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Archive for May, 2010

Rotten Tomatoes Now Integrated with iTunes

21 May

Popular movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes is now integrated with Apple’s iTunes Store, giving viewers the chance to instantly see the rating of a movie in the form of a popularity gauge called the Tomatometer.

Rotten Tomatoes is a popular site that’s been around since 1998, and it was been acquired by Flixster early this year. It takes the reviews of professional movie critics around the world, counts the positive (fresh) and the negative (rotten) reviews and turns them into a percentage-based grade.

Now, you can see the Tomatometer in movie descriptions on iTunes, along with a couple of blurbs taken from some of the top critics’ reviews. It’s a great way to quickly check out whether a movie is worth watching; if you want more info, you can jump to Rotten Tomatoes for more reviews with a click.

[img credit: visualdensity]



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Reviews: Facebook, Rotten Tomatoes, Twitter

Tags: itunes, Movies, rotten tomatoes

 

Arizona Utilities Rep Invites LA to Continue Boycott on Arizona & Watch Their Lights Go Out

18 May

Last week the leftists on the Los Angeles City Council voted to boycott Arizona. Today, a representative from the Arizona Corporation Commission responded. Gary Pierce, one of the commissioners chosen in state-wide elections to the utility regulation panel, noted that Los Angeles gets about 25% of its power from Arizona producers.  He sent a letter to Mayor Villaraigosa.

Via HotAir:

Dear Mayor Villaraigosa,

I was dismayed to learn that the Los Angeles City Council voted to boycott Arizona and Arizona-based companies — a vote you strongly supported — to show opposition to SB 1070 (Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act).

You explained your support of the boycott as follows: “While we recognize that as neighbors, we share resources and ties with the State of Arizona that may be difficult to sever, our goal is not to hurt the local economy of Los Angeles, but to impact the economy of Arizona.  Our intent is to use our dollars — or the withholding of our dollars — to send a message.” (emphasis added)

I received your message; please receive mine.  As a state-wide elected member of the Arizona Corporation Commission overseeing Arizona’s electric and water utilities, I too am keenly aware of the “resources and ties” we share with the City of Los Angeles. In fact, approximately twenty-five percent of the electricity consumed in Los Angeles is generated by power plants in Arizona.

If an economic boycott is truly what you desire, I will be happy to encourage Arizona utilities to renegotiate your power agreements so Los Angeles no longer receives any power from Arizona-based generation. I am confident that Arizona’s utilities would be happy to take those electrons off your hands. If, however, you find that the City Council lacks the strength of its convictions to turn off the lights in Los Angeles and boycott Arizona power, please reconsider the wisdom of attempting to harm Arizona’s economy.

People of goodwill can disagree over the merits of SB 1070. A state-wide economic boycott of Arizona is not a message sent in goodwill.

Sincerely,

Commissioner Gary Pierce

Previously:
Los Angeles to Boycott Arizona… Maybe It’s Time for Arizona to Cut Off Their Lights?

 

Environment Furniture During Milan Design Week 2010

13 May

During Milan Design Week 2010, Environment Furniture exhibited their most recent pieces in a showroom in Milan’s Zona Tortona district.

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Visit the Environment Furniture website – here.

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Environment Furniture During Milan Design Week 2010

13 May

During Milan Design Week 2010, Environment Furniture exhibited their most recent pieces in a showroom in Milan’s Zona Tortona district.

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Visit the Environment Furniture website – here.

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The PLUS House by Mount Fuji Architects Studio

09 May

Mount Fuji Architects Studio have designed the PLUS house in Shizuoka, Japan.

Full description after the photos….

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Description of the PLUS House by Mount Fuji Architects Studio:

The site locates on mountainside of Izu-san, where Pacific Ocean can be looked down on the south. The untouched wilderness, covered with deciduous broad-leaved trees such as cherry trees and Japanese oaks, gives little level ground. But we saw faint glimmer of architectural possibility along the ridge.
The architecture would be used as villa for weekends. I didn’t want to just form the undulating landscape dotted with great trees as normal, nor design an elaborate architecture bowing down to the complex topography. What sprang to my mind is a blueprint for an architecture which is perfectly autonomous itself, at the same time seems to emerge as an underlying shape that the natural environment has been hiding. It’s abstraction of nature, to say. The architecture was realized by crossing two rectangular parallelepipeds at very right angles. The lower one contains private rooms and bathroom, and sticks half of the body out to existing narrow level ground. The upper one incorporates salon and kitchen, and lies astride the lower one and the mountain ridge. It almost seems like an off-centered cross pinned carefully on natural terrain. One axis of the cross stretches toward the Pacific Ocean on south, and the other, the forest of Japanese oak and some white birch on west. The rooms in the lower structure and terrace on it enjoy broad vista of the sea and blue sky. And gentle shade of natural forest embraces the space in the upper one. Water-polished white marble (cami #120) was chosen as interior finishing material. It glows softly like Greece sculptures to blend blue light from the south and green light from the west gradationally, thus creates delicate continuous landscape of light which suggests the character and usage of the space. Exterior is also finished with white marble. The surface get smoother as it approaches to the southern/western end till it takes mirror gloss (cami #1000) at the ends. The southern end of white cross melts into the blue of sky and sea, and the eastern end to the green of forest. Abstraction is nothing to conflict with nature here. Carved out of nature, it never stops being a part of nature itself, however highly abstracted. Never relativizes the nature with its foreignness, nor generate contradiction to settle for being “artificial nature” by giving up being abstract and mimicking the nature.The abstraction inspired by Mother Nature defines the nature itself, and still, stays natural. That’s what I wanted from this abstraction and architecture.

