NT is a trend setter

Today on On Point Radio, they'll be discussing back yard chickens, which are apparently everywhere.

They got the idea from a New Yorker article, "The It Bird: The return of the bark-yard chicken" (Video here)

What's next, NT?

Bank Of America's Troubles Only Getting Worse

Now, they're being sued for 1.784 Trillion Trillion dollars.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Dalton Chiscolm is unhappy about Bank of America's customer service -- really, really unhappy.

Chiscolm in August sued the largest U.S. bank and its board, demanding that "1,784 billion, trillion dollars" be deposited into his account the next day. He also demanded an additional $200,164,000, court papers show.

Attempts to reach Chiscolm were unsuccessful. A Bank of America spokesman declined to comment.

"Incomprehensible," U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said in a brief order released Thursday in Manhattan federal court.

Dr. Evil would be proud.

Did you know?

Did you know that polar bears have built-in sunglasses?

The latest thinking...

..."Awesomeness."

Courtesy of one of the HBS blogs:

The Awesomeness Manifesto Umair HaqueSeptember 16
Innovation: it's the ultimate source of advantage, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the economic ring. Innovation is what every organization should be ruthlessly pursuing, right? Wrong.

I'd like to advance a hypothesis: awesomeness is the new innovation.

Let's face it. "Innovation" feels like a relic of the industrial era. And it just might be the case that instead of chasing innovation, we should be innovating innovation — that innovation needs innovation. Why? When we examine the economics of innovation, three reasons emerge.

Innovation relies on obsolescence. Innovation was a concept pioneered by the great Joseph Schumpeter. And to subscribe to it requires us to accept his theory of creative destruction. Gales of innovation make yesterday's goods and services obsolete. Yet, that, in turn, means that the price of innovation is recession and depression. The business cycle might never be vanquished — but it is getting more vicious with every decade. In an interdependent world, obsolescence is what's obsolete.

Why do we let the GenXers out of the house again?

Friday Cat Blogging

It's Friday - and so here is the cat blogging.

This is Marmalade (informally, "Marmi" - close to Marty...), a recent gift. (Thanks, KC!)

He's made himself at home.

Enjoy Summer!

It evaporates at 5:18 EDT today!

Euro Burning Man

Burners are spread across Europe in ever-increasing numbers, and the region is growing fast in terms of activity. There is a multi day event in Spain, and there are Decompressions, meet n greets and events regularly in different parts of Europe.

Our correspondent in Europe has promised to "keep an eye" on this.

Monday Cat Blogging

It seems that we will have a feline visitor tomorrow, and that RA will be taking that visitor home. Thanks to KC and her Mother's tireless efforts, his house will be a home again.

...And since it is Friday, here's the week's de rigeur cat

It is apparently a Norwegian Forest Cat.

Extreme Kite Photography

From Wired:

Meet the $150 (almost to) Space Camera.

Bespoke is old hat. Off-the-shelf is in. Even Google runs the world’s biggest and scariest server farms on computers home-made from commodity parts. DIY is cheaper and often better, as Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh found out when they decided to send a camera into space.

The two students (from MIT, of course) put together a low-budget rig to fly a camera high enough to photograph the curvature of the Earth. Instead of rockets, boosters and expensive control systems, they filled a weather balloon with helium and hung a styrofoam beer cooler underneath to carry a cheap Canon A470 compact camera. Instant hand warmers kept things from freezing up and made sure the batteries stayed warm enough to work.

Of course, all this would be pointless if the guys couldn’t find the rig when it landed, so they dropped a prepaid GPS-equipped cellphone inside the box for tracking. Total cost, including duct tape? $148.

The adventure continues, at the link.

NT Makes It Official

Well, sort of. We heard today at lunch that he's thinking of marrying WP.

Progress...

Art is Relevant to the Modern World

The BBC has a video profile of Geoffrey Raymond, "former PR man, now artist in residence, his own, in Brooklyn".

At Last, Levitating Mice!

Reuters has the story: JPL scientists succeed in levitating mice

The Truth About Burning Man

The Truth About Burning Man: Jay Michaelson admits he doesn't have it!

"Really?" the guy at the Alamo Rental Car place said, when I'd told him about Burning Man. "I heard it was just a lot of naked people running around on drugs."

