Starcraft, on the other hand, is something I can do. Competitive Starcraft is HUGE in Korea. There are 3 different TV channels that almost exclusively broadcast Starcraft. Watching rediculously good people play Starcraft is amazing. Most professionals average about 300 actions per minute, where one action could consist of hitting 2 keys simul on the keyboard and then left clicking. So it reall adds up to about 500 or so actions a minute. In a 15 minute game (which is a pretty long one by professional standards) you end up with 7500 actions. That is a good way to get RSI (repetitive stress injury).

Anyway, Starcraft is a complex game, with all kinds of strategies (many of which revolve around build orders) and counters to those strategies. To the majority of people, the following wont make any sense: 8rax used to be the best counter to 12hatch, but z players have realized ways to beat it. If you didnt get it, dont worry. Just go watch some professional Starcraft on youtube. A good search is Boxer vs Yellow.

I drove both ways to MIT, about 25 miles, one way in the rain. People in MA do drive like assholes. I try my very best not to, which is prolly a good thing since Im still on my permit. I saw three accidents on the way home, one right at the end of an exit ramp. Got to drive through a nice big, deep puddle too, managed not to flood the engine.

Gonna play something for a bit - havent decided what, either CoD4, BF2, Starcraft or EvE.

Both ATLAS and CMS will also explore the ghostly realm of
hidden dimensions. Particle physicists tend to think of subatomic particles as
point masses, but string theory attempts to unify all forces and particles by
viewing them as different vibrations of strands or loops called superstrings.

Although the superstrings are probably too tiny to observe
directly, the theory makes several predictions, including the existence of
seven hidden dimensions of space. These dimensions would be tightly compacted
or curled up. But through the production of new particles that might move or
wind around these extra dimensions, ATLAS and CMS experiments will have the
sensitivity to detect extra dimensions one-ten-billionth the size of an atom.

If this theory of extra dimensions is correct, the LHC could
become a factory for making microscopic black holes.

In Einstein’s theory of
gravity, which assumes a universe confined to three space dimensions and one of
time, black holes could be generated by an accelerator much bigger than Earth.
But in an alternative theory, gravity leaks out into other, unseen dimensions —
a possible explanation of why gravity appears to be so much weaker than the
other forces in nature.

In this scenario, gravity is weak only if observed at long
distances because the extra, hidden dimensions dilute its strength. Conversely,
at the high energies and small scales probed by the LHC, gravity would become
much stronger than it is in ordinary three-dimensional space, cramming enough
matter together to form microscopic black holes as often as once a second.

Such black holes, according to research by Stephen Hawking
in the 1970s, ought to rapidly radiate away their energy and evaporate in an
instant, and would not be dangerous. As they nearly instantaneously evaporate,
they would radiate distinctive sprays of elementary particles, which stand out
in the LHC detectors.

The possibility of creating tiny black holes at the LHC is
“quite a long shot,” admits Steve Giddings of the University of California,
Santa Barbara. But he’s hoping that long shot comes through. “Not only would we
learn things about gravity and the fabric of spacetime,” he says, “but we would
apparently have direct evidence for extra dimensions of space.”

Bon voyage to Mr. Living Small, who departs for Los Angeles via Amtrak this morning. It's a 36-hour train trip, folks — that's a lot of sustained silent reading — but he chose rails over airways for their lower environmental impact. Want some figures? Flit on over to this chart devised by the Sightline Institute (go, Seattle treehuggers!) on the subject of CO₂ emissions according to transit type.

Have you ever long-hauled it on the railroad? How far did you go?

(And how late did you arrive?)

"The overwhelming majority of people are so enslaved to habits, craving, instincts, and fixed reactions, they are such slaves to things and to their selves, that it would truly be surprising not to be able to forecast their future. Knowing the so-called 'character' of a person, we can already know in an approximate way what he or she will do in certain circumstances" (Evola and the Ur Group 2001, p. 310).

and

"Wherever the basic condition of 'desire' is overcome, and thereby the object is purified from an object of desire into an object of contemplation, the overcoming of the temporal condition ensues naturally. I am referring here to the liberation of the self and of the object and thus to the possibility of capturing in a synthetic way what ordinary consciousness would regard as events analytically arranged along a temporal series, as a mere sequence of 'facts' or events more or less endured" (Evola and the UR Group 2001, p. 313).

