Nov 21, 09
"The Rocketship Wonder of Earlier Decades is Gone"
A great round-up of the talks at worldchanging ally and writer Geoff Manaugh's London conference, Thrilling Wonder Stories. Here are some interesting tidbits (all quotes are paraphrases): Peter Cook: "He stood up to talk about “Weird Shit International” as a much-needed movement in architecture across the decades. ... He lamented “up and down” building design philosophy, and laughed that the Oslo school of architecture was pumping out such boring graduates of that philosophy, when a...
Latest to Sound the Climate Alarm: Doctors, Lawyers, Generals, Bankers and Diplomats
Latest people freaking out about the steadily worsening news on climate change? Doctors, soldiers, diplomats, lawyers and insurance bankers. A major study by the renowned British medical journal the Lancet and University College London calls on the world's medical and health professionals to mobilize, declaring, “Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.” "Climate change will have devastating consequences for human health from: changing patterns of...
A Month's Worth of Blogging, Condensed into a Single Column
It's been a crazy month, with talks to give and essays and books to write, and money to raise, and I've really fallen behind in blogging. So here's a month's worth of things I've been meaning to post about: Screw your IQ -- what's your Buxton Index? "The Buxton Index of an entity, i.e. person or organization, is defined as the length of the period, measured in years, over which the entity makes its plans." ... This is an interesting concept: and one that helps explain a lot of attitudes and...
LSE Podcasts
I'm a podcast junky. I travel a lot, and even when not traveling, I spend a lot of time on public transportation or in cabs or waiting for meetings and when life forces me into little wedges of time which are neither productive nor relaxing, I think nothing beats a pair of headphones and a brilliant lecture or interview. One of my absolutely favorite podcasts comes from the London School of Economics. LSE Public Lectures showcases the leading academics, writers, scientists, politicians and...
What if Climate Change is Not an Energy Problem?
Here's a thought I've been kicking around, and I'd like your ideas. What if, contrary to conventional wisdom, climate change is not actually primarily an energy problem, and by thinking of it as an energy problem, we risk making huge mistakes in the coming years? What do I mean by energy problem? A problem caused by our choice of energy sources. Given that a large percentage of greenhouse gasses comes from the burning of fossil fuels, it seems odd to contend that climate change is not a...
Someone Invent a Better City Ranking!
A couple weeks ago, Popular Science released a list of the greenest 50 U.S. cities, to a predictable amount of bloggage and debate about whether Portland is really all that. But something important's been missed in the discussion of the list, which is that it's not actually based on good measurements of what makes a city green. The exercise was based on the following criteria: * Electricity (E; 10 points): Cities score points for drawing their energy from renewable sources such as...
2007's Best: Green Building
Green building is a subject we pay a lot of attention to, obviously: here are some of the stories I found most interesting... 1:1 Digital House and the Future of Green Building There is a direct link between the growing "intelligence" of our homes -- their increasing ability to use electronics to sense, monitor and adapt -- and their sustainability. Many of the coolest aspects of green building involve the building itself responding to the conditions around it, working with, rather than...
2007's Best: Sustainable Design
John Thackara is one of my heroes. The Man Who Mistook a Concrete Pillar for a Global Threat might show you why Some of you may know Oliver Sacks' book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. It's about people afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations - and in particular a man who looks at something familiar (his wife) but perceives something completely different. Well, I’ve become one of those people! It happened to me most recently at Madrid’s new airport. One...
2007's Best: Culture
Regine's posts consistently reframe the way I see global culture. They're all pretty amazing, but these are three of my favorites: The Morrinho Project at the Venice Biennale Morrinho means 'little hill' in Portuguese and alludes to the shantytowns, or favela, located on the hills surrounding Rio de Janeiro. In 1998, kids built up a miniature reproduction of their favela (Pereirão, perched above the upper class Laranjeiras neighbourhood) using bricks and other materials left-over from...
2007's Best: Our Foreign Correspondents
We have a global network of writers, but a handful of them are regular columnists and contributors. For instance, Mara has done a great job as Worldchanging's China correspondent, with a number of terrific stories, including Revitalizing China's Dust Bowl Western China is turning into a massive dust bowl. Desertification now affects fully one-third of the world's population -- and what's happening in Western China represents the largest conversion of productive land to desert anywhere in...
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