Contextless Links

• The skyscrapers of Dubai :: Take a look at the number of skyscrapers completed or under construction (over 600) and compare that to New York (+5000).  While Dubai is booming and gets a lot of media attention, it has a ways to go to catch up to the world financial cities in terms of building.
• YouTube - Norman Foster: Building on the green agenda
• Simple Living Manifesto: 72 Ideas to Simplify Your Life
• Unclutterer " Archive " Creating a minimalist workspace :: So the first step is for you to consider your requirements for working, and what’s essential to your workflow. If possible, streamline and simplify that workflow and those requirements. Then, once you’ve got that down to a minimum, see what the minimum setup would be for those essentials and your workflow. Eliminate everything unnecessary.
• Your Future Will Be Filled with Promiscuous Friends :: Reality television and Facebook is altering how we view friends and relationships
• Google Public Policy Blog: How Google determines the names for bodies of water in Google Earth :: Like any cartographic publisher, our policies have come under scrutiny from many groups, particularly when multiple countries disagree about the correct name for a shared body of water. While most bodies of water have a common name (think "Pacific Ocean"), others are called different names by different countries and cultures. Some variations in placenames are attributable to language-based variations (think "Germany" in English, "l'Allemagne" in French, "Deutschland" in German, etc.). Other differences, however, reflect broader political, historical, or cultural disputes. For example, the body of water between the Japanese archipelago and the Korean peninsula is known as the "Sea of Japan" in Japan, but as the "East Sea" in South Korea.
• Lifehacker Top 10: Top 10 Email Productivity Boosters
• The sustainability of improving living standards :: We use energy in nearly everything we do, and it is, therefore, widely assumed that a modern economy is dependent on cheap energy. Yet mainstream economists, even those most critical of Kyoto, are unanimous in the view that we could greatly reduce emissions of carbon dioxide while continuing to improve living standards at much the same rate as in the past.
• Why We Love the Knuckleball :: Everything about the knuckleball is unusual and unpredictable. When it works, the erratic flutter of the ball makes it virtually unhittable. But when it doesn’t, it’s a 65 mph duck, waiting to be smacked out of the ballpark. The pitchers have no control over the direction or degree of the movement, and they don’t know whether the ball is breaking well on a given day until they see the hitters swing.  Few pitchers are able to throw the knuckler, giving those who can a cult-like status. It generally requires very large fingers. As Hall of Famer Willie Stargell explained it, “Throwing a knuckleball for a strike is like throwing a butterfly with hiccups across the street into your neighbor’s mailbox”.
• Former Premier of Alberta, Peter Lougheed tells Premier Brad Wall to manage to the "boom" Saskatchewan is experiencing carefully.