September 2012
August 2012
“At the top of the agenda, Joachim says, is mobility and its inefficiencies. Citing US Department of Energy statistics, he says that while 29 percent of the nation’s energy expenditure—what he calls “the suck”—now goes toward getting around, “in 50 years that will double.” Among the biggest sources of waste, he argues, is the automobile—not only in energy but in the space it occupies (cars, he notes, spend more than 90 percent of the day parked). For nearly a century, Joachim says, “cities have been designed around cars. Why not design a car around a city?” So he did just that. One of his concept vehicles, the City Car , was named to Time magazine’s Inventions of the Year list in 2007.
His various cars would be less machine than Facebook on wheels. Instead of rpm gauges, there’d be social networking software telling drivers where their friends are and how to get there. Made from neoprene and other soft materials, cars would no longer suffer traffic-fouling fender benders, merely what he calls “gentle congestion”—picture a flock of urban sheep grazing against one other. Like Zipcar vehicles, the cars would be shared. They would “read” potholes and send warnings to nearby drivers and city repair crews. Urban parking would be eased by intelligent real-time supply and demand management, with people bidding remotely for available spots. Of course, there’d also be more spaces to begin with, since his cars could be folded and stacked like shopping carts. The average New York City block could handle 880 of the vehicles, he says.” —Mitchell Joachim: Redesign Cities From Scratch
His various cars would be less machine than Facebook on wheels. Instead of rpm gauges, there’d be social networking software telling drivers where their friends are and how to get there. Made from neoprene and other soft materials, cars would no longer suffer traffic-fouling fender benders, merely what he calls “gentle congestion”—picture a flock of urban sheep grazing against one other. Like Zipcar vehicles, the cars would be shared. They would “read” potholes and send warnings to nearby drivers and city repair crews. Urban parking would be eased by intelligent real-time supply and demand management, with people bidding remotely for available spots. Of course, there’d also be more spaces to begin with, since his cars could be folded and stacked like shopping carts. The average New York City block could handle 880 of the vehicles, he says.” —Mitchell Joachim: Redesign Cities From Scratch
“Through history, as natural selection played its part in the development of modern man, many of the useful functions and parts of the human body become unnecessary. What is most fascinating is that many of these parts of the body still remain in some form so we can see the progress of evolution. This list covers the ten most significant evolutionary changes that have taken place – leaving signs behind them.”
—Top 10 Signs Of Evolution In Modern Man
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when the client feels strongly about their own direction but we manage to convince them otherwise
I don’t remember who sent me this gif.
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“My husband flew to Puerto Rico and back in April on Jet Blue and he was not required to have a passport or a birth certificate. Jeffery R was very rude and said that Delta Airlines requires a birth certificate or passport when travelling outside the United States. We asked to see his supervisor and he said that there was not a supervisor available. I had to call my daughter to have her go to my house and fax a copy our birth certificates. He even asked us for a green card.
…Puerto Rico is part of the United States. A person who is born in Puerto Rico does not need to go to immigration to live in the continental United States. If Delta Airlines wants to discriminate against Puerto Ricans and require them to have a passport or a birth certificate or a green card they should spell it out on their ads.
I have travel back and forth between the continental United States through many different airlines and have never had been subject to discrimination for being a Puerto Rican. Delta airlines needs to let customers that purchase their tickets who are Puerto Ricans that they are not considered U.S. Citizens under Delta Airline’s system and Puerto Rico is not part of the United States according to Delta Airlines.”
” —1 Complaints and Reviews about Delta - Puerto Rico
“We collected data on over 1000 taxicab rides in New Haven, CT in 2001. After controlling for a host of other variables, we find two potential racial disparities in tipping: (1) African-American cab drivers were tipped approximately one-third less than white cab drivers; and (2) African-American passengers tipped approximately one-half the amount of white passengers (African-American passengers are 3.7 times more likely than white passengers to leave no tip).”
