The rise of smart drugs

A Reporter at Large: Brain Gain: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

And yet when enthusiasts share their vision of our neuroenhanced future it can sound dystopian. Zack Lynch, of NeuroInsights, gave me a rationale for smart pills that I found particularly grim. “If you’re a fifty-five-year-old in Boston, you have to compete with a twenty-six-year-old from Mumbai now, and those kinds of pressures are only going to grow,” he began. Countries other than the U.S. might tend to be a little looser with their regulations, and offer approval of new cognitive enhancers first. “And if you’re a company that’s got forty-seven offices worldwide, and all of a sudden your Singapore office is using cognitive enablers, and you’re saying to Congress, ‘I’m moving all my financial operations to Singapore and Taiwan, because it’s legal to use those there,’ you bet that Congress is going to say, ‘Well, O.K.’ It will be a moot question then. It would be like saying, ‘No, you can’t use a cell phone. It might increase productivity!’ ”

From Metafilter.

And I do not know where I stand on this. One side of me wants to throw the towel in and just say the Rat Race is officially past me by and fuck it. Now you have to take drugs to get ahed in the job market? BAH! Then another says, wouldn't it be great to get my brain fired up like it was when I was 16? There is a scary and a fun side to it but knowing human nature I'll go with the scary side prevailing.

Awesome!

The painful truth about trainers: Are expensive running shoes a waste of money? | Mail Online

Come race day, the Tarahumara don't train. They don't stretch or warm up. They just stroll to the starting line, laughing and bantering, and then go for it, ultra-running for two full days, sometimes covering over 300 miles, non-stop. For the fun of it. One of them recently came first in a prestigious 100-mile race wearing nothing but a toga and sandals. He was 57 years old.

When it comes to preparation, the Tarahumara prefer more of a Mardi Gras approach. In terms of diet, lifestyle and training technique, they're a track coach's nightmare. They drink like New Year's Eve is a weekly event, tossing back enough corn-based beer and homemade tequila brewed from rattlesnake corpses to floor an army.

Rattlesnake beer..... that sounds very, well, insane.

Low

So I took my guitar
And I threw down some chords
And some words I could sing without shame

And I soon had a song
I played it around
For some friends but they all said the same

They said music's for fools
You should go back to school
The future is prisms and math
So I did what they said
Now my children are fed
'Cause they pay me to do what I'm asked

I forgot all my songs
The words now are wrong
And I burned my guitar in a rage

But the fire came to rest
In your white velvet breast
So somehow I just know that it's safe

Low, Death of a Saleman

Do something today.

::: wood s lot ::: "the fitful tracing of a portal"

An Old Man

At the noisy end of the cafe, head bent over the table, an old man sits alone, a newspaper in front of him.

And in the miserable banality of old age he thinks how little he enjoyed the years when he had strength, eloquence, and looks.

He knows he's aged a lot: he sees it, feels it. Yet it seems he was young just yesterday. So brief an interval, so brief.

And he thinks of Prudence, how it fooled him, how he always believed - what madness - that cheat who said: "Tomorrow. You have plenty of time."

He remembers impulses bridled, the joy he sacrificed. Every chance he lost now mocks his senseless caution.

But so much thinking, so much remembering makes the old man dizzy. He falls asleep, his head resting on the cafe table.

Poems by Orhan Veli Translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat

Wood S Lot, one page you really should go to everyday.

How to compose?

The Lazy Rule of Thirds | Whimsical Fashion Photography

To find the real story behind the “rule of thirds” we need to go back in time, not to the renaissance, not to the Greeks, and not even to Adam nor Eve… even further. We need to go to the creation of the universe, why is that? Well I’ll tell you why. There is a number that determines how a sunflower’s seeds grow, it determines the path a hawk takes when diving at it’s prey, it is echoed in the breeding habits of rabbits and it even determines how the spirals in a spiral galaxy are laid out. It’s all very simple in it’s beauty and best of all, it’s all true. If you want to wrap your head around it further then I highly recommend the book The Golden Ratio by Mario Livio

Too much photoshop.

Danish Photoshop Debate Leads To Disqualification

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK (April 13, 2009) – Ethical questions surrounding photojournalists' use of Photoshop in image processing is not a controversy confined to the American market. Currently the embroilment rages in Denmark, where at least one photojournalist has been disqualified from a contest because it's been determined that his image manipulation went too far.

I agree wholeheartedly with this call. His images are super tweaked out in a HDR program and fall well outside what I consider right for Press footage. This is heavy, heavy tweakage to the image.

That and super hdr images done poorly look like flickr trash....

Bryan Nash Gill | Ashes & Milk Blog

I am extremely excited to welcome Bryan Nash Gill and to announce that we will be offering his work at Ashes & Milk. As a lover of natural textures and literal translations of beauty, I am completely embraced by the above print. Through relief printing and a laborious rubbing technique Byran created the above piece Hemlock 82 (Bryan literally scratched his fingernails over every surface of the tree). At the grand size of 52″ long x 38.5″ wide the actual diameter, texture and pattern of this tree section is gorgeously translated onto paper.

Very interesting idea that yields interesting art. I'd love one of these for my house.

