Season four of AMC's hit series Mad Men starts Sunday night. But I was reminded of an episode from season two after reviewing fresh research results. In the episode, fast-rising copywriter Peggy Olson confronts senior partner Roger Sterling in the hallway, reminding him that she "landed the Popsicle account on her own." Earlier scenes depict Olson imagining the ad campaign, testing it on colleagues, and successfully pitching it to Popsicle executives. As compensation, Olson asks Sterling for her own office.

"It's yours," replies her boss decisively.

The takeaway? While the Sterling Cooper ad agency has hordes of creative types employing "more failed artists and intellectuals than the Third Reich," according to mordant creative director Don Draper Olson is the one that is conspicuously rewarded for combining creativity and aggressive execution (and a dose of moxie in choosing to approach her boss.)

It's usually not a great idea to look for innovation tips in the storyline of television series, even award-winning ones. But in this case, the scene depicted what our results showed: Bosses shouldn't hesitate to openly reward the execution of a solid idea.

In our Babson Executive Education survey of 194 front-line employees on trends and practices in corporate innovation, we found a striking correlation between higher performance and overt leadership rewards for execution of new ideas in three innovation practices: personal idea creation, experimentation, and scaling ideas. For convenience, below we call organizations in which respondents agree that their leadership overtly rewards execution of new ideas "rewarders," and those that disagree "non-rewarders."

Rewarder companies report higher rates of personal idea creation. Respondents working at rewarders are two and a half times more likely to personally develop new ideas on a regular basis than those working at non-rewarders (55% versus 21%). This finding challenges the widespread notion that hiring imaginative, intrinsically-motivated people and letting them "do their thing" insures innovation.

Dangling the proverbial carrot on a stick may work after all. With no promise of some sort of extrinsic recognition from the top (even if it's something more modest than a new office), potential idea generators are far less likely to actually generate ideas.

Rewarders' employees demonstrate more productive action by using tests that yield fast, tangible results. Rewarders' are 3.5 times more likely than non-rewarders to devote significant organizational resources and attention to innovation experiments and projects that "will yield quick measureable outcomes" (73% v. 21%). They don't rely on a long, structured planning and resource allocation processes to make big bets. Instead, they try to democratize a process of action and analysis to quickly place a series of smaller bets.

The pervasive use of desktop idea management (PDF) tools and analytics help respondents at rewarder firms easily submit concepts for data-based evaluation, according to our survey.

At the same time, many rewarder respondents emphasize the importance of having an organizational group for testing and assessment, like an innovation center or open-door innovation lab. "The fact that we have an Innovation and Advanced Technology Department speaks volumes about our organization's commitment to innovate," says a worker at a large health services company we surveyed. The upshot of forming these groups is they can quickly kill ideas that early analysis shows won't fly.

The rewarders' approach of low-scale, quick moving innovation seems to create fewer cognitive barriers to innovation. Only 18% of respondents at rewarder firms strongly agree that their main concern is "avoiding negative outcomes when pursuing innovation opportunities," compared to 57% at non-rewarder firms.

Rewarders scale IP and knowledge cleverly when they think they have a winner. In cases where analysis shows a small bet to be promising, rewarders build and scale the idea to ensure that organizational learning and IP doesn't go to waste. Nearly three-quarters (72%) of rewarders devote significant organizational resources and attention to "developing processes that make new ideas monitorable, repeatable, and transferable" to other business domains, markets, or customer segments. By comparison, only 21% of non-rewarder companies focus on maintaining such processes. Respondents at non-rewarders thus report more inefficiency ("We have multiple groups working on the same thing") and less impact ("Innovation is promoted but with a limited scope...it is extremely difficult to find and implement significant opportunities").

As a follow-up to our research, we hope to understand in more detail the specific rewards leaders use to ensure that great ideas are found and used. What rewards or recognition does (or should) your boss use to drive innovation?

H. James Wilson is a Senior Researcher and Senior Writer at Babson Executive Education (BEE) in Wellesley, MA.

It was a night of both explicit and implicit Weezer tributes at the Black Cat -- starting with Hooray For Earth frontman, and Rivers Cuomo look-a-like, Noel Haroux forcing a melody out from behind guitar snarl and insistent quarter note snares on their fun track "Form." Haroux has a gift for writing catchy synth rock, which is persistently melodic, upbeat, and often references Weezer in their prime. The band's solid Momo EP gives a hint at what a promising young band they could be. Live, they look the part of your typical Brooklyn indie band, but instead of dour or whiny, they bring a youthful exuberance with them to the stage. "Comfortable, Comparable" and "Surrounded By Your Friends," are great cuts, which even caused a few hesitant D.C. hips to bounce. Hooray For Earth ended their brief set with a stage party, bringing out two female backup singers and Kurt Feldman, the drummer for headliners The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, on guitar. This was the last night of their tour together with Pains, and Surfer Blood. It was a promising lineup, and the openers played their set as if they were closing the show.

The evening's closers, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, funnel a handful of influences into a unwavering formula. They are a solid twee band operating in a genre with few real competitors -- they've already surpassed the likes of My Teenage Stride, for instance -- which goes a long way in explaining their rapid rise to indie stardom.

There's little to alter from Valerie's appraisal of Pains' show at Black Cat's tiny back stage last year. Much of what they played was difficult to distinguish from the rest of their catalog, and the band really don't live up to the hype they have received. They have the wall-of-sound, shoegaze jangle style in spades; but there is little else in the way of drama or dynamics or inventiveness (see M83). If anything, they seemed a bit more jaded or, at least, less deferential to the audience than they were on their last trip through town.

Surfer Blood was, for me, the most intriguing band on the billing. First of all, they are all about 13 years old. Well, okay, not exactly -- but at least two of them aren't old enough to drink yet, as evidenced by the large black Xs on their hands. There are plenty of young bands out there, but few with the depth of sound and quality that Surfer Blood brings to bear. At one point early in the show, after some minor gaff, someone shouted "that's what happens when you give high schoolers beer!" With a wry smile, guitarist Thomas Fekete asked the shouter, who turned sheepish, to join the band on stage. They have clearly met a cynical audience member before.

Lead singer John Paul Pitts wore jean shorts, black socks and blue topsiders. He looked a bit like a cherub-faced drug dealer from a New England prep school. Surfer Blood sing about surfing, yet none of them surf -- and they sound as if they are from California, when they are really from West Palm Beach, Florida.

The band's performance contained a few choppy licks, but they are clearly a talented group of songwriters and musicians. Their appropriately titled Astro Coast LP is a must-own. Their sound is retro, and there is a rawness to the production quality, but it all comes off without a shred of irony. The album grows on the listener with time, and after moving beyond the best tracks, "Swim," "Floating Vibes," and "Catholic Pagans," there are many other aural pleasure nuggets tucked within. These three essential songs were energetic and excellent live. "Swim," especially, suggests a Hold Steady-esque barroom romp. Another song, "Take It Easy," brings to mind the indie afro-pop of Vampire Weekend. "Harmonix" is played with Strokes-like intensity, while Pitts' high falsetto calms the song's nervous backbone. Sadly, they did not play the oft-requested, "Slow Jabroni."

The lengthy set showcased the group's intriguing versatility of influences and sound. Just when we thought they had played their last song, they brought out Peggy Wang-East, keyboardist from The Pains. After Fekete confessed to not really knowing how to play their upcoming final tune, the ensemble launched a rousing cover of Weezer's "Undone - The Sweater Song." Indeed, Fekete stumbled a little on the iconic guitar solo, but almost everyone at the Cat was singing along.

