According to believers in biorhythms, a person’s life is affected by rhythmic biological cycles which affect one’s ability in various domains, such as mental, physical, and emotional activity. These cycles begin at birth and oscillate in a steady sine wave fashion throughout life; thus, by modeling them mathematically, a person’s level of ability in each of these domains can be predicted from day to day.
Most biorhythm models use three cycles: a 23-day “physical” cycle, a 28-day “emotional” cycle, and a 33-day “intellectual” cycle. Although the 28-day cycle is the same length as the average woman’s menstrual cycle and was originally described as a “female” cycle (see below), the two are not necessarily in any particular synchronization. Each of these cycles varies between high and low extremes sinusoidally, with days where the cycle crosses the zero line described as “critical days” of greater risk or uncertainty.
In addition to the three popular cycles, various other cycles have been proposed, based on linear combination of the three, or on longer or shorter rhythms.[6]
[edit]Calculation
The equations for the cycles are:
physical: sin(2?t / 23),
emotional: sin(2?t / 28),
intellectual: sin(2?t / 33),
where t indicates the number of days since birth.
Biorhythm
Congress is going to hobble the Internet, here’s how.
“Tell Congress not to censor the internet NOW! – fightforthefuture.org/pipa
PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites– they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”
The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill would cost us $47 million tax dollars a year — that’s for a fix that won’t work, disrupts the internet, stifles innovation, shuts out diverse voices, and censors the internet. This bill is bad for creativity and does not protect your rights.”
from: http://vimeo.com/fightforthefuture
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/protesting-sopa-what-you-can-do.ars
Contact San Juan County’s elected Senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?State=WA
Contact San Juan Islands Congressional representative http://larsen.house.gov/contact/
Petition: http://www.google.com/takeaction/
Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act
From NPR: “
Deregulation That Helps Small Businesses
The bill heads to the Senate next. It currently allows business owners to raise up to $2 million from an unlimited number of individuals who can invest as much as $10,000 each.
Right now, all sorts of do-gooder causes get donations through engines like Kickstarter.com. But because of a securities law born of the Great Depression to prevent fraud, for-profit businesses can’t ask strangers to invest.
Congressman Patrick McHenry introduced the bill. “What we’re doing is changing a regulation, eliminating a regulation, so that you can let capitalism be free in this country,” he said at a small victory rally last week.
The North Carolina Republican says a fellow Republican told him the bill “should be renamed the Obama-McHenry Friendship Bill.” In fact, a version of the crowdfunding bill is also in the jobs plan President Obama is urging Congress to pass.” – more details here..
Toys Safer This Holiday
Toys Safer This Holiday Season Due to Stronger Safety Rules
Recalls and lead violations are down; 180,000 child injuries per year is too high
WASHINGTON, D.C. – It’s that time of year again, when parents, grandparents, and friends begin to prepare holiday toy shopping lists. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) wants consumers to know that while safety should be at the top of everyone’s toy list, stronger federal rules are making a positive impact and restoring confidence in the safety of toys.
New toy safeguards include: establishing the lowest lead content and lead paint limits in the world; setting a stringent limit on the use of certain phthalates; converting the voluntary toy standards into mandatory standards; requiring third party testing and certification of toys designed or intended primarily for children 12 and younger; closing in on new limits for cadmium in toys; and working with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to track shipments in transit from other countries, thereby increasing seizure of dangerous imported toys.
These safeguards, along with safety-conscious steps taken by many toy makers and sellers, have contributed to a continued decline in toy recalls since 2008. There were 34 toy recalls in fiscal year 2011. This is down from 46 toy recalls in fiscal year 2010, 50 recalls in 2009, and 172 recalls in 2008. In 2011, toy recalls related to lead declined to 4, down from 19 in 2008.
“Strong toy standards support the production of safer toys in the marketplace,” said Chairman Inez Tenenbaum. “Parents and toy shoppers also always need to be vigilant by choosing age appropriate toys and keeping small parts, balls, and balloons out of the hands of young children.”