A lot of what Evola writes about in terms of habits, cravings, etc is is quite true. Contemporary studies in neuroscience show the people act more so on emotions and cravings and desires and then after that initial impulse end up rationalizing their choices. Given that the amount of neural connections that go from the emotional systems to the rational sections of the brain is substantially more than the connections going from the rational systems to the emotional systems, it's fair to say that the emotions have a significant impact on our choices (no matter how we might like to conceive of ourselves as rational thinkers). Add in the fact, that in sales it's recognized that you sell the feeling in order to hook a potential buyer, and you have people who do in fact plan on the future likelihood that a person will react in an expected manner.

A conversation with my neighbor tonight yielded another insight, which is that if a person feels really good about the lifestyle s/he has, s/he may be perfectly content with the predictability of hir routines. This then brings into question what the motivation for change needs to be to shake up that routine...point is though that time becomes more of a reality through the predictable routines we use to navigate life. In fact time can be conceived as a measurement of those routines. this is most noticeable in the eight hour workday, where time is used to measure how long a person has to stay at work. But it can also be seen in other activities...Calculating the commute for instance.

An astute reader will note that I mentioned time's nature is illusory, but might wonder if that's really the case, given what I just wrote above. But what I wrote above amply demonstrates the illusory nature of time in the sense that time is used as a predictor and measurement of activities...when they should occur, when they could occur, etc....We use time as a measurement to determine and predict when something happens, and create routines out of that prediction.

The second passage of Evola's is intriguing to me, mainly because I've experienced it...i.e. the alignment of events and occurrences that cause a situation to manifest favorably for me. And I think he hits on a key point, that the overcoming of desire greatly enhances the potential of the events aligning in a person's favor. The reason is because you're no longer engaged in specific routines that you believe will get you what you want. We use routines to provide us comfort as well as to fulfill desires, but those same routines are predictive of the actions we'll take, and can limit the possibilities/opportunities a person could manifest.

The choice to overcome the basic condition of desire is really the choice of being able to perceive the desired outcome in a dispassionate manner...to no longer want it, and thus to no longer need your fixed routines that you'd normally use to get it. Unsurprisingly the result of this is that a person is much more open to possibilities or opportunities that are unconventional, yet still lead to the same outcome. A personal example I'd use is my deliberate choice to not concern myself about the out come of my most recent job hunt. Instead of worrying about when I'd get a job, I focused instead on other matters that I cared about. I did of course still do some job hunting, but ultimately the job I ended up with came through a different venue than what I'd normally have found. Everything came together at at exactly the right time.

It occurs to me that linear time is really another means of measuring desire, measuring how much effort you will put into getting something...whereas non-linear time  is an acceptance that the desire isn't essential, and consequently this opens up new vectors which can bring that desire into fruition...the act of not wanting it causes it to occur. Sounds contradictory, but the more desire we emotionally feel, the more invested we are in attempting to obtain something, and as Evola notes and I have noted myself, both from personal experience and from reading a variety of texts on the subject, the feeling of desire can trap us into particular routines, while blinding us to different perspectives that may not be as based in desire (or linear time), but are based on being open to the random opportunities that cause reality to align and manifest what the person was seeking. It's exactly when you give up desire on an emotional level, that you open up to non-linear time and allow what you wanted to come to you through unconventional methods.

Paradox...

Kant was right, in attempting to talk about things as they are in themselves (the noumena) instead of how they are to us (the phenomena) we commit the cardinal error of contemporary philosophy. The ultra prevalent (and I will argue immature) belief that there exists a separate objective reality (a noumenal world) that is permanently shrouded apart from ourselves plagues both philosophy and physics at the moment with language and mathematics being used respectively to absolutely try and describe how things are in themselves instead of how they appear to us.

Akin to the flat earth belief, but on a much greater scale since you can’t set sail to prove it wrong, the problem in accepting that you can talk meaningfully about how things are in themselves, instead of how they appear to you, is that in doing so you have to abandon both scepticism and empiricism in taking such a absolute view of the world. (Scepticism as in your saying there is a separate reality with x (when there may not be) and empiricism in deferring to rationalistic/a priori truths, which both language and mathematics depend on, instead of experience which real science is based upon).

