Leise, how about this: [link] less expensive, yes?

Douglas Coupland's depressing next ten years

Douglas Coupland's "Radical pessimist's guide to the next 10 years," from this weekend's Globe and Mail is a thought-provoking (and somewhat depressing) exercise in linear predictions based on peak oil, rampant financialist malfeasance and climate change:

1) It's going to get worse
No silver linings and no lemonade. The elevator only goes down. The bright note is that the elevator will, at some point, stop.

2) The future isn't going to feel futuristic
It's simply going to feel weird and out-of-control-ish, the way it does now, because too many things are changing too quickly. The reason the future feels odd is because of its unpredictability. If the future didn't feel weirdly unexpected, then something would be wrong.

3) The future is going to happen no matter what we do. The future will feel even faster than it does now
The next sets of triumphing technologies are going to happen, no matter who invents them or where or how. Not that technology alone dictates the future, but in the end it always leaves its mark. The only unknown factor is the pace at which new technologies will appear. This technological determinism, with its sense of constantly awaiting a new era-changing technology every day, is one of the hallmarks of the next decade...

6) The middle class is over. It's not coming back
Remember travel agents? Remember how they just kind of vanished one day? That's where all the other jobs that once made us middle-class are going - to that same, magical, class-killing, job-sucking wormhole into which travel-agency jobs vanished, never to return. However, this won't stop people from self-identifying as middle-class, and as the years pass we'll be entering a replay of the antebellum South, when people defined themselves by the social status of their ancestors three generations back. Enjoy the new monoclass!

8) Try to live near a subway entrance
In a world of crazy-expensive oil, it's the only real estate that will hold its value, if not increase.

Ha! - I have #8 handled.

The full article: [link]

From boingboing, Mean Monkey Monday 1

Why do so many men's adventure magazines feature stories of monkey attacks?

tommy, I have #8 handled, too. Now if I can just get a job that would let me use it to get to work, I'll be golden (and happy).

So you know how in the future we're supposed to have self-driving cars? Well, Google has them, and has been testing them in actual traffic for a while now.

Google Cars Drive Themselves, In Traffic

WASHINGTON — Google Inc. is road-testing cars that steer, stop and start without a human driver, the company says.

The goal is to "help prevent traffic accidents, free up people's time and reduce carbon emissions" through ride sharing and "the new 'highway trains of tomorrow,'" project leader Sebastian Thrun wrote Saturday on Google's corporate blog.

The cars are never unmanned, Thrun wrote. He said a backup driver is always behind the wheel to monitor the software.

...

The cars have traveled a total of 140,000 miles on major California roads without much human intervention, according to Google's corporate blog.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based technology giant has sent seven test cars a total of 1,000 miles without a human touching the controls at all, the New York Times reported. The newspaper published a report on the cars earlier Sunday.

This is one weird-ass bat:

Mary's Monday Metazoan: Even Adrien Brody makes fun of this guy

Wow. Check out this hand-engraving on this iPhone: [link]

Lots of ~ma for Perkins, this afternoon.

Leise, how about this: [link] less expensive, yes?

The only problem with that is that it's cheap b/c it's not very pigmented.

Vibing for trivialities for Perkins.