Coated in gypsum dust, and still high not on drugs but on the altered consciousness of radical creativity and community, I had just tried to describe what Burning Man is, somehow. I think I'd said something like, "It's a temporary city of 50,000 people, devoted to radical self-expression. So you'll find anything you'd find in a regular city -- art museums, dance clubs, yoga studios -- only in the middle of the desert, with no money, and with more creativity than you've ever seen."

Of the two descriptions, surely Rental Car Guy's is the more familiar. When Adam Lambert revealed that he'd gotten the idea to go on American Idol while on mushrooms at Burning Man, America groaned. The image, I assume, was of a drugged-out weirdo coming up with a loopy idea in the middle of wild, crazy party.

The truth, though, is that Burning Man is an ideal place for self-reflection and self-transformation, whether substance-aided or not, and as someone who's just gotten back from his 8th Burn, Lambert's revelation didn't surprise me a bit. Friends of mine have changed their names, their professions, and their entire lives at Burning Man. And not because they were stoned or tripping, but because Black Rock City -- the temporary city (built and erased within a month) where the event goes on every year, the week before Labor Day -- has a tendency to expand horizons, reveal possibilities, and question the assumptions most of us make about how we're supposed to live our lives.

Burning Man does this, I think, because of a combination of factors. One of them is the sheer size and scope of the thing. 50,000 people. Hundreds of cars and trucks modified to look like dragons, whales, radios, and steamboats; many breathing fire; most with dozens of revelers dancing on them. It's like "Mad Max" meets "Blade Runner" meets "The Ten Commandments," and it's real, it's actually happening.

[...]

You don't get it. You don't get what it's like to have 50,000 people circle around a wooden effigy, with 1000 people spinning fire and 500 more playing drums, all encircled by 200 art cars -- and then all roaring in unison as the effigy is set afire. You might think you get it, and it may scare or tempt or delight you, but I assure you, you don't get it. None of us do, because it's not about any one thing in particular; "it" can be an orgiastic celebration, or the sad mourning of a lost loved one. Or a warm, hippie-like community. Or a mean, Mad-Max-like apocalypse. "It" is chiefly a space in which all these things are possible.

The temporary erasure of societal, social, and personal boundaries is, for most of us, terrifying. Such boundaries help build the structures of society and self; they give form to human life, which is often chaotic and unpredictable. Thus they have been the bedrock of religious and civil life for millennia, even before the Furies were imprisoned under Athens, and Moses descended from Sinai.

But if religion creates boundaries, mysticism and spirituality efface them. In the transcendence of ordinary distinctions, peak experiences such as those encouraged at Burning Man give a glimpse of the ultimate, the infinite. It may seem absurd to suggest that Burning Man is a mystical event. But then, if it's just a big party, why is there a temple in the middle of it?

Friday Cat Blogging

We're cat blogging today just to put the final nail in the URLesque meme of the previous posting.

9/9/09 A Day Without Cats on the Internet

Urlesque has proclaimed today "A day without cats on the Internet". They've even dragged NPR into it.

Just who do they think they are?

There will never be a day without cats on the Internet.

Never.

Hell's Biomarkers

Today our boys terrorized the neighborhood, on their hetrogenous motorcycles. The gang displayed a touring bike, a dirt bike, and something referred to as a chainsaw.

According to WL, "Women and children cowered when they saw us!"

Thank goodness winter is coming, or we'd have a real problem on our hands.

Number 9... Number 9... Number 9...

Today is 09/09/2009 - or 9/9/9 if you're hip to our jive.

What's happening today?

Tim Burton has a new film out, "9".

Apple has a new Beatles video game out, launching today. (And EMI is issuing a $ 259.00, 206-song, 13-album box set of Beatles hits, today, too).

Oh, and it's HSI's Blogiversary! Celebrating 4, count 'em, 4 years of Blogging Excellence! (With no apologies to Rush Limbaugh!)

The Brownies are Back!

Which must mean that SJ (aka "The Jesuit") is back in town.

Hooray SJ, those were probably the best brownies yet!

While researching for this entry, I noticed that the image above is of Black Bean Brownies. Via anotheronebitesthecrustblog. The recipe is here: We might try it at home ourselves...

Rumor!

It seems JT has found a job!

Congratulations!