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Record summer temperatures, farm fertilisers and a lack of wind have created a gigantic carpet of evil-smelling weed covering large areas of the Baltic and threatening both marine life and seaside tourism, scientists warn.

The 377,000 sq km of blue-green algae, covering an area the size of Germany, has been identified by satellite cameras. It extends from Finland along the south coast of Sweden and surrounds the Danish island of Bornholm.

Scientists from the German section of the World Wide Fund for Nature in Hamburg have warned of the damaging effects of the weed. "These huge algae carpets hit the marine environment most," said Jochen Lamp, a WWF project spokesman. "They kill plants and encourage the spread of dead zones on the sea bed which have no oxygen left in them."

driver from www.independent.co.uk

You know who's really kind of hard to believe? The cast of Community.

Not because they're all talented or good-looking or whatever. They are. But that's true of most people on TV. But they only seem so smart and cool because other people — dorky sweaty writers — think of great stuff for them to do.

Not so with the Community people. The Community people — and this is kind of an outrage — are also really good at coming up with great material for themselves. They proved it, yet again, at their Comic-Con panel Saturday.

Comic-Con: Let TVGuide.com be your Avatar

One of them is Chevy Chase, basically a comic genius, who has utterly nailed the self-satisfied American male. Then there is Joel McHale, the host of The Soup, who is the present owner of the exceedingly rare perfect dry delivery.

Donald Glover, who's in the sketch and improv group Derrick (whose videos you and millions of others may have happened across on YouTube), used to write for 30 Rock and moonlights as a rapper. And also, annoyingly, he doesn't seem to be one of those multi-hyphenates who just throws a lot of stuff on his resume out of insecurity. He's actually good at every one of these things.

Danny Pudi forms one of the best comic duos on television with Glover, and never, ever seems to be off. Alison Brie, the go-to crush of anyone paying attention, also stars on Mad Men, another of the other best shows on TV, and once improvised a really good song with Pudi during an interview with TVGuide.com. The flawless Gillian Jacobs happens also to be, good lord, a gifted dramatic actress. And the adorable Yvette Nicole Brown has some of the best moments in the show and exudes human decency.

Check out all of TVGuide.com's Comic-Con coverage

You kind of want to hate these people, right?

But then you can't. Because their show is the kind of three-steps-ahead-of-you funny of 30 Rock at its best. And they may be funnier in person than they are on TV.

Their Comic-Con panel featured scads of good off-the-cuff bits: Glover pretending to be a magician who cries when his tricks don't work, and then a home invader who will say anything to have sex with McHale. Chase saying how much he loves his cast mates, and then demanding that Brown get her hand off him. Pudi and Glover repeating their first-season performances of their Spanish rap, and then "Somewhere Out There" from An American Tale.

Watching all this, you may be tempted to think: Why do these people even need writers, when I laugh at hard at their panel as I do at their show? But then, to really, twist the knife, they give the writers all the credit for how good their show is.

Eventually, with a lot of prodding, the show's stars concede that maybe, just maybe, they did think of some of the funniest bits on the show themselves: like Brie's choo-choo noise in one episode, or Glover's ad lib when he and Pudi played Sesame Street's Burt and Ernie.

That ad lib? "I'm late for my cousin's funeral."

Argh, you know? Just argh.

driver from www.tvguide.com

President Obama and his allies in Congress are doing everything they can to rally 60 senators behind health care reform. But, for one red-state senator, even 60 "yes" votes won't do. It has to be 65. "I think anything less than that would challenge its legitimacy," he said in late September. It's a ludicrously high standard for passage--the sort you'd expect from a Republican opponent. But this comment came from Democrat Ben Nelson. And, while Nelson may be an extreme case who revels in opportunities to buck his party, he's not the only conservative Democrat arguing that health care reform--even the scaled-back version moving through the Senate Finance Committee--may be too much, too fast.

