Kevin Coffer

Low Carb Chicken Soup

2011-01-19T15:38:00.000-05:00

Fast | Easy | Yummy
Serves 8
Carbs 5.5g
Fat 25g
Protein 36g

Ingredients

5lb chicken, cut into bite size
3 onions
3 carrots
3 celery sticks, chopped
6 garlic cloves
4 bay leaves
1 tablespoon organic chicken or vegetable bouillon powder
4 tablespoons chopped parsley
salt and pepper

Directions:

Place chicken in a large pot and cover with water.
Bring to the boil then simmer for 30 minutes.
Skim away any fat from the surface of the stock, then add about 3 cups water, onion, carrot, celery, garlic cloves and bay leaves. Bring to boil, cover and simmer for 1 hour.

How Tea Partiers get the Constitution Wrong.

2010-10-18T03:27:00.001-04:00

America’s Holy Writ

Tea Party evangelists claim the Constitution as their sacred text. Why that’s wrong.

Win McNamee / Getty Images

Tea Partiers hold up the Constitution on Tax Day in Washington.

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/10/17/how-tea-partiers-get-the-constitution-wrong.html

Since winning the Republican senate primary in Delaware last month, Christine O’Donnell has not had trouble getting noticed. When the Tea Party icon admitted to “dabbl[ing] into witchcraft” as a youngster, the press went wild. When she revealed that she was “not a witch” after all, the response was rabid. O’Donnell has fudged her academic credentials, defaulted on her mortgage, sued a former employer, and campaigned against masturbation, and her efforts have been rewarded with round-the-clock coverage. Yet few observers seem to have given her views on the United States Constitution the same level of consideration. Which is too bad, because O’Donnell’s Tea Party take on our founding text is as unusual as her stance on autoeroticism. Except that it could actually have consequences.

Win McNamee / Getty Images

Inside the Tea Party

Last month, the candidate spoke to 2,000 right-wing activists at the annual Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. She wore a black suit and pearls, and swept on stage to the sound of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Most of the speech was unremarkable: a laundry list of conservative platitudes. But near the end she veered into stranger—and more revealing—territory. O’Donnell once told voters that her “No. 1” qualification for the Senate is an eight-day course she took at a conservative think tank in 2002. Now she was revisiting its subject: the Constitution.

The Founders’ masterpiece, O’Donnell said, isn’t just a legal document; it’s a “covenant” based on “divine principles.” For decades, she continued, the agents of “anti-Americanism” who dominate “the D.C. cocktail crowd” have disrespected the hallowed document. But now, finally, in the “darker days” of the Obama administration, “the Constitution is making a comeback.” Like the “chosen people of Israel,” who “cycle[d] through periods of blessing and suffering,” the Tea Party has rediscovered America’s version of “the Hebrew Scriptures” and led the country into “a season of constitutional repentance.” Going forward, O’Donnell declared, Republicans must champion the “American values” enshrined in our sacred text. “There are more of us than there are of them,” she concluded.

By now, O’Donnell’s rhetoric should sound familiar. In part that’s because her fellow Tea Party patriots—Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, the guy at the rally in the tricorn hat—also refer to the Constitution as if it were a holy instruction manual that was lost, but now, thanks to them, is found. And yet the reverberations go further back than Beck. The last time America elected a new Democratic president, in 1992, the Republican Party’s then-dominant insurgent group used identical language to describe the altogether different document that defined their cause and divided them from the heretics in charge: the Bible. The echoes of the religious right in O’Donnell’s speech—the Christian framework, the resurrection narrative, the “us vs. them” motif, the fixation on “values”—aren’t coincidental.

From a legal perspective, there’s a case to be made that O’Donnell’s argument is inaccurate. The Constitution is a relentlessly secular document that never once mentions God or Jesus. And nothing in recent jurisprudence suggests that the past few decades of governing have been any less constitutional than the decades that preceded them. But the Tea Party’s language isn’t legal, and neither is its logic. It’s moral: right vs. wrong. What O’Donnell & Co. are really talking about is culture war.

When Barack Obama took office, experts rushed to declare an end to the old battles over race, religion, and reproductive rights—whether because of Obama’s alleged healing powers, or the Great Recession, or both. But these analyses ignored an important reality: at heart, the culture wars were really never about anything as specific as abortion or gay marriage. Instead, as James Davison Hunter wrote in Culture Wars, the book that popularized the term, the conflicts of the 1990s represented something bigger: “a struggle over…who we have been...who we are now, and...who we, as a nation, will aspire” to be. Such conflicts, Hunter explained, pit “orthodox” Americans, who like the way things were, against their more “progressive” peers, who are comfortable with the way things are becoming.

Shane Bevel / AP

PHOTOS: A History of America's Conservative Movements

For the forces of orthodoxy, the election of a black, urban, liberal Democrat with a Muslim name wasn’t a panacea at all; it was a provocation. So when the recession hit, and new economic anxieties displaced the lingering social concerns of the Clinton era, political fundamentalists sought refuge in a more relevant scripture—one that could still be made to accommodate the simpler, surer past they longed for but happened to dwell on taxes and government instead of sinning and being saved.

The Constitution was waiting. Today, Tea Party activists gather to recite the entire document to each other. They demand that a wayward America return to its Constitutional roots. They even travel to Colonial Williamsburg and ask the actor playing George Washington how to topple a tyrannical government. In short, they take their Constitution worship very, very seriously. The question now is whether the rest of us should as well.

Contemporary Constitution worshipers claim that they’ve distilled their entire political platform—lower taxes, less regulation, minimal federal government—directly from the original text of the founding document. Any overlap with mainstream conservatism is incidental, they say; they’re simply following the Framers’ precise instructions. If this were true, it would be quite the political coup: oppose us, the Tea Party could claim, and you’re opposing James Madison. But the reality is that Tea Partiers engage with the Constitution in such a selective manner, and for such nakedly political purposes, that they’re clearly relying on it more as an instrument of self-affirmation and cultural division than a source of policy inspiration.

In legal circles, constitutional fundamentalism is nothing new. For decades, scholars and judges have debated how the founding document should factor into contemporary legal proceedings. Some experts believe in a so-called living Constitution—a set of principles that, while admirable and enduring, must be interpreted in light of present-day social developments in order to be properly upheld. Others adhere to originalism, which is the idea that the ratifiers’ original meaning is fixed, knowable, and clearly articulated in the text of the Constitution itself.

While conservatives generally prefer the second approach, many disagree over how it should be implemented—including the Supreme Court’s most committed originalists, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Thomas sympathizes with a radical version of originalism known as the Constitution in Exile. In his view, the Supreme Court of the 1930s unwisely discarded the 19th-century’s strict judicial limits on Federal power, and the only way to resurrect the “original” Constitution—and regain our unalienable rights—is by rolling back the welfare state, repealing regulations, and perhaps even putting an end to progressive taxation. In contrast, Scalia is willing to respect precedent—even though it sometimes departs from his understanding of the Constitution’s original meaning. His caution reflects a simple reality: that upending post-1937 case law and reversing settled principles would prove extremely disruptive, both in the courts and society at large. As Cass Sunstein, a centrist legal scholar at the University of Chicago who now serves in the Obama administration, has explained, “many decisions of the Federal Communications Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and possibly the National Labor Relations Board would be [ruled] unconstitutional” if Thomas got his way. Social Security could be eliminated. Same goes for the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve. Individual states might be allowed to establish official religions. Even minimum-wage and maximum-hour laws would be jeopardized.