Broken Bells, courtesy Columbia Records

>>Rock and Roll Hotel: Plants and Animals, Lost in the Trees. 8:30 p.m., $12.

>>Wolf Trap: Jeff Beck, Erin McCarley. 8 p.m., $25-42.

TUESDAY
Many musicians fashion themselves as oddities, but it doesn't get much stranger (in a good way) than the keyboard scuzz of New Orleans duo Quintron and Miss Pussycat. If their MySpace page is to be believed, they'll be taking this opportunity to preview some new songs from the forthcoming double album tentatively entitled, Sugar of the Savage. Opening is Nashville's JEFF the Brotherhood, another duo comprised of former members of pre-pubescent punks Be Your Own Pet. The two have created quite a stir banging out garage rock with straightforward titles like "Bone Jam" and "Heavy Days." The evening at DC9 begins with Peggy Sue. 8:30 p.m., $10/$12.

>>9:30 Club: Dave Rawlings Machine. 7 p.m, $25.

>>Black Cat: CocoRosie, Diane Cluck. 8 p.m., $20.

>>Iota: Megafaun, Sam Quinn. 8:30 p.m., $12.

>>Verizon Center: James Taylor, Carole King. 8 p.m., $62.50-128.00.

>>Wolf Trap: Jethro Tull, Procol Harum. 7:30 p.m., $30-45.

>>Birchmere: Langhorne Slim, Harper Simon. 7:30 p.m., $20.

WEDNESDAY
Ondi Timoner's 2004 documentary Dig! provided The Brian Jonestown Massacre with an unprecedented level of exposure. Unfortunately, it also made its principle songwriter, Anton Newcombe, look like a complete nutbar. Misrepresentation or no, the band rolls into the 9:30 Club, proving once again that all press is good press. With The Young Sinclairs. 7 p.m., $22.

>>Black Cat: Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby, Ward White at the Backstage. 9 p.m., $12.

THURSDAY
Fear not, faithful WMA reader: you are not suffering from listing dj vu. Reflection Eternal (Talib Kweli & Hi Tek) is already back at the Black Cat for an encore performance. Tabi Bonney opens. 8 p.m., $25.

>>Rock and Roll Hotel: Typefighter, The Torches & Dirty Banners, who are website-less. 8:30 p.m., $10.

FRIDAY
>>The Red and the Black: Billy Woodward & The Senders, Kingsley Flood, Pearl and Beard. 9 p.m., $8.

>>The State Theatre: Mason Jennings, Sahara Smith. 7 p.m., $17.

SATURDAY
For those looking to hear some great new local bands, tonight offers an unusually strong and diverse range of options (see below). For the other 25,000 of you, who prefer maddening traffic and unadulterated nostalgia, there's tonight's show at Jiffy Lube Live! featuring Foreigner, Styx, and Kansas. I blame Kilroy. 7 p.m., $26-61.

>>Black Cat:The Cheniers, America Hearts at the Backstage. 8 p.m., $8.

>>Rock and Roll Hotel: Tom McBride, Olivia Mancini, The Treading Lemmings, The Andalusians. 9 p.m., $10.

>>Velvet Lounge: Tennis System, Asteroid No. 4, Sounds of Kaleidoscope. 10 p.m., $8.

SUNDAY
Acoustic-anarcho punks Defiance, Ohio, make a rare non-church basement appearance at the Black Cat's backstage. Like-minded Richmond punks The Two Funerals warm up the room. 9 p.m., $10.

>>9:30 Club: Drake, Francis and the Lights. 9 p.m., Sold Out.

>>DC9: Warpaint, Mini Mansions. 9 p.m., $12.

Shared by Tim
Sad commentary.

As technology becomes more a part of our day-to-day lives, some are worried that it is stunting the education of children by taking away time from activities like reading. A startling discovery from the London-based National Literacy Trust finds that children are more likely these days to own a cell phone than they are a book. The study, which NLT will publish next week, ties cell phone penetration to the presence of books in a child's home, but are these conclusions fair to draw?

Sponsor

A survey of 17,000 U.K. children between the ages of 7 and 16 found that while 86% owned a cell phone, only 73% said they owned a book. The NLT believes a child's access to books has a direct effect on their reading ability, finding that 80% of children reading at their expect levels have their own books. Conversely, the same can only be said for just 58% of children not reading up to par with their age group.

"Our research illustrates the clear link with literacy resources at home and a child's reading ability," said Jonathan Douglas, Director of the NLT. "By ensuring children have access to reading materials in the home and by encouraging children to love reading, families can help them to do well at school and to enjoy opportunities throughout their life."

The connection between books and cell phones in the hands of children is a strange one for the NLT to make. In the press release announcing the study, NLT does not define what they consider to constitute "owning a book," - a significant factor that could change the way readers interpret the study. There are, however, ways to help the literacy problems by taking advantage of the popularity of mobile devices.

While children certainly seem more interested in chatting with friends on their phones than sitting quietly and reading a book, some argue that this debate shouldn't become about the media which children consume. Teacher and education blogger Vicki Davis told ReadWriteWeb that she believes kids benefit from reading on phones or computers as much as they do from paper.

"Whether on a mobile phone, iPod, Kindle, or handheld device or paper - the medium should be irrelevant. The important thing is that students can read and write, or in this case read and text," said Davis. "If ancient man had demanded that their children continue to use their tools - we would still be looking for cave walls to draw upon - paper has been an essential tool of the mass-produced industrial age and electronics are the essential produce of the interconnected information age. Education needs to wake up and harness these tools for learning!"

Redefining "Reading"

Michelle Manafy, editorial director at Information Today, says older generations need to open up their definitions of what "books" actually are. "The very notion of literacy and reading itself has evolved beyond the capacity of many who grew up with linear reading experiences to understand," she says.

"If every kid has a phone, then maybe we need to be looking much harder at creating content optimized for this reading environment, to creating a reading experience that coincides with their voracious appetite and shorter attention spans, with their tangentially and serendipitously connected non-linear reading style and socially mediated tastes," said Manafy

Mobile technology blogger Jason Harris agrees with Davis and Manafy, and adds that the drop in reading skills are likely due to a combination of factors.

"The world is changing in that mobile phones are falling into the hands of new populations, including young children," said Harris. "Of course, there's a competition for time in this age group, so if they're on their mobile phones then all leisure activities, including reading, will take a hit. But are reading scores falling because of this one factor? I doubt it."

Are Parents to Blame?

Marnie Webb, co-CEO of TechSoup Global says the technology is not to blame for the decline in reading skills. As she puts it, the onus is on the parents to make sure the kids have the same access to books as they do phones.

"It doesn't have to be an either or. We can't make it an either or," says Webb. "But that seems to me to be up to grownups [...] I have to put the books in the kid's pocket. Just like we put the phone in the kids' pockets."

Agreeing with Webb is Peggy Anne Salz, founder of MSearchGroove.com, a leading blog on mobile search. Salz says the report is "a call to parents to participate in their children's education, a process they can only improve and enhance with anytime, anywhere mobile access to educational materials."

"Read between the lines, and this is not about a connection between children having a mobile device and any drop in grade school literacy skills," adds Salz. "The report argues there is a link between having literacy resources at home and a child's reading ability. That's an access issue that mobile devices can solve for children in the U.K. and around the world."