Even though the bill, as constructed, would leave millions uninsured and millions more with scant coverage, several of Nelson's Democratic colleagues have talked about weakening the bill even more, by further reducing its funding. They say they're worried about controlling the cost of medical care, and yet, they've eschewed obvious ways to cut costs, such as taking more money from the drug or hospital industries. And they oppose a voluntary public insurance plan, which is among the most efficient ways of delivering affordable, reliable coverage.

What are their motives? The charitable explanation is that Nelson and his allies are acting out of principles they come by honestly--that they simply can't abide even this modest expansion of government. But sincerity does not guarantee good public policy. And, in this case, their opposition wouldn't seem to serve their constituents well: 12.8 percent of Nelson's Nebraska constituents lack health insurance, as do 17.5 percent of Blanche Lincoln's in Arkansas and 20.2 percent of Mary Landrieu's in Louisiana. Many additional people in those states are "underinsured," meaning their coverage doesn't meet their needs. Because the Senate Finance bill does not offer financial assistance to people making more than three times the poverty line--and because the insurance it guarantees is less protective than what other, more expensive versions of reform would require--many of these people will remain exposed to the severe financial, not to mention medical, risks of inadequate coverage. More generous reform would ameliorate that problem, and few of its beneficiaries would bear the price, since the money to pay for it would likely come from taxes on the rich and on expensive benefit plans.

A less charitable explanation for the obstructionism of red-state Democrats is that they are trying to curry favor with health industry interests that help finance their campaigns. (Nelson has always been a favorite candidate of the health insurance industry, for example.) But there's a political cost to watering down reform: It might produce a bill that voters don't like. A reform crafted to appease the health care industry would extract minimal concessions from it: It would let drugmakers and hospitals get off with minimal sacrifice, even as both stand to gain the business of millions of new customers. Such reforms would do little to tamp down the skyrocketing prices of drugs and hospital stays (and, for that matter, the prices of devices and doctor visits). Insurers would have more leeway to raise their own prices and treat their sicker patients badly. Employers would continue to operate with minimal interference, which would mean fewer guarantees for Americans who get insurance through their jobs. By insisting that reform conforms to the interests of these groups, conservative Democrats can perhaps secure their campaign contributions--but only at the risk of alienating constituents. Lincoln will have Wal-Mart. But will she win her next election?

To be fair, Nelson, Lincoln, and others do have constituencies that express some seriously right-wing views. And, while polls sometimes show that conservatives support reform, voters in these states may well be skeptical. Perhaps what these senators need is a clever way out of their political dilemma--a way to produce change without supporting reform that is perceived as too liberal. Fortunately, the procedures of the Senate allow for just such a convoluted arrangement. Obama and his allies are focused on getting 60 votes because that's what it takes to break a filibuster. But a senator can vote to break a filibuster without voting for the bill being filibustered. Nelson and others can simply support cloture and then vote "no" on the final bill (or merely abstain). As long as Democrats have 50 "yes" votes--and they almost surely do--the bill will pass.

This approach would let an important bill come to a full vote and would allow a simple majority to pass the legislation. It's more democratic than allowing a minority inflated by the over-representation of small states to block the newly elected president's central domestic policy promise. Surely that's enough legitimacy for Nelson--particularly when it's also the right thing to do.

driver from www.tnr.com

HOUSTON — Federal biologists are releasing thousands of endangered baby sea turtles into the western Gulf of Mexico, betting that by the time the silver dollar-sized swimmers make it to the oil-fouled waters of the eastern Gulf, BP will have cleaned up its goopy mess.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service are proceeding with the annual release of Kemp's ridley turtle hatchlings off Padre Island National Seashore because Texas has not been significantly impacted by the oil spill. For years, scientists have incubated and hatched the turtles to give the endangered creatures a boost.

The risks of holding turtles in captivity at a critical stage in their life cycles could be worse than the dangers of oil more than 400 miles away, the plan's supporters say.

Hundreds of days-old hatchlings have been freed on Texas beaches since the June 8 decision. Another large group is expected to be released early next week.

The decision, however, has stirred controversy among some scientists, environmentalists and turtle lovers.

Supporters say there should only be intervention with animals directly in the oil's path, like loggerhead turtles in Florida. In 1979, after a rig blowout in the Mexican Gulf, authorities airlifted Kemp's ridleys to oil-free waters.