Toy-related deaths to children younger than 15 increased to 17 fatalities reported in 2010, up from 15 reported in 2009. Nearly half of these toy-related fatalities were attributed to choking on balloons, small balls, and rubber balls.
A new report (pdf) released by CPSC today also notes that about 181,500 children younger than 15 years of age were treated in U.S. hospital emergency departments due to toy-related injuries in 2010. Nonmotorized scooters continued to be the category of toys associated with the most injuries. Frequently these injuries involved lacerations, contusions, and abrasions to the child’s face and head. Importantly many of the incidents were associated with, but not necessarily caused by, a toy.
Here are some safety steps that consumers can take while shopping this holiday season:
- Balloons – Children can choke or suffocate on deflated or broken balloons. Keep deflated balloons away from children younger than 8 years old. Discard broken balloons at once.
- Small balls and other toys with small parts – For children younger than age 3, avoid toys with small parts, which can cause choking.
- Scooters and other riding toys – Riding toys, skateboards, and in-line skates go fast, and falls could be deadly. Helmets and safety gear should be worn properly at all times, and they should be sized to fit.
- Magnets – For children under age 6, avoid building or play sets with small magnets. If magnets or pieces with magnets are swallowed, serious injuries and/or death can occur.
Once the gifts are open:
- Immediately discard plastic wrappings or other packaging on toys before they become dangerous play things.
- Keep toys appropriate for older children away from younger siblings.
- Charging batteries should be supervised by adults. Chargers and adapters can pose thermal burn hazards to young children. Pay attention to instructions and warnings on battery chargers. Some chargers lack any mechanism to prevent overcharging.
Along with educating the public, CPSC is committed to working with foreign and domestic toy manufacturers, importers, and retailers to help them understand and comply with U.S. toy requirements.
—
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is charged with protecting the public from unreasonable risks of injury or death associated with the use of the thousands of consumer products under the agency’s jurisdiction. Deaths, injuries, and property damage from consumer product incidents cost the nation more than $900 billion annually. CPSC is committed to protecting consumers and families from products that pose a fire, electrical, chemical, or mechanical hazard. CPSC’s work to ensure the safety of consumer products – such as toys, cribs, power tools, cigarette lighters and household chemicals – contributed to a decline in the rate of deaths and injuries associated with consumer products over the past 30 years.
To report a dangerous product or a product-related injury, go online to: www.saferproducts.gov, call CPSC’s Hotline at (800) 638-2772 or teletypewriter at (800) 638-8270 for the hearing impaired. Consumers can obtain this news release and product safety information at www.cpsc.gov. To join a free e-mail subscription list, please go to https://www.cpsc.gov/cpsclist.aspx.
Orcas Island TV Presents “Salish-ious” Foods: Salish Sea Salt
Its not often I get excited about a new locally made product. Today’s different. The San Juan Islands enjoy a sense of community that is unique. As a group of islands – local promoters like to call it an archipelago – the ancient term for a group of islands – San Juan County has about 15,000 residents. Its a small land-area, crowded with second homes and tourist serving businesses. Among those who, in one way or another serve the major source of revenue for the Islands – tourism are a handful of artists, craft people, farmers, ranchers, fruit growers, timber growers, and I’ve learned today – a Salt maker.
Salt making is one of the oldest arts around. In India, Ghandi led a walk to the sea to make salt defying an English law which forbade the making of salt, many decades ago. But here, its not defiance that produces this new substance, but rather a simple, small business.