It is certainly true that mobile handset penetration is reaching a younger and younger audience, but that is not necessarily a direct catalyst to lowering reading scores. Whether the presence of books in a home affects a child's ability to read is another argument, but it seems strange to try and hook that on mobile phone usage. As technology evolves, so too will the way kids "read" and consume information, so basing studies on the presence of older forms of information digestion may become less and less appropriate.

Photo by Flickr user eyeliam.

Shared by phillip
:(

U.S.

The tornado struck at least 13 counties, destroying scores of homes and trapping people inside, damaging businesses, blocking highways and knocking out power to thousands, said the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency.

Five people died in Choctaw County, four in Yazoo County and one in Holmes County, said Greg Flynn, spokesman at the agency.

Governor Haley Barbour declared a state of emergency after the first major U.S. tornado of the year.

"It has done huge damage around Yazoo City," Barbour, who grew up in the city, told CBS television.

"We have fatalities, a number of people that we're still trying to rescue who are trapped in buildings. But it is a major, significant tornado ... and it did some huge damage and perhaps some fatalities north of here," Barbour said.

"The Hinds County Sheriff's Department is sending two dozen deputies and 100 inmates to assist with the response in Yazoo County and clear debris," the emergency agency said.

The storm system has moved to Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky, said Greg Carbin, spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

(Reporting by Peggy Gargis; Writing by Matthew Bigg; Editing by Peter Cooney)

By Christina Hill and Abigail Wise, Staff Writers

It seems we've had our last snow of the season and spring has finally sprung. Take advantage of the first warm and sunny weekend in months and get outside with one of these spring-inspired activities.

1. Grab the kids and travel to a nearby park to hunt for eggs. Parks all over the city, including Loyola Park, Brands Park and Piotrowski Park are hosting these egg extravaganzas in celebration of Easter. Most events are free, but check chicagoparkdistrict.com for a list of participating parks and prices. Plus, be sure to take a peek at the Kids section of Time Out Chicago for even more egg hunting options.
2. It's hard to resist Berry Chill's frozen yogurt, which comes in three flavors, with healthy toppings such as fruit and nuts. The shop also offers cookie and candy toppings for those extra sweet cravings. On warm days, enjoy a breeze coming through Berry Chill's open patio doors, while licking frozen yogurt off the color-changing spoons. 635 N State St (312-266-2445)
3. Sign up for these spring sports then spend the day working off that winter laziness.
4. Race to the Lakeshore Athletic Club for its outdoor tennis and basketball courts.
5. Head to BOKA for its hibiscus-inspired Spring Paloma.
6. Take a stroll around the best shops in Wicker Park, starting with the floral oasis that is Asrai Garden.
7. Get inspiration to lace up your dusty sneakers and hit the Lakeshore path on our new running blog or follow our 5-mile running tour around Pilsen and Chinatown.
8. Skip the lemonade stand and mix yourself a Cynarata from our cheap-cocktail-recipe list. Then plop down on your patio listening to what springtime-induced music is playing at Time Out.
9. Take one of our seven sinful strolls that guide you around the ways of the Pullman laborers or help you steam up the bedroom. Then walk your way straight into one of these spas for a massage your feet will appreciate
10. Enjoy the sights around the Museum campus before summer tourists take over, then meander your way to nearby 12th Street Beach for some beach bummin'.
11. Kayak on the Chicago River with Kayak Chicago. Rentals for an hour are only $15, and you can spend the day paddling around the river for $60.
12. Buy yourself (or your lovely man) some new trendy threads by hopping on this men's spring heritage streetwear trend.
13. Learn about the architecture behind Chicago's buildings. Shoreline Sightseeing offers architectural cruises that discuss major landmarks like the Tribune Tower or Chicago Board of Trade.
14. Bring the spring fever indoors and start your own indoor garden in DIY containers.
15. Hit up Ravenswood Antique Mart for its 20% off sale celebrating its fifth year in business.
16. Find out why we heart Hyde Park and take a stroll around the South Side neighborhood, hitting all our favorite hot spots.
17. Pick up a volunteer gig. Fill your weekend with feel-good deeds while working toward a better community.
18. Find the best outdoor eating joint in your neighborhood and head to dinner with your shades on. Birchwood Kitchen in Wicker Park is not only BYOB, but its shaded back patio is cozy as can be. If you're looking for something more upscale, Vertigo in River North offers snazzy outdoor rooftop dining with a view.
19. The murals in Pilsen tell stories of immigration, religion and historical figures. They adorn many outdoor canvases on the sides of buildings in the neighborhood. Plus you can hop into La Cebollita Grill for what it boasts are the best tamales around.
20. If you still haven't gotten a chance to check out the Contemporary Sculptures from China in Millennium Park, now's the perfect time. The exhibited Windy City Dinosaur and friends are going extinct this October.
21. Celebrate the vanishing ice rink when the Park Grill and Caf overtakes the once-icy spot. Not to mention, its Kobe burger makes for a delectable dinner under the Bean.
22. Take a tour of Wrigley before the Cubs take back their ballpark. During a behind-the-scenes look (for the cost of a terrace-reserved seat during a game), a tour guide will lead you from the historic building of the stadium to the press box into the Cubs locker room and onto the field.
23. Visit the butterfly haven at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. You can also take a step away from the city and take a walk through their restored native prairie. The museum is also home to more than 150 species of animals and seasonal activities that are sure to keep you and your kids amused.
24. Bike along the Lakeshore path even if you don't own your own set of wheels. Millennium Park Bike Rentals, Navy Pier and North Ave. Beach all offer bike rentals from $30 a day.
25. Participate in Critical Mass on Friday and be a part of bringing awareness to Chicago's great biking community.
26. Practice your ace at North Ave Beach. Volleyball equipment is only $5 per set. You can rent until 9pm on weekdays, letting you take advantage of that spring weather even if you can't play hooky to work.
27. Learn to sail on Lake Michigan with Chicago Sailing. The $510 weekday course is the first step to becoming a world-renowned seafarer. You'll receive curriculum from US Sailing and 15 hours of hands-on training on the water.
28. Fall in love with Chicago all over again by playing tourist. Chicago's Double Decker Buses offer hop-on hop-off tours for $29. The ticket will get you not only a two-hour trip around Chicago's greatest spots but also special offers such as free Garrett Popcorn or discounts at local dining joints.
29. Bird watch at Bill Jarvis Migratory Bird Sanctuary in Lincoln Park. Millions of birds stop by Chicago each year from breeding grounds in the north. The sanctuary is also a place to catch a glance at some smaller mammals like opossums or foxes.
30. Catch a glance at the budding tulips at Grant Park's own Buckingham Fountain Flower Garden. Lincoln Park Conservatory and Garfield Park Conservatory are also hosting their annual flower shows.
31. Take your visiting nieces and nephews to Chase Park to run off some sugar-induced energy. The park offers seasonal sports as well as holiday events sure to tire out the little ones.
32. See doubles at Cloud Gate. Then head for a picnic under the Pritzker Pavilion.
33. After a long day soaking in the sun, head to MCA First Fridays. The monthly event will host a preview of the newest UBS 1212: New Artists/New Work exhibition along with music spinning from local DJs and free appetizers from Wolfgang Puck.
34. Spend the day walking in the shadows of modern Chicago architectural giants like Mies van der Rohe, Louis Sullivan and Helmut Jahn. Enjoy the inviting weather, but don't be surprised if you learn a thing or two from the tour, too.
35. North Side beaches can get chaotic, especially on the first pleasant days of the year. So take in the sun at the more laid-back and infinitely more scenic Promontory Point in Hyde Park. Too bad a BBQ is a bit premature.
36. Call the kids in sick, take a little road trip and gulp up some views at the Morton Arborteum, where spring is getting into full swing. After getting high off all that woody oxygen and seeing the prairie, wetlands and woodlands in the Acorn tram tours or on your own, visit the Children's Garden, where kids can slide down tree trunks, splash around the stream, and climb giant acorns in this 4-acre play space.
37. Pack a picnic, a blanket and then find a place to park yourself on it.
38. Check in on your favorite animal or make a new furry (or feathery) friend at the Lincoln Park Zoo. They've all been just as eager as we have for the long-awaited spring.
39. Let your waggly tailed best friend enjoy your day off too with a romp at Foster Beach, our favorite doggy-approved stretch of sand.
40. Dine as the Europeans do with an outdoor meal at the Art Institute's Garden Caf, then cozy up inside with free museum admission from 5 to 8pm as the sun goes down and things cool off outside.
41. Google Maps now offers a beta version of directions by bicycle, so dust off that bike that's been sitting in the garage all winter, make sure it's not in need of any immediate repairs and ride, ride, ride!