Critics argue the decision to free vulnerable hatchlings doesn't adequately account for hurricanes, storms or a seasonal change in current, all of which could bring the oil west and directly into their path. Nesting mothers, they say, are also at risk because many deposit their eggs in northern Mexico or south Texas and head for heavily impacted areas.

"We have raised them in captivity and learned the hard way that there are also a lot of negative potential from that," said Deborah Crouse, a sea turtle biologist in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Endangered Species Recovery Program.

However, Crouse acknowledged the release does present a risk of oil exposure. It took a team of 14 experts days to decide whether to release the Kemp's ridleys.

"It was a balancing act between the danger of holding them in captivity vs. the damage that could be done to them by the oil," Crouse said. "That's why it was not an easy decision."

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said that as of Wednesday, 167 visibly oiled sea turtles of various species had been collected alive. At least 482 have been found dead, but no oiled turtles have been found in Texas.

Carole Allen, director of the Sea Turtle Restoration Project's Gulf office in Houston, is a vocal critic of the hatchlings' release in Texas. At least some of the babies and nesting mothers should be kept in captivity until the oil is cleaned, she said.

"Don't just send them out to the Gulf to die cause they're going to get oiled eventually," Allen said.

Andre Landry, a sea turtle expert at Texas A&M University in Galveston, said baby turtles swim out and attach themselves to algae mats or other floating habitats. It's possible those habitats are oiled, he said.

In Florida, because of the proximity to the oil, loggerhead turtle nests are being collected and incubated. Hatchlings are being released on the state's eastern coast, far from the oil.

"That goes in direct opposition to what's been decided with the Kemp's ridleys," Landry said.

The Kemp's ridleys have been on the endangered list since 1973 after their population was depleted from years of hunting their eggs and trapping the animals in fishing nets. They are among the smallest sea turtles, and live mostly in warmer Gulf of Mexico waters.

Their population numbers have slowly recovered. This year, there were nearly 13,000 nests – or about 4,300 nesting turtles – in Mexico and Texas, down from last year when there were about 22,000. Scientists attribute the slip to natural variation and an unusually cold winter.

Still, scientists were so encouraged in March by the Kemp's ridleys recovery they believed they might see 10,000 nesting females within five to 10 years. That would upgrade the species from endangered to threatened, allowing them to still be protected by some federal laws.

While it won't be clear until next year whether the oil spill damaged the turtles' progress, it has put upgrade hopes at risk.

Donna Shaver, chief of the Division of Sea Turtle Science and Recovery at Padre Island National Seashore has been monitoring the Kemp's ridleys for 30 years. She collects their nests from Texas beaches, incubates them and watches them hatch. Finally, she releases the babies at the precise moment when they enter a "frenzy" of activity and have extra energy from the yolk they've ingested, allowing them to get past the surf and float on the currents to their new homes.

Federal agencies have long maintained a policy that collected wildlife should be released, Shaver said.

"Any time you release hatchlings, you realize it's a perilous situation for them," Shaver said. "They can fall victim to fish, they can fall victim to birds. Only a fraction of them survive into adulthood. And this year, this is another risk they face, so it's frustrating."

Allowing the Kemp's ridleys to remain in captivity, however, creates other risks.

Early efforts aimed at recovering the species taught scientists that prolonged captivity can mess with the turtles' navigation and foraging skills, putting long-term survival in danger, said David Godfrey, executive director of the Sea Turtle Conservancy in Gainesville, Fla.

He supports the loggerhead program in Florida, but thinks the Kemp's ridleys should be released so long as Texas is oil-free.

"Everybody who is critical of that decision has a right to be critical because it's not a black or white decision," Godfrey said. "If oil comes into Texas with a hurricane, nobody knows what would happen. Is it absolutely foolproof, 100 percent, signed, sealed, delivered? I don't know. Nobody knows."

Jon Voight was in proud-papa mode Monday at daughter Angelina Jolie's Salt premiere in Hollywood.

