Do We Want the Alarm Clock to Do It All, Though?

Thanks to Tyler over at Marginal Revolution for making me aware of this.
I'm a ThinkGeek enthusiast. My friend Joseph turned me on to ThinkGeek products and as other neophiles out there I have not looked back since.
Their digital products like watches are a nice fusion of precision and aesthetically pleasing styles and I am a regular customer.
Having said this, I was thoroughly amused by the sentence Tyler Cowen featured in his blog today about a ThinkGeek alarm clock. It says:

[It] connects via WiFi to your online bank account, and donates YOUR real money to an organization you HATE when you decide to snooze!

Bravo, Tyler, bravo!

Where Is The Talent Going?

Here are some most gripping graphs that chart talent immigration and intellectual movement in the recent years.
I so much enjoyed this post by Richard over at Creative Classrooms, that I have to comment on it too.
Many of my friends are mobility-friendly. They are willing to relocate if the right position comes their way. The relocation could be in a differhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifent city in the same country or a different country all together. That kind of move does not scare them. It is, after all, about the work, and if good work is to be had in Australia, then Australia it is.
'Would you move for a job all the way to, say, Canada?' I ask a good friend?
'Absolutely!' She says. 'If I can to pursue what I'm interested it, then yes, I would go.'

Richard summarizes:

1. There are an estimated 200 million global migrants world-wide, 3 percent of the world's population.

2. The USA has the largest number of immigrants, but not the largest percentage. Australia does, followed by Switzerland, Canada, Germany, then the USA, Sweden, Ireland, the UK and France.
http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
Would you relocate for the right work opportunity?

Read full article on The Economist here.

Music and Politics? Wait, Huckabee and, uhm, Bono?!

Hat tip to Carrie Brownstein over at NPR's Monitor Mix, one of my favorite bloggers.
Carrie has a fantastic piece today on politicians' use of music. The following snippet is the best thing I read today:

'There is nothing like politics and politicians employing songs as a force for musical atrophy. Even though politicians might inspire some great tunes (imagine 1980's hardcore without Reagan or recent Springsteen, Steve Earle, or Arcade Fire albums minus Bush II et al as inspiration), they are less successful at marrying music with their own image or agenda. It's a tricky process indeed. We're not talking about a benign Celebrity Playlist on i-Tunes, wherein people can admire the esoteric tastes of Nicholas Cage, or confirm their instinct that they and Michael Cera were meant for each other based on a mutual fondness for The Microphones. And it is more serious than the song one chooses as a cell phone ring, that 15 second personal ad broadcast ed a few times a day. Instead, a candidate's theme song is a little bit more like a tattoo; some people won't care or even notice it at all, others will think it really sums up who they are and what they stand for, and the final category of people will be slightly offended by their lack of taste.'

Music, after all, precedes much else. The soundtrack we pick for ourselves reveals much about us. Employing music for the purpose of making strong political statements makes plain sense to me. Obama's choice of music, U2's City of Blinding Lights sounds like a well-informed choice to me. Bono's voice echoes a sense of possibility, novelty, and optimism, the things Obama seems to want to be remembered for.
Ah, yes, and even Mike Huckabee is playing bass on the Tonight Show outing his love of classic rock. The PR folk must have picked up on something here, right?
I will ask the same question here that Carrie asked over at her blog, i.e., why are the candidates spending trying to pick the 'right' song for their respective campaigns?
And didn't Hillary pick a Celine Dion track at some point?
In the words of a favorite person, 'what kind of blip was that? Seriously, Celine?!'
Read more here.

Femaled Architecture, Part Deux

Hat tip to Xan for the link with the attached pictures which show fluid, architectural samples in Chicago (up and running by 2009).
And in the 'supposed' words of that LA-based bard/heiress, 'that's hot!'
Thanks, Xan.
You may get to the link here.

Femaled Architecture?

Even though Chicago's skyline is a haven for pointy buildings and sharp lines that seem to shoot straight for the stars, the general feel I get when looking at the continuous lines of buildings is one of curvaceous fluidity.
Seeing as my father is an architect I have had the good fortune of being exposed to an architecturally informed discourse. A city is not simply an inanimate cluster of mortar- and wood-based structures but rather a living organism in a state of constant reinvention. I believe that.
And Chicago is one such city.
I was talking to my father today about the concept of fluidity and how he perceives it in the realm of architecture. I also asked him about 'femaled architecture,' as I termed it, and if there is such a thing. In his typically clear and to-the-point fashion he intimated that generally fluidity of rendering is a beautiful, feminine contribution provided by either female architects or architects at large who are in tune with femininity-informed instincts.
A good architect, after all, says my father, is one who is in tune with his/her instincts as well as the client's vision for a particular blueprint and structure. A good architect can walk that fine line where the perfect balance of form and content is to be found.
Our discussion today was prompted by a NY Times feature on a well-known female Chicago architect by the name of Marion Mahony. Mahony was licensed in 1908 and she is the first female architect to have received the license to produce architectural work. Naturally, I was interested in discussing the piece in greater detail and that we did.

The article says:

'...architectural historians who acknowledge Mahony have tended to focus on her relationships with men and on her physical appearance, often in unflattering terms. (She was frequently described as homely, though Brendan Gill, in “Many Masks,” his 1987 biography of Wright, called her a “gaunt, beaky beauty.”)

That Mahony spent her most productive years in Australia, where she and her husband designed a plan for the new city of Canberra in 1911, has also lowered her profile in the United States. But “the Australians take Mahony as seriously as we take Frank Lloyd Wright,” said David Van Zanten, a professor of art history at Northwestern University.'

That females have a different take on architectural delivery is a beautiful thing that needs to be embraced, seems to be the message of the Times piece as well as my father's interpretation. And this is not an essentialist take on gender and performativity. Of course, not. It is rather a beautifully aware and informed story of a talented female architect, whose talent was nourished by Wright himself and which talent is admired and carefully interpreted by other, more modern architects.
And as my father noted today, aesthetically pleasing structures need to feature natural, unaffected fluidity.
And I much enjoyed that.
I also think it was the very modus operandi that Mahony espoused in a time frame when female architects were not visible.

Read more here.

graphs per ny times