Archive for July, 2008

The Most Powerful Motivators

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What are the most powerful motivators for good?

Some of us just see a better world, and can’t wait to get there. Some of us are affronted by the brutality of brutal systems. For some of us, the impetus arises from the spirit of can do in a social network, or the inspiration of a beloved mentor. And for some of us, it’s one of the four things the young prince Gautama who would one day be Buddha ran across, when he escaped his father’s castle and came face to face for the first time with

-poverty
-sickness
-old age
-death

You don’t have to be a future Buddha to notice these things, and indeed it may have helped Gautama to see them more clearly, that he had been kept hidden away in a luxurious palace, surrounded by friends and servants in the flower of youth and health until that fateful day.

But poverty, sickness, old age and death are direct affronts to our hopes: we can turn away from them and pretend they don’t exist, or we can face them and use them as the Buddha did, to act as an impetus for a life of compassion, of caring in action. [read the rest at socialedge]

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Posted: July 16th, 2008
at 6:48am by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: life,9th dan,"ninja",entrepreneurship

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Mystery on Fifth Avenue

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THINGS are not as they seem in the 14th-floor apartment on upper Fifth Avenue. At first blush the family that occupies it looks to be very much of a type. The father, Steven B. Klinsky, 52, runs a private equity company; the mother, Maureen Sherry, 44, left her job as a managing director for Bear Stearns to raise their four young children (two boys and two girls); and the dog, LuLu, is a soulful Lab mix rescued from a pound in Louisiana.

They are living in a typical habitat for the sort of New Yorkers they appear to be: an enormous a€™20s-era co-op with Central Park views (once part of a triplex built for the philanthropist Marjorie Merriweather Post), gutted to its steel beams and refitted with luxurious flourishes like 16th-century Belgian mantelpieces and custom furniture made from exotic woods with unpronounceable names.

But some of that furniture and some of those walls conceal secrets a€" messages, games and treasures a€" that make up a Rube Goldberg maze of systems and contraptions conceived by a young architectural designer named Eric Clough, whose ideas about space and domestic living derive more from Buckminster Fuller than Peter Marino.

The apartment even comes with its own book, part of which is a fictional narrative that recalls a€oeThe Da Vinci Codea€A (without the funky religion or buckets of blood) and a€oeFrom the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,a€A the childrena€™s classic by E. L. Konigsburg about a brother and a sister who run away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and discover a€" and solve a€" a mystery surrounding a Renaissance sculpture. It has its own soundtrack, too, with contributions by Kate Fenner, a young Canadian singer and songwriter with a lusty, alternative, Joni Mitchell-ish sound, with whom Mr. Clough fell in love during the project. via

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Posted: July 16th, 2008
at 6:30am by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: hood status,myninjaplease,bling,music,art,home,games,architecture,design,real life news,boredom killer,philanthropy

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Lisa Lynch : Recession

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Posted: July 16th, 2008
at 5:55am by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: business

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Shape-shifter : Dynamic Architecture

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Architects dona€™t usually hold elaborate press conferences to announce their new designs. But David Fisher is not a typical architect, and not only because he goes by the honorific a€oeDr.a€A Fisher, who was born in Tel Aviv fifty-nine years ago, is based in Florence, and believes that he has come up with the most innovative concept in architecture since the pyramids. He calls it a€oeDynamic Architecture,a€A and it includes a plan for an eighty-story skyscraper in which every floor rotates, not in tandem with other floors but on its own. Fisher unveiled his project the other day, in the Grand Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel.

Fishera€™s building looks something like the torqued towers that have been designed in recent years by established architects like Santiago Calatrava, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and Kohn Pedersen Fox. In Fishera€™s view, those are just conventional skyscrapers with a slightly different shape. His tower takes on a variety of shapes. When the floors rotate, the tower begins to undulate, and it can look a little like a fourteen-hundred-foot-tall belly dancer.

a€oeI believe that everything should be adjustable to life,a€A Fisher said at breakfast a couple of days before the press conference. a€oeWhat is right for today may not be right for tomorrow.a€A He turned on a laptop to show a video. To the music from a€oe2001: A Space Odyssey,a€A the narrator intoned, a€oeFor the first time, Man will have a building in four dimensions.a€A read the rest at newyorker

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Posted: July 16th, 2008
at 5:30am by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: architecture

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the Shrine of BahA¡a€™ua€™llA¡h

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Yesterday, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) named two Bahai shrines to the World Heritage List, which is designed to protect areas of natural and cultural heritage around the world. The two shrines, the Shrine of BahA¡a€™ua€™llA¡h in Acco and the Shrine of the BA¡b in Haifa, are the holiest sites for members of the Bahai faith, who number some five million, and attract hundreds of thousands of pilgrims and visitors every year. isrealli

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Posted: July 16th, 2008
at 5:03am by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: architecture

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HUMMER : Eco vs. Macho

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Posted: July 16th, 2008
at 5:00am by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: green,business,whips

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Peter Callesen’s ‘Papercuts’

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[Image : White Diary, 2008
240 x 212 x 18 cm
A5 Notebook (120 gsm acid free paper), pencil, and glue. Mounted on mdf]

This ninja here - Peter Callesen - is crazy. With a collection of pretty siiick work, Peter’s most intricate are probably his ‘papercuts’, which are basically sculptures cut from paper and arranged so as to appear as if they were emerging from a flat sheet. Ridiculous.

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[Image : Resurrection, 2008
Acid free A4 115 gsm paper and glue]

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[Image : The Short Distance Between Time and Shadow, 2006
Acid free A4 115 gsm paper and glue]

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Posted: July 15th, 2008
at 10:35pm by orangemenace


Categories: myninjaplease,art,fo' real?

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X-Files - I Want to Believe (2008)

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Posted: July 15th, 2008
at 7:30am by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: youtube,film

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Ninjas on the Net : Milano

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Welcome once again to…..Ninjas on the Net : Edition Milano. Milano definitly takes the prize for having the greatest impact on the internets and their blogos. For this feature we will be taking on a design theme go figure.

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What is going on in Milano?

-Even older cats got crazy style-Learn how the press, pr and fashion windows coexist at the world’s fashion scene
-Try this recipe of the Milano Cookie [Vegan] dropped from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World
-Modular shelving? MY NINJA PLEASE this is the sh**
-Peep the The Salone del Mobile Internazionale and some interesting layouts-Milano 2.0 : If you speak Italiano, this is where you want to be
-And just for kicks, from our friends over at Jay-Blog - an Alfa Romeo Milano-To contrast, some amazing fotos of Milano and her advertising guises AKA Ballerina, Soldier, Sumo-Finally : "the tag it forward" 5 things about you bandwagon game from a Milano perspective

    //As an added bonus this week, we have included the greatest music video of all time.

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    Posted: July 15th, 2008
    at 6:24am by Koookiecrumbles

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    Categories: ninjas on the net

    Comments: 1 comment