Soon, though, the Oscar-winning actor, 71, will be shipping out to Texas for the new TV show Lonestar, but he says the distance won't put a damper on the relationship he's building with his daughter and grandkids.

"It's hard for me to be away from my grandkids, yes, but I'll stay in touch with them," Voight told PEOPLE at a screening of show's pilot episode at the Paley Center in Los Angeles. "Thank god we have this technology, and you know, we use all of it."

I love my kid.

I hate my life.

That was the headline of a recent New York cover story that has created a media frenzy. No one I know in California gets New York, but I just tested a friend by saying, "Okay, complete this sentence. I love my kid, but ..."

"I hate my life," she said without a moment's hesitation. Holy cow. Is this a part of our cultural mantra?

Plenty of research shows that American parents are, on average, less happy than their childless counterparts. But this "I hate my life" thing is a bit more problematic than the slight dip in parental life satisfaction that research shows can occur when children are young.

Clearly our generation isn't successfully developing the skills we need to parent happily. This does not bode well for our kids' happiness. Is it any wonder that we are seeing increasing levels of depression and anxiety in children and adolescents? If we love our children but hate our lives, will our kids learn to hate their lives?

As a rule, children don't make us happy. That isn't their job. It is silly to assume that adding something as complex and challenging (and time consuming!) as child-rearing to our lives will make us happier. Of course it won't.

It isn't at all silly to assume that having children will fill our lives with happiness, because kids add so much love to our lives. And love is about the purest form of happiness there is.

So where is the error in our thinking and doing? I tend to agree with Lisa Belkin of The New York Times, who argues that we're taking on too much as parents, becoming over-involved with our children in a way that makes us feel helpless and our children feel resentful and uncooperative. We can't, after all, live their lives for them. The benign neglect I imagine parents practiced in the 1950s -- go play outside, I'll call you when dinner's ready -- was infinitely more enjoyable for parents. And children, too, I'd bet.

Our collective parenting misery is a political problem as well as an individual one. American children rank towards the bottom of developed nations in emotional well-being; it should come as no surprise that their parents also don't fare that well when compared to parents raising children in countries with stronger social welfare systems. Paid maternity leave (for a year!), affordable child-care, high-quality public education and health care -- a safe neighborhood, for crying out loud -- when these things are provided by the state, parents can stop worrying so much about how to secure them for their children. No longer do parents feel compelled to somehow produce perfect, high-achieving, successful people -- that won't get left behind -- all while under-resourced and under-supported.

In her feature for New York, Jennifer Senior concludes that children provide meaning and purpose in our lives, but not moment-to-moment happiness. "As a matter of mood," she writes, "there does seem to be little question that kids make our lives more stressful." Is this true? To parrot Byron Katie, can we absolutely know that this is true?

Because it seems to me that my own kids have introduced an awful lot of not-stressful down-time and socializing into my life that wouldn't be there without them. And that is a great source of moment-to-moment happiness. Before I had kids, I was an anxious overachiever toiling away in a Chicago high rise. Now I spend a lot of time enjoying family meals I'd otherwise be eating in front of a computer, talking about things like how exactly to make a bow-and-arrow out of string and a stick.

Of course kids might bring fun to the table with their knock-knock jokes and fart-inspired giggles, while ALSO bringing more stress into our lives. But this is not a forgone conclusion. When we stop multi-tasking and are truly present with our children, when we let kids make their own mistakes rather than trying to control their every outcome, when we simply give ourselves the alone-time we need -- that we had before kids -- parenting can be a source of BOTH meaning AND moment-to-moment happiness.

And that moment-to-moment happiness is not overrated; it is not something we should forgo in order to look back on our life and think it was meaningful because we raised beautiful, successful children. Because those children may not learn to lead lives they love if we're not modeling for them lives we love.

I want Raising Happiness to serve as a manifesto for more joyful parenting. Life is short, and thankfully the new science of happiness is showing us ways to both love our kids AND love our lives.

What have you learned that makes your parenting more joyful? What situations are the greatest source of stress and unhappiness in your family life? In coming weeks, I will be taking a closer look at the research on parental misery.

