ideometric

Recent research also supports the hypothesis that health can be passed down through generations […]

A long-term study that included more than 100 years of birth, death, health and genealogical records for 300 Swedish families in an isolated village showed that an individual’s risk for diabetes and early death increased if his or her paternal grandparents grew up in times of food abundance rather than food shortage.

“Evidence indicates that what you eat can affect your grandchildren’s brain molecules and synapses,” Gómez-Pinilla said. “We are trying to find the molecular basis to explain this.”

Source

So, what does that bode for our obese, diabetes ridden, genetically modified food-eating, hormone and antibiotic fed meat-consuming, cheap corn-obsessed food culture? We’re already dooming ourselves with unsustainable energy, environmental, and industrial food/farming policies (etc). Are we in the process of creating deeper problems embedded in the genetic make-up of future generations as well?

Random shot in the Fashion District, downtown LA.

Aesthetics and security. Form and function. What’s the difference between a nice looking security gate and a utilitarian one? Who does it avoid offending (who is the audience)? Does it change the perception of the surrounding area? What’s the point? (Alternatively, why not? Why shouldn’t it look good?)

I don’t think enough thought (creativity, culture, wit/humor/irony, style, humanity, whatever) is put into design, especially for mundane things. What if we lived in a culture that could incorporate a sense of humor into the design of security gates as a matter of course? Like, perhaps, Japan and their all-encompassing emphasis on kawaii (see the Japanese defense ministry’s annual report, published as a manga).

Maybe this hints at a deeper critique of industrialized production, monopolization, and/or the cooptation of the aforementioned design aesthetic (and material culture more generally) by a production process that makes it all subservient to marketing, efficiency, and profit.

I think that computers and the ‘net put some of that creativity back into the hands of individuals, atleast for certain things.

[unfinished thought]

http://www.myspace.com/hamatsu

I can’t read Japanese, so I don’t know what it says. But I really like the bass emphasis, electronic elements, and blend of styles. The retro 80s cheesiness is also a plus.

http://ffffound.com/

This is the best time waster ever. (And occasionally inspiring).

“Glenda Kinzer, 41, from rural Ohio, believes the end of the world is about to occur. “A lot of people are talking about how Obama fits the description” of the Antichrist.”

Sigh.

Source

French electronica, pop, with Japanese noise/collage, psychedelia influence. Nice!

More here:

http://www.olamm.tk/
http://www.myspace.com/olamm

I thought about making a ‘cyberculture’ category for my postings, but is there really any point to distinguishing online from offline culture now that ‘cyberculture’ is mainstream? Is the line between the two, to the extent that it exists, largely irrelevant?

Vanity Fair maps the blogosphere. Part of it, anyway.

This blog (Kotaji) has good coverage of the Korean beef protests, among other things.

IT staff routinely snoop on users, riffling through their e-mails and personal files, a newly released survey has found.

Few ordinary users realize that one in three of their IT work colleagues are snooping through company systems, peeking at confidential information such as your private files, wage data, personal e-mails, and HR background, using admin privileges.

Source

The Associated Press has decided that fair use no longer applies to them, and is attempting to charge $12.50 (and up) to quote as little as 5 words from an article.

This is an example of the tension embedded in new media, between cultural autonomy, democratization, and the enhancement of capability on the one hand, versus the creation of potentially more invasive methods of control, censorship, cooptation, and extraction of profit on the other. It’s a political issue (at the very least). We need smart policies regulating technology and communications, and smart laws protecting our rights.

This post from Making Light sketches the alternative…

“Welcome to a world in which you won’t be able to effectively criticize the press, because you’ll be required to pay to quote as few as five words from what they publish.

Welcome to a world in which you won’t own any of your technology or your music or your books, because ensuring that someone makes their profit margins will justify depriving you of the even the most basic, commonsensical rights in your personal, hand-level household goods.”

In the same vein, Bruce Schneier echoes this concern in light of wider designs for embedded limitations, such as kill-switches in OnStar that can remotely shut-off your car, or overrides in your cell-phones and other gear that might forcibly set them to silent in a movie theater, or turn them off in an airplane, (etc.).

“This is really about media companies wanting to exert their control further over your electronics. They not only want to prevent you from surreptitiously recording movies and concerts, they want your new television to enforce good “manners” on your computer, and not allow it to record any programs. They want your iPod to politely refuse to copy music to a computer other than your own. They want to enforce their legislated definition of manners: to control what you do and when you do it, and to charge you repeatedly for the privilege whenever possible.”

“…recently, research has found coffee drinking linked with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes and some cancers, and preventing the development of cardiovascular disease”

“some compounds, such as the antioxidants found in coffee, may be healthy.”

Now I don’t feel so bad. Source

The interface design for Google’s new live stock market app is pretty slick. All kinds of information convergence happening. Notice the way it links to news stories on top of the graph of the stock price.