Links for the week of June 4th, 2010

If you want to follow my shared links in real time instead of as a weekly digest, head over to Delicious. You can search them there easily too.

  • Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it – The situation in the Niger delta isn't as clear as the author makes it out to be, but the amount of oil spilled there one way or another is on par with what's spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, and boy, nobody really seems to care.
  • Medical Pot Sold In Boulder Colorado Must Be Grown With 100% Renewable Power. – This should be in the Onion. Seriously.
  • Boulder County Zero Waste Plan – Boulder has drafted a zero waste plan and they're asking for resident comments either in person or online. They have to be received by June 11th.
  • Bowties, metabolism and disease (PDF) – A (scientific) op-ed piece on the bowtie architecture which metabolic networks appear to prefer, in which a common biochemical currency (such as ATP) sits at the "knot", with many input paths, and many output paths. These structures provide efficiency and centralized, transferable evolvability, at the expense of being prone to parasitization. Analogs are given for (non-biological) technological systems.
  • The Center for ReSource Conservation – A Boulder based cash-flow-positive non-profit that works with the community to reduce resource consumption. I'm most familiar with their ReSource center, which takes relatively high-value fittings and fixtures from deconstructed buildings (windows, cabinetry, tile, etc) and makes them available for sale.
  • Boulder Community Tool Library – Boulder is trying to get a tool library started at the ReSource Center. Would be awesome. Hopefully someone's written a business plan though!
  • Society of the Spectacle – A funktastic place to get glasses in Eagle Rock.
  • The Yes Lab for Creative Activism – Are you irritated by the one-sided drivel that passes for mainstream journalism these days? If so, support the Yes Lab, a project to train teams of activists for culture jamming media operations, organized by the Yes Men.
  • Folk Tales – A literary review of Kurt Vonnegut, across his lifetime of works, their themes, and his commentaries on modern society in contrast to what he called folk societies, and the evils that result.
  • vintage bicycle posters – A collection of vintage bike posters, many French. Perhaps a new decorating scheme…
  • People You Think You Know – An Iranian family in diaspora, making a film about the difficulties of cross-cultural communication, especially between the US and Iran. Continuing production has been funded through Kickstarter.
  • Debra S. Goldberg – A CS professor at CU Boulder focusing on computational biology problems. Lots of interesting looking network analysis stuff, looking at gene function, and extracting information from a noisy, error prone system. Reminds me of my GSN work a little bit.

Published by

Zane Selvans

A former space explorer, now marooned on a beautiful, dying world.

Leave a Reply