Looking for resources to parent more happily? You might want to sign up to receive the Raising Happiness Newsletter (this text is from that Newsletter), or sign up to take my online Raising Happiness Class this fall. Click here to receive more information about the Raising Happiness Class.

There's no doubt about it and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a parent who would argue with you, parenting has its share of stress. When you have a child, there is less time for the couple to spend with one another, less time for individuals to spend on their own, and there is another living being to be responsible for. These are all givens. There is a lot of research that suggests that parents hate parenting, so with all these built in challenges, is there something deeper besides just the evolutionary push that drives people to become parents?

An interesting article about the complexity of parenting just came down the pipe of New York Magazine titled All Joy and No Fun: Why parents hate parenting. Over 80 percent of the article sets out to give examples on why parenting leads to disharmony and unhappiness. The final 20 percent gives us a different angle saying that perhaps happiness may not be defined as perceived fun in the moment, but perhaps what is most important is a sense of meaning and purpose in life and parenting provides that.

The part of the article that struck me most was when Harvard Psychologist Daniel Gilbert said, "When you pause to think what children mean to you, of course they make you feel good," he says. "The problem is, 95 percent of the time, you're not thinking about what they mean to you. You're thinking that you have to take them to piano lessons. So you have to think about which kind of happiness you'll be consuming most often. Do you want to maximize the one you experience almost all the time" -- moment-to-moment happiness --"or the one you experience rarely?"

So how I interpret this is that often times when parents get busy (as those who are not parents also do), we get kicked into a state of auto-pilot not being aware of what really matters or what is meaningful in life. In other words, 95 percent of the time (I would argue more) we're on auto-pilot. So Gilbert's question is actually the wrong question. We don't want to make decisions just based on our habitual way of living, we want to build more pauses of awareness in our life so we can get in touch with the meaning of life that is there.

Abraham Joshua Heschel said, "Life is routine and routine is resistance to wonder." It seems to me that Gilbert's question doesn't take into awareness that we can pop out of this auto-pilot and become more aware of what is most important in life and expand that 5 percent to a point where perhaps it even weaves into our moment-to-moment awareness. In other words, we can be more intentional with our attention and lead a meaningful and purposeful life.

This obviously expands out from even the topic of parenting.

Cornell Psychologist Tom Gilovich "recalls watching TV with his children at three in the morning when they were sick. "I wouldn't have said it was too fun at the time," he says. "But now I look back on it and say, 'Ah, remember the time we used to wake up and watch cartoons?' " The very things that in the moment dampen our moods can later be sources of intense gratification, nostalgia, delight.

Is there a way we can become more aware in those moments where our moods are dampened that these may actually be precious or even sacred moments in life. In other words, can we create what I call a present nostalgia? This is the ability to bring that feeling for reminiscence or longing to the moment that it is actually happening. One way of doing this is to imagine yourself many years from now laying down toward the end of life looking back to this moment. What is here now that you're not seeing?

In respect to parenting, your child will never be this age again, they grow so fast. Some aspects of that may be relieving, but others would create a sweet sadness and give us a chance to get in touch with the preciousness and meaning of the times.

It's almost impossible to experience the unhappiness that the researchers found in the first 80 percent of the New York Magazine article while experiencing this sense of present nostalgia, which is very much also the reality of the moment. Why wait until the moment passes to be aware of it?

So rather than just acquiescing to the routine of life, we can be more intentional and dig a bit deeper into what really matters right now.

Whether someone chooses or does not choose to have children is a personal choice and there is no judgment, it's impossible to truly put ourselves in another's shoes.

However, we can be more intentional with the lives we have noticing that when the kids are sick and we're at home taking care of them; it may not be fun in the moment, but there is something precious about it. The more precious moments we cultivate in life or become aware of the greater stress reduction and increases in well-being (based on my professional research published in The Journal of Clinical Psychology).

As always, please share your thoughts, stories and questions below. Your interaction provides a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

In a poll of over 300 Japanese women, half of them felt that they couldn’t compete with fake females.

