For the next thirty days, you have the opportunity to impact the life of a bold, new publication called JPG Magazine. Now entering into their second year, JPG wants to honor the works of nonprofessional photographers in crazy exciting ways. If their online community votes for your photo, it might just show up in the next issue (plus you get a free subscription and $100... not bad!). So if I may promote my own submissions, get in there and vote! There are three themes in JPG Magazine's Issue 9:

• The Treacherous Commute from last winter's blizzard in NYC. Part of the "9 to 5" Theme, featuring photos of people on the job.


• Long Island City and the glowing nightlife of Queens. Part of the "Street" Theme, showing the world as it is.


• A Quiet Moment at Crim Dell at the College of William and Mary. Part of the "Elegance" Theme, finding beauty in the everyday.

It's official. Christmas is now here, and we have the modern-indie bard Sufjan Stevens to laud for it. His new 5 CD box set Songs for Christmas started five years ago as a simple EP for family and friends, and has since transformed into a full-blown masterwork.

As jazz Christmas music is to be played in Manhattan, is Sufjan's Christmas music in Brooklyn. Or as the Boston Globe puts it: "Consider this Christmas music for hipsters huddled around a puny tinsel tree in their Williamsburg apartments."

It's worth mentioning that a significant number of songs are not really Christmas tunes, but Sufjan presents them in a package that just makes sense. "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" might seem to belong in a praise and worship session, but next to the story of "O Holy Night" there's more than meets the eye:

Truly He taught us to love one another,
His law is love and His gospel is peace.

There's as much history from the ancient Jewish tradition to the mystery of incarnation as there is a nod to medieval symbolism and the modern winter festival. The entire collection has a light and lifting spirit that celebrates both the secular and sacred sides of the holiday in the same breath. For example, the lyrics of "Come On! Let's Boogey to the Elf Dance!" ingeniously presents a modified "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" layered on top of "Away in a Manager" in the energetic style of "Chicago" on his Illinois album from last year.

I'm ashamed to say I bought the album on iTunes, because this is one box set that deserves to have a place of honor next to the hi-fi (or at least the iMac). All it took was one stellar review in the Times to make the box set fly off the shelves (of every single music store I visited in the city) faster than a Tickle-Me-Elmo at Toys-R-Us in Times Square. Thus I was forced to go the (temporary) digital route until I can visit my local record shop back home in rural Virginia, where the album might not be discovered quite yet. The stickers, chord charts, lyrics, poster, animated video, and album art will just have to wait. A chance to spread out the holiday cheer!

Meanwhile, I'll be enjoying the music, especially the delightful little interludes sprinkled throughout, probably best illustrated by the guitar picking antics in "Holy, Holy, Etc." that is interrupted briefly by the musicians cracking themselves up. Merry Christmas!

Chestnuts and fire, holly and hay,
Jesus and Mary, what a great day!
Get up off the floor and give a shout,
There's a lot to shout about!

Last year, Bono accepted an award from TED, an exclusive and enlightening conference in the technology, entertainment, and design communities. Previously unreleased, Bono's stirring talk loudly outlines the importance of a social movement for Africa, including his efforts with the One Campaign. I've highlighted a few key moments from his speech here:

It's not a cause, it's an emergency. This is not about charity, this is about justice. Justice is a tougher standard than charity. Catastrophes that we can avert are not as interesting as ones we could avert. Funny that. Equality for Africa is a big, expensive idea. What on earth can we all do about this? Well, much more than we think. The fact is ours is the first generation that can look disease and extreme poverty in the eye - look across the ocean to Africa - and say this and mean it: we do not have to stand for this. Working together, we can actually change the world. Where you live in the world should not determine whether you live in the world. History, like God, is watching what you do.

At the prompting of a Technology Review article today, I wanted to highlight this fascinating new high-resolution, four-dimensional weather service called Deep Thunder.

The brainchild of IBM's Research Division, Deep Thunder predicts rain, wind and temperature data down to a one-kilometer resolution. And while the project has been motion for over a decade, it is only now reaching a point where forecasts can be calculated every 30 minutes for several trial cities (including Miami, Kansas City, New York, and Baltimore). Eventually, IBM's supercomputers will be powerful enough to provide forecasts down to your neighborhood and street. By comparison, the National Weather Service can rarely provide resolution better than eight kilometers, which can be the difference in seeing the Brooklyn Bridge, for example, versus the island of Manhattan via satellite.

At a local submetropolitan level, the weather really can vary quite significantly, says Treinish. Yet typical forecasts will often slap a single simplistic symbol, such as the sun, a cloud, or a snowflake, on an area representing a small city.

The benefits to local municipalities and businesses would be the amount of precise data available to make decisions around weather conditions, such as deploying snow plows, managing a power outage, delivering the mail, and guiding airport traffic. Several classic scenarios (included in this series of animations) have provided accurate forecasts to major metropolitan areas in real-time:

• A northeaster in New York City this year dumped a record 26.9 inches of snow in Central Park; Deep Thunder's forecast came as an early warning the night before.


• Hurricane Wilma's track over Florida was recorded in high resolution, helping local and federal agencies to better plan their emergency response.


• High winds coming off the Atlantic and up into New York Harbor were first tracked a multiple scales at once in 2003, including 16, 4, and 1 kilometer resolutions.


• One of the first implementations helped the National Weather Service verify that it wasn't going to rain over Atlanta during the closing ceremonies at the 1996 Olympics.

The team of researchers at IBM's Watson Research Center in upstate New York has a long way to go before they can provide accurate forecasts at high resolution, but Deep Thunder marks a promising step towards a truly local forecast.

Thanks to Michael and Joannou for their help on this entry.