The mobile phone's days as primarily a phone were short lived. Global mobile company Ericsson announced at the CTIA conference today that mobile data traffic surpassed voice traffic worldwide at approximately 140,000 Terabytes per month at the end of last year.

GigaOM's Stacey Higginbotham writes, "Worryingly, that data traffic was generated by an estimated 400 million smartphones set against 4.6 billion mobile subscribers making voice calls. What happens when everyone has a smartphone?" This is an historic moment in terms of both technical capacity and the development of innovative features to serve mobile users.

Sponsor

The mobile industry is just coming to terms with this "tsunami of data" and the challenges it poses. Tricia Duryee wrote last year on MocoNews that two years ago none of the mobile companies would admit they faced a shortage of capacity, but that changed dramatically at the CTIA conference last year. In calling for more wireless spectrum, Qualcom co-founder Irwin Mark Jacobs said last year, "In the lab, we've done everything we know how to do to optimize spectrum. We have to use different tricks now."

These tiny computers trying to use the spectrum that phones have traditionally used for voice are real game changers. As Duryee again reported last year, one smartphone equals 30 feature phones on a network, and one netbook or aircard equals 450 feature phones.

It's not just about capacity, either. As mobile search specialist Peggy Anne Salz wrote last Summer, there's a whole lot of feature development possibilities opening up because of this data:

"The advance of Internet-specific smartphones and the spread of app store schemes turns up the pressure on mobile operators (and their content providers) to decipher data transactions (on and off the network), combine it with location and demographic data and use the results to create a 360-degree view of the individual."

Hopefully that will mean cool new features to serve users, not just mobile profiles to follow us around and target us with ads. So far smart phones have treated us pretty well though, haven't they? They certainly aren't just phones anymore.

Don't miss the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit on May 8th in Mountain View, California! We're at a key point in the history of mobile computing right now - we hope you'll join us, and a group of the most innovative leaders in the mobile industry, to discuss it.

Shared by tamihania
Fascinating!

A Different Kind of Youth
If everyone could begin to mimic what the centenarians do naturally, we'd all benefit as the Hurlburts vividly illustrate. Agnes was mentally nimble enough as she aged that she learned to drive when she was 63, and she only recently gave up her license ("I was a very fast driver, but they never caught me," she confesses); Walter, 84, is an accomplished painter; Muriel, 89, writes poetry and sews quilts; James, 91, is also a poet; Peter, 80, taught himself to play the piano and ice-skate after midlife; Millie, 93, burns through half a dozen books every few weeks ("I like exciting books with a lot of action," she says); Helen, 88, sews intricate dolls, complete with period costumes; and Peggy, the baby at 79, loves to cook and read. Even when they're watching Jeopardy!, says Peter's granddaughter Nicole, they're calling out the answers in the form of a question, of course.

If studies are going to determine how adopting such behaviors can influence and strengthen genes, they're going to need a lot of volunteers, and the LLFS, like the New England study, is ready. So far, the trial includes 840 families like the Hurlburts, with 4,800 siblings who were at least 79 when they enrolled in 2006 and many of their children. All of the participants signed on knowing they'd be sitting still for in-depth interviews, recounting family histories and providing blood and DNA samples. And all have happily done their part. "I am interested to see if their influence can carry over to our generation," says Janet Kinnally, 61, who joined the study along with her mother Helen. "I hope the research leads to things that are helpful for generations to come."

This beautiful anatomical heart locket created by Peggy Skemp, opens to reveal the anatomically correct interior of the heart, complete with cordae tendinae. Peggy's love of science reflects in her jewlery designs, which pose as intimate sculptural scientific illustrations. View more of her unique designs here.

Apple's iPad is only one of a host of new technologies only begin to define the parameters of books and storytelling in times to come. Bold new ventures on the part of authors and media artists, from nervy experiments in digital narrative to extrordinary efforts to create communities of writers and readers, push the boundaries of the bookish. Tim Carmody, blogger at the ever-exciting Snarkmarket, is working not only to flesh out the critical possibilities of the bookfuturist disposition, but to spark and organize a vital conversation about its possibilities, at his new site intellectual networking site Bookfuturism.

And now, Joanne McNeil of Tomorrow Museum is shaping a series of meetups to showcase terrific new experiments taking place where books and technology collide. The first meeting, the Boston Bookfuturists, will take place tonight at Microsoft's amazing New England Research and Development Center, near MIT in Cambridge's Kendall Square.

It's a Hilobrow-heavy event: Josh and I both will give presentations (I'll be presenting my thought experiment about a terms of service for books; Josh will talk about eBay as a literary venue) as well as our recent artist-in-residence, Peggy Nelson (Twitter and other social media as space for presenting movie/novel hybridizations). We'll also hear from Stona Fitch, founder of the amazing Concord Free Press, and from our impresario and provocateuse, Joanne McNeil. Special guests will be on hand to read from their work, and there will be plenty of time to talk about ideas and projects in Boston's arts, media, and publishing communities.

If you're in Boston, we hope you'll join us tonight at the NERD! If you live elsewhere, get in touch about participating in future Bookfuturist events in other cities in the months to come.

What dangles when you angle? What slides when you dive? How many ladders can they fit in one sub, and must I climb all of them? This and many other questions were answered Friday when a group of 8 bloggers were invited aboard the U.S. Navy's nuclear submarine U.S.S. Hampton for an all-day distinguished visitor cruise.

The bloggers included Smarterware's Gina Trapani (@ginatrapani), NBC San Diego tech correspondent and Mashable associate editor Jenn Van Grove (@jbruin), Mitch Wagner (@mitchwagner), Angie Swartz (@aaswartz), Chris Cantore (@chriscantore), Scott Kingery (@techlifeweb), Rob Marlbrough (@DowntownRob), and me, Peggy Gartin (@thepegisin). The visit was arranged by Submarine Squadron 11's public affairs officer Lt. Denise Garcia and led by the squadron's commander, Commodore Brett Genoble. Waiting to greet us were the boat's commanding officer Commander Bill Houston and his crew of 134.

