Car-Free Housing in European Cities – A survey of sustainable residential development projects across Europe, including Vauban, outside Freiburg. The study is from 2000, so it's a little out of date, but an interesting overview anyway. It would be great to have a decadal survey of such developments, to see how they evolve and deal with growing pains, and issues which arise in their experimental settings… (tagged: urbandesignsustainabilityarchitectureeuropebicycle )
Nuns arrive at eco-convent and leave behind high-carbon habit – An interesting set of design choices by an organization with what one would imagine is a very long time horizon. Their old (stone) convent was certainly built to last centuries, structurally. I wonder if the new one is too, or if the construction methods, while minimizing energy consumption while the building functions, will ultimately require more embodied energy as it has to be re-build more frequently? Most homes today aren't built to last much more than the length of a mortgage contract. In the US anyway. (tagged: sustainabilityreligionarchitecturedesigngreenenvironment )
The Solipsist and the Internet – Larry Lessig offers a (very) lengthly review of of Helprin's "Digital Barbarism", which is an argument (an abjectly bad one in Lessig's view) in favor of infinite copyrights. Oh. My. God. And I thought *I* knew how to rant! (tagged: lawinternettechnologycopyright )
Government Data and the Case for Not Running Me Over2010/07/24 A good short note on how open (but still semi-broken) government data can help make all kinds of policy discussions more substantive. And how much better it would all be if it weren't so borken. As applied to the question of who pays for roads (everyone, it turns out, including cyclists).
Boulder is a city "wired for biking" - The Denver Post2010/07/21 Well thankfully I'm not the *only* person who has noticed how nice it is to bike here! Boulder has a whopping 10% modeshare for bikes (commuting), and a 46% increase in bikes downtown over the last 2 years. Please please please let this be a runaway process.
Xeromag | Polyamory?2010/07/21 A decent devil's advocate type description of what "polyamory" means. Lots of continuum variables...
Boulder Green Streets2010/07/19 Boulder is experimenting with temporary de-motorization of some streets, semi-Ciclovia style, and half a block from my house!
Icelander’s Campaign Is a Joke, Until He’s Elected2010/06/26 Go Iceland! Strange things happen in countries the size of cities. And even if you don't agree with this particular iteration, we need more experiments. More long tail governmental experiments. What we've got today just doesn't cut it.
The Real Science Gap2010/06/26 A much broader and more data driven historical look at how gradschool, and the system of science in the US, got so broken. Freakishly published only a couple of weeks ago. I had no idea it existed when I wrote my essay.
Tuna’s End2010/06/25 We will eat them all. Every. Last. One.
Don't Become a Scientist!2010/06/24 Jonathan Katz, a professor at Wash U., advises us not to become scientists. Not because science is evil or untrue, but because the system we have constructed for doing science, at and beyond the graduate level, is fundamentally broken.
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