When asked whether they thought they could win against a 2D game character their boyfriend was besotted with, 53% thought they had “no chance.”

Livedoor has the article, but it’s entirely in Japanese (Google Translate wasn’t much help), so we’re depending on Sankaku Complex and Kotaku for the info.

As for explanations, women said:

“There’s no way I can beat that level of cuteness.”

“Their personalities are nice and they have no flaws. Complete perfection.”

“They’re made to be the ideal girlfriend after all.”

“Because he has a manual any man can enjoy a game as much as he likes.”

Actually we’re not really sure what the last one means.  Does the manual tell you how to win the game?

To recap: half of the women polled felt that they couldn’t compete with a virtual person designed to, after a challenge that isn’t so frustrating that you give up, like and reward the player.  I’m not sure whether that says more about the women involved, or the men, to be honest.

Don’t get me started on pillow girlfriends.

A CENTURY ago, when Bushwick, Brooklyn, reigned as a center of the American brewing industry, a beer baron may have lived in the prim black-and-white mansion topped with a steeple on Bushwick Avenue. But even in his wildest dreams, this Victorian captain of industry would never have envisioned what the old place would be like a hundred years later.

Nine artistically inclined 20-somethings — “Renaissance men and women,” as they were once described — use the premises to create hipper-than-thou music and art. Crowds have packed the house for events like an installation called “When All Through the House,” for which video screens flickered in every room. A black-metal band called Liturgy has blasted away in the basement, surrounded by dozens of dead Christmas trees.

A young math genius named Morgan Silver-Greenberg is ensconced in the apartment in the steeple, and a flotilla of bikes and skateboards is parked in his foyer.

Bushwick may not be East Williamsburg. But for those seeking the newest Bohemia, this neighborhood is arguably the coolest place on the planet. And few places are cooler than the white brick building with black trim that its residents call Cedar House, courtesy of its location on the corner of Cedar Street.

“Really, there’s nothing like this house anywhere in Brooklyn,” said Ben Shapiro, an original resident and the one who provides much of the glue that holds the place together. “Everyone is so creative and so talented. We’re all friends, and this is such a fun place to play.”

Mr. Shapiro is 26, and like most of his housemates, he has a lot going on. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence, he spent two years touring the world as a drummer for a band called Asobi Seksu. (The name is a colloquial Japanese term for playful sex.) These days, along with completing work for a master’s degree in film history at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and drumming with the bands Scary Mansion and Chris Garneau, he works part time at Film Forum. (He’s the clean-cut, dark-haired young man scooping popcorn at the concession stand.)

Thanks to his intimate knowledge of Brooklyn’s music scene, Mr. Shapiro also contributes to The New Yorker’s pop music listings. “Plus,” he pointed out as he conducted an impromptu tour of the mansion, which was built in 1901 and sometimes looks it, “living here is a job in itself.”

The mansion’s current incarnation began three years ago when Mr. Shapiro and a few friends who wanted to live together discovered the building and recognized its possibilities. As of last fall, after various comings and goings, the lineup of residents, each of whom has a bedroom and pays about $600 in rent, was largely complete.

On the first floor are Morgan Jones, an artist; Jackie Oberman, a magazine graphic designer who plays bass in a punk band called the Homewreckers; and Lauren Denitzio, a freelance illustrator and graphic designer. Also on the first floor are Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, the moving force behind Liturgy, a band that Mr. Shapiro describes as “one of my favorites in Bushwick,” and Mr. Shapiro, whose room features David Wojnarowicz’s famous photograph of buffalo being driven off a cliff, along with leather-bound copies of Balzac from an old girlfriend and, like nearly all the other bedrooms, lots of vinyl.

Upstairs are Danielle Rosa, a freelance art handler who is attending social work school; Ben Keller, an assistant video editor; and Julia Norton, an artist and half of the folk duo Paps. Her space, with its flowered curtains, sewing box and collection of tiny enameled spoons, has the cluttered charm of a little girl’s room, although few such rooms would also feature figurines clustered to represent such disasters as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, along with half a dozen ukuleles, which Ms. Norton plays when she performs.