According to Lt. Garcia, we were the first bloggers the San Diego-based sub community has hosted, and are possibly the first for the entire submarine community as well. I wondered if it would turn into a kind of culture clashdisciplined military types faced with long-haired eggheads used to shooting off their mouths. As it turned out, we had more in common than you might think.

The Navy, it appears, is coming to recognize the value of new media, and thinks bloggers can be as effective at telling their story as traditional media. The U.S. military has been surprisingly open to blogging even within its ranks; the number of milblogs (or military blogs) run into the thousands, with bloggers ranking as high as admiral (as in Admiral John C. Harvey, Jr.). Milblogging.com currently tracks 2,534 milblogs in 43 countries. Commodore Genoble confessed to reading up on all our blogs before we got there. Heck, lurking and snooping like that are core blogger skills! Maybe we're not so different from submariners.

The day began with a coffee, pastries and a briefing in Commander Houston's wardroom, the largest private room on the boat, but honestly, the size of a walk-in closet. They told us what they'd show us and what they couldn't show us: mainly anything classified, which means no inspecting the nuclear reactor. We would get to see weapons, go up the wing to the bridge, and be in the control room while they did some maneuvers, including 30-degree dives to depths of 500 feet.

I couldn't possibly tell you all the things we did in a brief blog post, but here are the highlights:

My I shoulda joined the Navy moment
I had heard that standing on the bridge (the top of the wing, or that part of the sub that sticks up) while heading out to sea is an experience not to be missed, so when they asked, Who wants to go up first? my hand shot up. I was then wrapped up in a warm jacket with USS HAMPTON on the chest and strapped into a rather complicated harness. I clambered inelegantly up 3 not-so-consecutive ladders, and kept thinking I was going to put my foot on a knob or a valve and a horn would go off. Then I stuck my head out of the hatch and couldn't quite believe what I would have to do next: wriggle up onto a maybe 4-foot-wide piece of real estate, on either side of which was a 25-foot-drop into foamy, freezing-cold ocean. I am not a wriggler. Somehow I got up there anyway, my harness was clipped to a hook on the floor, and I clung to a railing for dear life.

Once I looked out on the ocean, though, I knew it was all worth it. The day was gorgeous, with mist just burning off around Point Loma, sun shining on cormorants, pelicans and gulls skating by or hitching a ride on the back side of the sub, and even a few dolphins playing some yards to our left. A gray boat labeled NAVY SECURITY accompanied us on the right, and a white Coast Guard cutter followed behind. The power of the boat as she sliced through the water, and the greater power of the sea as it surged over the bow, was simply breathtaking. I would have stayed up there all day if they'd let me.

• See video from the bridge (courtesy of @DowntownRob)

Buster Keaton, angles and dangles
When we'd reached a point 15 miles out where the water was deep enough to dive, we all gathered in the control room for an exercise called Angles and Dangles. The CO explained that when you shoot a torpedo at an enemy, you reveal your sub's position, and they're probably going to fire back. So firing a torpedo is almost always accompanied by a steep dive so that when return fire comes, you're not there anymore. He then showed us what that kind of dive felt like, first with a 25-degree dive, then a climb, then a 30-degree dive.

Have you ever seen that silent film of Buster Keaton fighting a wind storm? A steep climb forces you into a posture something like that. Your calf muscles scream from the strain. You grab onto anything just to stay upright. A steep dive forces just the opposite. You have to lean waaaaaaaaay back. Then your abs and thigh muscles have a fit. It's a total body workout, and you're standing still!

The most impressive part of this exercise was the clear and exact communication between captain and crew. The control room was full of people, but each was quiet and focused on their individual task. The captain would say an order, not loudly but clearly, and the person who knew that task was theirs would repeat that order back, say Aye sir, and get it done. I never heard anyone repeat back an order wrong or fail to get a handoff that was meant for them. In this way the captain and crew executed precise maneuvers, all while the captain was giving us a running dialogue of what we were doing and why. It made you feel that we were in really good hands.

• See video of the Angles and Dangles exercise (courtesy of @DowntownRob)

Hmmwhat's missing?
By now I had been all over the boat, and was even starting to recognize certain people when I saw them again. Oh hey, there's Fisher again. Excuse me, Spillner. Hiya Jonesy, how ya doin'? Still, there seemed to be something missing, and it seemed connected to the wide-eyed silence I sometimes encountered as I made my way down the halls. Then it hit meTHERE ARE NO CHICKS ON THIS BOAT. Well, other than me and 3 of my blogger sisters.

I asked Commodore Genoble about it later, and sure enough, women are not yet allowed to serve aboard U.S. Navy submarines. Other ships only began allowing women in the 90s, a fact that also surprised me. He explained that to have both sexes aboard such a confined space would be tough, given that space is at a premium and privacy practically nonexistent. However, there is a plan to integrate some of the bigger SSBN submarines in the near future. I hope so, because otherwise sustaining my joining-the-Navy-at-43 fantasy is going to be tough.

Eating like admirals
In preparation for this visit, I asked my dad what he remembered about subs from his Navy service. Here's what he said:

Let me make a prediction: you will eat like admirals. When I was a young ensign in 1960 at the Naval Photographic Center, my first job was to sit in a screening room and declassify motion picture footage from the U.S.S. Triton, an SSN making a secret around-the-world cruise underwater. They only surfaced the conning tower to offload film to a helo off Spain. The job was torture. I was living in the BOQ and had not yet figured out how to get to work on time and eat breakfast first. The hours of watching the mess cooks at work were excruciating. SSN crews eat exceedingly well.

Just as my dad predicted, lunch was a feast. Two kinds of braided bread, salad, choice of tomato soup or seafood chowder, beef stroganoff, and for dessert, cookies & cream ice cream, cherry cheesecake or fresh fruit cup. If you held up 3 fingers, you got all 3 desserts. They even made one of the breads, one of the soups and the noodles vegan because they knew one of our party was vegan. I was stuffed.

The captain explained it like this: These guys work 18-hour days, sleep 6 hours, then do it all againgenerally seeing no sunlight for days at a time, and can only tell what time it is by what meal they're being served. The least we can do is make that meal enjoyable. He also confirmed what I'd heard about every sub having its own ice cream maker.

Roll me into the torpedo tube, I want to take a nap
Next they showed us the delicate operation of loading a torpedo into the torpedo tube. They used a dummy shape for our demo, but I could just imagine how nerve-wracking it would be to load a live shell. I mean, the torpedo is 21 feet and 1 inch long, and the tube is only longer than thatnot much room for error.

Later they dared me to climb in to the torpedo tube, and of course, I did. Once I was in there they started telling me how there was only a thin 1 steel louvered door between me and the whole ocean, which caused me to scramble out in as ladylike a manner as I could muster. If I'd been calmer about it, my knees wouldn't be so black and blue today.

Home again
When we pulled back into port, I couldn't believe we'd been gone all day, from 8AM to 4PM. I'd had so much fun, it felt like we'd just left, but our day as submariners was over. As climbed out and walked onto the dock, we passed dozens of crewmen carrying boxes of food and produce. The captain had explained this earlier: We can stay out at sea as long as our food holds out. We can make our own air, we can make our own water, and the nuclear reactor keeps us powered indefinitely. The resource we have to replenish is food.

If what I saw was any indication, they plan to be at sea for quite a while.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Shared by Jesse Stay
So jealous! I <3 the military!

