Archive for May 2012
the kardashian unit
Ethan Zuckerman is musing, ”The Kardashian is a unit I proposed a few classes back as a measure of attention.”
A Kardashian Unit is the amount of global attention Kim Kardashian commands across all media over the space of a day.
We determine a Kardashian by measuring the percentage of media dedicated to Kim Kardashian.
For example by using Google Insights you can discover the Kardashian Unit for global warming is merely 11.
our brain has a grid
Based upon the The Guardian’s Neurophilosophy blog, there’s a tremendous collection of brain images archived at Neuro Images.
doesn’t have to be like this
What must be done is not an expanding economy… but a stable economy.
There is something fundamentally wrong in treating the Earth as if it were a business in liquidation. ―Herman E. Daly
slick stump politics

1) The black line is the improving jobs outlook under Obama.
2) The red line shows the continuing trend…
3) See Romney riding on Obama’s back ?!
on the line between earth and sky
Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It was what I was born for - to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world - to instruct myself over and over in joy, and acclamation. Nor am I talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant - but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab, the daily presentations. Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these - the untrimmable light of the world, the ocean's shine, the prayers that are made out of grass?
de-clutter city streets
Philips has invented suspended street lighting —no streetlight poles.
our essential national purpose
Where does our humanity begin?
The USA is in 25th place among best countries to be a mom.
“Though they can be as opinionated as the adults that surround them, most children are more willing to open up to new ideas, to be fascinated by conflicting information, to make an attempt to learn a new skill or be beguiled by a new concept. They are quick to dispense hugs and they love to share.”
“There is one high promontory within the sprawling panorama of life on earth that does indeed afford a perspective upon the whole…
“…where the living creature not only acts out its own significant existence, but is capable of contemplating this existence along with that of all other living things.
“…where life’s own power of survey blossoms and reaches its fullest fruition: the understanding consciousness of man.”
grid dancing through the ages
In 2006, Li and his colleagues began working on a hydraulic hybrid vehicle.
They were in the process of developing an energy storage system for that purpose when they realized that their idea was better suited to grid-scale energy storage.
And on the other hand….
Specifically, he teaches them that the food and bathroom waste they produce every day can be transformed by a biogas digester into fuel to clean and cook plus a compost to fertilize crops.
http://www.
One flame in a room.
There once were 10s of 1000s in old rural China; so simple, so common, but now?
think small to solve big
The USDA isn’t seeing the problem.
Walter wrote, “We need many smaller processing facilities.”
A network of nano-scale facilities will give us all better food security.