The ad in San Juan Islands Buy Sell Trade reads:
For sale SJI: Salish Sea Salt! Great stocking stuffer! I have made sea salt from the waters of the San Juans. The seawater was harvested at Cattle Point on an incoming tide then evaporated in my greenhouse. 3.5 ounce jar for $10
About 1,500 San Juan Islanders belong to a local buy sell trade group on Facebook, where scores of postings can go up each day, offering swaps, services, new and old products. Everything from tools to expiring ferry tickets, the local buy sell trade group works a little community magic – driven by good nature and the desire to build community commerce. Its read by many simply because it reminds us of how a small town works together to reduce off-island consumption, share items we no longer use or need, and build relationships among those who otherwise might not see or connect with one another.
Salish Sea Salt looks interesting. I have yet to try it.
For more information Contact Steven Gutmann
Why Google and Facebook Shouldn’t Get Into Handsets and Operating Systems
Google is pulling out of renewable energy project ?
http://planetark.org/enviro-news/item/63983#.Tsx5SRRahxM.facebook
“Google Inc has abandoned an ambitious project to make renewable energy cheaper than coal, the latest target of Chief Executive Larry Page’s moves to focus the Internet giant on fewer efforts.
Google said on Tuesday that it was pulling the plug on seven projects, including Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal as well as a Wikipedia-like online encyclopedia service known as Knol.”
its funny, in an odd, disconnected way, how this parallels Steve Jobs return to Apple and ‘cleaning house’ on projects that weren’t profitable, or that many have been distracting to the top people. However, Google is *not* Apple. Google is an *advertising* company, and as such, has a social obligation to work to invest in renewables.
Google is not a product company, never has been. If refocusing Google means focusing on Advertising, we’re all damned. Lubricating the wheels of sales by extracting money out of the supply chain is fine. Goog-nix (Android) and Gmail, G+, don’t need billion dollar budgets.
They are all 10 creative person projects. Goog-nix, if it gets to be a 100 person project, is too large. When it grows too large, with too much of a budget, it no longer is an open source project. It has its own political ambitions, its own weight.
If Google becomes an organization that drives toward assuring privacy while at the same time being an advertising company, it will need to do that in some magical, yet unknown way.
I don’t like my Gmail being read by Google. I don’t like everything I search for being compiled. I don’t like G+ being a social ‘graph’ to more effective sales. Is there anything I can do about it? Not today.
These are linking commercial interests – as fB does, to *social* concepts. Dragging the best ideas of humanity – sharing – into the worst ideas of humanity – conning people into acting or buying things, not because they are the best things *for* them, but because the folks wanting to sell those things pay Google and fb *to sell them*.
How in the world that disjointed set of philosophical and social obligations is resolved has *not* so far yielded good results. People are furious with the indiscriminate introduction of privacy invading pushes by FB, and Google to a lesser degree.
So, as Google pulls away from investing in humanity directly, the reveal a sadder truth, they are bound to their investors, and those who pay Google’s bills – advertisers, and to their rules and demands. They have the money Google needs to operate.
The notion that Google should be or fB should be building Operating Systems, as advertising company which they are, is totally at conflict. If that isn’t obvious, the world is blind.
Why Apple Needs Adobe
They build the desktop publishing market together. Adobe’s Unix workstation based products came to the Apple consumer ‘workstation’, along with Photoshop. Now Adobe’s Premiere, with its GPU accelerated video editing and processing is the leader for professional video editing. After Effects is screaming ahead of Apple’s Motion product.
Apple dropped the ball by renaming the upgraded iMovie product “Final Cut”. Final Cut Studio was an industry dominating video editing software bundle, which after 3 years of little change, still dominated the hearts and minds of pro studios, newsrooms and indie film makers. Apple’s 2006 Intel hardware was rapidly closing in on being the best, both in ease of use and performance for professional film editing and post production.
Speculation is that the Final Cut software development team lost its vision, its leadership at Apple. They couldn’t make the three things many editors wanted – faster transcoders built on top of super fast GPUs, more responsive editing on the timeline – again integrating better graphics – and taking a UI leap up.