Exchanging mathematical ideas of space-time for our flat earth example now it can be said here that Kant (who first attempted to rigorously describe it in these terms) made the error in his philosophy (analogous to the later cosmological constant error made by Einstein) of adding the idea of noumena - by saying first that space and time were intuitions with us but then adding that what we perceive is ultimately different from what actually is within his synthetic a priori distinction. Einstein however, who in physics gave strict mathematical laws of how space and time act, said of space-time that it was something out there - holding it again along with Kant as something which is separate of us being a realist/materialist on these matters. Both here can be said to have to have made the common rationalistic error of believing that things exist past our potential or complete perception and founded their respective philosophies on it (being unable, or perhaps unwilling, to give the full and opposite empiricist/idealist view its complete and fair due).

Keeping with metaphysics for a moment the differences today between how idealism and materialism handle the notions of space-time are stark and are worth mentioning. Excluding detailed materialist discussion of any of the new hypothesised and unverif-ied/able dimensions, physicalists/rationalists now, out of mathematical/linguistic necessity, are currently supposing a separate, flat, finite containing ’substance’ for space-time which deforms and expands at local and universal levels and that progresses linearly while existing on a(nother?) donut like surface to avoid any boundary problems (thereby cleverly avoiding Kant’s 1st autonomy by creating a flat substance which expands, deforms and curves back on itself - something which I think we can’t really blame Kant for not seeing when first contemplating space). With a idealist/empiricist however (defined here in their proper forms as those who don’t defer to existence or knowledge past possible experience) the need for description comes after observation so the focus is upon the phenomenal machinery first (the way it’s required to be for perception to take place) and the “absolute” mathematical detail second - a process that bypasses the materialists dilemma without having to sacrifice either scepticism, empiricism or simplicity in the judgement.

Philosophies ultimate goal has always been concerned with establishing absolute certainty within it (by seeking complete answer to such questions as what is the meaning of life? what is good? how am I sure of my knowledge?) but by following a rationalistic and materialistic route towards this end you will necessarily run into the problems laid out above. Rationalisms deductive place (which is required for mathematical space-time) is rightfully behind sciences inductive one and by starting from a position which depends on deductively containing perceptual experience as a first principal (when the opposite ideas of unlimited experience give way to such critical ideas of absolute knowledge, objective morality and perceiver based reality) you will necessarily be abandoning any practice of sceptical philosophy with the rejection of the only idea which can potentially falsify it.

In conclusion then - the focus on clarity and the use of the language in philosophy will always be secondary to the scepticism that can be placed upon it’s results and to try and establish a system of mathematical precision in which all of reality can be contained and explained within ignores the very real objections from empiricism and scepticism. It can be argued from this that our current everyday language is as good as any other method of description when applied after the fact of experience which is the only real method we have of knowing anything about the world - a state of affairs which may, or may not, be secondary to another all encompassing transcendent truth of which the idea of a monistic God is the only representative of in philosophy. The ultimate goal of mathematics and language therefore (being the third person realm which science and philosophy make use of) should only ever be to describe the dependent, logical structures that are required for perception to take place without ever attempting to transcend them and pose first person questions that it has no business in asking (a position which applies the anthropic principle completely to phenomenal knowledge and that both rationalists and materialists must wholly reject in order to keep the primacy of their third person world views). ]]> http://brandontilford.wordpress.com/?p=55 Wed, 18 Jun 2008 03:39:35 +0000 brandontilford http://brandontilford.wordpress.com/?p=55 I want to talk about some passages from a book: God & The New Physics by Paul Davies. It's a bit outdated, but he is able to explain things in a way that is refreshing. He poses more questions than answers and encourages me to keep an open mind when pondering God's existence.

[In response to superstring theory,] the skeptical theologian will reply, even a single superforce and a handful of simple particles require an explanation. Why that particular superforce? In fact, why any law at all?

The scientist, however, may wish to challenge the assumption that an infinite mind (God) is simpler than the universe. In our experience, mind only exists in physical systems that are above a certain threshold of complexity. The brain is a highly complicated system. While it is possible to imagine a disembodied mind, there must be some means of expression of the pattern, and the pattern itself is complex. So it could be argued that an infinite mind is infinitely complex and hence far less likely than a universe, many parts of which are far too short on complexity to support a mind.

In other words, Occam's Razor dictates that the uncaused eternal existence of the universe is a simpler explanation than God because Occam's Razor requires simpler beginnings, and it can be argued that God is "infinitely complex."