A reader nails it:

Peggy Noonan's biggest problem is that she's not a Republican anymore but she doesn't want to admit it. Like you, Bruce Bartlett, Chris Buckley and myself, she's a conservative - but unlike "us" she is unwilling to completely disengage from the party itself and recognize that it no longer represents true conservative values. But she's too smart to simply regurgitate GOP talking points, so she ends up talking herself into circles.

I think that's about right. But she does at least acknowledge the GOP's bankruptcy and extremism. Which is something,

IBY #1: This is the first in what will be a series of content written by me, but Inspired By You. I'll be calling one of my Twitter followers every week to talk to them for 15 minutes over the phone. What will we talk about? Whatever comes to mind. Honestly, I just want to get to know you. If you're wonder why I won't keep the conversation on Twitter, keep reading to find out. The point the is I want to show just how much inspiration can be produced from a single conversation.

This week's IBY was made possible through: Peggy Dolane (@FreeRangeMom)

@Corvida on Twitter href=http://twitter.com/corvida target=_blank>

Make no mistake about it, Twitter is edging closer and closer to becoming our next search engine. Think about it; while we're having all these awesome conversations (read: personal recommendations) with our friends and colleague, we're still sharing great content that we've read (read: link backs) every single day. We even leave comments on tweets for crying out loud! Haven't you ever wondered what could be done with all your data?

Read Between The Lines

Let's look at the facts:

• If you're a Twitter user (over 5 million that have sent out over 1 billion tweets), you're probably going to use Twitter Search or an alternative Twitter search engine at least 2 more times before the end of today.
• Search engine optimization isn't the only thing you should be worried about. Social media optimization has arrived! <insert collective awe> I know!
• Twitter took away the real conversations a long time ago.
• ReTweets are the new linkback and are more efficient for the next level of community outreach.
• Tweets in Bing?! Enough said.
• If you think tweets aren't apart of your online identity, don't ever try to hire me.

It All Started When

Last year, She Geek Alana Taylor guest posted a fantastic piece on why you should stop using search engines, and use Twitter instead. I officially announced Twitter as my personalized search engine back in early March. Twitter aggregates all of this data that WE give it and serves it back to us freely, just like every other search engine. Lately, Twitter has been getting some serious funding and you should be just as curious as everyone else is about what Twitter will do next.

Twitter has the potential to introduce semantic search technology without the geek lingo to mainstream users. And they'll get what makes Google so special, quality links and news updates.

Should Google be afraid? Welcome to the future of the social web.

Shared by Zach
"Betty no longer believes white men when they tell her that it's going to be okay, which means the sixties are finally starting in earnest."

What The Hell Is Going On?

by MOLLY LAMBERT

The problem with being Don Draper is that while a code of silence may carry you through for a long time, eventually there will be something you need to talk about. This is the problem with old school masculinity in general, with "never complain, never explain." It's the reason Tony Soprano started having panic attacks and needed to see a shrink. It's why Don Draper is going to be totally screwed for the rest of the sixties.

Mad Men's penultimate episode starts with several false starts. The heat is out at Sterling-Coop. Pete gets demoted by that British dick. Duck, ever the paternal smug fuck, tell Peggy "come on creative, be creative" and lures her to a nooner with the promise of Monte Cristo sandwiches. Peggy Olson resembles Liz Lemon in her trailblazing feminism and love of sandwiches and repressed desire to fuck Jon Hamm.

Don thinks everything is copacetic with Betty now that they've had their first real conversation of all (canon Mad Men) time. He's smugger than usual, playing Mr. Mom for a hot minute and staring dreamily at Bets like he didn't just fuck and run on that teacher betch with the name ganked from a Leonard Cohen song last week.

Then President Kennedy get shot and dies, and Betty and Carla sit on the couch together and smoke. Given that nothing seems to make sense anymore, Betty is overtaken with the nihilistic desire to destroy her shitty life, probably fed up with the way Don Draper ne Dick Whitman has gone about destroying his awesome one.

Duck and Don and all the other former walls of masculinity prove less stable than ever before, trying to shield the children/women in their lives from the scary truth that nobody knows now what the fuck is going to happen next. Everyone wants to watch TV except Don, who seems intent on shutting out the reality of most things in his life.

Everybody goes to Roger's daughter's wedding for the second act except Pete and Trudy. Pete is drunk and becoming radicalized by the larger tragedy at hand and the smaller ones that speckle his own life. Like Betty he is taking stock of his life and finding it wanting. You mean he and Trudy did the charleston for nothing?

In Pete's mind he is the protagonist of his own story, not someone who would get passed over for a promotion at work. His ambition far exceeds his grasp, and maybe he really doesn't have a future at Sterling-Cooper. Trudy has strong patriotic feelings that sound like Gretchen Weiners; "This is America, you don't just shoot the president."

Pete Campbell: "it felt for a second like everything was about to change."

Mona's new beau is out for Lee Oswald's blood and Mona is out for the blood of whoever fucked up delivering the wedding cake. Henry Francis shows up with his much younge girlfriend, except oops it's his daughter. Betty is relieved/skeeved out/super turned on. No one understands her attraction to Henry except Betty and Grandpa Gene.

Henry Francis is not hot at all, on the other hand Roger Sterling is a total silver fox

Everyone kowtows to Roger's desire to hear the sound of his voice over a loudspeaker except Jane and Bert Cooper, who are both probably so sick of Roger's narcissism at this point that they've managed to tune him out. Roger almost seems loath to toast except that he's already poured so much money into the wedding.

Betty doesn't feel like dancing with Don because she's sick of his crap. A wise friend of mine pointed out about Don's confession last week that it was forced, and that men will cry most of all when they get caught in a lie, doing something they knew all along they shouldn't have been doing. Don gives a damn about saving the Draper marriage now that Betty no longer does. Can you blame her for not giving a fuck? Or for not being impressed that Don is only just realizing he's been taking her for granted?

There are only antiheroes and anti-villains on Mad Men. No character is so loathed that they can't have a redemptive moment. It's like how in The Wire you follow and feel for the cops and the criminals, only in Mad Men you sympathize with the misogynists and the feminists. Because like most things in life, it is entirely shades of gray.

No man is so misogynist that he can't understand feminism (except old style James Bond, who doesn't exist), and lots of women are fairly misogynist to begin with because of the horrible patriarchal culture they grew up in.

"Hang In There, Red" Mad Men OTPs: Roger/Joan, Don/Rachel, Pete/Peggy, Sal/Ken

Roger Sterling drunk dials Joan Holloway to put it all in perspective. For whatever reason, their basic sexual and verbal chemistry, they are a great match. Joan knows how to deal with any stressful situation, how to pacify Roger after he's had to pretend to know how to pacify everyone else.

Betty tells Don she's "going out for a drive" to clear her head which as we know from Don is the universal euphemism for "I'm going out to commit adultery." Betty no longer believes white men when they tell her that it's going to be okay, which means the sixties are finally starting in earnest. Henry wants to marry Betty, which freaks her out considerably less than it does us. He probably could make her happy, since all she wants is a father figure type to take her to the movies. Let's face it Betty Draper is probably pretty vanilla in the sack considering how often Don is out bed-hopping with Jewesses.

And then January Jones stretches her acting tethers as far as they will possibly go in order to tell Don that she doesn't love him anymore. Don demonstrates him mental and emotional pain by furrowing his brows deeper than every before, telling her she'll feel better tomorrow, and walking out of the room. Betty might just be less superficial than we are, as she is somehow able to resist Don even in his Gene Kelly in An American In Paris sweater/collar combination.

