I don't understand, how is it blackmail? It sounds useless to the store owner, because people basically say "I want cheaper things, give them to me", but it doesn't sound at all like blackmail.
I like the approach that Summerhill and Sudbury students tend to follow: after finishing "high school", they work in the world, thus earning money and gaining experience, and then they attend college if they think it is right for them. They work for their tuition, and they don't party away their school life.
I also overdosed on TV and got rid of it around college time. That is, until Netflix came along. Now I'm thinking about unsubscribing from Netflix. I like what he says about needing a break: you just need to exercise another part of your brain. And that is what I've discovered to be the solution for work-life balance: take a break from work, and immerse yourself in family time, so that you can return to work refreshed. You shouldn't feel guilty for missing out on work while with your family, nor guilty for working while not being with your family, as long as there is balance, because you need to satisfy different needs at different times, and it helps you return to full power.
Sounds like they are ignoring Jane Jacobs. Her four rules for a flourishing city area: the area must serve more than one primary function, and preferably more than two; most blocks must be short; the district must involve mixed aged buildings; and there must be a sufficiently dense concentration of people.
Sounds a bit cargo-culty. Those four factors happen to apply to the vast majority of cities in the world, most of which aren't necessarily "flourishing".
And one of the places which least fits the bill is the very place they're trying to replicate: Silicon Valley, where the blocks are long, the population sparse, the buildings mostly from the last few decades, and the whole area ain't nothin' but high-tech.
Now I'd say that Silicon Valley succeeded despite its lousy geography rather than because of it (most people I know who work there hate it and commute from San Francisco) though there's one important exception: the sparse population means that big companies can build those huge campus-like HQs which you just couldn't do in a denser city.
Some people prefer urban. However, a lot of people don't. The urbanists are merely one group who hasn't figured out that when an argument suggests/implies behavior that doesn't happen, the argument is wrong, no matter how appealing the proponents find the conclusion or proposals.
Silicon Valley isn't a city. San Francisco is. I don't know whether Jacobs wanted to encourage such factors --- she turned city planning on its head with her book in 1960, and it was a data-driven book, while the orthodoxy at the time satisfied "The urbanists are merely one group who hasn't figured out that when an argument suggests/implies behavior that doesn't happen, the argument is wrong, no matter how appealing the proponents find the conclusion or proposals."
I'm not sure why "encourage" is in quotes. If you mean, "inspire the next generation of city planners and architects to design places that people want to actually live" you're right. But I'm reading a more dismissive tone and I'm not sure why.
Jacobs' work directly contributed to the decline of the urban superblock (that mainstay of 1960s urbanism and blight on 21st century cities) and a rebirth of the mixed use development. The later is especially popular in inner suburbs going through phases of new growth looking for an antidote to their original strip-mall and subdevelopment plans (usually lack of plans).
Those sound like proxies for measuring some other factors; who flourishes based on the range of ages of the surrounding buildings? Presumably that really measures some variation in the types of businesses nearby, or that there are some long term residents, or the area has some hook factor which keeps people investing over and over.
All of which they could design in or design around without having to have old buildings, say.
But it sounds like they are designing for the administration of the city, not for the end users. I wouldn't want to live there for a few revisions at least...
How did Sputnik come into the picture? I didn't see Sputnik mentioned by the NSA article. It just said that the messages were received from outer space: "Recently a series of radio messages was heard coming from outer space."
I used to alternate between sitting and standing. I don't need to any more. The trick for me, figured out by a therapist, was to build the proper muscles, and to always hold proper posture. I find that I can sit anywhere with comfort now, even on the crappiest chairs, because I use my muscles to support me, not the chair. When you stand, you do the same. I've come to appreciate the importance of our muscles and how they contribute to one's quality of life.