Tea Partiers tend to sound more like Thomas than Scalia. Every weekday on Fox News, Glenn Beck—“the most highly regarded individual among Tea Party supporters,” according to a recent poll—takes to his schoolroom chalkboard to rail against progressives like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. “They knew they had to separate us from our history,” he says, “to be able to separate us from our Constitution and God.” In Beck’s view, progressives forsook the faithful Christian Founders and forced the country to adopt a slew of unconstitutional measures that triggered our long decline into Obama-era totalitarianism: the Federal Reserve System, Social Security, the graduated federal income tax. True patriots, according to Beck, favor a pre-progressive vision of the United States. When Nevada Senate nominee Sharron Angle says we need to “phase out” Social Security and Medicare; when Alaska Senate nominee Joe Miller asserts that unemployment benefits are “unconstitutional”; when West Virginia Senate nominee John Raese declares that the minimum wage should “absolutely” be abolished; when Kentucky Senate nominee Rand Paul questions the legality of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; when Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann claims that Obama’s new health-insurance law violates the Constitution; and when various Tea Party candidates say they want to repeal the amendments that triggered the federal income tax and the direct election of senators—this is the vision they’re promoting. At times, the Tea Party can seem like a popularized, politicized offshoot of the Constitution in Exile movement.

Over the years critics have lodged dozens of objections to originalism—the disagreements among the Founders; the preservation of slavery in the final product; the inclusion of an amendment process—and they apply to the Tea Party’s interpretation of the Constitution, too. But at least originalism is a rational, consistent philosophy. The real problem with the Tea Party’s brand of Constitution worship isn’t that it’s too dogmatic. It’s that it isn’t dogmatic enough. In recent months, Tea Party candidates have behaved in ways that belie their public commitment to combating progressivism. They’ve backed measures that blatantly contradict their originalist mission. And they’ve frequently misunderstood or misrepresented the Constitution itself. In May, for example, Paul told a Russian television station that America “should stop” automatically granting citizenship to the native-born children of illegal immigrants. Turns out his suggestion would be unconstitutional, at least according to the 14th Amendment (1868) and a pair of subsequent Supreme Court decisions. A few weeks later, Paul said he’d like to prevent federal contractors from lobbying Congress—a likely violation of their First Amendment right to redress. In July, Alaska’s Miller told ABC News that unemployment benefits are not “constitutionally authorized.” Reports later revealed that his wife claimed unemployment in 2002.

The list goes on. Most Tea Partiers claim that the 10th Amendment, which says “the powers not delegated” to the federal government are “reserved to the states,” is proof that the Framers would’ve balked at today’s bureaucracy. What they don’t mention is that James Madison refused a motion to add the word “expressly” before “delegated” because “there must necessarily be admitted powers by implication.” In last week’s Delaware Senate debate, O’Donnell was asked to name a recent Supreme Court case she disagreed with. “Oh, gosh,” she stammered, unable to cite a single piece of evidence to support her Constitution in Exile talking points. “I know that there are a lot, but, uh, I’ll put it up on my Web site, I promise you.” Angle has said that “government isn’t what our Founding Fathers put into the Constitution”—even though establishing a federal government with the “Power To lay and collect Taxes” to “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare” is one of the main reasons the Founders created a Constitution to replace the weak, decentralized Articles of Confederation. In 2008 Palin told Katie Couric that the Constitution does, in fact, guarantee “an inherent right to privacy,” à la Roe v. Wade, but added that “individual states…can handle an issue like that.” Unfortunately, Palin’s hypothesis would only be viable in a world without the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave Washington sole responsibility for safeguarding all constitutional rights. Then there are the proposed amendments. In the current Congress, conservatives like Michele Bachmann have suggested more than 40 additions to the Constitution: a flag-desecration amendment; a balanced-budget amendment; a “parental rights” amendment; a supermajority-to-raise-taxes amendment; anti-abortion amendment; an anti-gay-marriage amendment; and so on. None of these revisions has anything to do with the document’s original meaning.

The truth is that for all their talk of purity, politicians like Palin, Angle, and Miller don’t seem to be particularly concerned with matching their actual positions to the Constitution they profess to worship. For them, the sacred text serves a higher purpose—and in the end, that purpose isn’t hard to pinpoint.

Since the earliest days of the republic, Americans have, like the Tea Partiers, spoken of the Constitution in religious terms. In 1792, Madison wrote that “common reverence…should guarantee, with a holy zeal, these political scriptures from every attempt to add to or diminish from them.” George Washington’s Farewell Address included a plea that the Constitution “be sacredly maintained.” In his Lyceum speech of 1838, Abraham Lincoln cited the document as the source of “the political religion of the nation” and demanded that its laws be “religiously observed.” In 1968, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black called the Constitution his “legal bible,” and a few years later, during Richard Nixon’s impeachment hearings, Texas Rep. Barbara Jordan testified that her “faith in the Constitution is whole.” But the similarity between these figures and the Tea Partiers ends at the level of language. For leaders like Lincoln and Jordan, the Constitution is a symbol “that suppl[ies] an overarching sense of unity even in a society otherwise riddled with conflict,” as sociologist Robin Williams once wrote. It is an integrative force—the cornerstone of our civil religion.

The Tea Partiers belong to a different tradition—a tradition of divisive fundamentalism. Like other fundamentalists, they seek refuge from the complexity and confusion of modern life in the comforting embrace of an authoritarian scripture and the imagined past it supposedly represents. Like other fundamentalists, they see in their good book only what they want to see: confirmation of their preexisting beliefs. Like other fundamentalists, they don’t sweat the details, and they ignore all ambiguities. And like other fundamentalists, they make enemies or evildoers of those who disagree with their doctrine. In the 1930s, the American Liberty League opposed FDR’s New Deal by flogging its version of the Constitution with what historian Frederick Rudolph once described as “a worshipful intensity.” In the 1960s, the John Birch Society imagined a vast communist conspiracy in similar terms. In 1992 conservative activists formed what came to be known as the Constitution Party—Sharron Angle was once a member—in order to “restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations and to limit the federal government to its Constitutional boundaries.” Today, Angle asserts that “separation of church and state is an unconstitutional doctrine,” and Palin claims that “the Constitution…essentially acknowledg[es] that our unalienable rights…come from God.” The point is always the same: to suggest that the Constitution, like the Bible, decrees what’s right and wrong (rather than what’s legal and illegal), and to insist that only the fundamentalists and their ilk can access its truths. We are moral, you are not; we represent America, you do not. Theirs is the rallying cry of culture war.

