+ In Iraq: the coalition-administered Iraqi Ministry of Health has joined the Pentagon’s efforts to suppress publication of Iraqi civilian deaths. Hospital staff are forbidden from issuing any information to the international news media. –from a larger Arab News editorial on Bush government election year news manipulation and management.

+ Still have what must be the flu (8 pages, very informative, from E Medicine Health). Can’t pinpoint when I had the first symptoms, but it seems that it has come and gone three times since early fall. Going to a clinic tomorrow. Want to make sure a go hard New Year won’t do me in. –edit: naw. skip that. i’ll rest and go as hard as possible..

+ Alex sent me an excerpt from an article in In the Sun I read this article about an interesting little pill called “Modafinil”. It’s supposed have the capacity to help a person stay awake for up to 40 hours without any side effects. I’ve no reason to stay awake that long but some of the side effects of under-sleeping have me thinking I aught to sleep more than my average of 6.5 hours a night.

Studies have found that people who sleep six hours or less a night have an increased risk of high blood pressure, heart attacks and stroke. Just one bad night’s sleep can have a dramatic effect on memory, alertness, concentration and judgment, and chronic sleep deprivation can lead to anxiety and depression.

More worrisome, “when we’re really sleep deprived, at some point in time we start to micro sleep,” says Coren. “No matter what we’re doing, our brain goes into a sleep state, and it can remain there anywhere from 10 seconds to a minute.”

“Now suppose that you’re tooling down the road in your car at 50 kilometres an hour and you have one of these small little micro sleeps, and it’s the 10-second kind. What that means is that your car will travel more than the length of a football field while you’re asleep.”

In fact, Coren’s team has found that traffic accidents in Canada jump seven per cent on the Monday after the switch to daylight savings time and people lose an hour’s worth of sleep.

+ Want to see phone number portability in Canada? Go and make a request at the CRTC website. –in case you weren’t aware, cel phone numbers were recently made portable in the states. Meaning that you can change providers without losing your number.

+ Music I’m listening to this week, in no particular order:

Mu. Mu is wicked Neo New Wave, with subtle references to Nina Hagen

Styrofoam has a enticingly melancholic glitch-poppy Goth Wave vibe that has enticed me

Along that vein comes The Boy Lucas (get a website Boy!). He’s a little less goth and a little less pop, but certainly as enticingly melancholic.

Various Artists -Daniel bell - the button-down mind strike. This one has a glitchy downtempo flavoured tech house essence.-nice.

Four Tet. I have three albums from Four Tet. They fit the downtempo category.

Check the name: “Pantytec” it says what this is all about, sex-tech, or down-tech. Good sounds to fuck by, or I suppose hang out with your computer by. Album name = pony slaystation.

John Tejada & Takeshi Nishimoto. Some hip jazz that taps into glitch pop. –great listening.

Tied and Tickled Trio - observing systems. Some very easy listening contemporary jazz. I know not the current terms for jazz. –it sounds fresh, younger and kinda sexy. Fucking by this would not be a bad thing.

Prefuse 73. A couple albums. Someone who I’m currently debating peaches’ perfeormance with recommended that I catch their recent show. I missed it, but I’ve loads of their music and think it’s very westcoast, creative and groove riddled glitch-hop-pop. Reminds me of way laid back and immensly creative westcoast hiphop from 1991-1994.

And Donna Regina, well she’s just like the coolest electronic musician who loves bands like the Velvet Underground, Goldfrapp, and Bjork.

And Crescent takes the fucked up melancholic poet with a three(?) piece band prize. Dude, don’t be so existentialist…well, do be, but only for your art.

Buscemi - Our Girl In Havana. I suppose at one time I would call this Elegant Latin Acid jazz. But today let’s call it really sexy and leave it at that.

AIM. Downtempo that’s all jazzy hip hop vibes. -aaahh. smooth like chocolate in your mouth.