Perhaps, then, God is not a mind, but something simpler? Does it in any case make sense to talk about a mind existing timelessly? Aren't thoughts, decisions, and so on things that take place in time? But if God cannot decide (or hope, or judge, or converse) in what sense is he responsible for the nature and existence of the universe? Is such a being anything that we would recognize as a God at all? Despite these doubts, we are still left with the complexity and specificity of the universe to account for. Why this universe?

Why this universe, indeed. If M-theory is correct, however, it's quite possible that many parallel universes exist, then our universe can be explained by the anthropic principle. IF M-theory has any truth to it.

We have seen how physicists think of space and time as a sort of four-dimensional sheet (or perhaps balloon) with the possibility of other disconnected sheets. Could the soul reside in one of these other universes? Alternatively, spacetime may be envisaged as enfolded by, or embedded in, a higher dimensional space, much as a two-dimensional surface or sheet is embedded in a three-dimensional space. Might not the soul inhabit a location in this higher dimensional space which is still (geometrically speaking) close to our physical spacetime, but not actually in it? From this higher dimensional vantage point the soul could 'lock on' to the body of an individual in spacetime, without itself being part of spacetime.

It's a plausible scenario that has been suggested by philosophers for hundreds of years. I don't know of any physical evidence for it, though.

Further problems crop up when one turns to the question of time. A soul is not in space, but is it in time? Presumably the answer is yes. If the soul is the source of our perceptions, then this must include our perception of time. Moreover, many recognizably human mental processes are explicitly time-dependent: planning, hoping, regretting, anticipating, for instance.

On the one hand, such notions are strongly tied to our perception of time in the physical world and do not accord well with the alleged separation of the physical and spiritual realms. The difficulty is exacerbated if one entertains the possibility that there may actually be an end to time: there may be no 'everlasting' anyway.

In summary, it seems there is a logical incoherency between a belief that the soul experiences "emotions" of some sort, yet is at the same time timeless. The experience of emotion requires the principle of cause and effect. How can something be timeless and undergo cause and effect at the same time?

That's enough for now. More later, perhaps. Are you exercising your brain?

Other stuff:

I totally failed at the whole "post a piano video every Monday" thing. Alas, life got slightly busier (and I greeted that change with open arms).

I spent the early part of this week figuring out what classes I'll be taking for the next year or so at UAB. Today was orientation, which was surprisingly a very nice experience. I'm finally taking some serious math courses; it's about damn time, I say. It's funny how something as silly as planning my classes has given me a much more positive outlook on life. I feel like I'm going places now. Perhaps I'm just at a place in my life where I very much welcome change.

WHO: Werner Aisslinger and the Loftcube team

WHERE: Berlin

WHAT: Spacey (but not spacious) nomad's modhouse

SIZE: 420 sq. ft.

Ich bin ein Berliner!

Leave it to the Germans to come up with a way to modify the flattop prewar buildings of their capital city. Werner Aisslinger and co. have devised an über-clever tiny house, known as the Loftcube, to create an instaPenthouse feel atop any flat-roofed building. At just 420 feet square, the Loftcube incorporates all living necessities — compact kitchen, miniature bathroom, and multipurpose living/sleeping area — all within a windowed exterior that allows for 360-degree views of the surrounding cityscape.

What's more, Aisslinger designed the Loftcube with mobility in mind. His plan? To have Loftcubes winging from metropolis to cosmopolis, their lightweight frames and integrated interiors held aloft by no more than a helicopter or two. While I'm not so keen on the fuel burned by transporting these megamodern structures between Euro-capitals, I am interested in the possibilities they create for rooftops everywhere. A Big view makes living Small just that much easier. Check out the Loftcube website for pics and vids, complete with kooky German trip hop.

Bei mir bist Du schön, Loftcube.

Eins, zwei, drei! More diminutive domiciles in the Tiny House Logue. And special thanks to Timmy C. for the tip-off on the Loftcube. Schnell!

Here's some to look into:

SpaceTime is a 3-dimensional interface for use with Google, YouTube, RSS, eBay, Amazon, Yahoo!, Flickr and Images and many other services, to help search and give you a 3D result.  Obviously, it's promoted as being especially good for images.  Freeware.

3DNA is actually kind of old as interfaces go (their last news post was in 2004), and not for Vista -- it's for XP and earlier.  But if you have RAM to spare for it, you can create a pretty cool desktop interface for free, and if you buy it, you have even more options.  Freeware and pay.