The Tea Partiers are right to revere the Constitution. It’s a remarkable, even miraculous document. But there are many Constitutions: the Constitution of 1789, of 1864, of 1925, of 1936, of 1970, of today. Where O’Donnell & Co. go wrong is in insisting that their imagined, idealized document is the country’s one true Constitution, and that dissenters are somehow un-American. By putting the Constitution front and center, the Tea Party has reinvigorated a long-simmering argument over who we are and who we want to be. That’s great. But to truly honor the Founders’ spirit, they have to make room for actual debate. As usual, Thomas Jefferson put it best. In a letter to a friend in 1816, he mocked “men [who] look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched”; “who ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment.” “Let us follow no such examples, nor weakly believe that one generation is not as capable as another of taking care of itself, and of ordering its own affairs,” he concluded. “Each generation is as independent as the one preceding, as that was of all which had gone before.” Amen.

Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy | How to Start a Movement

2010-05-27T12:26:00.001-04:00

Many thanks to Derek Sivers for his inspiring post. Check out his the full blog post on his site at http://sivers.org/ff. You can also watch him deliver his talk like on Ted Talks, http://blog.ted.com/2010/04/how_to_start_a.php.

Transcript:

If you've learned a lot about leadership and making a movement, then let's watch a movement happen, start to finish, in under 3 minutes, and dissect some lessons:

A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. But what he's doing is so simple, it's almost instructional. This is key. You must be easy to follow!

Now comes the first follower with a crucial role: he publicly shows everyone how to follow. Notice the leader embraces him as an equal, so it's not about the leader anymore - it's about them, plural. Notice he's calling to his friends to join in. It takes guts to be a first follower! You stand out and brave ridicule, yourself. Being a first follower is an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire....

The 2nd follower is a turning point: it's proof the first has done well. Now it's not a lone nut, and it's not two nuts. Three is a crowd and a crowd is news.

A movement must be public. Make sure outsiders see more than just the leader. Everyone needs to see the followers, because new followers emulate followers - not the leader.

Now here come 2 more, then 3 more. Now we've got momentum. This is the tipping point! Now we've got a movement!

As more people jump in, it's no longer risky. If they were on the fence before, there's no reason not to join now. They won't be ridiculed, they won't stand out, and they will be part of the in-crowd, if they hurry. Over the next minute you'll see the rest who prefer to be part of the crowd, because eventually they'd be ridiculed for not joining.

And ladies and gentlemen that is how a movement is made! Let's recap what we learned:

If you are a version of the shirtless dancing guy, all alone, remember the importance of nurturing your first few followers as equals, making everything clearly about the movement, not you.

Be public. Be easy to follow!

But the biggest lesson here - did you catch it?

Leadership is over-glorified.

Yes it started with the shirtless guy, and he'll get all the credit, but you saw what really happened:

It was the first follower that transformed a lone nut into a leader.

There is no movement without the first follower.

We're told we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective.

The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.

When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.

TED: Ideas Worth Spreading | Tim Ferriss

2010-05-23T03:35:00.002-04:00

Dancing Walrus 'Smooth Criminal'

2010-05-23T03:28:00.001-04:00

Arthur Jones and High Intensity Training - Thegymmonkey's Blog

2010-05-03T12:17:00.004-04:00

Arthur Jones and

High Intensity Training

by thegymmonkey on March 27, 2010

http://thegymmonkey.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/arthur-jones/

Casey Viator before and after the Colorado experiment

Arthur Jones was one of the giants of modern body building, and his ideas are still controversial in the body building world today. He was famously the originator of High Intensity Training. A training method he developed in the 70’s that relied on short, single sets with high intensity (always to failure), which, according to Jones, triggers maximal muscular growth.

Jones was a highly unconventional man. Born on November 22 1926 in Mrilton, Arkansas, both his parents were doctors. Jones taught himself to read and by the time he was 5 he could understand both German and English Newspapers [1]. He started flying planes at the age of 13 and maintained a log of every flight he ever made (14,090 flights, 17,393.6 hours, across every state in America and 56 countries [1]. He joined the Navy in 1941 (at only 15) with almost a perfect test score on the entry exam. After the war Jones lived in Mexico, South America and Africa, before returning to America where he invented several weight training exercise machines and most famously created the Nautilus company to produce and market his Nautilus machines. He then went on to founded MedX Corporation, in which he invested millions to develop medical-based exercise and testing equipment. Jones was also the creator of the “Jumbolair” estate, 350 acres (1.4 km²) of wildlife sanctuary for orphaned African elephants and other wildlife.

He had great success with his training methods, and many famous world-class body builders, including; Casey Viator, Mike Mentzer, Sergio Oliva & Dorian Yatescredit his methods with their success.

The Arthur Jones HIT method

1. Load the barbell with a weight you can do for 10 repetitions in good form and then decrease the weight by 10 pounds, because you probably over estimated your strength.
2. Grasp the bar with an underhand grip and stand erect.
3. Anchor your elbows firmly against the sides of your waist and keep them their.
4. Lean forward slightly, look down at your hands, and curl the bar smoothly and slowly. Don’t move your head.
5. Pause briefly in the top position, but don;t move your elbows forward. Keep your hands on the bar in front of your torso, as opposed to over your elbows.
6. Lower the bar slowly and smoothly. Again, keep your elbows stable against your sides. The movement is very deliberate, and each repetition takes approximately 3 seconds going up and 3 seconds going down.
7. Repeat the curling movement using this exact form. You’re aiming for 10 repetitions, but in reality, with this strict form, you hit the wall at 6.
8. Jones would now tell you to loosen your from slightly, by moving your elbows out and backward and forward a little. You want to get the weight up, then focus on lowering it slowly. Sure enough, you get another repetition, but you can;t get the next one. At this point, your biceps are very fatigued and your forearms and hands are getting tired.
9. “Loosen your arm even more,” Jones would say, instructing you to lean forward and then backward while curling. Yep, you can do another and with Jones challenging you, you get one more – again concentrate on the negative, or lowering phase. Those were reps 8 & 9. Now your lower back is killing you, your legs are shaking, your lungs are burning, and your heart rate is more than 180 beats per minute. Lucky for you, you’ve lost all feeling in your biceps, forearms, and hands.
10. “Get one more rep,” Jones would inform you now. He’d be standing in front of you, telling you he’ll help you get the last one. Slowly, the bar starts moving. You feel as if you’re almost power-cleaning the barbell, using every muscle fibre to pull the weight to the top. When it get there, Jones would give the final command.
11. “Bring the bar half way down and hold for a count of five. That’s it – five, four, three, two, one! Now, ease the barbell to the floor”
In something less than 1 ½ minutes, you’ve experienced outright hard workfrom one set of 10 repetitions of the barbell curl.

From, The New High Intensity Training, Ellington Darden, PHD.