People are often in love with one another at different times, at the wrong times, at times that overlap but somehow manage to conflict. You're with someone else, they're with someone else, you're still thinking of somebody else. Supposedly we remember incomplete actions more vividly than finished ones, which might help explain the sort of perverse pleasures associated with longing, regret, and melancholia. Look, I'm not in love with the tragedy of this thing.

Don goes to work on JFK memorial day because, as he tells Peggy "the bars are closed." Peggy goes to work because the crazy roommate she found on analog craigslist is driving her insane, a quintessential twenty-something urban experience. Don declines the opportunity to hang out with Peggy, even though she might be the only person who understands him, out of who knows what, pride, shame, a desire to maintain the rapidly crumbling facade that is "Don Draper."

About the possibility of the Sterling-Cooper office disbanding for good, Matthew Weiner said "What's the point of the universe if there are no stakes?" It's true. Why should a fictional dramatic universe be any more stable than the real one? Who knows, maybe Don will surprise us all and learn to roll with the changes. One episode left...

Molly Lambert is the managing editor of This Recording. She also tumbls and twitters.

"Telescope" - Choral (mp3)

"Add Infinity" - Choral (mp3)

"Melodica" - Choral (mp3)

I only wish I were kidding here, folks. From JLFinch at Daily Kos and Wonkette, we find out that Dan Riehl is pulling a Peggy Noonan It-Is-Irresponsible-Not-To-Speculate smear job on a dead guy who can't fight back:

Was Census Worker Bill Sparkman A Child Predator?

Update: Before any more people start going bonkers that I'm accusing Sparkman of anything, take a breath. ... . ...All I'm doing is looking at any and all possibilities. ... Why strip him naked and bind and gag him, which has serious sexual overtones?

I have no idea what happened, but from the reporting I've seen, neither does anyone else. If he adopted a boy as a single man, or was married and split with the wife and kids, who knows. But I never assume I know a story or motive until I know it. Right now we don't. I'm simply speculating on one possible alternative, however impolite.

Well, golly, Mr. Riehl, I'm sure Mr. Sparkman's wife and son must really enjoy your coy little efforts to smear their tortured-to-death husband and father:

"We are deeply saddened by the loss of our co-worker," Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers are with William Sparkman's son, other family and friends."

Gee, how would Dan Riehl like it if we asked, without any evidence to back up our questioning, if Dan Riehl had raped and murdered any little boys? I suspect he wouldn't like it at all.

But of course, this isn't the first time Riehl's been deeply amoral and stupid in public. It isn't even the first time this month. That's just par for the course with him.

So another Bush bashing book is out (at least in excerpt) and the Bushie loyalists are again charging the airwaves and the Internet to defend GWB. Just as we saw with Scott McClellan, they'll define Latimer as a doofus, out of the loop, in over his head, not as important as he thinks. (Which, of course, begs the question why the Administration excelled at hiring the incompetent and the self-important. Didn't they have a screening process?)

I have read the excerpts of Latimer's book and frankly don't find all that much wrong with it. I'll likely buy the book and consume it all simply because I liked the way the excerpts were written. His publisher is right. He has an engaging style. Was he in the room or across the street at the EEOB? Who cares. He was clearly closer to the President than 99.9% of Americans will ever get in their life, so let him have his say. We might find it interesting.

The treatment Latimer has received in the last 36 hours, however, has left me perplexed. It reminded me a lot of McClellan's welcoming reception and that reminded me of something Peggy Noonan wrote.

William Safire, himself a memoirist of the Nixon years, said to me, a future memoirist of the Reagan years: The one thing history needs more of is first-person testimony. History needs data, detail, portraits, information; it needs eyewitness. I was there, this is what I saw. History will sift through, consider and try in its own way to produce something approximating truth.In that sense one should always say of memoirs of those who hold or have held power: More, please.

Noonan, and by extension Safire, were spot on. I think that every White House staffer should not be discouraged, but rather should be required to write a book, and tell the story of their time there. Our history demands that those making it (whether the President or his secretary) should provide us with as much detail as possible. When these books are written we should not denounce the writer, we should simply ask for the next installment from the guy who sat next to Latimer so we could see how he remembered the events.

One of the most interesting conversations I have ever had was with the woman who sat next to Monica Lewinsky in the White House. She once gave me her take on the woman behind the blue dress and it meant more to me than any ABC News special report.

Do I buy the caricature of Latimer as an opportunist trying to parlay his brush with fame into a financial windfall? Absolutely. Do I also believe that much of what he says is probably exactly as he remembers it? Absolutely.

That's why we need more of these books, not less. We need to be able to compare notes and make our own determination about what happened, who these people were, where they made mistakes and where they proved they were only human.

Now, the latest to weigh in against Latimer in protecting the Bush years is James Carville.

This little dweeb needs to be glove slapped People that have the honor of working in the White House ought not be going out and publishing this

I couldn't disagree with Carville more.

The people that need to be glove slapped are Carville and his ilk for attempting to silence future tomes. If Dana Perino, Tony Fratto, or Ed Gillespie recall events differently, let them write a book and give us their take. By the time all the ink dries, we might have a semi-complete picture of life inside the GWB administration.

Photo: abmiller99

From Gulliver's Travels to Alice in Wonderland, the idea of people shrinking and growing has proven endlessly fascinating. What if, we wonder, we were that big or that small? Then along came mass produced cameras, and easy as eating a cake that says EAT ME, the more adroit shooters among us were able to realise just such size-shifting exploits or at least the illusion of having done so. Places around the globe provide backdrops for these fine examples of forced perspective.

Size is everything or nothing: Salar de Uyuni

Photo: abmiller99

Bolivia's Salar De Uyuni is a particularly conducive environment for photographers keen to test out their perspective-bending skills. The vast, expansive landscapes of the world's largest salt plains have few features to shatter the illusion of big objects appearing small or small objects big.

Scots bonsai: Carrot Hill, Scotland

Photo: stuant63

Taken in the Angus area of Scotland, this photo shows that with an isolated tree, a bit of imagination, and no little skill, you can pull the wool over the eyes of human perception. It's all about the way scaled objects are made to relate to one another and the viewer's vantage point.

Gobbling a hot dog: Kennedy Space Center

Photo: toastforbrekkie

This next pic could be construed as being be a little on the lewd side, but that's up to you. The Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral, Florida is the launch pad for the visual gag. It's a good job Space Shuttle Discovery's STS-121 Mission to the International Space Station wasn't launched when the photo was taken.

This could be painful: Cape Canaveral

Photo: Lorenia

What is it about Kennedy Space Centre and high jinks with forced perspective? The flat background broken only by the instruments of space launches obviously inspires some people. This photo of a guy doing a good impersonation of a cheerleader even made it onto Japanese TV. Who'd have thought it?

We are not amused: Peggy's Cove

Photo: lifecreations

Nova Scotia's Peggy's Cove provides the setting for this next addition to our list. This small rural community is nevertheless a busy tourist attraction, and its classic red-and-white lighthouse is major focal point for visitors carrying cameras. Believe it or not, it's almost 15 metres (50 ft) high.

Think big, be big: The Eiffel Tower

Photo: ~Thanh

This touching shot makes aiming for the top not such a fanciful dream after all. The most famous landmark on the Parisian landscape is the perfect prop to make this little girl seem like a giant standing some 324 m (1,063 ft) tall. The low camera angle and large depth of field do the rest of the work.

