Museum, and was curated by the owlish hipster Henry Geldzahler, summarized swiftly receding glories. Philip Guston, whose hypersensitive abstractions I had revered, was painting R. Crumb-like goofball imagery, for which it would take me more than a decade to forgive him. After a psychedelic efflorescence, color died. This I’ve confirmed on visits to “1969,” a huge show of works from the Museum of Modern Art’s collections, at P.S. 1, the museum’s affiliate in Long Island City. A grayer affair, in mood as in hue, cannot be imagined. It vivifies a reign of asceticism that followed upon our surfeit of freedom. Spiritual hair shirts were in fashion.

The avant-garde movements of the time were post-minimalism and Conceptual art. Reacting against Pop and minimalism, they steered serious art into mazes of self-reference that it has not escaped to this day. (The march of progressive styles since Impressionism was over.) The year’s most original artists were the post-minimalists Bruce Nauman and Richard Serra—and Eva Hesse, whose work is annoyingly absent from “1969.” They founded their art in the absurdity, and the necessity, of making formal decisions. Two grainy videos show Nauman, alone in his California studio, walking with arbitrary determination and wielding a lit fluorescent tube. In a film shot with an industrial high-speed camera, he pulls his mouth agape with his fingers; in another, he yanks a streamer of gauze from his mouth. more…

Daily Bookmarks 11/20/2009

Christy Tucker — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:30:04 +0000

Big Dog, Little Dog: Designing for Agile Learning

Part of a series on agile learning design. This post focuses on 4 lenses for design: performance centered, guru, learner-centered, and system. These lenses are then mapped to the complexity of the design environment and sources of information in those different environments. Lots of graphics to reinforce how different approaches fit different environments.

tags: instructionaldesign
Learntrends 2009 Sessions Live Blogging « Online Sapiens

Collected links to live blogging posts from LearnTrends (including mine)–nice to have all of them together in one place

tags: learning, training, liveblog

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Genicious traz favoritos do Delicious para o BlackBerry

Rafael Murta — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:25:53 +0000

Genicious é um aplicativo grátis, compatível com aparelhos BlackBerry com sistema operacional versão

links for 2009-11-20

orgeltom — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:05:40 +0000