Genius Now

Bomb the Blocks

Guerrilla Gardening and more.

http://www.designundersky.com/dus/2010/2/25/ludic-guerrilla-gardening-drone-warfare.html

Urban Downsizing – will it happen?

“Operating on a scale never before attempted in this country, the city would demolish houses in some of the most desolate sections of Detroit and move residents into stronger neighborhoods. Roughly a quarter of the 139-square-mile city could go from urban to semi-rural.”

CNC vs 3D – one take on the “revoluion”

“We may not see millions of new factories in the short run, but I would bet we will see thousands.”

I don’t necessarily agree with everything he’s saying, but a lot of it makes great sense.

Cooperation goes viral

“The study is the first work to document experimentally Fowler and Christakis’s earlier findings that social contagion travels in networks up to three degrees of separation, and the first to corroborate evidence from others’ observational studies on the spread of cooperation.

micro solar-photovoltaics – potentially cost effective, resource effective, and competitive

“So they use 100 times less silicon to generate the same amount of electricity,” said Okandan. “Since they are much smaller and have fewer mechanical deformations for a given environment than the conventional cells, they may also be more reliable over the long term.”

blood glucose, decision making, and future orientation

Interesting research. As an evolutionary mechanism, it makes sense – if you need food *now*, planting seeds is less attractive than eating them. More likely we will see this immediately tested in marketing. If you want to sell pie in the sky, serve pie. If you want to have them take the immediate offer because it’s to your advantage to do so, serve celery and carrots. Or something like that

another tangent for the circle

Regarding a discussion about pre-Westphalian history, bards, resiliency, open-source warfare, and more, I believe this summarizes my position. Note that the audience knows all the words, and are singing along. Just like they do in Athens, in Paris, in Prague, in San Francisco.

Resilient Community OODA loop – first pass

Funding a Relief Project

photo credit:
United Nations Development Programme

I posted my original comment on disaster relief requirements approximately ONE HOUR before the quake hit Haiti . You can see yesterday’s repost here …. so what are the relevant notes from today’s news? (quotes compiled from multiple wire stories.)

Read more on Funding a Relief Project…

Apocalypse and Armegeddon

Interestingly, searches and news references for these two terms have been trending upwards since the fourth quarter of 2008. Both had been on generally downward trends from 2004. While it’ would be naive to assume this had something to do with Obama’s election, there may be some measure of truth there.

Read more on Apocalypse and Armegeddon…