From the 1970s, four influential Architects explored to reveal that “new thinking 30 years ago is relevant today.“

By the 1960s many artists had started to look at extra-aesthetic considerations in their work. There was a movement towards site specificity in art and dialogue emerged between artists and their environment–particularly the architectural. To further encourage integration of art and building, ‘percent for art’ schemes were established across North America and Europe, with the sixteenth century Italian piazza as the model. Under these schemes beginning in 1965, the Department of Public Works in Canada first allocated one percent of new construction costs of federal buildings for fine art; the architect was to be responsible for co-coordinating the programme. Artist Richard Serra used the term “piazza art” reproachfully to speak against much of the work conceived at this time. Out-of-scale studio art seemed to drop arbitrarily in front of new buildings without questioning or challenging the space. Serra’s own work was always devised as a counterpoint and a critique of its architectural surroundings.

It is unfortunate that public outcry over some of Serra’s most contentious work has led, in part, to today’s civic art programs. Introduced to most Canadian cities during the late ’80s and early ’90s, the programs use a model of art funding involving both corporate and citizen representation with an emphasis on process (often to head off controversy). Although in principal the idea seems worthy, public art created this way frequently ends up bland and lifeless.

“It is the rigid mentality that architects install the walls and artists decorate them that offends my sense of either profession,” says Gordon Matta-Clark, whose views on the subject reflect a new way of thinking about art for architecture in today’s increasingly multi-disciplinary world–a collaborative approach. Collaboration between an artist and an architect does not result in a reaction to a given space, as in the work of Serra, or a work unrelated to its context (e.g., ‘piazza art’ or ‘plop’ art), but instead there is a commingling of ideas where both art and architecture are the better for it. The funding structures based on a percentage of project costs or a dollar amount per square foot of revenue construction need not change, though the process must.

Last night I was at John Morgan’s talking about color and design with him and Monica. Doing an interior make over starting Monday. The idea is to get it to look less like a bachelor pad. It needs to be made more cohesive, like there’s a vision that is followed through on. A place that’s hip, stylish and where people want to live out some good times. –a glossy red ceiling rising from a velvet red column/supporting wall in the kitchen, and two warm crimson and blue black perimeter walls in the open area leading up to the loft, is what we’re starting a mufti-phased project with. This project is going to be evolutionary. Where one growth causes another growth. With strong statements it’s not as easy to predict how each element will impact a space, so we’ll wait and see before committing to the next statements. –in the end it’s going to be a cool space to live in and visit!

Monica made some wicked cookies, the recipe for which she posted Nov. 13th.

Before getting there I stopped in at the opening party of the very slick “Raw Potential” Bark Collective exhibit at 44 water street. Impressed by the geometric origami light form by Studer and Khan Lee, the log and resin cube table by Mark Brady, the Haida Manga by Michael Yahgulanaas, and the bar by whoever built the bar (I really liked your bar bar designer!). –show closes December 14th.

The Information boom is causing a memory overload.

Alex has ‘been “fair used” by a famous guy’. He emailed technopundit Bob Cringely last week about his
column “No Confidence Vote” in regards to the US voting machine debacle. Cringley used some of Alex’s thoughts in a follow up article, paragraph 17. –cool. –Alex was also “fair used” here, but alas my fame is lesser.

The title of this Wired article is The Key to Genius. It discusses the ways in which some savants think, it associates savant thinking processes with the relationship between enhanced and diminished functions in specific areas of the mind. Some scientists are studying the minds of savants in the hopes of finding ways to unleash genius thinking in anyone. –maybe. Lots of maybes and ethical questions come to mind..

–got me thinking, what areas of the brain are enhanced to compensate for the Tourette’s Syndrome and “ADHD” in my afflicted nephew’s brain? He definitely has artistic abilities that are a quite bit beyond his classmates. I wonder if, without these afflictions, would he just have the drawing skills of a regular kid?

I’ve the flu. After watching various “Family Guy” and “The Sopranos” episodes, reading hours of the latest news, searching for great downtempo through listening to Acid Radio, I’ve been tweaking/mod-ing my XP. I’ve always been doing it, but rarely blogging about what I do. Blogging these links cause the programs are free and seemingly simple to use, and there are some decent image files to make your computer a little less generic:

Speed up and secure Windows XP using Windows XP Home and Professional Service Configurations ~ by Black Viper.