Illustration by Belle Mellor

THE web has changed in many ways since it first emerged in the mid-1990s. The first web pages contained only text, and there was a big debate about whether pictures should be allowed. Today, by contrast, it is quite normal for pages to be bursting with photos, animated graphics, video clips, music and chunks of software, as well as text. In one respect, however, the web is unaltered: the clickable hyperlinks between pages are still the way users get from one page to another.

But now a Norwegian computer scientist named Frode Hegland has cooked up a new sort of navigation. His free software, a browser add-on called Hyperwords, makes every single word or phrase on a page into a hyperlink—not just those chosen by a website's authors. Click on any word, number or phrase, and menus and sub-menus pop up. With a second click, it is possible to translate text into many languages, obtain currency or measurement conversions, and retrieve related photos, videos, academic papers, maps, Wikipedia entries and web pages fetched by Google, among other things.

All that information, of course, can already be accessed by web users willing to root around, opening a series of new browser windows or tabs. The goal of Hyperwords, Mr Hegland says, is "reducing the threshold" of satisfying curiosity, by making the quest faster and easier. Later this year he will release a new version that extends this trick beyond the web browser, turning any word in any window into a clickable "hyperword".

Hyperwords is a relatively new idea, and so far it has fewer than 200,000 users. But it is one of a number of new initiatives designed to transform internet browsing, by providing more connections between data, presenting information in new ways and making it easier to navigate. Another example is Cooliris, a start-up based in Silicon Valley, which has invented a browser add-on called Previews. Hovering the mouse pointer over a link causes a small preview of the linked page to pop up in a tiny window, making it easier to decide whether to click through to the page or not. More than 2m people have downloaded the free software since January.

Another Cooliris application, PicLens, takes images fetched from Google, Flickr, Facebook, eBay and other websites and displays them, free of the clutter on each image's webpage, on a spectacular full-screen, 3-D wall. Viewers can zip left and right, zooming in or pulling back, to scan hundreds of images in seconds. Images can be clicked for full-screen display, or shown in context on their original webpage. The free software has been downloaded over 5m times. A new version, released in April, turns YouTube searches into a clutter-free wall of videos in a similar fashion. Austin Shoemaker, technology chief at Cooliris, says internet users are "subconsciously frustrated" with clicking "next, next, next" to view content.

PicLens provides a glimpse of a possible future for the web: as a three-dimensional environment, in which users move through clusters of pages that appear to float in space, pushing unwanted ones away and arranging others in logical groupings. This approach takes advantage of people's natural spatial memory. John Maeda, the president of the Rhode Island School of Design, says people find it hard to navigate the flood of online information in two dimensions, and rarely open more than a few windows at a time. With a 3-D browser over 100 windows can be visible at once, even on a laptop screen.

Mr Maeda, until recently a senior researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, worked on a forthcoming 3-D browser called E15 which uses a special mouse to allow viewers to move around in a 3-D space. Researchers have been kicking around 3-D browsers in labs for years, but they never came to much. Only in the past year or so have ultra-fast internet connections and powerful computers become commonplace enough to make mass-market 3-D browsing feasible.

SpaceTime, a start-up based in New York, has developed a 3-D browser which has been downloaded over 2m times since its launch in January. SpaceTime's boss, Edward Bakhash, says the inspiration came from video games, and the sleek animated graphics of Apple's iPhone. Software developers compete, of course, but Mr Bakhash says there is a feeling that the whole community is working hard to "help usher in the next paradigm".

The movement will get a boost in late July, when Second Life, a popular 3-D virtual world, incorporates a feature that will allow inhabitants to post web pages on walls. Joe Miller, vice-president of technology at Linden Labs, the company in San Francisco, California, that runs Second Life, says 2-D web browsing is usually solitary. Browsing in Second Life, however, will be a social activity, because users strolling virtually through the world can gather and chat next to web pages.

A browser called 3B, developed by a firm of the same name in London, also makes browsing social. Users search for a product, and pictures of the results are arranged into the aisles of a virtual shop. Shoppers can mill about to get a better look, and chat via instant messaging with other people searching for similar things. Over 200 retailers, including Barnes & Noble, Wal-Mart and Gap, display their wares in 3B. A few employ shop-assistants to answer shoppers' questions. 3B takes a cut of sales initiated in its browser. Nicky Morris, the firm's boss, says business is "absolutely phenomenal" because women in particular stay in shops longer when they are not alone.

