End the University as We Know It – I can only imagine that the end of the University as we know it is well underway. We should start building its replacement now. I don't know if I could honestly encourage anybody to go to grad school. (tagged: educationacademiagradschoolresearch )
Dune: Arenaceous Anti-Desertification Architecture – Take a dune, and inject into it Bacillus pasteurii, with water, nutrients, a calcium source in solution, and oxygen, and it turns sand into sandstone. Figure out a way to do this precisely, and you can "print" buildings in 3D inside the dune, and then let the wind excavate it for you… if you've got your fluid dynamics right. Pretty incredible idea. Still very challenging at scale though. (tagged: architecturesustainabilitybuildingssciencegreenbacteriadesertdunesand )
We’re in a freefall into future. We don’t know where we’re going. Things are changing so fast, and always when you’re going through a long tunnel, anxiety comes along. And all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. — Joseph Campbell, Sukhavati
Incoming Memes
Twitterfeed
Saying goodbye to the Internet for about 10 days. I'm sure it will be fine without me. 1 week ago
Is Facebook really censoring a NYTimes article about gay marriage in DC? Or is a link-shortening glitch? http://nyti.ms/crWznQ1 week ago
I realized today that my black bike actually makes me want to dress up when I ride it. 1 week ago
The handyman from Beven and Brock was a sociology major, liked the play Copenhagen, and also metaphysical quantum mechanics... 1 week ago
US to require all cars have brake-override. Great. I feel so much safer. Personally I'd prefer we just banned engines. 1 week ago
Retirement talk seems to have gone pretty well... It was probably the tie. 1 week ago
Laid low all day long by some stupid stomach bug. Now missing @CICLEorg party too :( 1 week ago
Pasadena Babalon was good. A kind of Caltech/JPL/Pasadena folk art/history. We need more of that kind of thing. 2 weeks ago
Made a poster for a conference I'm not going to. Working on my talk for next week. This retirement seems a little bit like employment... 2 weeks ago
Made (dumpster) banana bread w/ zest from (salvaged) naranjas agrias, and flaxseed. Breakfast for before climate and media talk tomorrow. 2 weeks ago
SEC Charges 'Prophet' With Fraud2010/03/04 Sadly, this guy really isn't any more dishonest than most investing newsletter publishers, or actively managed mutual funds. His problem is he was too honest about his dishonesty.
Should We Clone Neanderthals?2010/03/03 Apparently the quest to resurrect our nearest hominid relatives continues! This is going to be so weird.
City Response to “Water Conservation: Sober Up San Diego, The Water Party Is Over.”2010/03/03 Although they won't come right out and say it, it does appear that the City has no intention of proactively dealing with the possibility of long term undersupply/overdemand of water. Ironically (I think) San Diego gets about twice the reainfall of Taos, NM, where the earthships happily collect and process all the water they need for domestic living... suggesting that if you're creative enough, actually *both* sides in this SD debate turn out to be a little bit absurd.
The truth about risk2010/02/26 A great interactive info-graphic and discussion for exploring various investment returns over the last century.
The American poor spread to suburbia, but we’re not ready2010/02/25 We already have a word for a large annulus of poor people surrounding a relatively wealthy urban core, and it's not "suburbs". For instance, we don't talk about the "suburbs" of Jakarta, or Mexico City, or Cairo, or Nairobi.
Enceladus' Warm Baghdad Sulcus2010/02/24 Thermal IR overlaid on a visible light mosaic of Baghdad Sulcus on Enceladus. Basically the whole fracture is warm and spewing geysers into space. Weird weird awesome icy place.
The Case For An Older Woman2010/02/22 No surprise: men disproportionately prefer younger women, but it turns out women are fairly even-handed when it comes to age and dating. However, if you look at many other preferences (sex frequency, dominance/submissiveness, etc.) younger men and older women actually aren't a bad match. I certainly don't regret having had experiences with older women when I was younger.
Attribution of climate forcing to economic sectors2010/02/22 A paper in PNAS on relative climate effects of different industry sectors, which emit different relative proportions of aerosols (cooling) and GHGs (warming). Cars are "clean", and so are almost exclusively warming both short and long term. Power is "dirty", and so is less warming short term. However because the time-constants for removal of aerosols and GHGs are so different, in the long term, all these emissions are warming. Suggests cutting out car emissions first, then going for power/industry, lest we also remove our inadvertent sulfate aerosol geoengineering. Interesting way of looking at the problem, but I fear it will be latched on to by the deniers/geoengineers and misconstrued to suggest that dirty emissions are actually a good thing...
0 Response to “Shared Links for Apr 28th”