jam tomorrow and jam yesterday

Indeed, attention is probably the scarcest resource there is—at least by our own estimation, as we absolutely rush, harried through our daily routines, ushered by those gadgets designed to be more fleet of foot and to help us help ourselves—but surely it’s a cultural quirk, a weakness or vanity that can be appealed to like any insecurity.

As with any other matter of pride or conceit, there is a price to pay—perhaps not so obvious to the buyer and beholder, whereas it might be mockingly apparent to those outside looking in. The family of inmates—I think, is growing. This essay from Æon Magazine certainly gives pause and make one think about the idea of allotted time. Technology is both a flatterer and a heckler—our schedules, how we use time, has probably never been allowed to be so idiosyncratic, and yet there’s a dual passage of it, both incredibly slow and incredibly fast and with the same seconds, minutes and hours to savour as before, that synchronises very disparate agendas. Innovation, even when made to bear awful burdens of chauvinism, covetousness and myopia, is not imagination and generally re-enforces the society that creates it. Far from the great, relentless oppressor its easy to characterise it to be, those productivity tools that are sometimes thrust upon us (but usually willingly accepted and even sought out), and just insistent reminders of what’s left yet to be done (or what could be done) and closed-out. It is OK to leave something pending—and has been always, although ignorance or forgetfulness can no longer be substituted for avoidance and procrastination.

five-by-five

that dress: the original brunt of cyber-bullying, Monica Lewinsky, stops off in Norway on her way to present a seminar on the phenomenon

broadcast energy transmitter: researchers are making progress in beaming solar from orbiting cells

strangers have the best candy: annual roundup for oddest book titles

intermission: a loving collection of vintage theatre lobby carpets

pukebox: a subjective playlist of music most vile

afturköllun

The Foreign Ministry has informed the European Union that it will no longer be pursuing its bid of accession into the supranational monetary and trade pact.

The nation of just over three-hundred thousand residents made their bid to join the EU in 2009, just as the people were mounting a revolt, spurned by the global hedonism of speculation in investment markets that ravaged the otherwise sufficient and partaking economy that threatened to a generation without prospects and marginalise Iceland. This announcement, while doubtless a popular one and a decision to be respected by all sides ultimately, did however come from a minister who had tried before to unilaterally derail talks who committed his government without the clearance or consent of parliament. Though there is probably no chance that the minister will be made to eat his words, circumventing democratic processes does seem like rather a big deal, and though the EU remains outwardly chipper, I think it might be doing so through clenched-teeth.

five-by-five

drunk and disorderly: a supercharged tonic wine produced by monks in an abbey in Devonshire is a subject of controversy

rubber banding: some absolutely brilliantly illustrated brochures for the British video game awards

proud as a peacock: new species of spiders discovered in Australia

inked: an interactive exhibition allows people to tell a story with magical conducting ink

chatty-cathy: new fashion doll will forward children’s conversations along to corporate HQ and snitch to their parents

print-lab

Reports are emerging that organic chemists from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have collaborated with engineers to produce their discipline’s own version of the 3D printer, which can transcribe small molecules and building-blocks for study and discovery. An established line of known chemicals can of course be synthesised in laboratories but usually at a great cost and with limited access which makes experimentation and distributed research prohibitively expense.

Most of such facilities are under contract to the pharmaceutical industry and it’s much more profitable for a lab to try to tease out an extension on some proprietary drug, a patent-medicine, that to devote time and effort on, say, an exotic jungle plant’s interesting, intriguing but uncertain anti-microbial properties brought to them by some unknown and uncredentialed scientist. Perhaps now, instead of supplicating and then queueing up—or trying to gather more samples from the field—researchers could just isolate the target compound, its structure and composition, and submit a print request to have batch of the chemical custom-made, which could be dispatched to several test centres or research facilities at one time. Democratising the studies, the important concepts of peer-review and vetting could perhaps become to mean teamwork, discovering novel and safe treatments and other substances (better culinary preservatives, glues, inks, textiles, etc.) more efficiently.

livery and latchkey

I wonder if there is a public shame-registry of unmarked white vans. Should we make such a thing? Suspiciously—though probably only in truth relegated to the wilds of my imagination, this one “delivery” vehicle has been parked opposite my apartment’s balcony for almost a week already and I can detect no sign of activity—other than the interior lights were on the other night and one could see the rear windows illuminated through the plastic tinting.
I tried to stare it down last night but nothing came of that standoff.  Rather than building a registry, I suppose, snapping a picture probably is more likely to tattle on the observed with hidden, backmasked Q-R codes, camouflaged in the white to off-white of the van’s paint (which is a pretty scary concept, that one’s scanning in invisible data with a digital sweep of one’s surroundings). I guess, however—thinking back to a funny, chance separate incident—there are other ways to have one’s cover blown.