Though hospitals will end up looking better, these efforts aren’t about decorating, they’re about outcomes. Numerous studies point to the benefits of the design strategies and environmental interventions KP has proposed and implemented. Factors like the quality and intensity of light, access to natural light, the noise level in a room, the privacy afforded by single-patient rooms — all of these affect patient health, satisfaction, soundness of sleep and speed of healing. Views of nature have been shown to decrease depression, pain, stress and even length of hospital stays.
I’ve visited a few hospitals in Seoul and designs vary – some feel very institutional, and look like something from the Soviet Union with dull steel, beige equipment, and dark green walls covered in dark stains. Others, like Severance hospital, feel more like a shopping mall or airport terminal with bright lights, modern design, comfortable waiting rooms, Starbucks cafes and other amenities that make the whole experience a lot more pleasant. I particularly liked the flower gift shop right outside the emergency room at the Gangnam Severance. That’s entrepreneurship.
I like this idea from a temporary cafe in Japan: you get what the person in front of you ordered. As a concept it’s fun, but working something like that into a normal brick and mortar cafe might be tougher — generally you’d just want to go in and get whatever you want, no hassle. But I could see it working at specific low-volume times as a quirky way to encourage interaction with strangers in line and pop the antisocial laptop bubbles people get stuck in.
Strong IP is usually branded as “good” for “creators” but the main impact of the digital revolution has been to advantage non-commercial producers relative to commercial producers, and the main impact of strong IP law is to shift the balance of power back to the commercial world. We’re accustomed to thinking of capitalism in opposition to socialism, state-direction production, but in the information realm the main opposition is between capitalism and activity that is simply non-commercial in nature.
This graph from the NYT makes it very clear how big the wage gap is between men and women in various professions. In some, like surgeons, it’s as much as 40% less.
It would be nice if there was more detail exploring the varied reasons for male-female wage gaps.
Facebook’s “25 Things About Me” meme seems harmless enough; people write 25 facts about themselves and post them on their Facebook pages, just as they do with videos, status updates and photos of last weekend’s party. An estimated 5 million of these notes — that’s 125 million facts — have appeared on the website within the past week. Assuming it takes someone 10 minutes to come up with their list, this recent bout of viral narcissism has sent roughly 800,000 hours of worktime productivity down the drain.
If there is a creative class, in Richard Florida’s phrase, there is also emerging what might be called a fusion class: people positioned to mediate among the multiple societies that claim them.
Cultural education is key in a globalized world. Learning how to negotiate cultures – a skill children of immigrants build by tough necessity – is a definitely a competitive advantage in the global marketplace. However, I think its value outside the market is ultimately much greater. The culture wars, ethnic conflicts, tensions caused by immigration, conflicting religious beliefs, etc. all require us to find a way to relate to each other civilly (lest the clash of civilizations thesis prove accurate), which I think means learning how to replicate the kind of “in-betweenness” that immigrants and especially children of immigrants are forced to negotiate.
It’s got a different nuance than ttys (talk to you soon), or ttyl (talk to you later). It suggests both a resignation to or acceptance of the passage of time, which may be unavoidable. It has a hint of drama. It’s got a cool nonchalance, like when old dudes in movies say “I’ll see you when I see you.” It’s almost like “We’ll meet again.”
It suggests that whatever is keeping two parties apart must be of some significant import. There’s some fatalism in it, that “we will talk” is inevitable, even if when and where may be unknown. So, it implies a surety of bond despite the uncertainty of life’s twists and turns.
Plus it’s all symmetrical and stuff, and if you try to pronounce it it sounds funny. Try it.
Sorry if it’s a bit morbid, but I was just thinking… What happens to your Facebook or Myspace or other virtual presence after you die? (Or whichever networking site may be popular in the future…). Does it become a de facto memorial to you? Does it take on a life of its own, a repository of memories and past conversations to be revisited and added to by friends leaving last wishes or addressing messages to you long after, much as you might address a grave site symbolically? Something that provides comfort to others?
Is there anything that should be, or can be, designed into a site for that? Is a deceased person’s e-presence a bug or a feature in an online community/social network?