That short excerpt form Ellington Darden’s book on Arthur Jones and hit HIT training principals pretty much sums up the Arthur Jones approach to weight training:

One brutal set, full on to complete failure.
8 -12 repetitions .
Move slowly (a set should last approx. 1 minute).
Emphasise the negative part of the movement.
Continual progression (2 – 5 % increments)
Train the whole body at each session
7 – 12 exercise per training session (each session should last less than 40 minutes)
Train 2 – 3 times per week

Even today, more than thirty years after Jones started to train body builders this way the method is still controversial. Jones’s ideas on training I think have much in common with many modern proponents of Primal/Paleo training principals today. The idea of brief intense training, instead of hours and hours of set/reps and cardio was being taught by jones thirty years ago. He always said his approach to training came from his years working with animals in Africa. He owned a 400 pound gorilla and kept many lions over the years. Jones’s idea was that lions and gorillas spend most of their time relaxing and do almost no hard activity, but when they do they go at it 100%. Have you ever seen two male gorillas charge at each other? Gorillas are five times stronger than men pound for pound with an adult male gorillas able to lift over ten times their own body weight. And a male Lion (according to Jones) could jump over 10 foot fence with a 400 pound cow in it’s mouth[1]. Jones idea was that exercise had to be hard, brief and infrequent and believed that if a lion or a gorilla was exercised as much as many body builders train, they would die from exhaustion [1].

The Colorado Experiment

The Colorado experiment is highly controversial. In May 1973 Arthur Jones conducted an experiment on himself and another body builder Casey Viator. The experiment lasted 28 days during which Jones gained 15 pounds and Viator a simply astonishing 63.21 pounds.

Results[2]

First subject (Casey Viator), 28 days
Increase in bodyweight……..45.28 pounds
Loss of bodyfat…………..17.93 pounds
Muscular gain……………..63.21 pounds

Second subject (Arthur Jones),22 days
Increase in bodyweight …….13.62 pounds
Loss of bodyfat……………1.82 pounds
Muscular gain……………..15.44 pounds

The main criticism made is that both these men were rebuilding previously gained muscle. Casey Viator and lost over 30 pounds following an allergic reaction to a tetanus injection that almost killed him. Jones had previously been a regular body builder and had at one point weighed 190 pounds, however he was far below this weight at the start of the experiment and had not trained for at least four months before the start. Even so, allowing for the fact that several other studies have demonstrated that it is considerably easier to rebuild previously built muscle, the results are still very impressive.

Thanks for reading.

References:

1.The New High Intensity Training, Ellington Darden, PHD.

2. The Colorado Experiment by Arthur Jones. Published in IronMan , September 1973, Volume 32 Number 6

The High Line Celebrates its 2,000,000th Visitor!

2010-04-06T11:40:00.001-04:00

April 02, 2010 | Author: Auzelle Epeneter | Categories: On the High Line

Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, Co-Founder Joshua David, Congressman Jerrold Nadler,
Zach Hauser, City Planning Commission Chair Amanda Burden, and Lexi Hauser plant an eastern
redbud tree in the Gansevoort Woodland. Photo by Joan Garvin

Earlier today we welcomed our 2,000,000th visitor to the High Line since the park opened to the public ten months ago.

To celebrate the occasion, and to mark the arrival of the very first spring on the High Line, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, City Planning Commission Chair Amanda Burden, and Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe joined Co-Founder Joshua David to plant a flowering eastern redbud tree (Cercis Canadensis) in the Gansevoort Woodland.

Our lucky 2,000,000th (and 2,000,001st!) visitors were Lexi and Zach Hauser, from Raleigh, North Carolina. This was the first trip to the High Line for Lexi and Zach, who were joined by their mother, Deb, and their family friend, Richard Conolly, a native New Yorker and Chelsea resident. The gang helped plant the new tree and received some very special commemorative gifts: a framed photo of the High Line and limited edition High Line beach towels designed by Diane von Furstenberg.

Read more at http://www.thehighline.org/blog

Quote: Parkinson's Law

2010-03-01T10:20:00.002-05:00

"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."

The Empathic Civilization

2010-03-01T09:33:00.002-05:00

Great new book from Jeremy Rifkin, "One of the leading big-picture thinkers of our day" delivers his boldest work in this erudite, tough-minded, and far-reaching manifesto. Never has the world seemed so completely united-in the form of communication, commerce, and culture-and so savagely torn apart-in the form of war, financial meltdown, global warming, and even the migration of diseases.

Here's an excerpt:

Author: Jeremy Rifkin
'The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global consciousness in a World of Crisis'
Posted: March 1, 2010

While our radio talk shows and 24-hour cable TV news programs incessantly play off the political rift between conservative and liberal ideologies, the deeper conflict in America has always been the cultural divide between faith versus reason.

At the dawn of the modern market economy and nation-state era, the philosophers of the Enlightenment challenged the Age of Faith that governed over the feudal economy with the Age of Reason. Theologians and philosophers have continued to battle over faith vs. reason ever since, their debates often spilling over into the cultural and political arenas, with profound consequences for society.

Today, however, at the outset of a global economy and the biosphere era, a new generation of scientists, scholars, and social reformers are beginning to challenge some of the underlying assumptions of both the Age of Faith and the Age of Reason, taking us into the Age of Empathy.

The empathic advocates argue that, for the most part, both earlier narratives about human nature fail to plumb the depths of what makes us human and therefore leave us with cosmologies that are incomplete stories--that is, they fail to touch the deepest realities of existence. That's not to dismiss the critical elements that make the stories of faith and reason so compelling. It's only that something essential is missing--and that something is "embodied experience."

Both the Abrahamic faiths--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--as well as the Eastern religions of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism, either disparage bodily existence or deny its importance. So too does modern science and most of the rational philosophers of the Enlightenment. For the former, especially the Abrahamic faiths, the body is fallen and a source of evil. Its presence is a constant reminder of the depravity and mortality of human nature. For the latter, the body is mere scaffolding to maintain the mind, a necessary inconvenience to provide sensory perception, nutrients, and mobility. It is a machine the mind uses to impress its will on the world. It is even loathed because of its transient nature. The body is a constant reminder of death, and therefore, feared, disparaged and dismissed in the world's great religions and among many of the Enlightenment philosophers.

Most of all, the body is to be mistrusted, especially the emotions that flow from its continuous engagement with and reaction to the outside world. Neither the Bible nor the Enlightenment ruminations make much room for human emotions, except to depreciate them as untrustworthy and an impediment either to obedience to God in the first instance or to the rational will in the second instance.

In the modern era, with its emphasis on rationality, objectivity, detachment, and calculability, human emotions are considered irrational, quixotic, impossible to objectify, not subject to detached evaluation, and difficult to quantify. Even today, it is common lore not to let one's emotions get in the way of sound reasoning and judgment. How many times have we heard someone say or have said to someone else, "Try not to be so emotional . . . try to behave more rationally." The clear message is that emotions are of a lesser ilk than reason. They are too carnal and close to our animal passions to be considered worthy of being taken seriously--and worse still, they pollute the reasoning process.

The Enlightenment philosophers--with a few notable exceptions--eliminated the very mortality of being. To be alive is to be physical, finite, and mortal. It is to be aware of the vulnerability of life and the inevitability of death. Being alive requires a continuous struggle to be and comes with pain, suffering, and anguish as well as moments of joy. How does one celebrate life or mourn the passing of a relative or friend or enter into an intimate relationship with another in a world devoid of feelings and emotions?

