Cooking up a new plate for the Department of Music while soaking up Buhaina’s Delight. Free coffee is good too.

Gotta love the minimal approach.

‘I am a young woman. I have sex for money. And I love to write. This is my story…‘:

My alarm is never set; I rise at a different hour each day. I eat breakfast, check my e-mail and update the weblog – little chores. My working day proper begins at four or five in the afternoon when I shower and dress. The first meeting, unless I have a lunch date, is usually at seven. Sometimes there’s only one; sometimes more. Occasionally I work all night and come home at 7am.

Women with higher income than their men faced relationship problems: “Putting Money on the Table.”

George Johnson’s “An Oracle for Our Time, Part Man, Part Machine“:

It was the Internet that stripped the word of its innocence. Algorithms, as closely guarded as state secrets, buy and sell stocks and mortgage-backed securities, sometimes with a dispassionate zeal that crashes markets. Algorithms promise to find the news that fits you, and even your perfect mate. You can’t visit Amazon.com without being confronted with a list of books and other products that the Great Algoritmi recommends.

He also pointed out Google Image Labeler, a game describing an image.

Bill Maher: “Maybe a President who didn’t believe our soldiers were going to heaven might be a little less willing to get them killed.”

From transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to vagus-nerve stimulation (VNS) to deep-brain stimulation (DBS), a shocking story, Maria Luisa Tucker’s “Shock and Awe,” of a woman who is desperate in seeking for a cure of severe depression before she reaches her suicidal destination:

Kelley’s journey into the labyrinth of experimental treatments began 15 years ago, when she was officially diagnosed with major depressive disorder at age 29. She had known for years that something was wrong: In college, where she graduated magna cum laude with degrees in English literature and fine arts, she consumed espresso by the pot, alcohol by the liter, and clove cigarettes by the carton, self-medicating the unnameable thing that kept her awake all night and numb all day. After accepting that it wasn’t simply the blues, or hormones, or a dozen other ailments she was tested for, Kelley started on a pharmaceutical merry-go-round, trying out scores of antidepressants and other meds, none of which helped very much. Previously the chatty, likable life of the party, Kelley was transformed into an erratic and hostile mess. Deb, her partner of 23 years, remembers coming home to find Kelley slashing a stuffed animal with a razor blade or silently sitting in the closet.

A provocative set of photos by fashion photographer Steven Meisel

MoveOn.org‘s new ad: “Congressional Representation or ‘Ass-Kissing Little Chickenshits’.”

Damn! Haven’t twit in a month, which is ages online.