Going off on a tangent spurred by the persistence of our virtual silhouettes…
Imagine some future anthropologist sifting through old servers of myspace pages or facebook profiles and analyzing the recorded conversations of bygone eras and individuals…
Imagine looking back on the history of our generation’s recorded personalities and relationships and general lack of privacy. Without a doubt future presidents and leaders and historical figures will have errant blog posts, forum discussions, comments and photos, etc. More data, and I guess transparency, than any time previous.
Maybe 20 or 30 years from now, it could be common to have old AIM logs and other things dug up during elections (let alone the current practice of employers googling you and checking your Facebook profile). If you have any ambitions, maybe it’s a good idea to watch what you say online
For a while now, a Korean blogger under the name Minerva has drawn a lot of attention for his writing on the economic collapse going against the official line of the Korean government. Some speculated that he was an insider posting anonymously.
Now someone alleged to be Minerva has been arrested, and he turns out to be a 30-something with little more than a 2 year degree. It’s part of a seemingly wider effort to curtail freedom of speech and press, as the major broadcasters are coming under threat of greater control and some officials advocate legislation to do away with anonymity on the Korean parts of the internet.
Among governments struggling to contain the global financial crisis, South Korea set a rare and controversial example over the weekend by arresting a popular blogger who was accused of undermining the financial markets but worshipped by many Koreans as an online guru.
The man, known throughout South Korea by the pen name of Minerva – after the Roman goddess of wisdom – upset the government with his doomsayer’s forecasts for the economy and his satirical attacks on President Lee Myung Bak’s policies.
But when some of his predictions on the markets proved right, he gained a huge following among South Koreans fretting over an uncertain economic future.
Park Dae Sung’s arrest on Saturday on charges of spreading false online information with a harmful intent – a crime punishable by up to five years in prison – came as the South Korean government was escalating its efforts to fight the fallout of the global financial turmoil.
[...]
The government camp hopes that Park’s case will lend weight to the Lee government’s attempt to regulate the country’s vigorous and unruly online communities. But the main opposition Democratic Party has accused the government of gagging the Internet, a popular venue for anti-government criticism.
The story is less about the content of Minerva’s posts than the government response, which is a great embarrassment and disappointment. Korea is so advanced in many fields of IT development, yet displays such backwardness in action and policy.
Good article by Hua Hsu in the Atlantic on the changing dynamic of race and culture in America. Especially good treatment of what “whiteness” means in America’s changing demographic makeup.
As a purely demographic matter, then, the “white America” that Lothrop Stoddard believed in so fervently may cease to exist in 2040, 2050, or 2060, or later still. But where the culture is concerned, it’s already all but finished. Instead of the long-standing model of assimilation toward a common center, the culture is being remade in the image of white America’s multiethnic, multicolored heirs.
The article is good in that it doesn’t lose sight of entrenched inequalities, and sees the variety of “white” responses to demographic shift (and power shift, as “white” people come to terms with it), from self-denial and identity crisis to defensive withdrawal into identity groups. But it’s ultimately optimistic, as am I, about the potential for a new era of respect for individuals as individuals, and the democratization of American culture.
But maybe this is merely how it used to be—maybe this is already an outdated way of looking at things. “You have a lot of young adults going into a more diverse world,” Carter remarks. For the young Americans born in the 1980s and 1990s, culture is something to be taken apart and remade in their own image. “We came along in a generation that didn’t have to follow that path of race,” he goes on. “We saw something different.” This moment was not the end of white America; it was not the end of anything. It was a bridge, and we crossed it.
A giant straw goat erected each Christmas in a northern Swedish town has been burned down – yet again.
The 13m-high (43ft) animal in Gavle has been torched 23 times since it was first erected in 1966. It has also been hit by a car and had its legs cut off.
1966: The first goat is burned down
1970: It is set on fire six hours after being erected
1971: Tired of arson, the project is abandoned. Schoolchildren build a miniature. It is smashed to pieces.
1976: A car crashes into the goat
1979: The goat is burned down before it is finished
1987: The goat is treated with fireproofing – but still goes up in smoke
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The group representing the U.S. recording industry said Friday it has abandoned its policy of suing people for sharing songs protected by copyright and will work with Internet service providers to cut abusers’ access if they ignore repeated warnings.
The move ends a controversial program that saw the Recording Industry Association of America sue about 35,000 people since 2003 for swapping songs online. Because of high legal costs for defenders, virtually all of those hit with lawsuits settled, on average for around $3,500. The association’s legal costs, in the meantime, exceeded the settlement money it brought in.