Microsoft is also developing a 3-D browser, called Deepfish, for mobile devices. Many other 3-D browsers are in the pipeline. It is seductive technology that can look gorgeous. But Dave Farber, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon who is one of the internet's founding fathers, says the enthusiasm for cool visuals will be replaced by a realisation that 3-D navigation is a much-needed tool. He points to Hyperwords, which he thinks will become widely used (and imitated). It allows people to make more connections of the kind that interest them. A user can add an option, say, to search for any clicked-on word or phrase in her favourite Bolivian and Peruvian newspapers. Hyperwords users can also effortlessly place clicked-on text into a blog, e-mail, instant message or Facebook profile. These new connections add "depth" to words and ideas, Mr Farber says, but create incredibly complex networks. Without 3-D maps, he says, we may lose our bearings. 

-Jun 5th 2008 

From The Economist print edition

WHO: Pia Jane Bijkerk, globe-trotting designer, stylist, and blogger

WHERE: Amsterdam

WHAT: Haute-cool houseboat

SIZE: No se, but not sizable

Old man river gets an overhaul.

Whoever thought houseboats were the purview of salty sailors and their cranky parrots obviously missed Pia Jane Bijkerk's incredible Amsterdam oasis (and, I suppose, Sleepless in Seattle), featured at Design*Sponge a few weeks ago.

Despite a history of acute seasickness, I've always been curiously drawn to houseboats — maybe it's their multifunctional nature — and Pia's is an outstanding example of just how homey a waterbound abode can be. The ample light maximizes space and highlights the honey-colored woodwork, giving the place a spacious, yet cocoon-like, feel. Because the boat is essentially shaped like a bowling alley (long and thin, and sans any architectural break-ups), Pia created "rooms" with clever uses of furniture, including a "bedroom," courtesy of a lovely screen framed out in that same golden hardwood.

Sadly, this isn't Pia's primary home — kind of a downer for living Small; what's Small about having three residences, all of them flung as far and wide as Pia's places in Amsterdam, Paris, and Sydney? Nevertheless, it is a testament to small space living. And an aesthetically ga-ga one, at that.

Check out the original D*S post for more photos. And don't forget to walk through the Tiny House Logue for more of what you love: teeny-tiny houses with Small style.

"Every time you break an egg, you are doing observational cosmology."

From Does Time Run Backward in Other Universes? by Sean M. Carroll.

there will be more coming on what i've been up to during the absence (which mostly involves a lot of moving, working, and sleepiing), and the exciting changes in store for culturshock in the near future.  For now, I want to jump right into a topic that I've spent a few days pondering about.

It's no secret that technology has changed the very fabric of our world, how we interact with it, how we model it, and how lives are built around it.  The original example I came across while chatting with a friend was transportation. Namely, how the transportation technologies that have permeated our existence have radically altered human perceptions of distance.

Conceivably, there was once a time where a journey from Toronto to Ottawa was a matter of days or even a few weeks.  The geography of society was navigated using the only available means: feet and the occassional horse.  The use of these technologies placed a practical limit on the possible speed and distance that a traveller could achieve in a given period of travel.  Subjectively, the corner store was "close", the next town was "far", and any trip to Ottawa was a big deal. As transportation technologies have improved and become more obtainable, the perceptions of "close" and "far" distances has shifted.  Now, a trip to Ottawa is a day affair, and the B.C. coast a few days at most. Most places within an hour's drive are "close".  With these technologies so readily at hand, we grow accustomed to the immediacy of physical transportation that they afford.

It was here that the metaphor struck me.  I saw technology (and its associated purposes, etc) as exerting a sort of pressure over and upon us.  This compressing force brings more and more into smaller and smaller spaces.  As a result, our "reach" is extended. To us, it simply feels as if the room we inhabit is getting smaller.  Just like the pressure of water on the body of a scuba diver at a given depth, technology acts a form of pressure on our perceptual, cognitive, and social systems.  And much like the scuba diver who suffers the effects of compressing or decompressing too quickly (ie: shifting pressure environments), so shifts in technology can alter our ability to function in the world.  A sudden disappearance of transportation would leave many businesses empty, as their employees (normally "close") live 6 hours away (by foot). I tend to get very grumpy when the internet goes down in my house, as I feel cut off from the world at large, and re-confined to my local space.  This is frustration is symptomatic of techno-decompression sickness.