Just hangin' around: Perito Moreno

Photo: Alexandre Duarte

This shot was taken at the Perito Moreno glacier in the Argentine region of Patagonia. The 250 km2 (97 sq mi) ice formation is an important tourist attraction, and the sheets of frozen fresh water clearly offer ample opportunity for a little playfulness with visual perspective.

Blowing off some steam: Old Faithful

Photo: toastforbrekkie

This is one instance where you might safely accuse the subject of the photo of being full of hot air except of course that it's Old Faithful, Yellowstone's most famous geyser, producing the steam for this gigantic breath. The creative snapping of nature's geothermal force delivers a cool result.

Sources: 1, 2, 3

If you want to find out all the latest news on the environment, why not subscribe to our RSS feed? We'll even throw in a free album.

Helping readers take blogs offline, Zinepal lets any user convert their favourite online content into eBooks and printable, magazine-style PDFs.

Users of British Columbia-based Zinepal begin by selecting content they like from blogs, Atom/RSS feeds and other websites. Zinepal then reformats that content into a printable PDF and ebook format for use with the Amazon Kindle and other electronic readers. Users can preview and edit or reformat the resulting "zine," even adding a title and logo of their own to customize the publication. Advertising images can also be included at the bottom of each page. Once their zine is complete, users can print it or request an e-mailed copy; they can also request that new zines be automatically created each day or week from the content they choose. Zines can be made public on the site for sharing and searchability; zine feeds, meanwhile, provide a way for users to offer subscriptions to their publications. There is currently no charge for using Zinepal. A video on blip.tv explains how the process works.

Similar also to BlueMailCentral, Peggy Mail and other tools that help forge the OFF=ON connection, Zinepal gives readers one more choice in deciding how their content is delivered. Even beyond that, though, it has the potential to spawn a whole new generation of small, niche publications similar to the (discontinued) The Printed Blog but put together by independent thinkers, organizations or even brands. One to try out! (Related: Magazine publishing for everyone and every niche.)

Website: www.zinepal.com
Contact: info@zinepal.com

Spotted by: Murtaza Ali Patel

Last Sunday's third episode of this season's Mad Men was one of the best in the series on many levels, which was why for me, a frequent little problem with the show stood out more than ever. Namely, the show's depiction of how people speak is less accurate than the loving exactitude with attire, cocktails, product labels, and the like.

The most glaring example in this episode was what seems to have gone down as a memorable line from Peggy Olson, erstwhile secretary who is slowly climbing the corporate ladder. I'm in a good place right now, she says, which is dramatically compelling it makes Peggy seem cool, a proto-feminist on her way to our modern reality, in contrast to what a dowdy little twinkie she seemed to be when we first met her. But would that woman use that expression in 1963?

Not that the expression is as new as many may think. Locutions have a way of going further back than intuition would suggest, just as it is something of a surprise to find out that the first McDonald's opened way back in 1948 (or the first Wendy's in 1969). I, for one, first heard I'm in a good place from a person of a rather New Age-y frame of mind in September 1994, and that certainly wasn't the month it originated.

However, would a secretary from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, in a frilly collar have said I'm in a good place right now 31 years before that? Note, the issue is not a literal usage concerning physical location some might think of the quotation from James 2, And if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say You sit here in a good place,' while you say to the poor man You sit over there' .... Catholic Peggy may well have known that passage. However, its modern usage is metaphorical, having to do with spirit and development. It wasn't something Marlo Thomas' Ann-Marie on That Girl would have said, even when she was in a good place.

More generally, however, the writers at Mad Men seem to have an idea that in the early sixties, people spoke more properly than they do now. And they did, in formal and public settings. Until the late sixties, there was a sense that language was to be cossetted and dressed up in public in the same way that one wore deodorant. Think of the old gesture of clearing your throat before Making a Speech, the speech having been carefully written out and practiced, as opposed to today when we prefer looser talks.

Crucially, this sense included how people were depicted as speaking in movies. Even when the characters were speaking casually (i.e. most of the time), there was a sense that as a public performance, a film was to show people using language more properly than they actually would. Standards were looser for comics, of course. But, for instance, Letter to Three Wives has Linda Darnell growing up poor in a shabby flat. Yet while her mother speaks working-class American, Darnell has the flawless elocution of a dramatics student.

Sure, people can tilt their speech upward in line with social aspiration but traces almost always remain, especially when people relax or are excited. The Darnell character in real life, hoping to get out of the tenements, would likely not have sounded just like her mother (just as Peggy Olson doesn't sound like hers). However, she wouldn't have sounded exactly like someone out of My Man Godfrey either. Speech habits especially accent are learned early and deeply ingrained. To speak as an adult with no trace of how you spoke at ten is as tough as learning a foreign language with no accent after the age of about 16.

The Mad Men characters are often like Linda Darnells in this regard especially, for some reason, the younger ones. One senses that the creators see people talking like that in the movies of the period and suppose that this reflected messy old real life. But in reality, how people spoke casually was as unlike written language as it is now, and not just among stevedores. For example, in 1950 a linguist (in the classic Leave Your Language Alone) quoted a newspaper ad for grammar lessons:

How many of these frequent errors in English do YOU make? Do YOU say KEW-pon for KOO-pon, ad-ver-TISE-ment for ad-VER-tise-ment, or AD-ult for ad-ULT? Almost everybody makes these blunders in English: between you and I, it's me, those kind of books.

So: the idea that there is something especially slovenly about how people talk these days is one that people had in 1963 as well (and long, long, long before). Which means that folks, just-folks, when going about on an informal basis did not sound like Disney announcers and Joan Crawfords (on the latter, her movie voice was sharply distinct from her casual one).

In Sunday's Mad Men episode, therefore, when Jennifer Crane gets up and takes her husband over the Drapers' table saying I want to see how they are, crisply pronouncing want separately from to, it's false. That woman, even with her poise and aggressive social aspirations, would have said wanna just as we all do when we are not reading from text or laying down an answering mcahine message. The want to would have been all the more unlikely from someone who had had a drink or two (especially the stiff ones still ordinary on Mad Men as opposed to today's Chardonnay).

Vincent Kartheiser's Pete Campbell talks this way constantly, the idea being to convey that he is a high-WASP scion. However, people are people and especially, boys have always been boys. Would a real Pete Campbell, even knocking back highballs as is his wont, really casually talk like a Hardy Boy with the crisp, measured diction?

Relevant here would be how a similarly minded American aristocrat spoke in that same year of 1963. In recordings of John F. Kennedy speaking off-the-cuff with Robert McNamara in October of that year, not long after Pete and his wife did that nifty dance routine at that party, we hear someone talking the way, basically, we talk. Listen here [1].

Remember that the ah's in words like rah-ther are his famous Boston accent, which one can still hear cabdrivers there using; it's not Kennedy sounding British. And beyond that listen to how ordinary, unmeasured, Kennedy sounded nothing of the want-t-to sort. He says Yeah, not Yes, and ...without makin' a formal statement about it rather than making.

I certainly understand that Mad Men is a confection, and on a certain level enjoy the characters' aristocratic tones as an artifice just as we all enjoy the too-perfect costumes and saturated color. However, an artifice it is: when we read of producer Matthew Weiner and his crew attending to actors getting the language right, the right in question is not the same kind of right as concerns the toys and fabrics and magazine fonts.

Often, it's right in the way that we like to think ordinary people spoke 50 years ago sometimes including expressions unknown to them, but so deft that we can't help putting them in their mouths.