99 Months
Sophie Thomas, from the London based design agency Thomas.Matthews is leading a five-day workshop titled “99 Months,” which is based on NASA scientist James Hansen’s prediction, that in 99 months from now, our world will reach the “tipping point,” the point of no return where the climate’s reaction to the manmade creation of greenhouse gases will take over, when we will no longer be able to avert the consequences. That’s just over 8 years from now!
In the workshop Fabrica students will create a “campaign” using the same theme. Tough enough, it gets tougher. The final product should not just feed what is now being called “global yawning,” the boring reality of being constantly preached to, which has lead to very little up till now.
An interview with Sophie Thomas and the results of the workshop will be published here, on Benetton Talk, in the following week.
Filed Under Environment, Events
Coming closer to being gods
Robots used to be cool, back when they weren’t real. Science fiction used to be entertaining and thought provoking, back when mad scientists were doing “wrong” things in their secret laboratory. But it’s all reality now. Organs are being grown like vegetables, cars driving us, robots are becoming our significant others. These are all commonplace. The Age of Discovery, pure observation, is dead. We’ve entered the Age of Mastery. We’ve become gods, we serve ourselves by creating servers. We’re magicians, building invisibility cloaks and turning one thing into another. It’s all happening too fast and with very little deterrence. Is this where we want to go? Shouldn’t we discuss the progression of our status (gods vs. humans) and come to a progression consensus? The BBC started “Visions of the Future,” a three- part series asking the same questions. Tune in and inform yourself.
Filed Under Research
Sexy walking = mixed signals
Women are so complex. Just when you think you get it, get how they work, you realize (through the news) that you don’t get it at all, and you never will. Maybe the general trick is to expect the unexpected. A woman with a sexy walk, hips softly swaying from side to side, has got to be a subconscious, natural clue: fertile and looking for love. Au contraire mes amis, au contraire. A Queen’s University, Ontario, team examined volunteers’ walks and found those with alluring walks were the furthest away from ovulation. In a test carried out by the team, the women who were most fertile walked with fewer hip movements and with knees closer together, suggesting that women want to conceal ovulation from males other than their chosen partner. So how does the chosen partner know when it’s time to get Bizz-ay? “A sexy walk would be too obvious, so women are thought to use changes in smell and facial expressions that can be experienced only at close range.” So sly and subtle. I love women. They are far superior in intellect and tricks. Three cheers for thought out tricks!!!
Filed Under Research
Iranian terrorists don’t eat falafel
According to this article, featured on BoingBoing, top FBI counterterrorism officials (Phil Mudd and Willie T. Hulon ) planned to use records from San Francisco grocery stores to target areas with a spike in falafel sales, believing it would lead them to secret Iranian agents. With a bit of logic on behalf of the FBI’s criminal investigations division, Michael A. Mason, the idea was trashed, arguing that, “putting somebody on a terrorist list for what they ate was ridiculous — and possibly illegal.”
If you’re going to be ridiculous I suppose you may as well go all out.
Filed Under Research
The Entrepreneurial Dropout
I’m preparing a new CV and on it I’m thinking of adding an extra year onto my journalism studies… I dropped out a year before finishing, realizing that I hated it. It just seems such a shame, an embarrassment really, to list an unfinished degree on a CV, but then again, maybe it shows a headstrong character, an unabashed attitude, a fine self-understanding. And if you do what you do well, then who needs school? Point in case: some of the world’s most famous entrepreneurs were college, or even high school, dropouts. That list includes Bill Gates, Walt Disney, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, and Coco Chanel.
Filed Under Wondering
Disney caters to the obese
Disney just reeks of America. You know what else reeks of America? Fat people. Mix the two together and you’ve got one “only in America” smirk-worthy problem. The rides in Disneyland, “It’s A Small World” and “Pirates of the Caribbean,” which take visitors from animatronic scene to animatronic scene via boat, are being reconstructed as the vessels are bottoming out, halting transport. When “It’s a Small World” made its debut in the World’s Fair in 1964, Americans, on average, weighed 25 pounds (11.3 kg) less than they do today. Aware of the problem for some time, Disneyland employees have been keeping seats empty in boats carrying heftier folk. Reconstruction (which involves a deeper river and more buoyant vessels) will take 10 months starting in January, so if you’re planning on showing your chunky kids the magic of ethnic diversity a la Disney, you’re going to have to hold off a while.
Filed Under Modern Life
Who owns the Arctic?
I’ve never even thought to question it… who does the Arctic belong to? Unlike the Antarctic, it’s not its own continent, it’s not even part of one country. Made up of the Arctic Ocean and northern parts of many countries including Canada, Greenland (a territory of Denmark), Russia, the United States (Alaska), Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland, it doesn’t really belong to anyone. In fact how much each country owns of it isn’t even definite.
Governed by the Law of the Sea, a 1982 U.N. treaty signed by more than 150 countries, “the agreement gives each nation control of the area up to 200 nautical miles off its coast and whatever natural resources might lie beneath them.” If countries can prove their underwater continental shelf extends beyond the normal 200-mile boundary they are allowed to extend their boundaries upto 350 nautical miles outward. Of course, the layer of ice over these waters makes it very hard to scan the seabed.
Spats have erupted as of late, a good old fashioned race for claiming underwater land, between Russian and Canada. The U.S. Coast Guard is planning to establish its first Arctic base in Alaska, joining the race.
Filed Under Wondering