Adobe on the other hand, to their credit, recognized their Photoshop product was in the same muck and mire. The UI looked and felt 1980s. What developers rankly call creeping featurism, was killing the grace of a very good, but now very klunky product. All of Adobe’s products had that sameness, lack of inspired user-computer interaction.
Then five years ago, Macromedia launched Lightroom! OMG, Lightroom was the *first* true leap in User Interface design since Xerox showed Jobs the insanely expensive UI that MacIntosh commercialized. Lightroom was properly balanced, organized. A casual user was *empowered* without a 10 week training course on the product. Of course, Photoshop and other entrenched Photo management tool trainers didn’t care for Lightroom at first.
After all, Lightroom was just a computerized slide-tray where you could organize photos. You might create a collection of images you wanted to keep as a group. Then perhaps make a print. Or tweak the image a little with some simple tools to adjust the photo’s appearance. Or maybe you wanted to make a slide show for the web. Lightroom was *task* oriented. and it is. But the sleek, refined, simple and powerful UI is really an Apple UI – the first made outside of Apple. 
It embodies Apple’s quest for simple, powerful, intuitive controls, that do one thing – make an individual more productive – happy and thus cost justify an expensive product.
Adobe recognized Lightroom was the future of UI. They bought it and renamed it Photoshop Lightroom. Most Lightroom users knew that was a joke. Photoshop wasn’t going to exist in the market if Lightroom continued on its path. Today, those users of Lightroom know PS should simple be underneath LR, and often that is precisely how LR is used – calling up PS as a tool set for the LR work-flow.
Premiere – Adobe’s now excellent digital video editing tool, along with its somewhat integrated After Effects product is emerging as the best overall editor for video footage.
Apple decided that the ‘Lightroom Leap’ would happen in iMovie and from the looks of it, dumped tons of effort into the iMovie team to goose the UI and features up to a very strong home video editing system. One could argue the new iMovie, renamed and rebranded as a follow on to Final Cut Pro as Final Cut X, was set to make that splash. There are two basic problems with that announcement. First, the thing called Final Cut X *is* iMovie, it has nothing to do with Final Cut Pro. It won’t import Final Cut, it doesn’t work with Final Cut. How anyone convinced Jobs to allow Apple to rebrand iMovie as Final Cut is a yet to be told story.
It was a sham – a totally bamboozle. One could only imagine it was to ‘gain traction’ for the new iMovie thing called Final Cut X. It did the reverse. It nearly killed Apple’s credibility in the video editing business. Unless there are miraculous iMovie, I mean Final Cut X, upgrades – which seem unlikely, given the massive authority handed to the iMovie product and development teams – Apple will be making a nice iPad iMovie and Final Cut product for the growing market segment – I’m a photographer and movie maker group of 200 million people. They are much better served divesting themselves of the iMovie team, allowing them to produce tools for Android – the Google-Unix, or Goog-nix operating system and keeping a 49% stake in that.
For Apple to retain the admiration, support and market impact that professional movie makers have, they need Premiere. To retain the love and market influence that the best graphics designers and thinkers have, they need Lightroom and Photoshop.
Buy joining forces there, Apple’s Hardware would be utilized by Photoshop and Premiere, making a truly awesome combination. With Apple’s valuation at an all time peak, its time for Apple to buy Adobe, and quickly add Apple hardware optimizations to the Adobe product line. Merging AE and Motion, as well as some of the Final Cut 7 software into Adobe’s Premiere product would help Premiere leap frog forward in the industry.
By merging the UI leadership of Lightroom with the wacky, punk rock UI of iMovie X (Final Cut X), in 2 years a break through UI for all apple’s products could be crafted.
In the mean time the market gets the best footage editing suite, the best hardware, the best designer suite. Adobe has a chance to shake off its 1980s UI and both groups benefit. Win win win.
Hard Times Come Again No More.. a tribute to
those who are being re-employed, are finding joy in their friends and families, are taking a stand for compassion, caring and community.