Visit the website of Mount Fuji Architects Studio – here.

Photography by Ken’ichi Suzuki

 
 

The PLUS House by Mount Fuji Architects Studio

09 May

Mount Fuji Architects Studio have designed the PLUS house in Shizuoka, Japan.

Full description after the photos….

.

Description of the PLUS House by Mount Fuji Architects Studio:

The site locates on mountainside of Izu-san, where Pacific Ocean can be looked down on the south. The untouched wilderness, covered with deciduous broad-leaved trees such as cherry trees and Japanese oaks, gives little level ground. But we saw faint glimmer of architectural possibility along the ridge.
The architecture would be used as villa for weekends. I didn’t want to just form the undulating landscape dotted with great trees as normal, nor design an elaborate architecture bowing down to the complex topography. What sprang to my mind is a blueprint for an architecture which is perfectly autonomous itself, at the same time seems to emerge as an underlying shape that the natural environment has been hiding. It’s abstraction of nature, to say. The architecture was realized by crossing two rectangular parallelepipeds at very right angles. The lower one contains private rooms and bathroom, and sticks half of the body out to existing narrow level ground. The upper one incorporates salon and kitchen, and lies astride the lower one and the mountain ridge. It almost seems like an off-centered cross pinned carefully on natural terrain. One axis of the cross stretches toward the Pacific Ocean on south, and the other, the forest of Japanese oak and some white birch on west. The rooms in the lower structure and terrace on it enjoy broad vista of the sea and blue sky. And gentle shade of natural forest embraces the space in the upper one. Water-polished white marble (cami #120) was chosen as interior finishing material. It glows softly like Greece sculptures to blend blue light from the south and green light from the west gradationally, thus creates delicate continuous landscape of light which suggests the character and usage of the space. Exterior is also finished with white marble. The surface get smoother as it approaches to the southern/western end till it takes mirror gloss (cami #1000) at the ends. The southern end of white cross melts into the blue of sky and sea, and the eastern end to the green of forest. Abstraction is nothing to conflict with nature here. Carved out of nature, it never stops being a part of nature itself, however highly abstracted. Never relativizes the nature with its foreignness, nor generate contradiction to settle for being “artificial nature” by giving up being abstract and mimicking the nature.The abstraction inspired by Mother Nature defines the nature itself, and still, stays natural. That’s what I wanted from this abstraction and architecture.

Visit the website of Mount Fuji Architects Studio – here.

Photography by Ken’ichi Suzuki

 
 

Obama: iPads Make Information a Distraction

09 May

Although before his inauguration U.S. President Barack Obama was rarely seen without his BlackBerry, he has criticized the current crop of popular consumer gadgets for helping make information a “distraction.”

The context of his comments is important; Obama was talking about the importance of education and Thomas Jefferson’s realization that citizens must stay informed to make a democracy work. If quoted out of context, though, his comments might not be too popular with freedom of speech advocates — or gadget lovers, for that matter.

“You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank all that high on the truth meter,” the AFP reports Obama saying during a talk at Hampton University in Virginia.

“With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.”

Obama, arguably the most social media savvy of all U.S. presidents, went on to suggest that the traction gained by the “craziest claims” from blogs and talk radio outlets is “putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy.”

What do you think? Is Obama right to highlight how hard it can be to differentiate disreputable sources from the responsible ones (unless you’re really media savvy)? Are iPads, iPods, Xbox 360s and PlayStation 3s making the problem worse, or is he finding causation where none exists? Have your say in the comments section below.



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Tags: barack obama, ipad, iphone, media, playstation 3, politics, Xbox 360

 

Broken promises – by American presidents

08 May
* In 1974 with 36.1% of oil from foreign sources, President Richard Nixon said, “At the end of this decade, in the year 1980, the United States will not be dependent on any other country for the energy we need.”

* In 1975 with 36.1% of oil from foreign sources, President Gerald Ford said, “We must reduce oil imports by one million barrels per day by the end of this year and by two million barrels per day by the end of 1977.”

* In 1979 with 40.5% of oil from foreign sources, President Jimmy Carter said, “Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 – never.”

* In 1981 with 43.6% of oil from foreign sources, President Ronald Reagan said, “While conservation is worthy in itself, the best answer is to try to make us independent of outside sources to the greatest extent possible for our energy.”

* In 1992 with 47.2% of oil from foreign sources, President George Bush said, “When our administration developed our national energy strategy, three principles guided our policy: reducing our dependence on foreign oil…”

* In 1995 with 49.8% of oil from foreign sources, President Bill Clinton said, “The nation’s growing reliance on imports of oil…threatens the nation’s security…[we] will continue efforts to…enhance domestic energy production.”

* In 2006 with 65.5% of oil from foreign sources, President George W. Bush said, “Breakthroughs…will help us reach another great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025.”

* In 2009 with 66.2% of oil from foreign sources, President Barack Obama said, “It will be the policy of my administration to reverse our dependence on foreign oil while building a new energy economy that will create millions of jobs.”
From a presentation by Mike Milken posted at The Money Game, via The Christian Science Monitor, via Oregon Expat.