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- Postopolis LA – Presentations, films, talks slideshows, discussions and parties, centered around architecture, design, and the future of cities. Wish I knew someone who was going… (tagged: losangeles architecture design urban )
- Seville Orange Marmalade Recipe – Going to get a bunch of naranjas agrias from Jon and try making a batch of this. (tagged: recipe seville orange food cooking canning marmalade )
- Dear A.I.G., I Quit! – One might hope that all the executive collateral damage would provide a future incentive in other companies for people to call bullshit on each other when doing things that will get the whole company into trouble. (tagged: nytimes AIG bailout politics )
- Make Textbooks Affordable – Student-Faculty alliance to put the textbook publishers out of business (or, at least, force them to update their business model!). $100 textbooks are a joke. We should be providing grants and prizes for people to write free and open textbooks, that the whole world can use (and translate) instead of extorting cash out of the education system. (tagged: copyright openaccess creativecommons open education )
- skeptic etiquette – OMG, this woman should open a charm school for scientists and engineers. What *is* the right way to respond when somebody asks you at a cocktail party "What's your sign?" (tagged: science funny pseudoscience skeptic astrology )
- Fight against terror 'spells end of privacy' – Admiral Poindexter's Total Information Awareness is alive and well, and living in the front bedroom. Privacy is dead. Long live privacy! Transparency is our only hope. (tagged: transparency privacy surveillance police terrorism )
- FairShare — Watch how your work spreads. Understand how it is used. – A system for tracking how your content is re-published across the web, and potentially monetizing that re-use, or just making sure that people are abiding by your creative commons license. (tagged: copyright creativecommons technology openaccess )
- Dmitry Orlov: Social Collapse Best Practices – I'm sure I won't agree with Orlov on a lot of things, but I want to watch this just to see what the Dark Side is talking about. And he's reportedly funny too. (tagged: collapse economy crisis bailout longnow )
- Designing a Zero-Waste City: A Visit to the San Francisco Dump – San Francisco has a stated goal of zero waste to landfill by 2020. They currently divert 70% of their municipal waste stream, composting yard and food waste, taking in construction materials, sending usable furniture, clothes, plants, etc to thrift stores. The dump even has a coveted "Artist in Residence" program. (tagged: green urban design landfill compost waste sustainability sanfrancisco )
- Highway to hell revisited – A conservative commentator railing against… highways? Barring the political crap at either end of the article, I think he's got a pretty good critique of our national obsession with massive roads projects. Too bad we're just dumping a ton more cash into them. (tagged: transportation policy stimulus highways cars )
- This Old House – Conservative columnist David Brooks (from late last year) talking about how one might reasonably go about using the stimulus to re-invest intelligently, instead of just gushing cash at the construction industry. Sadly, his fears appear to have been largely realized. (tagged: transportation policy stimulus infrastructure obama urban nytimes )
- Long Beach’s State Senator Lowenthal Takes on Parking Requirements – Wow, how awesome would this be? Massive state wide overhaul of our insane parking requirements? Will be interesting to see the vote… (tagged: parking transportation policy california )
- Report on HR 801, Fair Copyright in Research Works Act | MAPLight.org – MAPLight takes a look at campaign financing in the context of HR 801 (that Conyers bill) which would prohibit the federal government from requiring open access to publications arising from publicly funded scientific research (along the lines of what is currently required for the NIH). Bill sponsors on the house judiciary committee got, on average, about twice what non-sponsors got. My rep, Adam Schiff got $6,000, which is more than the average contribution to sponsors. (tagged: politics transparency openaccess science )
- Welcome to the Future – An essay by Bruce Schneier, on the immediacy of panopticon style surveillance. All the technology is in place, it just needs to stitched together at the edges. In typical human style, we're going to bumble headlong into the mess, it seems. I'm not as sure as he is that it's ultimately bad for us though – when we lived in tribes and villages, privacy was rare. This transparency will, I think, only be a disaster if we can't watch those in power just as well. (tagged: technology privacy transparency surveillance )
- Livable Streets Education – Curricula and lesson plans for teaching Livable Streets topics in K-8 classrooms. Currently being used in NY, but available online for anyone, anywhere. (tagged: transportation green education open )
- A Brighter Shade of Green – A good essay on what it means to be "bright green", politically and philosophically. (tagged: green sustainability environment philosophy politics )