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The Haussmannian masterpiece - Les Bains in Paris - is a building design that is firmly stamped by its heritage, whilst it captures the zeitgeist of 21st century Paris. Check it out here...

Yesterday's Sunday Times devoted the lead slot of its front page to a long examination of the effects of the web on the attention spans of teenagers. In the tradition (yes, it is now a tradition) of Nick Carr, the piece concludes that, essentially, our smartphones - and our Facebook and our YouTube and our web in general - are robbing kids of their ability to concentrate. Neuroplasticity! "Researchers say the lure of these technologies, while it affects adults too, is particularly powerful for young people," the piece notes. "The risk, they say, is that developing brains can become more easily habituated than adult brains to constantly switching tasks - and less able to sustain attention."

The NAACP has just passed a historic resolution demanding an end to the War on Drugs.  The resolution comes as young Black male unemployment hovers near 50 percent and the wealth gap's become a veritable gulf. So why is the forty-year-old "War on Drugs" public enemy number one for the nation's oldest civil rights organization? Well here's why:  it's not extraneous - it's central: the war on drugs is the engine of 21st century discrimination - an engine that has brought Jim Crow into the age of Barack Obama.     Author Michelle Alexander lays out the statistics -- and the stories --  of 21st Century Jim Crow in her ought-to-blow-your-socks off book: "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness." I had a chance to sit down with Alexander earlier this summer. We'll be posting the full interview in two parts.     "We have managed decades after the civil rights movement to create something like a caste system in the United States," says Alexander in part one here  "In major urban areas, the majority of African American men are either behind bars, under correctional control or saddled with criminal record and once branded as criminal or a felon, they're trapped for life in 2nd class status."     It's not just about people having a hard time getting ahead and climbing the ladder of success. It's about a rigged system. Sound familiar?  Like the Pew Research Center report on household wealth and the Great Recession -- the NAACP resolution story was a one-day news-blip - despite the fact that it pierces the by-your-bootstraps myth that is at the heart of - you pick it - the deficit, the stimulus, the tax code - every contemporary US economic debate.     White America just maybe ought to pay attention. With more and more Americans falling out of jobs and into debt, criminal records are a whole lot easier to come by than life-sustaining employment.  Contrary to the conventional media version, the "Drug War" story is not a people with problems

In what may feel like a flashback to the porn wars of the '60s, a new study investigates the link between a country's relative gender equality and the degree of female "empowerment" in the X-rated entertainment it consumes. Researchers at the University of Hawaii focused on three countries in particular: Norway, the United States and Japan, which are respectively ranked 1st, 15th and (yikes) 54th on the United Nations' Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). To simplify their analysis, their library of smut was limited to explicit photographs of women "from mainstream pornographic magazines and Internet websites, as well as from the portfolios of the most popular porn stars from each nation." Then they set out to evaluate each image on both a disempowerment and an empowerment scale, using respective measures like whether the woman is "bound and dominated" by "leashes, collars, gags, or handcuffs" or "whether she has a natural looking body." Their hypothesis was that societies with greater gender equity will consume pornography that has more representations of "empowered women" and less of "disempowered women." It turned out the former was true, but, contradictory as it may sound, the latter was not. "While Norwegian pornography offers a wider variety of body types -- conforming less to a societal ideal that is disempowering to the average woman -- there are still many images that do not promote a healthy respect for women," the researchers explain. In other words, Norwegian porn showed more signs of female empowerment, but X-rated images in all three countries equally depicted women in demeaning positions and scenarios. This, the researchers surmise, "suggests that empowerment and disempowerment within pornography are potentially different constructs." So, gender equality is accompanied by sexual interest in a broader range of beauty types but not a decrease in porn's infantilization of females, use of dominating fetish gear on women or any of the other characteristics th

It has become clear that in a era of Republicans focused on defending tax breaks for millionaires while cutting government assistance for everyone else, the middle class - and its influence in society - is shrinking. But we haven't just lost our political clout.  It turns out that we're no longer that influential in multiple spheres, including marketing.  At some point as more of the nations wealth became consolidated within the top percentage of the upper class, the consumer industry turned to them as the only people to woo.  And as the income gap grows, that's only going to continue.

As intense protests spawned by Occupy Wall Street continue to grow, it is worth asking: Why now? The answer is not obvious. After all, severe income and wealth inequality have long plagued the United States. In fact, it could reasonably be claimed that this form of inequality is part of the design of the American founding -- indeed, an integral part of it.

Monotony and complexity have no room in Italian cuisine and so it is, with the design of this restaurant in New Delhi that serves it. The design team of Sumeet Nath and Aanchal Chaudhary has tastefully carved out a setting for Ristorante Prego that essentially blends variety with simplicity. Check it out here…

That 'high-rises provide vantage points, otherwise unthinkable of' is beyond debate and when such a point provides an unobstructed view as well, it's definitely a bonanza. It is this distinct advantage that Aedas, the architects of Mongkok Residence, Hong Kong plan to serve to its residents through this towering landmark. Check it out here...

Venice's new VITRARIA Glass +A Museum is dedicated to experience and discover the world of glass in its most unexpected forms. Its first exhibition is on view till Jan25, 2015. Check it out here...

The Yogananda Library in Himachal Pradesh exudes a strong architectural vocabulary that not only defines its functions but empowers its serene yet pulsating environment. Check it out her and leave us your views...

Every city has a story to tell, its narratives hidden in every nook and lane. Honest and expressive, #Studio Archohm's metamorphosis of #Hussainabad in #Lucknow rightfully prioritises its culture, history, its people and their pure connection…

Ar. Rajeev Sathe designs a transparent office in Mumbai, steering the design to balance the innate values of the company with the cultural ethos it wishes to inculcate in its employees. Check it out here…

Ar. Mitul Shah of Studio Yamini designs an extension to a bungalow in Baroda - discerningly balancing the design vocabulary of new with existing; and upping its luxury quotient in sync with the changing lifestyle of its occupants. Check it out here…

Given its myriad entities and perhaps the world's most advanced performance pool, Watergarden in Istanbul is a first-of-its-kind gastronomy and entertainment centre. Check it out and tell us what you think

Scholars gathered at Columbia University to focus on the elite in American society and their relationship to the non-elite.

"You can't sustain a democracy in an oligarchic state. The writers on Athenian democracy understood that 2000 years ago," says Chris Hedges, whose new book The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress explores the problems of a crumbling empire, inside and out. Chris joins Laura in studio for a conversation about the death of Bin Laden and the continuing concern over terrorism, the end of empathy in the U.S., and what avenues are left for progressives to fight back.  "The elites are not going to help us," he warns, "We're going to have to help ourselves."

Wingardium Leviosa!! Tech enthusiasts especially Harry Potter fans - here is something for you - a build-it-yourself tech kit that teaches you the basics of coding and equips you with the power to influence it to fit into your narrative of storytelling (ideas) and make creativity fun! Check out all you need to know about the Kano Harry Potter Coding Kit developed in association with @warner-bros--entertainment …

Flexible layouts, co-working spaces, and the work-from-home model - how will the IT sector adapt to the next big thing that challenges the way we work?