New developments in evolutionary biology, cognitive science, and psychology are laying the groundwork for a wholesale reappraisal of human consciousness. The premodern notion that faith and God's grace are the windows to reality and the Enlightenment idea that reason is at the apex of modern consciousness are giving way to a more sophisticated approach to a theory of mind.

Researchers in a diverse range of fields and disciplines are beginning to reprioritize some of the critical features of faith and reason within the context of a broader empathic consciousness. They argue that all of human activity is embodied experience--that is, participation with the other--and that the ability to read and respond to another person "as if " he or she were oneself is the key to how human beings engage the world, create individual identity, develop language, learn to reason, become social, establish cultural narratives, and define reality and existence.

If empathic consciousness flows from embodied experience and is a celebration of life--our own and that of other beings--how do we square it with faith and reason, which are disembodied ways of looking at reality and steeped in the fear of death?

When we deconstruct the notion of faith, we find that at the core are three essential pillars: awe, trust, and transcendence. The religious impulse begins with the sense of awe, the feeling of the wonder of existence, both the mystery and majesty. Awe is the deepest celebration of life. We marvel at the overwhelming nature of existence, and sense that by our own aliveness, we somehow fit into the wonder we behold.

Although faith is set in motion by a feeling of awe and requires a belief that one's life has meaning in a larger, universal sense of things, it can be purloined and made into a social construct that exacts obedience, feeds on fear of death, is disembodied in its approach, and establishes rigid boundaries separating the saved from the damned. Many institutionalized religions do just that.

It is awe that inspires all human imagination. Without awe, we would be without wonder and without wonder we would have no way to exercise imagination and would therefore be unable to imagine another's life "as if" it were our own. We know that empathy is impossible without imagination. Imagination, however, is impossible without wonder, and wonder is impossible without awe. Empathy represents the deepest expression of awe, and understandably is regarded as the most spiritual of human qualities.

But faith also requires trust--the willingness to surrender ourselves to the mystery of existence at both the cosmic level and at the level of everyday life with our fellow beings. Trust becomes indispensable to allowing empathy to grow, and empathy, in turn, allows us to plumb the divine presence that exists in all things. Empathy becomes the window to the divine. It is by empathic extension that we transcend ourselves and begin connecting with the mystery of existence.

In the empathic civilization, spirituality invariably replaces religiosity. Spirituality is a deeply personal journey of discovery in which empathic experience--as a general rule--becomes the guide to making connections, and becomes the means to foster transcendence. The World Values Survey and countless other polls show a generational shift in attitudes toward the divine, with the younger generation in the industrialized nations increasingly turning away from institutionalized religiosity and toward personal spiritual quests that are empathic in nature.

Reason too can be salvaged from its disembodied Enlightenment roots and be recast within an embodied empathic frame. While reason is most often thought of in terms of rationalization, that is, abstracting and classifying phenomena, usually with the help of quantifiable tools of measurement, it is more than that. Reason includes mindfulness, reflection, introspection, contemplation, musing, and pondering, as well as rhetorical and literary ways of thinking. Reason is all of this and more. When we think of reason, we generally think of stepping back from the immediacy of an experience and probing our memories to see if there might be an analogous experience that could help us make the appropriate judgment or decisions about how best to respond.

The critical question is where does reason come from? The Cartesian and Kantian idea that reason exists independently of experience as an a priori phenomenon to be accessed does not conform to the way we reason in the real world. Reason is a way of organizing experience and relies on many mental tools. The point, however, is that reason is never disembodied from experience but rather a means of understanding and managing it.

Experience, as we learned earlier, begins with sensations and feelings that flow from engagement with others. While one's sensations and feelings make possible the initial connection with the other, they are quickly filtered by way of past memories and organized by the various powers of reason at our disposal to establish an appropriate emotional, cognitive, and behavioral response. The entire process is what makes up empathetic consciousness. Empathy is both an affective and cognitive experience.

If empathy did not exist, we could not understand why we feel the way we do, or conceptualize something called an emotion or think rationally. Many scholars have mistakenly associated empathy with just feelings and emotions. If that were all it was, empathic consciousness would be an impossibility.

Reason, then, is the process by which we order the world of feelings in order to create what psychologists call pro-social behavior and sociologists call social intelligence. Empathy is the substance of the process. Reason becomes increasingly sophisticated as societies become more complex, human differentiation more pronounced, and human exchange more diverse. Greater exposure to others increases the volume of feelings that need to be organized. Reason becomes more adept at abstracting and managing the flood of embodied feelings. That's not to say that reason can't also be used to exploit others, for example, to advance narcissistic ends or create terror among people.

By reimagining faith and reason as intimate aspects of empathic consciousness, we create a new historical synthesis--the Age of Empathy--that incorporates many of the most powerful and compelling features of the Age of Faith and the Age of Reason, while leaving behind the disembodied story lines that shake the celebration out of life.

Vitra Unveils Its Stunning New Museum Designed by Herzog & deMeuron

2010-02-24T13:47:00.003-05:00

BY CLIFF KUANGMon Feb 22, 2010
View original post at www.fastcompany.com

The German furniture-maker maker adds another jewel to its starchitect-studded corporate campus.

The Vitra campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany, is already a mecca for contemporary architecture, featuring a design museum by Frank Gehry, a conference center by Tadao Ando, and another building on the way by SANAA. And they've just finished what might be the greatest of them of them all: a new building, designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, to showcase the company's home-furniture collection.

Herzog & de Meuron--who made a global splash in 2008 with their "Bird's Nest" stadium for the Beijing Olympics--conceived of the building as an "ur-house." The individual volumes take the form of generic, A-frame houses, which are then stacked on top of each--creating an architectural symbol of Vitra's actual business, selling high-design through mass production.

There are 12 houses in all, and the stacking of them

[For more stunning images by Iwan Baan, check out Arch Daily]

A Woman's First Week at the Gym

2010-02-22T14:09:00.002-05:00

My friend Laura sent me this. If you read this without laughing out loud, there is something wrong with you. This is dedicated to everyone who ever attempted to get into a regular workout routine.

Dear Diary,
For my birthday this year, my Husband (the dear) purchased a week of personal training at the local health club for me. Although I am still in great shape since being a high school football cheerleader 43 years ago, I decided it would be a good idea to go ahead and give it a try. I called the club and made my reservations with a personal trainer named Chito, who identified himself as a 26-year-old aerobics instructor and model for athletic clothing and swim wear. My husband seemed pleased with my enthusiasm to get started! The club encouraged me to keep a diary to chart my progress.

_________________________________
MONDAY:
Started my day at 6:00 a.m. Tough to get out of bed, but found it was well worth it when I arrived at the health club to find Chito waiting for me. He is something of a Greek god - with blond hair, dancing eyes and a dazzling white smile. Woo Hoo!! Chito gave me a tour and showed me the machines. I enjoyed watching the skillful way in which he conducted his aerobics class after my workout today. Very inspiring! Chito was encouraging as I did my sit-ups, although my gut was already aching from holding it in the whole time he was around. This is going to be a FANTASTIC week-!!

