bodhi tree swaying

I love this video showing the cycle of photosynthesis in the oceans and on land over a three year period. It’s like watching a child breathing. This is another video from NASA’s SeaWiFS satellite.

This NASA page has more information about what’s going on.

If I hadn’t seen this Microsoft ad on PC Magazine’s website I would have assumed it was a spoof. How could any respectable company produce such an obnoxious advertisement?

In the hunt for quicker and easier ways to maintain this blog, I’m going to be experimenting with posting by email. This is just a test to see if I have the settings right.

Interesting interview from Wired, with Maggie Jackson, the author of “Distracted.” Ironically I started reading “Distracted” but put it to one side while I immersed myself in some of other books.

Paying attention isn’t a simple act of self-discipline, but a cognitive ability with deep neurobiological roots — and this complex faculty, says Maggie Jackson, is being woefully undermined by how we’re living.

In Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, Jackson explores the effects of “our high-speed, overloaded, split-focus and even cybercentric society” on attention. It’s not a pretty picture: a never-ending stream of phone calls, e-mails, instant messages, text messages and tweets is part of an institutionalized culture of interruption, and makes it hard to concentrate and think creatively.

Of course, every modern age is troubled by its new technologies. “The telegraph might have done just as much to the

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Maia takes after her parents (except that dad has enormous resistance to speaking on the phone).

From the NYT:

PLEASE listen carefully as this menu has changed.

For English press or say “One.” Para español oprima o diga “Dos.” For all other languages press or say “Three.”

One.

Thank you for your interest in our service. If this is a true spiritual emergency, please hang up and dial the number on the upper left-hand corner of the mailing label of your last solicitation. Otherwise, please stay on the line and your prayers will be answered in the order in which they were received.

All right, let’s get started. For prayers of repentance press or say “Two.” For prayers of supplication press or say “Three.” For prayers of forgiveness press or say “Four.” For prayers of serenity press or say “Five.” For all other prayers press or say “Six.”

>I guess…Er…Supplic — three. Three. [3]

I think you said, “Two.” Is this correct?

No.

I

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I predict with, some confidence, that by the year 2000, or not long afterward, technology will have developed to the point where we can talk to — and even see — people in other parts of the world. The arts of cinematography and telegraphy will come together as never before and vast networks of cables will transport sounds and images around the globe.

From the comfort of one’s own drawing room one will be able to converse with friends and family in distant places, allowing us to keep in touch with each other as we travel the world. And if I may make an even more outrageous prediction, by that time there may even be heavier-than-air flying machines that allow us to cross the world’s oceans in a matter of hours rather than days!

Cory Doctorow’s Bitchun Society comes one step closer — a society in which people are permanently wired into the net, can see head-up displays in their visual field, can vote on each other’s status (like voting on Digg stories), and can email each other directly from the mind. It’s a concept that’s both scary (what about mindful concentration?) and attractive (all that access to information, anytime).

The Army grant to researchers at University of California, Irvine, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Maryland has two objectives. The first is to compose a message using, as D’Zmura puts it, “that little voice in your head.”

The second part is to send that message to a particular individual or object (like a radio), also just with the power of thought. Once the message reaches the recipient, it could be read as text or as a voice mail.

Army developing ‘synthetic telepathy’ …