You have to remember that we're talking about 1908 here. Nobody was thinking about buildings in this way before. In a way, the fact that you find this building meaningless is even more telling of its complete ubiquitous power. These types of buildings and their way of thinking about space totally revolutionized manufacturing throughout the world and it happened in the matter of a few decades, which is why it feels so normal, but at the time this was really new and groundbreaking shit. Even Corb's manifesto which says that "Architecture is a machine for living in" wasn't published until 15 years later. And Corb was in fact greatly influenced by what he saw during his visit to industrial America. Architecture was starting to empathize with and incorporate the car. For me, the real interesting thing that this building talks about is how our lives were starting to become compartmentalized. Now (in 1910), you would GO to work, and GO on vacation, and GO to grandma's house. Our lives were exceedingly being dictated by the clock and reduced to schedules. You can read this in the elevation of the building. It's a grid of repetitive rectangles all working together to create the mass of a whole building. I mean, is it just a coincidence that the elevation of the building, as wholly dictated by it's functionality, looks exactly like a calendar? This was also happening in painting at the time too, which of course was equally revolutionary. Cubism was partly about deconstructing the body into parts and reassembling them. It was about, for me, the beginning of the lack of cohesiveness in our daily lives. Highland Park is where all of this started.

Every person that voted in favor of that is a moral and intellectual coward at worst, and at best incredibly ignorant. To be fair, the religious indoctrination most of them are acting out puts them squarely in the ignorant camp. Plenty of nice, mostly benign and well intentioned, incredibly ignorant human beings, perpetuating hate.

Second, let me compliment you on the layout. It's slick. I think it's fairly innovative too, at least for the text input. I like beginning to type, and having a band auto-populate, then being able to just continue typing a new string in the same input box without having to perform extra mouse clicks or insert unintuitive punctuation (commas, etc) to separate the selections.

I tried it on Safari on OSX and mobile safari on iOS. Unlike OSX, when I selected my bands and hit [Play] in iOS, the music/video does not play. It takes you to the music launch page with the 'Now Playing' Band Bio, but you must then locate the video, and look for Youtube's on-screen play button, then select that. Only then will the station start. Both OSes played the station continuously once it started.

That being said, there are, imo, currently 3 major types of online music streaming services:

1)Pandora Style - Sites like Pandora, Slacker, and others, let you type in a band, or song, or some other input, and it generates a playlist and builds a station of songs and artist based upon your input.

2)Spotify Style - All you can eat buffet. Spotify lets you type in an artist, album, or band, and it pulls up every song in its catalog for you. You then take those songs that you go out and find, and create a playlist that you can listen to. Spotify boast a vastly larger catalog than Pandora, but you have to do the work of putting your playlists together. I'm not going to get into the social sharing elements, but it is worth noting that Spotify has an open API that has let outside developers create an app that taps Spotify's larger catalog, and mimics Pandora, building you an instant radio station based on their catalog and your existing playlists.

3)Songza Style - A relatively new service, Songza occupies a space in between Pandora and Spotify. Songza knows what time of day it is when you open the site or the app, and based off the time of day, it presents you with curated mixes that are on-theme based on the time of day. Right now it's Friday night, so I open Songza and my choices are 'A Sweaty Dance Party', 'Pre-gaming with friends', 'Unwinding After a Long Week', 'Love and Romance', and 'Bedtime'. Whichever I choose, it will then break my station options into genres like Electronic, Indie, Acoustic, etc. Basically, it creates a mix for you, but unlike Pandora, the songs always stay "on mood" and you don't have resort to taking forever to make a mix that stays on mood with Spotify (or your own music collection for that matter). This service is truly fills a role you probably didn't realize you needed filled before you used it. The tracks are also curated by the service, and it shows. I have found that they play a lot more of what might be considered 'deep cuts' than other services, -great songs that don't get played on Pandora because the algorithm is too busy playing the most popular cuts from that artist.

For me, Presto falls squarely in the 'Pandora Style' camp. You tell it what you like, and it gives you a station built around that. I haven't used it enough yet, but what would make it or break it for me is a)the size of the catalog compared to competitors like Pandora, and b)the tracks it chooses to present to me from within that catalog. I personally find Pandora repetitive and awfully stale. I have a feeling that if Presto pulls from Youtube, then it's already got a leg up, as Youtube has much more eclectic content that what Pandora has licensed from the labels.

The band biography info is fantastic, but let's be honest, if you are building a music streaming app/site nowadays, this feature is expected.

Can I say I tell you that I like the font you use on your site? I like the font on your site.

Finally, the question, "Will I adopt Presto?"

Hard to say. For me, it seems to have the potential to be much better than a service I don't, unfortunately, use (Pandora style). For me, having a Spotify is giving me any song/album/artist I want, as much as I want, and Songza is creating the effortless, "on mood" station when I'm not picky.

Also, not having iOS/OSX Airplay feature means I'm probably going to just pull out the phone in my pocket and open Spotify or Songza and stream wirelessly to my stereo speakers, instead of going to get my laptop, powering it it up, and playing out of the crappy laptop speakers.