—To Insure Prejudice: Racial Disparities in Taxicab Tipping by Ian Ayres, Fredrick Vars, Nasser Zakariya :: SSRN
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“I don’t mean computer memory. That stuff’s half-price at Costco these days. No, I’m talking about human memory, stored by the gray matter inside our heads. According to recent research, we’re remembering fewer and fewer basic facts these days.
This summer, neuroscientist Ian Robertson polled 3,000 people and found that the younger ones were less able than their elders to recall standard personal info. When Robertson asked his subjects to tell them a relative’s birth date, 87 percent of respondents over age 50 could recite it, while less than 40 percent of those under 30 could do so. And when he asked them their own phone number, fully one-third of the youngsters drew a blank. They had to whip out their handsets to look it up.” —Your Outboard Brain Knows All
This summer, neuroscientist Ian Robertson polled 3,000 people and found that the younger ones were less able than their elders to recall standard personal info. When Robertson asked his subjects to tell them a relative’s birth date, 87 percent of respondents over age 50 could recite it, while less than 40 percent of those under 30 could do so. And when he asked them their own phone number, fully one-third of the youngsters drew a blank. They had to whip out their handsets to look it up.” —Your Outboard Brain Knows All
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“AMONG family-law buffs, the case is seen as a key example of the messy ways in which religious and civil law can get entangled. It concerns an Italian couple who wed in a Catholic church in 1962. After 25 years of less-than-blissful union, she got a legal separation from a civil court, which told him to make monthly maintenance payments. But he had other ideas: he convinced an ecclesiastical court that their union had never been valid, because they were close blood relations. After vain appeals to various civil and religious courts in Italy (to which she complained that she never got a chance to tell her story), she turned to the European Court of Human Rights, which in 2001 ruled in her favour and made a modest compensation award. The European judges in Strasbourg had no jurisdiction over church courts—but they did find that Italy’s civil judges failed to assess the religious courts’ work or note the deficiencies.”
—Faith, law and democracy: Defining the limits of exceptionalism | The Economist
“MOBILE phones are frequently held up as a good example of technology’s ability to transform the fortunes of people in the developing world. In places with bad roads, few trains and parlous land lines, mobile phones substitute for travel, allow price data to be distributed more quickly and easily, enable traders to reach wider markets and generally make it easier to do business. The mobile phone is also a wonderful example of a “leapfrog” technology: it has enabled developing countries to skip the fixed-line technology of the 20th century and move straight to the mobile technology of the 21st. Surely other technologies can do the same?”
—Technology and development: The limits of leapfrogging | The Economist
“Now, in a new paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Justin Rao of Microsoft and David Reiley of Google (who met working at Yahoo) have teamed up to estimate the cost of spam to society relative to its worldwide revenues. The societal price tag comes to $20 billion. The revenue? A mere $200 million. As they note, that means that the “‘externality ratio’ of external costs to internal benefits for spam is around 100:1. Spammers are dumping a lot on society and reaping fairly little in return.” In case it’s not clear, this is a suboptimal situation.”
—All the Spammers in the World May Only Make $200 Million a Year - Alexis C. Madrigal - The Atlantic
“The difference in sexual predilection, temperament and reactiveness between hot chicks and the rest of womankind lies primarily in two interacting social phenomena: one, hot chicks know they’re hotter than other girls and two, hot chicks receive a lot more tangible and intangible attention from men. (An example of intangible attention: while fewer men may approach a 10 than would approach a 7, the 10 can’t help but notice how many men swivel their heads in her direction when she breezes past them. Tangible attention: hot chicks get their meals paid more often than other women.) Knowing these two things, the master seducer tailors his game as befits the degree of beauty of his preferred conquest. He knows, for instance, that hot chicks will rebuke flattery much more aggressively than will lesser women. Hot chicks squeal with glee for negs and teasing bordering on insults. Hot chicks expect you to be flustered around them; stay calm and unmoved, and you capture their interest. Hot chicks love love love to be disqualified. And hot chicks don’t suffer weak men gladly.”
—Hot Girls Need Your Best Game « Chateau Heartiste