________________________________
TUESDAY:
I drank a whole pot of coffee, but I finally made it out the door. Chito made me lie on my back and push a heavy iron bar into the air then he put weights on it! My legs were a little wobbly on the treadmill, but I made the full mil e. His rewarding smile made it all worthwhile. I feel GREAT-!! It's a whole new life for me.
_______________________________
WEDNESDAY:
The only way I can brush my teeth is by laying the toothbrush on the counter and moving my mouth back and forth over it. I believe I have a hernia in both pectorals. Driving was OK as long as I didn't try to steer or stop. I parked on top of a GEO in the club parking lot. Chito was impatient with me, insisting that my screams bothered other club members. His voice is a little too perky for that early in the morning and when he scolds, he gets this nasally whine that is VERY annoying. My chest hurt when I got on the treadmill, so Chito put me on the stair monster. Why the hell would anyone invent a machine to simulate an activity rendered obsolete by elevators? Chito told me it would help me get in shape and enjoy life. He said some other shit too.
_______________________________
THURSDAY:
Asshole was waiting for me with his vampire-like teeth exposed as his thin, cruel lips were pulled back in a full snarl. I couldn't help being a half an hour late - it took me that long to tie my shoes. He took me to work out with dumbbells. When he was not looking, I ran and hid in the restroom. He sent some skinny bitch to find me. Then, as punishment, he put me on the rowing machine -- which I sank.
_________________________________
FRIDAY:
I hate that bastard Chito more than any human being has ever hated any other human being in the history of the world. Stupid, skinny, anemic, anorexic little aerobic instructor. If there was a part of my body I could move without unbearable pain, I would beat him with it. Chito wanted me to work on my triceps. I don't have any triceps! And if you don't want dents in the floor, don't hand me the damn barbells or anything that weighs more than a sandwich. The treadmill flung me off and I landed on a health and nutrition teacher. Why couldn't it have been someone softer, like the drama coach or the choir director?
________________________________
SATURDAY:
Satan left a message on my answering machine in his grating, shrilly voice wondering why I did not show up today. Just hearing his voice made me want to smash the machine with my planner; however, I lacked the strength to even use the TV remote and ended up catching eleven straight hours of the Weather Channel.
________________________________
SUNDAY:
I'm having the Church van pick me up for services today so I can go and thank GOD that this week is over. I will also pray that next year my husband will choose a gift for me that is fun -- like a root canal or a hysterectomy. I still say if God had wanted me to bend over, he would have sprinkled the floor with diamonds!!!

HOW TO: Make Your Small Business Geolocation-Ready

2010-02-20T11:52:00.000-05:00

HOW TO: Make Your Small Business Geolocation-Ready

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Small businesses stand to increase their local audience and further their market reach through geolocation platforms, which attach real-world locations to mobile phones. Here are a few ways companies can become part of the location tagging world of social media.

Green Design: Hobbit Style

2010-02-18T21:49:00.003-05:00

A Real-Life Hobbit House

View original post at www.shelterpop.com

By Laura Fenton (Subscribe to Laura Fenton's posts)
Feb 4th 2010 8:00AM

Photos: SimonDale.net

A low-impact, eco-conscious house fit for a hobbit in Wales.

I am the sort of girl who read all of The Lord of the Rings books (this was longbefore the films came out) and I even devoured Tolkien's prequel to the series, The Simarillion. So, when I saw a post on lace & tea titled 'The Hobbit House,' I was intrigued.

This Wales-based home is, in fact, designed much like much like what I imagine a hobbit house would be, but this is more than a novelty home. The builder, Simon Dale, and his father-in-law created this house with a low-impact approach and maximum regard for the environment in mind. It was also a do-it-yourself project, built on the cheap by hand: A-mazing! ....click to read more.

Photos: SimonDale.net

Check out the 'how' section on Simon's site for a very detailed account of the building of the hobbit house. Simon says he built this amazing abode with a chainsaw, a hammer, a 1-inch chisel and very little else-seriously! He enthuses, "This kind of building is accessible to anyone. My main relevant skills were being able bodied, having self belief and perseverance and a mate or two to give a lift now and again."

Photos: SimonDale.net

While us city-dwellers won't be building any hobbit houses anytime soon, we're inspired by Simon Dale's incredibly optimistic view of home building. Click through to the section devoted to similar buildings, it has examples of other hobbit-like dwellings for all of us dork-tastic Tolkein fans out there.

Great Ideas: Sustainable Dance Floor

2010-02-18T13:15:00.000-05:00

The Sustainable Dance Floor generates energy as you bust a move by translating the vertical movement into electricity.

Sun is in Capricorn - My personality profile

2010-02-18T12:26:00.001-05:00

Surprisingly accurate. Although I completely disagree with the negative aspects. Capricorns are perfect, we don't have flaws! LOL See your profile at www.astrolis.com.

Kevin's Sun is in Capricorn Vitality You are basically down to earth and practical. You generally possess a great deal of patience and quiet ambition. Once you have decided on a course of action you can work hard for many years, enduring many setbacks, to achieve what you have set out to do. This will often be an achievement that meets with conventional standards of approval, but even if your life-style and goals are not so conventional you'll still need to see some sort of material or tangible result for your efforts. There's also a tendency to take life too seriously, and you may have little patience with those who take a more laid back approach to life and love. Remember to loosen up a bit every now and then, so that you can enjoy life here and now.	Kevin's Moon is in Libra Habits You have a need for harmony and honesty in your emotional life. You also need intellectual nourishment in order to feel happy and secure. You're naturally diplomatic and fair in your dealings with others, with an easygoing nature and an innate ability to see the many sides to any issue. On the negative side, however, this same fairness and balance of viewpoint can become indecisiveness and a tendency to avoid direct action when it's necessary. You would probably do well to work in a partnership where decision-making can be shared, as decisiveness may not be your strong point.
Kevin's Rising Sign is Aquarius Self-identity Being restless, original and rebellious, you need to be seen as an individual with the freedom to make your own choices and your own way in life. You don't like being taken for granted and at times will deliberately shock others with your unpredictable conduct. Kevin, click here to find out more about the area of life concerned with your sense of self-identity, the impression you give and how others see you.	Kevin's Mercury is in Sagittarius Mentality You prefer to think in broad philosophical terms rather than get bogged down in petty details. Although this is generally not a bad thing you may tend to overlook the fact that some details are important. You will try to live your life by what you believe and what you think is the best way to be, regardless of what other people may think, and you can be rather tactless in what you say. Your mind is restless and open to the future, refusing to be tied down by the past or present. Your refusal to be pinned down or express a definite opinion on some issues may frustrate other people. It's not that you don't have opinions; it's just that tomorrow it may suit you to change them - so it's best to keep your options open.
Kevin's Venus is in Scorpio Capacity for love You approach relationships with deep emotional intensity. Sometimes these intense feelings may be difficult for even you to understand or accept. You may handle this by giving the impression of being unemotional, but you're not as hard as you like people to think. You may find yourself involved in relationships that have a powerful and transforming effect on your life. You'll be possessive, but, like most of your deeper feelings, that will probably be safely hidden beneath the surface. To expose how you really feel would only make you feel vulnerable.	Kevin's Mars is in Aquarius Driving force You possess a tremendous amount of determination to achieve your goals. There's a great need for personal freedom, which can occasionally lead to unpredictable conduct. You're prepared to defend your thoughts and opinions with great force and regard criticism of your opinions as a personal attack. This will probably lead to conflict until you either stop taking yourself so seriously or learn to respect the opinions of others.