To change gears slightly, I continue to return to the idea of "distributed knowledge" as a siren call of the networked age, whereby the amalgamation of knowledge communities, websites, blogs, archives, and social networks gives rise to a system far too large for a single entity to possess in any meaningful entirety.  While a great way to frame the literal process, this approach sticks to the preferred (albeit archaic) vocabulary of the pre-networked age, one in which distance is still a concept of value.

Here's the pitch: the compression ratio of total knowledge per unit space-time has been cranked so high that the knob has broken off.  So high, in fact, that the other day, when my car wouldn't start, the only distance my hand had to travel was to my pocket, and across the keys on the screen of my iPod touch.  The only restraint on speed was the 3 seconds here or there to load diagnostic pages and address the problem. The knowledge, for all intents and purposes, wasn't my own or even nearby, and yet at speeds that fast and distances that small, it might as well have been.

jon.

Finding a needle in a hay stack is nearly impossible. But finding a picture in SpaceTime's™ visual stacks is easy. Now you can search Yahoo! Images and Google Images and take advantage of your computer's high powered graphics and fast broadband connection as SpaceTime™ displays thousands of images at once.

Enter your search term and SpaceTime™ displays your search results in their own visual stack.

Visit your favorite search engine, type in your search term and you may find yourself spending all afternoon clicking back and forth between a list and the web pages you are looking for. Not anymore. With SpaceTime's™ 3D Web Search, you choose your search engin

e from the drop down menu, type in your search term and enjoy the experience as SpaceTime™ displays all your search results at once in our patent pending interface. Enjoy the perks that immediate visualization has to offer as you save time, eliminate clicks and find the web pages you are looking for at a fraction of the time.

Your regular browser has one window. When you create a new web page, it replaces your old web page and gives you a tab. But what if you had unlimited space? What if you now had: here, there, and the space between? SpaceTime™ is proud to introduce this "space between" as 3D Tabbed Browsing. Just enter your websites in the address line as you normally would and watch as your web pages are individually displayed in a stunning 3D space where you can view all of your web pages at the same time. Effortlessly shuffle from one page to the next in your 3D space by clicking on the icons for these web pages on your timeline. It's that easy.

SpaceTime™

What do you get when you cross a tiny house with a bibelot hound? Living Small!

Sure, I try to limit my intake. Souvenirs are just stuff, right? Clutter, correct? Or are they?

As you may have deduced, I revere old things. Storied things, with all their bumps and bruises. A cat-shaped bottle of long-gone Avon perfume that Mommo kept on the bathroom counter (above). A Parthenon postcard from 1954, with a message to Nikolais Dombroussuis of 720 South L Street, Tacoma, Washington, written in Greek. But what's the use of old things if they aren't serving a need? What's the point of a shelf-sitter?

I know, I know: knickknacks are the cush of a home. They're the jewelry, in a sense — they are the things that make us remember, and the things that can tell us who we are and where we've been. It would take a Hannibal-worthy elephant stampede to get me to cast off my Parthenon postcard, even though I have no clue who Nikolais Dombroussuis is. (If you know him, please tell me; that would be so small-world cool.)

But why can't I imagine a life without a 50-year-old photo of the Parthenon and a message written to someone I've never met, and can barely read? Probably the same reason I'm itching to get a brick or two from the recently demo'd cold storage building of the old Rainier Brewery — history. Feeling the age of a thing, imagining the who and the where of it, gives me a thrill. Seriously. Plus, not only are these old items beautiful in their senectitude, they're beautiful in their Greenery: paying homage to a mannequin head likely bound for the landfill isn't only about design sense; it's a good way to add a little timeworn trash to a room without contributing to the cycle of new consumption.

Is this normal? I'd bet. And while I'm no hoarder, I know there are things in my home that feather my nest without furthering my downsize. But what's the real harm in tchotchke tableaux? A little more dust?

I'll take it.

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Curious about Einstein and his theories?  Check out this article, titled Spin and Spacetime, about spacetime and a test currently being performed to confirm one of Einstein's theories about the shape of reality.  The article includes some great diagrams and videos to help clarify.

From the site: Gravity Probe B: Testing Einstein's Universe

WHO: Sarah Humphreys, erstwhile Blueprint magazine editor

WHERE: West Village, Big Apple

WHAT: Large-scale mess turned small urban oasis

SIZE: 307 square feet

Cinderella didn't have it so good.