The steeple apartment is occupied by Mr. Silver-Greenberg, an installation artist who works for a company called No Mas that makes sports-themed clothing, and who was such a star at N.Y.U.’s Gallatin School that in describing his prize-winning computer research, the school noted it was “easy to forget he’s only 23.”

The basement houses two art studios, along with the music studio and performance space that in many ways are the building’s heart. Concerts, which are generally free, are held here once a month. Friends invite friends, and some nights the crowds are so thick — a couple of hundred strong — that they spill out the doors and onto the lawn.

For an urban dwelling, the house is rich in outdoor space. Along with the front porch, which overlooks the grassy corner lot, there’s a big backyard and a second-floor terrace where Mr. Shapiro celebrated his birthday.

Many of the original architectural details have survived, among them the stained-glass lighting fixtures that dangle from 10-foot ceilings, the transoms, the window seats and the wooden shutters. But even those who love the building would not describe its condition as perfect. Floors have holes; ceilings leak. It’s easy to trip on the rickety steps that lead up to the steeple and down to the basement.

“And keeping the place reasonably clean is an unbelievably huge challenge,” Mr. Shapiro said. “We have just a little money, and we try so hard to keep everyone happy.”

Interpersonal relations are equally ticklish. One housemate left because of the noise; another was kicked out. “In a place like this,” Mr. Shapiro said, “people’s personalities become a house issue.”

So does safety. Three people were murdered in the neighborhood late last month, one on Bushwick Avenue.

“It’s still rough around the edges,” Mr. Shapiro said of the area, once a deeply troubled part of the city. “You have to keep your wits about you, like anywhere. But I feel safe. And I love it here. I really do. Plus the neighborhood is amazing. There’s so much culture — the night life, the art, the music, the shows.”

He sometimes thinks back, not longingly, to the apartments of his past.

“I’ve lived in these tiny, crummy places, these windowless boxes,” he said. “Because usually that’s the only thing you can afford.”

Here, by contrast, there’s much to savor, not only the cheap rent, the studio space and the outdoor areas, but also the rich history and the generous light that pours through the tall windows.

In the morning, Mr. Shapiro likes to sit on the front porch, with its sagging, mismatched chairs, eating breakfast and reading the newspaper as trucks barrel down Bushwick Avenue. The experience, as a blog once said of a Cedar House event, is “very Bushwick and very fabulous.”

Driver from: www.nytimes.com

A CENTURY ago, when Bushwick, Brooklyn, reigned as a center of the American brewing industry, a beer baron may have lived in the prim black-and-white mansion topped with a steeple on Bushwick Avenue. But even in his wildest dreams, this Victorian captain of industry would never have envisioned what the old place would be like a hundred years later.

Nine artistically inclined 20-somethings — “Renaissance men and women,” as they were once described — use the premises to create hipper-than-thou music and art. Crowds have packed the house for events like an installation called “When All Through the House,” for which video screens flickered in every room. A black-metal band called Liturgy has blasted away in the basement, surrounded by dozens of dead Christmas trees.

A young math genius named Morgan Silver-Greenberg is ensconced in the apartment in the steeple, and a flotilla of bikes and skateboards is parked in his foyer.

Bushwick may not be East Williamsburg. But for those seeking the newest Bohemia, this neighborhood is arguably the coolest place on the planet. And few places are cooler than the white brick building with black trim that its residents call Cedar House, courtesy of its location on the corner of Cedar Street.

“Really, there’s nothing like this house anywhere in Brooklyn,” said Ben Shapiro, an original resident and the one who provides much of the glue that holds the place together. “Everyone is so creative and so talented. We’re all friends, and this is such a fun place to play.”

Mr. Shapiro is 26, and like most of his housemates, he has a lot going on. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence, he spent two years touring the world as a drummer for a band called Asobi Seksu. (The name is a colloquial Japanese term for playful sex.) These days, along with completing work for a master’s degree in film history at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and drumming with the bands Scary Mansion and Chris Garneau, he works part time at Film Forum. (He’s the clean-cut, dark-haired young man scooping popcorn at the concession stand.)

