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 )
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.