For those of you who missed the major makeover of editor Sarah Humphreys' apartment in Blueprint's March/April issue last year, a re-cap: Humphreys moved into the West Village rental in a flurry upon accepting editorship of Blueprint — the unfortunately now-defunct Martha Stewart mag aimed at the younger set. She soon found that living Small (307 square feet-small, to be exact) taxed her: from off-scale furniture to too-little storage to unsightly kitchen cabinets, the space was a wreck.

Naturally, in swooped a crack team of decorators, all assembled from the Martha Stewart empire. (Lucky.) Their small-space strategy:

• Open up the space with cool colors — warm tones, like the butter yellow Sarah moved in to, create cocoons, not aeries.
• Add uniform, if open, storage. Not only do these awesome, mantle-flanking shelves solve a storage problem, their sameness keeps the eye from zeroing in on the stuff.
• Chuck out bulky sofas and chairs; replace with streamlined and double-duty furnishings — her console/desk, for example, morphs into a dining table for four.
• Hang a fresh white curtain mounted on hospital tracking to hide the icky kitch. Some things, even Martha Stewart can't transform.

What a difference. Sometimes, all you need to live Small is a plan, a can of paint, and Martha. For more, see the photo tour. If you missed Blueprint altogether, check out its offshoot, the Bluelines blog.

Don't stop 'til you get enough. Check out Living Small's Tiny House Logue in the nav bar!

Photo at top: From marthastewart.com.

Naturally, I have a penchant for cat-related things, like the ZenHaus, which I stumbled upon at Apartment Therapy:

A mod fiberglass hut that doubles as an end table, the ZenHaus is the brainchild of Seattle-based pet co. DenHaus (interesting apellation parallels there), who pride themselves on creating "homes for pets, designs for people." While I can't vouch for the earth-friendliness of fiberglass, which is generated through a laborious and resource-guzzling process, I must say that the ZenHaus is awfully artful. From a small-space perspective, this dual-function piece — which can hide the standard litter box — makes co-species living a bit easier on the eyes and on the floorplan.

Or, if litter ain't your issue, the ZenHaus works as a streamlined feline (or canine) hideaway. The door is removable, allowing kitty to come and go as he pleases.

Now, the price: $525. Yipes. But so cool, no?

WHERE: See above

WHAT: Mini-home movement in the heart of the Midwest

SIZE: Under 600 square feet

As long as there's room for the Cheddar...

The Isthmus of Madison, Wis., covers the small-house trend with a profile of small-home residents. The paper's Ann Grauvogl checks in with the live-ins of five homes, each 600 square feet or smaller. One of those homes, the abode of Robert and Deborah Luther, tops out just over 550 square feet in toto. Writes Grauvogl:

Robert and Deborah Luther fit themselves, as well as a large dog and a cat, into 396 square feet on the main floor; there's another 156 in the not-quite-finished upstairs.

Robert bought the house west of John Nolen Drive on the shore of Lake Monona 20 years ago. "More or less, I was looking for a place to keep my boat," he says. When he and Deborah were married, "I threw out half of my stuff so she could move in. She threw out the other half of my stuff."

Certainly, cutting ties with prized possessions isn't always an offshoot of living small; instead, for many — Living Smaller included! — that definition of "prized possession" takes on a different meaning. Rather than furnishing a sense of wholeness and fulfillment, those piles of prizes, when crammed into a small space, turn a bit ugly. At Living Small, this ugly-turn signals that it's time to pare down, to reevaluate the purpose of each inanimate resident taking up space in our less-than-spacious residence.

What's more, according to interviewee and feng shui practitioner Jacquelyn Patricia, "small houses keep people connected because there's nowhere to hide," reports Grauvogl. "They force people not to keep stuff they don't use that creates stagnant energy. Simplifying helps people rest and connect. Less is more." Patricia's advice? Hang on to "what will pull you forward into your dreams and goals — how you hope you'll live in the next 20 years of your life."

Considering that, I wonder: What's the psychological shelf life of that tube of circa-'68 Mary Quant eyeshadow creme I nabbed from the back of my mom's makeup drawer ten years ago?

Hello! Super cool, right? French doors AND a transom? While this space is a mite bigger than my own (their 624 sq. ft. would eat my 509 in a New York minute), I do admire the way the pair has separated living and lounging areas, but nevertheless achieved a complementary style vibe.

And look at the kitchen:

Color. Love. It. Must. Have. Kitchen. Green. Oh my!

For more photos of the place — and to cast your vote (super cool!) — visit J & E's spot at AT.