9 posts tagged “articles”

There's not much information here so it's truly hard to know what happened. That's done little to ease rampant speculation on the part of the media.

Nonetheless, you should always where a helmet when you ski. You're probably wearing a hat anyway--why not wear one that just might save your life?

Natasha Richardson, Actress, Dies at 45
By BRUCE WEBER, Published: March 18, 2009

Natasha Richardson, a Tony Award-winning actress whose career melded glamorous celebrity with the bloodline of theater royalty, died Wednesday in a Manhattan hospital, where she had been flown suffering from head injuries after a skiing accident on Monday north of Montreal. She was 45 and lived in Manhattan and Millbrook, N.Y.

Joss Whedon's Dollhouse airs episode six this Friday, and according to Joss it's the hook: the one that once you watch, you won't be able to stop watching.

Dollhouse's premise is programmable memories: the actives have personalities that are downloaded for engagements and when they return to the Dollhouse their memories are wiped...erased...completely forgotten (although it appears that an imperfect wiping process is the central premise of the plot.)

Scientists now appear to be advancing research into the technology, making it seem like the future of Brave New World's Soma is not so much ingested medicines, but applied treatments.

A world without painful memories is not a complete world.

Should painful memories be erased?
Toronto researchers have been able to do it in traumatized mice
Mar 13, 2009 04:30 AM, JOSEPH HALL, HEALTH REPORTER

Something horrible happens. A child is lost. A bomb goes off. A car goes out of control.

And deep in the brain, in the lateral amygdala region, a scattered set of neurons come to life and begin to vibrate with fear.

Through an ingenious set of experiments, a group of researchers at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children have not only located these terror-laden brain cells in mice, but erased them--along with the frightening memories they stored.

The March 2009 cover of the Atlantic Monthly featured a series of "regional" covers highlighting an article by Richard Florida called How the Crash Will Reshape America. Apparently, the Atlantic considers Canada one region as the Vancouver area edition featured not Vancouver (mentioned in the article) and not even Seattle (the economic hub of our region) but Toronto. Yes...Toronto. 4000km away.

Although my feelings on Florida are mixed, the article isn't bad. He addresses some good points and every time a hole in his logical circle poked up he managed to plug it like a good little dutch boy. Some excerpts.

How the Crash Will Reshape America
Richard Florida, The Atlantic Monthly, March 2009

"The world's 40 largest mega-regions, which are home to some 18 percent of the world's population, produce two-thirds of global economic output and nearly 9 in 10 new patented inventions...Cities like Seattle, San Francisco, Austin, Raleigh, and Boston now have two or three times the concentration of college graduates of Akron or Buffalo...as globalization has increased the financial return on innovation by widening the consumer market, the pull of innovative places, already dense with highly talented workers, has only grown stronger, created a snowball effect...successful cities, unlike biological organisms, actually get faster as they grow older."

"Perhaps no major city in the U.S. today looks more beleaguered than Detroit, where in October the average home price was $18,513, and some 45,000 properties were in some form of foreclosure."

read more...

According to the New York Times, the owners of the San Francisco Chronicle are considering folding the paper. This won't be the last, and it's not surprising that San Francisco would be the epicentre of this quake as it has been for much of the revolution.

My favourite part about this is the fact they they knew something was wrong but decided not to do anything about it. Lucky no one was on the chair when it fell.

Whistler chairlift crashes to the ground
BY KELLY SINOSKI, VANCOUVER SUNFEBRUARY 22, 2009 8:01 PM

Whistler Mountain technicians knew there was a fault in the high-speed Harmony Express chairlift late Wednesday night, but because the mountain was closed at the time, they didn't follow protocols and inspect it.

In the morning, one of the chairs was found to have crashed eight metres to the ground. Nobody was on the lift at the time of the incident.

Today's Vanity Fair cover article is essential reading, and I'm taking a copy on the plane. Interestingly, Tina talks about the scar on her left cheek, which she never has before.

Barbara Walters has put Tina Fey on her most fascinating persons list, which is depressing only because anybody cares what Barbara Walters thinks even when she's so out of touch that it took her this long.

I'm just glad the rest of the world is finally on my bandwagon. About time you all got here.

The New York Times visits California's Redwood National Forest, and sends my mind wandering to that golden, scenic coast.

Maybe next year. Maybe on a bicycle.

In May of 1998 the Atlantic Monthy print an article called A Special Moment in History

It beings with a caution to:

BEWARE of people preaching that we live in special times. People have preached that message before, and those who listened sold their furniture and climbed up on rooftops to await ascension

and then goes on:

And yet, for all that, we may live in a special time.

The rest of the article goes on to make several points with society, in general, has yet to fully aware of. The article's well worth reading, and should lead to some careful reflection on the values of our world.

"...William Catton, who was a sociologist at Washington State University before his retirement, once tried to calculate the amount of energy human beings use each day. In hunter-gatherer times is was about 2,500 calories, all of it food. That is the daily energy intake of a common dolphin. A modern human being uses 31,000 calories a day, most of it in the form of fossil fuel. That is the intake of a pilot whale. And the average American uses six times that--as much as a sperm whale."

The emphasis is mine.

Portland has long had a reputation for being an extremely bike friendly city--perhaps more so than any west coast city. San Francisco's hills, it seems, plague it; Los Angeles' traffic destroys all hope. Seattle and Vancouver have much in common with Portland (including the rain,) although the geography of both is bumpier.

The New York Times has an article on Portland's cycling economy. What other city could have produced the phenomenal Full Wood Fenders from River City Bikes.

The cycling traffic jam I hit on the way home from work tonight was felt good, but they are rare here in Vancouver. Portland's a great town.