But I'm going to keep using it for sure. I am really curious to see what kind of serendipity it can deliver to me. If it presents me with new music that I love, the I'll be back for sure.

Overall, it looks great though :)

Edit: The Youtube window in Presto contains Youtube's iOS integrated 'Airplay' button. I think I will be using this service a lot more now. Cool.

EDIT 2: So I was listening to my station 'Nick Cave & The Bad Seed + Leonard Cohen' and it was playing a nice eclectic mix, and I was very impressed. Then this happened:

http://i.imgur.com/WInvx.jpg

My band bio tells me I'm listening to Ohio by Neil Young, and it gives me a bunch of info about Neil. But that is not what is playing. What is playing isn't music, but some chieften pawing his guitar and babbling about how he will teach me how to play a sweet solo to Neil Young's song.

Not so good. I have a feeling this may happen a bit if you're drawing your material from Youtube due to the sheer amount of covers, but I'm hoping not too much. Well, I'm just going to consider this Presto's version of commercials. I have to listen to stuff I don't want to on other apps, so I no exemption here I guess :) But it's bad that it's trying to tell me this chief is Neil Young.

To mitigate this, (if this is something that your algorithm can't reliably handle), you might want to make the 'next' buttons (along with the other media button 'previous' and 'pause') MUCH more prominent in the UI.

You say that I profane the name

no one even knows the name

and if I did then whats it to ya,

there is a blaze of light in every word

It doesn't matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah

I think the song is akin to the two faces or a vase pictures. It is a song about lost love and sex and a song about God. the tradition is very old remember Shlomo wrote

I have taken off my robe - must I put it on again? I have washed my feet - must I soil them again? My lover thrust his hand through the latch-opening; my heart began to pound for him. I arose to open for my lover, and my hands dripped with myrrh., on the handles of the lock.

She accuses him of talking the name in vain (a sin, this references one of the 10 Commandments), and his response that he doesn't even know the name she is referring to, places the protagonist in the same shoes as Peter, denying Christ right before his execution (another betrayal).

I guess the question is what does 'the name' refer to here? I interpret it this way. I feel like, as mentioned in the other posts, the man in this song views the man/woman union as a holy one in its ideal form (this is the 'Hallelujah'), and the woman does not see it this way. I get the sense in this verse that she accuses him of taking the name in vain, with the name being their love/relationship. I imagine he does this when it falls apart, and he curses it, but he says "So what if I did, really, what's it to you?" with the implication that she doesn't believe in that anyway. This framework is introduced in the very first verse "I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord...but you don't really care for music do you?". Right at the outset, she is rejecting his world-view regarding the religious component of relationships.

The last line of this verse tells me that the carnal/spiritual duality of relationships both have a greater truth to the protagonist, either the 'holy' or the 'broken' Hallejulia. Both have the blaze of light (truth), but just a blaze, as each is incomplete without the other half.

You are a great guy, especially considering how creatively I innovated problems for you when we were yournger, but more importantly you have been creative and innovative in your approach to solving the problems associated with cancer and stroke through your research at Henry Ford Hospital. Research that intersected ideally at the crossroads of the currently best known solution to a problem I now posess.

In relation to this article, I do see a great hope for the future of human creativity. Creativity, in solving problems, creates other residual problems. I expect that with the removal of part of my right temporal lobe, I will see some temporary and residual problems in my life. The neuro-oncologist, and neurosurgeon have both made me aware of the likely outcomes. In my ability to creatively view the likely outcomes of my future, I am also consciously choosing to favor the residual problems over the primary ones by far. Without creative medical intervention, my primary problems are expected to be: increasing seizure frequency, possible death or injury to me or others from an untimely seizure, certainty of increased tumor aggressiveness without ever having direct pathology of said tumor material, and accepting that choosing inaction will most certainly lead to a shorter and lower quality for my remaining life. From speaking with the experts in gliomas, as well as my communications with others in the four days since I've been aware, I am pretty firmly convinced that human civilization is at a tipping point with creativity sharing, the likes of which have never before been seen on earth. The ability that a person like me has to share the amount of information I've traded in the last four days, about a potential life-threatening condition, has only confirmed to me further that creativity is everything. We are traders of creativity and information. We trade creative solutions to creatively born problems.

Like you, I enjoy the beauty of Michigan's Upper Penninsula. We would be able to enjoy it if it was truly only old growth forest. We could not get there, but we can and that's what makes it special. Similarly, I also enjoy writing this post more than others I've written in the past. My creative thinking about what the rest of my life may or may not look like has given me perspective of life farther from the "treadmill of problems" than ever before.

Thank you brother.

-Jeff

*I would guess that the cost in watts of this email transmission is far more efficient than the amount of energy it would take to cut a field to feed a horse, to pulp the trees and bleach the paper, to ship the india ink, from Oakland County to Detroit.

Please, please, by whatever god or force you believe in, restrain yourself in the comments.

Everyone's pain is equally valid, even if what they have suffered through isn't equal. The spoiled teen who doesn't get a car for Christmas when they turn 16 can feel more pain then the kid growing up unloved in a poor household who gets nothing. This doesn't mean that the spoiled teen has gone through greater tribulation then the unfortunate teen, it's just how they are/have been wired.