Thanks to his intimate knowledge of Brooklyn’s music scene, Mr. Shapiro also contributes to The New Yorker’s pop music listings. “Plus,” he pointed out as he conducted an impromptu tour of the mansion, which was built in 1901 and sometimes looks it, “living here is a job in itself.”

The mansion’s current incarnation began three years ago when Mr. Shapiro and a few friends who wanted to live together discovered the building and recognized its possibilities. As of last fall, after various comings and goings, the lineup of residents, each of whom has a bedroom and pays about $600 in rent, was largely complete.

On the first floor are Morgan Jones, an artist; Jackie Oberman, a magazine graphic designer who plays bass in a punk band called the Homewreckers; and Lauren Denitzio, a freelance illustrator and graphic designer. Also on the first floor are Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, the moving force behind Liturgy, a band that Mr. Shapiro describes as “one of my favorites in Bushwick,” and Mr. Shapiro, whose room features David Wojnarowicz’s famous photograph of buffalo being driven off a cliff, along with leather-bound copies of Balzac from an old girlfriend and, like nearly all the other bedrooms, lots of vinyl.

Upstairs are Danielle Rosa, a freelance art handler who is attending social work school; Ben Keller, an assistant video editor; and Julia Norton, an artist and half of the folk duo Paps. Her space, with its flowered curtains, sewing box and collection of tiny enameled spoons, has the cluttered charm of a little girl’s room, although few such rooms would also feature figurines clustered to represent such disasters as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, along with half a dozen ukuleles, which Ms. Norton plays when she performs.

The steeple apartment is occupied by Mr. Silver-Greenberg, an installation artist who works for a company called No Mas that makes sports-themed clothing, and who was such a star at N.Y.U.’s Gallatin School that in describing his prize-winning computer research, the school noted it was “easy to forget he’s only 23.”

The basement houses two art studios, along with the music studio and performance space that in many ways are the building’s heart. Concerts, which are generally free, are held here once a month. Friends invite friends, and some nights the crowds are so thick — a couple of hundred strong — that they spill out the doors and onto the lawn.

For an urban dwelling, the house is rich in outdoor space. Along with the front porch, which overlooks the grassy corner lot, there’s a big backyard and a second-floor terrace where Mr. Shapiro celebrated his birthday.

Many of the original architectural details have survived, among them the stained-glass lighting fixtures that dangle from 10-foot ceilings, the transoms, the window seats and the wooden shutters. But even those who love the building would not describe its condition as perfect. Floors have holes; ceilings leak. It’s easy to trip on the rickety steps that lead up to the steeple and down to the basement.

“And keeping the place reasonably clean is an unbelievably huge challenge,” Mr. Shapiro said. “We have just a little money, and we try so hard to keep everyone happy.”

Interpersonal relations are equally ticklish. One housemate left because of the noise; another was kicked out. “In a place like this,” Mr. Shapiro said, “people’s personalities become a house issue.”

So does safety. Three people were murdered in the neighborhood late last month, one on Bushwick Avenue.

“It’s still rough around the edges,” Mr. Shapiro said of the area, once a deeply troubled part of the city. “You have to keep your wits about you, like anywhere. But I feel safe. And I love it here. I really do. Plus the neighborhood is amazing. There’s so much culture — the night life, the art, the music, the shows.”

He sometimes thinks back, not longingly, to the apartments of his past.

“I’ve lived in these tiny, crummy places, these windowless boxes,” he said. “Because usually that’s the only thing you can afford.”

Here, by contrast, there’s much to savor, not only the cheap rent, the studio space and the outdoor areas, but also the rich history and the generous light that pours through the tall windows.

In the morning, Mr. Shapiro likes to sit on the front porch, with its sagging, mismatched chairs, eating breakfast and reading the newspaper as trucks barrel down Bushwick Avenue. The experience, as a blog once said of a Cedar House event, is “very Bushwick and very fabulous.”

Driver from: www.nytimes.com