July 2010
14 posts
1 tag
Going off the Grid...Impossible →
“Use less, burn less, waste less, I’m for it. Smart grid? Sure, whatever that turns out to be. Let’s make it, invest in it, do it. But unless you’re spinning your own cloth and making buttons out of clam shell – and not using grid-produced sandpaper to smooth the edges, mind you – you’re no more off the grid than President Obama.”
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Baby Blue - Hurray for the Riff Raff →
I love this band. So perfectly sad and beautiful. This song is my song of the week.
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“If we consider all the implications of this “just in time” approach...”
– Digital Alarmists are Wrong: Google is not making us stupid, PowerPoint is not destroying literature, and the Internet is not really changing our brains.
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Summer Breeze - Vernon Green and the Phantoms →
O Happy weekend to y’all! A sultry summer night tune to usher in all this fun.
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“While sissy-bounce bookings offer them a rare chance to raise their national...”
– New York Times Magazine feature on New Orleans “Sissy Bounce”
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The End of Forgetting (or; On being meta) →
“Moreover, the narrow focus on privacy as a form of control misses what really worries people on the Internet today. What people seem to want is not simply control over their privacy settings; they want control over their online reputations. But the idea that any of us can control our reputations is, of course, an unrealistic fantasy. The truth is we can’t possibly control what others say or...
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Urban farming vs. economic development
Urban farming is a great way to feed city folk healthy, local food. It teaches people how to work with the land and reap the benefits of its fruits. It’s a way for community bond and to have a shared stake in what often would be an abandoned lot. Despite these very positive results, urban farming should not be thought as a substitute to actual, sustainable economic development.
Recently...
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Generation M Manifesto →
“Dear Old People Who Run the World, My generation would like to break up with you… Gen M is about passion, responsibility, authenticity, and challenging yesterday’s way of everything. Everywhere I look, I see an explosion of Gen M businesses, NGOs, open-source communities, local initiatives, government. Who’s Gen M? Obama, kind of. Larry and Sergey. The Threadless,Etsy,...
Squashed: On Nothing in Particular →
unsolicitedanalysis writes:
…
You keep using “theist” and “empiricist” as if they’re some sort of contrasting and mutually exclusive world view. You’ve beaten the stuffing out of that strawman!
You know that’s a strawman, right? Why perpetuate it? Surely you actually buy into the caricature…
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The Flooded Earth →
“Some of the very low-lying cities in the San Francisco Bay aren’t savable. San Francisco’s got high ground, but a lot of Oakland is really low ground and the entire San Jose region is hugely threatened. You can kiss Miami and Galveston goodbye, and those low-lying areas around Houston. All the Gulf cities. New Orleans, of course, is among the most endangered. I think by 2200...
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Arts education and community development
Q. What’s better than sitting on the stoop?
A. Talking with a bunch of elementary school kids on the stoop who are out of school for the summer about what they are up to, what they want to do, and just generally hanging out.
Two of the girls want to be artists and it got me to thinking about the availability of arts education and funding. Even though we’re supposedly coming out...