I have known people with normal problems who suffered to a much greater extent then people with totally fucked up horrible problems. I have known normal problem high suffering people who killed themselves and thought that it was probably the right move, life just wasn't for them. I don't say that cynically, I say it with compassion. I have been fond of and continually pained by these individuals inability to live the lives that I thought they could have realized.

However, the common assumption about me, portrayed by the media (both "independent" and more conventional), is that I am a pig; that I am racist, sexist, constantly horny, and unable to express emotion.

I am told, both by special interest groups and by society at large, that I am a bad person.

the fact that I have not suffered as much as others should make me feel bad; the fact that I'm the "majority" means that I am wrong. This is an inherently flawed viewed; its just as sexist, racist, and bigoted as any other type of discrimination.

Do you think that perhaps victimization is the new way to compete?

Brief aside. I remember sitting around drinking and smoking with some people I met near my work. Every one was going around that table telling the stories of and showing the scars from their most sever misfortunes, laying it on thick. after four or five people told their embellished tale this one fella reaches under the table and whips off his prosthetic leg, slams it down on the middle of the table. No one know he was shy a flipper walked/ran as smoothly as anyone. Guy was pleased as could be at the reaction, he "won".

Anyway. You can be bummed out about your "normal" problems and how people portray your normalcy or you can get on with what ever it is that helps you happily while away the time. If you are worried about how the media (toothpaste and car salesmen to a man, nothing to do with any significant truth for the most part) are representing you then you should probably try and find a way to free yourself of that bullshit. You might want to realize that you are living in a relatively easy place to get along in, and are one of the blessed White males. Sure life is hard even for us the chosen people at times, but mostly harder to be other then what we are.

I am sorry that I forgot to capitalize Brown when referring to people, I don't feel like going back and finding every lapse, my academic habits are a bit rusty and it's lazy and poor form, but I'll let it stand. I probably missed a few Whites as well, but hey we don't really need the extra capitalization, were doing alright as it is.

At any rate, conservative intellectualism seems homeless in this country.

I disagree. It is alive and well in the Democratic Party. Let's not forget that the mandate was the brain child of Republicans back in the early 90s when the Clintons were trying to adopt universal health care.

It is not about beeing harassed because you are not a 6'2", and, meanwhile you do, the others don't know how to handle themselves... I think It's all about the masses being used. It is about the ability to record everything you do and connect it with your persona. If you are not careful online they will know who and what are you talking to/about, what your income is (so they can estimate what your potential ability to buy is) what kind of fashion do you follow the clothes you wear (so they can select what to offer/put in front of your eyes), what do you usually buy, the places you frequent and spend your money to drink to eat...

You might remember the buzz created some months ago by the phrase:

If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold..

which, funny enough, in it's original form was:

The member of facebook is not a customer, they are the product. The advertisers are the customers.

As per the label part I will quote Neil deGrasse Tyson. I think what he said applies everywhere:

Labels are mentally lazy ways by which people assert they know you without knowing you.

So since computers are becoming an everyday part of our lives, people should be more educated, more computer literate and privacy is very important!

I think atheists have every right to actively go after religion in the public sphere as long as religion is giving its mouth and money in that public sphere to deny basic human rights to others. As a group, atheists are a lot less activist than theists, even counting the militant (or anti theistic) ones. It makes sense, since atheists have no central tenant to rally behind, and we certainly don't have the biblical command to go out and convert others like our theistic counterparts. I treat people kindly in person and generally with the same amount of respect as the extend to me. I'm not a raging atheist by any means, but I'm glad there are people out there like Dawkins chipping away. Institutions that promote and enshrine the kind of widespread bigotry and immorality that the church does need to either a) change their doctrine, or b) be torn down, IMO.

Edit: As an aside, I do find r/atheism to be one of the more grimace-inducing corners of the Internet. I had to remove it from my main feed a long time ago.

I think there is just a difference in how reading and math are understood. Being literate seems to only imply the barest minimum of standards. If you can translate text into the sounds that it symbolizes then you can read. Most kids will be able to do that by the time they're 5. However, it really doesn't say anything about reading comprehension. A person might be able to take away the relevant information from a menu at a restaurant, Facebook posts or even news articles, but not be able to draw anything of note from a great novel. Such a person might say, "I don't enjoy reading," but not actually consider themself to be a bad reader simply because they would be considered literate. "Bad at reading," to me at least, really implies being illiterate.

Contrast that with math. I think the bar is just placed higher. For instance, being able to count is just taken for granted. That same person who has no trouble reading menu items but forgoes literature can also probably pull out exact change without much effort. Only now, because they had trouble with algebra in school, they'll consider themself to be bad at math. Being able to say you're good at math seems to require more ability, and with things often being seen in black and white, if you aren't good at it then you must be bad.

In fact, that even brings up the other side of reading. I don't think anyone would ever say, "I'm good at reading." People just don't think in those terms on that subject. So, I think there is more to this than one being more socially acceptable.