mbf tod@y

2012 the end is nigh: NASA detects "tsunami" on the sun

 

"imagine a tsunami of hot plasma that is 62,000 miles high, travels at half a million miles per hour and packs the power of 2,400 megatons of TNT. That's what scientists have discovered on the sun." (Baltimore Sun, November 24 2009)

Read more

Staturday: Buying Influence in the Obama Administration (via GOOD)

 
 

yourscenesucks

 
 

FIAT lux: the 500 makes its American debut (yay!)

 

"Plans to introduce the Fiat 500, as well as the compact Alfa Romeo MiTo and the midsize Milano have been in the works since the spring." (New York Times)

Slavoj Zizek on ecology (from "The Examined Life", 2008)

Family 2.0 - some stats

"In 1970, a female high school dropout had a 17 percent chance of becoming a single mother (versus 2 percent for a woman with a bachelor’s degree). By 2007, her chances had jumped to a whopping 49 percent (versus 7 percent for the B.A. holder). Nearly all new mothers with graduate training, but only half of high school dropout mothers, are married. [...]

In survey after survey, Americans show up as valuing marriage more than people almost anywhere else. Yet at the same time we have the highest divorce — and romantic breakup — rate in the world, Andrew J. Cherlin observes in his highly insightful book “The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today.” We step into and out of romantic relationships faster than couples in Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. By age 35, 10 percent of American women have lived with three or more husbands or domestic partners — a higher proportion than in any of these countries. [...]

If Americans came to this country as restless seekers in search of a new and better life, capitalism made superb use of that impulse. We believe in the new? Here is a new car, a new iPhone. We buy. We discard. We buy again. In recent years, we’ve been doing it faster. The economist Juliet Schor shows in her research on “fast fashion” that we consume and discard dresses, shoes, toys, furniture and cellphones at a quicker pace than we did in the past. [...]

For some adults, the search for a new partner leads to a better life. But not so for many children. Reporting on his research about the nation’s teenagers, Cherlin says: “For each partner who entered or left the household of a single parent, the odds that the adolescent had stolen something, skipped school, gotten drunk or done something similar rose by 12 percent.” (Arlie Hochschild, The New York Times)

Read more

iPod in iRaq

"You wouldn't expect much Chris de Burgh or Barry White to come floating over the barbed wire fences around military camps in Iraq orAfghanistan, and Pieslak's research confirms the hunch. The playlists are dominated by Slayer, Metallica, Eminem and others. What's interesting about the work is not so much which bands soldiers are drawn to, but the extraordinary terms they use to describe the power the music has over them. Some talk about tracks turning them into monsters, making them inhuman so they can do inhuman acts. The subjects of Pieslak's interviews are among the first generation to take MP3 players to war. Some, only half joking, say iPods should be standard issue for soldiers. The psychological effect the music has, and highly stressful situations, make for a powerful mix." (Ian Sample, The Guardian)

Read more

texting and driving (via Simon Sellars)

Attention, multitaskers: your brain may be in trouble (Stanford Study)

"Attention, multitaskers (if you can pay attention, that is): Your brain may be in trouble. People who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time, a group of Stanford researchers has found." (Adam Gorlick, Stanford Report)

read more

OMG! My iPod Nano is Boycotting Me!

Don't be fooled by my Nike+ MiniMe (right).The little bastard does not know what he's talking about. Truth is: I have not given up on running the extra mile. My magical app is acting funny these days. The stupid iPod Nano is not saving my runs anymore for reasons that are beyond human understanding (are we ever going to see Nike+ on Zune players?). Apparently, the problem is widespread. Does anybody know how to fix it? [sigh]