charmed life

You've got to check out the interior and alternate view photos - simply amazing!

This has to be the most beautiful photo of an insect I've ever seen.

I want this. In my house. If I had a house. Well, whatever.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but I saw a post on how most Twitter users do not use the service, and thought I’d expand some thoughts. The majority of my friends do not Tweet. Nor does my family. They do not care about it. They see “follow us on Twitter” during TV broadcasts and don’t know why they should. Further, they are not getting more interested despite an increasing barrage of the service.  If anything, they are even less intrigued to the mystique that is Twitter than ever before.  Note that some of my screenshots contain vulgar language – nothing compared to Xbox Live banter, but you’ve been warned.

Here’s the “first impression” a user gets by coming to twitter:

 

Independent of all other things, this doesn’t really give any insight as to why people are going crazy about Twitter. If I’ve heard that Oprah and Ashton are tweeting, and my favorite football player, and it’s the latest hottest thing, and all I see is a static page with a bunch of random-seeming terms, I’m not yet compelled.  Further, the major tagline “Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world” isn’t exactly right.  If you make a search like “how are things in haiti” you get a very bizarre set of responses that do not inherently answer the question.  Knowing how to search in Twitter is important, yet isn’t taught.  Showing hashtags also overly geeks up the screen, and in a bad way.  To continue this “new user experience”, I clicked on “pregnancy pact” (was curious) and saw the following:

 

This didn’t really explain anything to me, just showed me, well, the exact type of garbage the average person does not want to be reading.  It’s not even gossip/fun, it’s just *weird*.  Sure there’ll be the occasional clever gem, but for the most part, especially with popular topics, it’s becoming a haven for spam or utter drivel.  Also, as an aside, Twitter should not display foul language to users who aren’t logged in – some people still prefer to keep vulgarity elsewhere. It actually gets even worse if you look at trending topics:

Huh?  No thanks.

Now how about the new user experience from the perspective of following someone they were “told” to follow.  The @CNN account shows recent CNN headlines, as it should.  However, this does not exactly “add value” to someone’s life, as finding CNN headlines is relatively easy to do.  How about mega-celebrity @Oprah?

 

Not exactly new and interesting, and definitely not “real-time”. All we’ve learned is she seems to like Avatar, uses capital letters inappropriately, and then includes a bunch of things that look like gobbledygook.  Why? Because once you do get “into” Twitter, you start using acronyms, links, and vocabulary that make texting look downright poetic.  What’s a ow.ly? Who’s RT? It looks foreign and daunting.  It’s as if there’s a huge “insider’s” club, and if you don’t get it, you feel awkward and alienated.

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The last American wild jaguar: captured and euthanised

Ewen Callaway, reporter

The last American wild jaguar - a male by the name of Macho B - was captured illegally by Arizona state officials, concludes a new US government report on the incident.

"In February, the 118-pound jaguar, which then appeared to be in fine health, was captured in a leg-hold snare in the mountains near Nogales, Ariz. His canine tooth was broken as a result. He was tranquilized, equipped with a radio collar and released. Days later it was found that Macho B was not moving, and he was recaptured and brought to the Phoenix zoo. Veterinarians there said he was suffering from irreversible kidney failure and euthanised him," reports the New York Times.

Officials at the Arizona Game and Fish Department (AZGFD) have maintained that they inadvertently snared the animal.

"We found that the AZGFD was aware of Macho B's presence in the vicinity of its mountain lion and black bear study in late December 2008 and January 2009," the report says, adding that the agency did not consult with the US government before laying traps as required by the Endangered Species Act.

"Federal investigators are weighing whether the evidence gathered in the case of jaguar Macho B merits prosecution of anyone involved in its capture last year, an official said Friday. The criminal investigation is now under 'prosecutorial review' by the US Attorney's Office in Tucson, said Nicholas Chavez, the US Fish and Wildlife Service's law enforcement chief for the Southwest," according to AP (via Arizona Daily Star).

Categories: Environment

• Posted on January 25, 2010 4:46 PM
Posted by Rowan Hooper at January 25, 2010 4:46 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (2)

When Kathleen Hall stepped off the elevator at her office on the 104th floor one Monday, she had it all: beauty, smarts, a successful career as a stockbroker on Wall Street, a supportive husband, and two healthy children. But despite her efforts to act composed, she was terrified. Nauseated and short of breath, her chest tight, she stopped to lean against a wall. She didn't move from that spot until a security guard took notice and asked if she was okay. She wasn't. Her life, until then so calculated, had come to a screeching halt.

Born to a violent, alcoholic father and a victimized mother, Hall, 55, had learned early what it took to survive. She worked hard as a teenager, baby-sitting, cutting hair in her garage, even detailing cars to scrape cash together. When married and pregnant with her first child, she began to put herself through college. Later she strove to achieve corporate success and make money -- something she knew brought power. But the years of late hours and high-stakes pressure (not to mention the weekly commute from her home base in Georgia) seemed to coalesce into a single realization: Winning the race wouldn't bring happiness. In fact, it could cost her life itself. She turned around, got back in the elevator, and booked a flight home.

Twenty years later, Hall is one of the nation's noted experts on stress management, sought after by clients, colleagues, and media in times of crisis. "I've seen stress cause people to totally shut down -- physically and emotionally. They lose focus and become disoriented, confused, and depressed," says Hall, whose work has included consoling Katrina survivors, counseling victims of domestic violence, and advising families in hospitals coping with cancer and AIDS. Stress comes in countless incarnations, from poor, homeless single mothers to wealthy, depressed CEOs. "It's our nation's greatest democratizer," she says, "and it's not going anywhere."

In her case, that moment of panic by the elevator turned out to be a catalyst for self-inquiry. She quit her job, retreated for six months to a remote cabin at her Clarksville, Georgia, home, and then spent the next seven years on an entirely different course, pursuing a master's in divinity at Emory University and then a doctorate in spirituality at Columbia University. She studied with an eclectic group of visionaries -- Thich Nhat Hanh and Bishop Desmond Tutu, Trappist monks and Sufi leaders -- and noticed that, despite their diverse backgrounds, they all seemed to advocate the same ground-up approach to life. "So many of us strive to move onward and upward, but I began to see that the path to joy starts with an entirely different approach: inward and downward. Seeds first move inward and downward to root -- and then toward the light, upward and forward." Reducing susceptibility to stress, she realized, was essentially a matter of nourishing the roots.

She adopted a powerful but surprisingly simple mantra -- SELF, an acronym for serenity, exercise, love, and food -- and started teaching it to others to great effect. These "four roots of real happiness" may seem almost too easy, but she insists they have a centering effect in even the worst of circumstances. "It's these basic, ordinary actions that ground you," she explains. "By attending to your roots each day, you learn to stay focused and intentional -- and stay true to your design." Making time for serenity, for instance, creates space in our lives for meditation and stress reduction; exercise benefits the spirit and mind as well as the body; love and friendship bring physiological and emotional rewards; and nourishing food, consciously consumed, feeds the senses in a deeply satisfying way. It's these simple things, she says -- a moment to connect with your breath, a walk in the park, a hug from a friend, a thoughtfully prepared meal -- that keep us balanced.

From Body+Soul, March 2007

Next Page: 10 Secrets to a Stress-Free Life

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The SELF acronym seems both clever and wise.

Incredible design using "...concepts familiar to many artists and photographers, specifically the diving proportion, the golden rectangle and golden spiral. To the layman, this means that hard geometry played a primary role in developing a house that is as beautiful and natural as it is mathematic."