Know your Market

Edward_ Winkleman

1. Determine whether your work even belongs in the commercial end of things: Many artists who want commercial galleries are conflicted about what is commonly discussed (at least in many art schools) as the corrupting or irrelevant influences of the commercial art market. Personally, I have no qualms about artists who eschew the art market...in fact, I find it highly impressive if done for the right reasons. I know many artists who like to think that way about their work, though, who will just as happily sell work if it doesn't cost them anything personally. (I think of a certain neo-Marxist who attacked me at a panel discussion for being the source of all ill in the art world because I'm a commercial art dealer only to confess over vodka that he too had sold work and liked doing so.) All of which is my long-winded way of saying start off doing a bit of soul-searching. I don't agree that the commercial side of the art world is automatically corrupting. Too many amazing artists were all too happy to work within it and/or work to improve it. Still, there's no reason to assume you need a commercial gallery just because you're an artist. You may not. It should be something you choose because it fits in with your vision of your career.

Good read on getting into galleries, something I have dabbled with over the past, hell, 20 years? Well I have learned that it's not for me. But for people interested in it this is a good read. I do like that he calls it "commercial" and makes no bones about. The gallery world is the same as any other business and I think this is something a lot for struggling art students fail to understand. Art for arts sake does not exist once you contact a gallery. You are marketing a product.

Now, there are no value judgements going on here on my end, so don't get your panties in a bunch. It's just being honest. And this article will help you achieve those goals if you choose that road.

VIA Conscientious

damn good

TG Brewery

ESG ~

Terminal Gravity's Rye beer, "Extra Special Golden," might be described as an American golden ale. This pale, dry and very drinkable beer is perfect for someone who wants something cold and refreshing but with a bit more flavor then the typical American lager. The suprise is that it has a bit of a kick. More bang for your buck as our regulars say!

ABV 5.4%

Starting Gravity 11.5 ºP

Terminal Gravity 1.9 ºP

Perfect end of day / week brew. Just enough flavor to let you know it's there but not chewy / piney. Hmmm.....

New Tattoo gun?!

Stunning tattoo gun - Core77

Traditional electric coil tattoo machines have barely evolved since their invention in the late 1800's. Still in wide use today, these machines are heavy, awkward, loud, temperamental, and, worst of all, they can't be sterilized in medical grade autoclave machines. This significantly increases chances of spreading blood-borne disease.

Dissatisfied with traditional coil machines, award-winning tattoo artist and inventor Carson Hill set out to create a completely new kind of tattoo technology--the first air-powered tattoo machine.

Iphone pic test

Testing out the wordpress app for the iPhone. This is a shot from Monday up on mt tabor. Nice bike ride...

Ink and water photos

Shinichi Maruyama

As a young student, I often wrote Chinese characters in sumi ink. I loved the nervous, precarious feeling of sitting before an empty white page, the moment just before my brush touched the paper. I was always excited to see the unique result of each new brushing.

Once your brush touches paper, you must finish the character, you have one chance. It can never be repeated or duplicated. You must commit your full attention and being to each stroke. Liquids, like ink, are elusive by nature. As sumi ink finds its own path through the paper grain, liquid finds its unique path as it moves through air.

Remembering those childhood moments, of ink and empty page, I fashioned a large 'brush' and bucket of ink. I get the same feeling, a precarious nervous excitement, as I stand before the empty studio space. Each stroke is unique, ephemeral. I can never copy or recreate them. I know something fantastic is happening, "a decisive moment", but I can't fully understand the event until I look at these captured afterimages, these paintings in the sky.

Simple and yet amazing.

More Long Exposure

Vicki DaSilva Format Magazine Urban Art Fashion

Vicki DaSilva’s photography is bright, bold and undeniably complex. She’s not only behind the camera, but in front of it, carefully crafting the light installations which serve as the subjects for most of her pictures. Though based in Pennsylvania, much of DaSilva’s work was influenced by the time she spent in NYC during the rise of graffiti and hip-hop culture.

What makes her work fascinating is that the effort isn’t apparent, only the skill. Most of her locations are outdoors and they suggest a consciously formed clash between the natural and the artificial, the dark and the light. She uses the words ‘light graffiti’ and ‘light painting’ to describe her work and the terms couldn’t be more fitting. She doesn’t just break through that invisible fourth wall; she leaves her tag all over it.

Using 4ft and 8ft tubes to light paint on a area.

Paintings

Jerome Lagarrigue

At first hand, Jérôme Lagarrigue seems to fully reveal his infinitely complex and yet infinitely simple nature. His roots are composite: he is French and American, his education and *spirit roaming freely between two continents. He owes his artistic sensibility to his father, Jean Lagarrigue, whose work is a great influence. The two now seem to be passing the torch back and forth, Jerome in return influencing his father, with whom he shares a fascination for what lies in the depths of a man’s glance. Everything in his painting becomes tinged with humanity, the walls of the Coliseum seemingly turning and revolving around themselves, much like the Earth itself. In the manner of a tightrope walker, Jérôme is constantly seeking out the balance and bond linking the different origins emanating from him, which dance to the sound of swing or be-bop and can be sensed as much in his vision as in his way of moving, speaking, observing, painting and portraying the world. Perhaps it is this internal rhythm that guides him along, bringing his soul’s temperaments together in harmony, the various viewpoints livening his gaze and assembling the vivid identity that is his, which far from being artificial and contrived is revealed to us as something quite straightforward, natural and spontaneous.

Nice loose style and a Freudish color pallete.