Poor Mojo's Newswire

One afternoon, earlier this year, as I was scanning a long list that I was adding to endlessly, I realized, "I'll never get it all done. That's probably just fine. But this endless list and this feeling of being completely scheduled...it's not working right now."

. . .

What did surgeons, artists, and CEO's have in common? Most of them reported that they managed both their time and their attention. In surgery, in the studio, and in the time carved out to think through strategies and issues, these professionals reported shutting down the devices and endless inputs (email, phone, interruptions), at scheduled times, and claiming those moments to focus. In almost every case, these professionals reported experiencing "flow" (a la Csikszentmihalyi) in their work.

We think we know what attention is. In fact, today's dictionary will tell us it's the "concentration of the mental powers upon an object." This definition assumes our attention can effectively be everywhere, all the time. We haven't always thought of attention this way.

In 1890, when the psychologist, William James, gave a definition of attention, he described it as, "taking possession by the mind in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought... It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others."

LONDON (Reuters) - A washing machine using as little as a cup of water for each washing cycle could go on sale to environmentally conscious Britons next year.

Xeros Ltd, which has been spun out of the University of Leeds to commercialize the technology, said on Monday the new machines would use less than 2 percent of the water and energy of a conventional washing machine.

Plastic chips are used to remove dirt and stains from clothes, leaving them dry and reducing energy consumption as there is no need to use a dryer after the washing cycle, Xeros said in a statement.

The result is a cup that can hold more than a can of soft-drink when full, yet is about 2cm thick when flattened, and fits easily in a pocket (it can also be looped securely onto a belt). The shape does not transmit heat to the hand easily, and best of all; it's made mostly from the polypropylene covers of used folders where the spine had broken. I write this instructable in the hopes that others may also manufacture one, and I intend, with time, to refine this project further.

The computer attackers who took down Comcast's homepage and webmail service for more than five hours Thursday say they didn't know what they were getting themselves into. In an hour-long telephone conference call with Threat Level, the hackers known as "Defiant" and "EBK" expressed astonishment over the attention their DNS hijacking has garnered. In the call, the pair bounded freely between jubilant excitement over the impact of their attack, and fatalism that they would soon be arrested for it. "The situation has kind of blown up here, a lot bigger than I thought it would," says Defiant, a 19-year-old man whose first name is James. "I wish I was a minor right now because this is going to be really bad." ... Threat Level expects both hackers' names and locations will emerge soon. The hackers say the attack began Tuesday, when the pair used a combination of social engineering and a technical hack to get into Comcast's domain management console at Network Solutions. They declined to detail their technique, but said it relied on a flaw at the Virginia-based domain registrar. Network Solutions spokeswoman Susan Wade disputes the hackers' account. "We now know that it was nothing on our end," she says. "There was no breach in our system or social engineering situation on our end." However they got in, the intrusion gave the pair control of over 200 domain names owned by Comcast. They changed the contact information for one of them, Comcast.net, to Defiant's e-mail address; for the street address, they used the "Dildo Room" at "69 Dick Tard Lane." ... Both say they've been raided by law enforcement before. "I slept in my clothes, because the last time they came, I was in my underwear with my dong hanging out and shit," says Defiant.... "I was trying to say we shouldn't do this the whole damn time," says Defiant. "But once we were in," adds EBK, "it was, like, fuck it."