Though their new strategy, issuing warnings and then getting ISPs to shut off service to file sharers, isn’t much better. And I wonder how legal it is.
99% of the kids at my school are wearing the exact same black North Face parka. And the ones that can’t afford it have fakes, which other kids love to point out to me “TEACHA – HIS JACKET IS IMITATION.”
It reminds me of last summer, when literally every other person I saw on the street was wearing a Ramones T-shirt. Until it went out of fashion.
Wired has an interesting Thanksgiving related look at genetically modified food. It’s slightly creepy.
The accumulation of agricultural breeding knowledge and consumer testing has resulted in plants and animals that are physically shaped by consumer tastes. Americans like a medium-size corn kernel, so kernels aren’t too big or small. American consumers like white meat, so turkeys are grown with larger breasts.
So large that their legs can’t even hold them up. That’s naaaasty. Right?
And some food lovers argue that fast growth and genetic change have robbed turkey meat of its distinctive taste. Some are turning to heritage-breed turkeys like the Blue Slate variety that pack pre-industrial genomes.
There’s something weird about shopping based on the genetic properties of your food…
“…to most people it wouldn’t have tasted like beer at all. There were hints of tobacco and molasses in it, black cherries and dark chocolate, all interlaced with the wood’s spicy resin. It tasted like some ancient elixir that the Inca might have made.”
It’s a good read. Makes me miss being in the states; Korean beer tastes like mineral water.
If you haven’t heard of Improv Everywhere, you need to check this out! They use the internet to coordinate random ‘happenings,’ breaking norms and confusing people with good intent.
Korean fashion is full of nonsensical English and references to Western culture. One particular strain is the Hitler/Nazi reference. I’ve seen some guys with full on Third Reich eagles and Swastikas on their t-shirts (no, not the Buddhist symbol). The other morning I was walking to work and saw a girl wearing a tote-bag with “Eva Braun” in big block letters on the side.
People here have no clue of the significance. Talk about lost in translation. There’s even a Wikipedia article on “Nazi Chic in Asia.“
I was wandering around Yongsan, spending money on gadgets and drinking Vita500 with my friend Chris when we ran across these dudes. They were wearing helmets covered in LEDs, sitting next to what looked like heavy equipment of some kind, like some kind of special construction crew ready to do one of those obscure but essential tasks that keeps the city’s pulse steady.
Alas, no. Their awesomeness went several orders of magnitude beyond that. They were ajusshis from the future. The equipment turned out to be a sort of motorized skateboard, as best as I can describe it. See for yourself in the pictures.
One guy called himself Bulldozer. He customized their gear with with LED lights and other electronics. I asked if they ride in traffic, he says “No problem.” Another guy called himself Superman, and pointed to the lit-up superman shield on his backpack.
The best part: they let us ride them around. It felt like it could get up to 25-30mph easily. Something I’d consider trying to import back to the states. The used ones only cost ~$600.
Click any picture to see more shots on my Flickr page.
HAHA this is great. Dude tapes electrodes to his face and syncs the shocks to a music visualizer, so his face contorts with the various sounds of the song.
Recent research also supports the hypothesis that health can be passed down through generations [...]
A long-term study that included more than 100 years of birth, death, health and genealogical records for 300 Swedish families in an isolated village showed that an individual’s risk for diabetes and early death increased if his or her paternal grandparents grew up in times of food abundance rather than food shortage.
“Evidence indicates that what you eat can affect your grandchildren’s brain molecules and synapses,” Gómez-Pinilla said. “We are trying to find the molecular basis to explain this.”
So, what does that bode for our obese, diabetes ridden, genetically modified food-eating, hormone and antibiotic fed meat-consuming, cheap corn-obsessed food culture? We’re already dooming ourselves with unsustainable energy, environmental, and industrial food/farming policies (etc). Are we in the process of creating deeper problems embedded in the genetic make-up of future generations as well?
“Glenda Kinzer, 41, from rural Ohio, believes the end of the world is about to occur. “A lot of people are talking about how Obama fits the description” of the Antichrist.”
I thought about making a ‘cyberculture’ category for my postings, but is there really any point to distinguishing online from offline culture now that ‘cyberculture’ is mainstream? Is the line between the two, to the extent that it exists, largely irrelevant?