Design Ideas: Hiding your television

2010-02-17T01:01:00.002-05:00

Great post on www.apartmenttherapy.com

The Power Of Distraction, Part II: Hiding TVs In Plain View

While I love watching movies, I will never love the look of a TV, but I love the idea of a bulky media cabinet even less...so what's a flick-obsessed aesthete to do? Well,Kyle's post on her TV curtain got me thinking about subtler ways to distract the eye from these mammoth eyesores. Here are some tips.

Just Ask A Designer | Online Interior Design

2010-02-14T02:01:00.001-05:00

Chinese Astrology | I'm a Fire Goat

2010-02-13T23:48:00.004-05:00

Daydreaming all afternoon sounds heavenly to the Sheep. This creative, esoteric Sign needs plenty of time alone in which to feed its Muse. Sheep are generally most comfortable in their own minds (which other, more linear-thinking Signs may have trouble deciphering). This Sign makes a great craftsperson or artisan, or perhaps a teacher of New Age studies -- any occupation that allows its mind the full range of freedom. Sheep tend not to be very well-organized, precluding many more dry business endeavors. In fact, Sheep tend not to be very materialistic in general, finding plenty of riches in their own imagination. However, especially when in love, the Sheep can be quite a lavish gift-giver. Perhaps it's that artistic temperament that so often causes Sheep to feel insecure, but the result is that these high-strung creatures need to feel loved and admired lest they start worrying incessantly. For this reason, Sheep tend to have a hard time with romance; anyone who couples up with a Sheep must know, this Sign has a sensitive streak a mile wide and can be subject to bouts of anxiety over seemingly inconsequential things. Sheep need plenty of love, support and open reassurance from their lovers.

If a relationship is marked by conflict, the Sheep will often pull away -- either physically or simply by retreating into the safe haven of its imagination. If the romance is going well, however, Sheep won't hesitate to tell their partner what they need -- and they can be quite insistent about it! This Sign will definitely return the favor, however; the Sheep has a luxurious side that delights in indulging a lover's every wish. Appearances are also important to the Sheep, which may explain why these folks can spend hours primping and posing. Sheep would be well-served by learning to relax and let others run the show from time to time. Once they can be certain that their friends and lovers won't be gone when the Sheep returns from its daydreams, life will be a field of daisies.

Just In: Apollo just won silver.

2010-02-13T23:14:00.002-05:00

Apollo just won silver. I was hoping he'd get the gold.

Eco Kitchen of the Future

2010-02-13T17:04:00.002-05:00

Great article found on Inhabit.com.

Faltazi Envisions the Eco Kitchen of the Future

by Lea Bogdan, 02/10/10

This green Ekokook kitchen by Faltazi design is one of the most well-researched culinary concepts we have seen. Ekokook proposes that in the future, the general public will strive to become self-sufficient in their homes, and they will do so through conservation and reuse. Eco enthusiasts will drool over the abundance of green features and efficient functionality, and the hearts of design aficionados will beat a bit faster when they see the clean lines, polished renderings, and ultra-cool process video.

The Ekokook kitchen is complex and addresses many needs beyond cooking, such as the short-term storage of fresh vegetables, water conservation, container gardening, sorting waste, recycling, and composting. They have even made it simple to break down waste storage into categories of solid, organic, and liquid. There are also accommodations for energy-saving appliances, such as a twin-tier dishwasher, steam oven, andcompartmentalized refrigerator.

Michael Buble - Haven't Met You Yet

2010-02-13T16:12:00.001-05:00

FREE Photo, Illustration and Drafting Software

2010-02-13T16:00:00.016-05:00

If you need general photo editing tools try using Google Picasa 3.6

http://picasa.google.com/

Free License. Free Download. Links to your online Picasa Account.

Picasa is free to download, and Picasa Web Albums provides 1 gigabyte of free storage -- that's enough space for 4,000 wallpaper-size photos. Edit to perfection. Improve almost any picture with Picasa's one-click fixes for common problems like red-eye, color, and lighting. Or, use tuning and effects to make your best photos look even better.Beautiful web albums. Show your photos at their best. View full-screen slideshows, see your pictures arranged on a global map, enjoy video playback, and more.Sharing made simple. Publish your favorite photos online with one click. Create stunning online photo albums to share with friends and family, or public albums for the world to see. Get notified when your "Favorites" post new photos.

If you need Adobe Photoshop try using Gimp 2.6

http://www.gimp.org/

Free License. Free Download.

GIMP is an acronym for GNU image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renerer, an image format converter, etc. GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted. It runs on MS Windows and Mac OS X.

If you need Adobe Illustrator try using Inkscape .47

http://www.inkscape.org/

Free License. Free Download.

An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. What are Vector Graphics? In contrast to raster (bitmap) graphics editors such as Photoshop or Gimp, Inkscape stores its graphics in a vector format. Vector graphics is a resolution-independent description of the actual shapes and objects that you see in the image. A rasterization engine uses this information to determine how to plot each line and curve at any resolution or zoom level. Contrast that to bitmap (raster) graphics which is always bound to a specific resolution and stores an image as a grid of pixels. Vector graphics are a complement, rather than an alternative, to bitmap graphics. Each has its own purpose and are useful for different kinds of things. Raster graphics tend to be better for photographs and some kinds of artistic drawings, whereas vectors are more suitable for design compositions, logos, images with text, technical illustrations, etc. Note that Inkscape can import and display bitmap images, too. An imported bitmap becomes yet another object in your vector graphics, and you can do with it everything you can do to other kinds of objects (move, transform, clip, etc.) Can I create webpages with it? Many webpage authors use Inkscape for webpage mockups or to generate parts of web pages, such as banners, logos, icons, and more. With the recent advances in SVG support in web browsers (such as Firefox or Opera), using SVG directly on the web becomes more of a possibility. For example, with Firefox 1.5 or better, you can open any Inkscape SVG document right in the browser, and Firefox will show it correctly. In theory, SVG and XHTML can be used together within the same document, so interested users or developers can explore this possibility further. Unfortunately, even though SVG is the internet standard for vector graphics, some older (but still common) web browsers fail to support SVG. Web page authors who need to support widest variety of web browsers convert each SVG graphic to a raster image (.png) as the very last step. runs on MS Windows and Mac OS X.

If you need AutoCAD try using Google Sketchup 7http://sketchup.google.com/

Free License. Free Download.

Google SketchUp is software that you can use to create 3D models of anything you like. Redecorate your living room. Design a new piece of furniture. Model your city for Google Earth. Create a skatepark for your hometown, then export an animation and share it on YouTube. There's no limit to what you can create with SketchUp. You can build models from scratch, or you can download what you need. People all over the world share what they've made on the Google 3D Warehouse. It's a huge, searchable repository of models, and it's free. This program would be super useful for party planning and quick room layouts. (I made the two drawings on top!)

FREE Anti-virus, Malware and Spyware Software

2010-02-13T16:00:00.013-05:00

Anti-virus, Malware, Spyware Software

If you need McAfee, Norton or anything like it try using Microsoft Security Essentials

http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/

Free License. Free Download.

Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software. Microsoft Security Essentials is a free* download from Microsoft that is simple to install, easy to use, and always kept up to date so you can be assured your PC is protected by the latest technology. It’s easy to tell if your PC is secure — when you’re green, you’re good. It’s that simple. Microsoft Security Essentials runs quietly and efficiently in the background so that you are free to use your Windows-based PC the way you want—without interruptions or long computer wait times.

You can also try AVG Anti-virus Free Edition 9.0

http://free.avg.com/us-en/homepage

Free License. Free Download.

I tried AVG first but it seemed to slow my computer a bit and it kept adding an not to my emails saying they have been scanned by 'AVG'. It's great software but I prefer the Microsoft one. Both are very similar. Surf, and search with confidence, while LinkScanner® keeps you safe from harmful sites. Get online and offline protection from viruses, spyware, and other nasties. Enjoy consistently high-speed PC performance with our new enhanced virus scanner. Automatic updates keep your protection current. Compatible with Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP and Windows 2000.

FREE Office Productivity Software

2010-02-13T15:58:00.007-05:00

If you need Microsoft Office Suite/Microsoft Word try using Google Docs

If you need Microsoft Excel try using Google Spreadsheets

If you need Microsoft PowerPoint try using Google Presentations

www.docs.google.com

Free License. No download necessary. Use Online. Anywhere. Anytime.

You can also install Google Gears on your computer which syncs your files for use Offline.

Create basic documents from scratch or start from a template. You can easily do all the basics, including making bulleted lists, sorting by columns, adding tables, images, comments, formulas, changing fonts and more. Upload your existing files. Google Docs accepts most popular file formats, including DOC, XLS, ODT, ODS, RTF, CSV, PPT, etc. So go ahead and upload your existing files. Familiar desktop feel makes editing a breeze. Just click the toolbar buttons to bold, underline, indent, change font or number format, change cell background color and so on. The best part of Google Docs is sharing and collaboration. Multiple people can share and edit the same document...at the same time! Great for projects. You can give your co-worker full 'edit' rights to a document and share it with a client and only allow them 'viewing' rights. You can't do that with Office unless everyone has an expensive license. Plus it's integrated with all the Google products like Blogger, Picasa Photos, Sites, Groups and Calendar.

If you need a desktop email solution like Microsoft Outlook try using

Mozilla Thunderbird 3.0

http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/

Free License. Free Download.

It works seemlessly with Gmail, Hotmail and just about any other email service. You can enter all your email accounts here in one location and manage, receive and send all your emails. I like as well as Outlook. You can even view your Google Calendar, add and delete items, in Thunderbird. A great tool.

TED2010 | Augmented-reality mapping technology.

2010-02-13T13:17:00.001-05:00

This is truly amazing stuff.

In a demo that drew gasps at TED2010, Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos new augmented-reality mapping technology from Microsoft. Blaise Aguera y Arcas is an architect at Microsoft Live Labs, architect of Seadragon, and the co-creator of Photosynth, a monumental piece of software capable of assembling static photos into… Full bio and more links

FREE Productivity Software

2010-02-12T19:59:00.007-05:00

FREE SOFTWARE

Here's a list of programs that are free/open source. I have all the microsoft products on my computer and I have to say keeping up with licensing and the latest version is a pain in the ass and needless to say very expensive over time. My switch to these programs has been gradual but I have to say I am VERY happy with them and today I am Microsoft free. (Except for Windows) Plus they all are fully compatible with the paid versions so you can easily share, import and export files. NOT a problem. I don't even miss them. I'm tempted to erase everything Microsoft but I'm just not there yet...maybe next week. LOL

Keep in mind everyone is targeting microsoft and they are doing it by offering competitive alternatives for FREE hoping you will pay for other services they offer. So take advantage. And all are compatible with MS Windows and Mac OS X computers.

I strongly recommend Google products in general. They keep improving every day and best of all I can keep things synced online and on my computer (using Google Gears which is also a free service). Plus they play well with other programs like Microsoft Office. If you use the Google products I'd recommend downloading their browser (also FREE) called Chrome. (Click here to download: http://www.google.com/chrome) It's by far the fastest and most stable browser I've used and it works seamlessly with their products. But no worries, they work great in Internet Explorer and Firefox too.

FYI - This email was created using Google Docs. My personal website www.kevincoffer.com and my business blog http://sites.google.com/site/justaskadesigner/ were made FREE using Google Sites. My personal blogs www.kevincoffer.blogspot.com and www.kevincoffer.wordpress.com were created FREE on Blogger and Wordpress. And all the images and information were created and edited FREE using the software suggested in this email. I advertise my company Free on Facebook Pages (http://www.facebook.com/justaskadesigner) and Twitter (www.twitter.com/jaadesigner). I promote myself and my company for FREE on LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/kevincoffer). There is so much you can do and all you need is a little creativity and the will to learn a few programs. And in most cases, once you learn one, you'll understand them all.

I didn't want this blog entry to be too long so I broke down specific types into 3 blogs.
Check out these blog pages for more information and links:
http://kevincoffer.blogspot.com/2010/02/free-office-productivity-software.html
http://kevincoffer.blogspot.com/2010/02/free-photo-illustration-and-drafting.html
http://kevincoffer.blogspot.com/2010/02/free-anti-virus-malware-and-spyware.html

Pornographic Fruits And Vegetables (PHOTOS)

2010-02-12T11:15:00.006-05:00

It's funny what people can imagine.

Click here to see full gallery: Pornographic Fruits And Vegetables (PHOTOS)

Elephant Seal Cuddles With Woman (VIDEO)

2010-02-12T10:52:00.006-05:00

I could die happy with an experience like this. Laying on the beach, cuddles with my elephant seal friend with penquins walking around. A perfect day.

Elephant Seal Cuddles With Woman (VIDEO)

Google Sketchup

2010-02-12T01:41:00.005-05:00

more drawings...

Canoe trip in the Pokonos

2010-02-12T00:06:00.005-05:00

more photos...

Exploring the Pokonos

2010-02-11T23:59:00.004-05:00

Mets Season Final at Citifield

2010-02-11T22:30:00.004-05:00

A great end to the summer. Derek managed to get tickets to the new Citifield Stadium here in Queens and I got to see the Mets play. I'm not a big fan of baseball on tv, a bit of a snorefest if you ask me. But I love going to the park. The people watching is great. The food is great. You get some good sun, you do sing-a-long, you dance a bit and then the 7th inning stretch. Fun. After we strolled over to where they play the US Open Tennis Championships, then on to Corona park which is like Central Park for Queens. The park was filled with soccer players from all over Latin America. I had just seen a documentary on PBS about the Golden League who play in the park. All ex-professional players from all over South America. So if you are a big fan of soccer it's the place to see some of your heroes from days gone by.