If you thought WALL-E’s world of garbage was science fiction, watch this video:
Filed under: PSA | Tagged: dystopia, ecology, green living, ocean, plastic, science, sustainability, TED, WALL-E | Leave a Comment »
The New Suburbs
Posted on February 4, 2009 by Eddie
In Allison Arieff’s post today for the New York Times’ By Design blog on “Saving the Suburbs,” there were a bunch of ideas, fired off like grape shot from a hundred-gun ship (it was a long post).
One of these caught my attention: Transit-oriented residences, which would amount to high-density developments based near rail stations. Here’s an artist’s rendering of the Mashpee Commons from Mashpee, Massachusetts:
Rendering of Mashpee Commons
As we see here, high-density neighborhoods can look really nice. The rendering reminds me a bit of Cambridge, MA, which I’ve visited, and also looks more than a little like a college campus (Notre Dame or the Univ. of Toronto, specifically). To put a business district and a rail station in the neighborhood would make for a really nice place to live.
The rendering reminds me of something else, as well: Sim City. When I was a kid, I would try to build neighborhoods with railways and was always forced to retrofit them to roads, no matter how many stations I made. I’ve always preferred trains to cars, and I still prefer the former — you have your hands free on the train, and can read a book or play Game Boy or fart around with your Blackberry without having to concern yourself with traffic or weather conditions.
That being said, I like walking best, which is why I live down the street from my office. My commute consists of a five-minute walk to and from work — and lunch, some days.
What do you think?
Would you want to live in a railway suburb? How do you think our transportation system will change as we wean ourselves off of petroleum?
Filed under: City Life, Uncategorized | Tagged: cities of the future, housing crisis, mass transit, neighborhoods, peak oil, suburbs, Urban planning | 2 Comments »
Tech Tech
Posted on February 3, 2009 by Eddie
Singularity University Campus
As Boing Boing reported earlier this morning, Singularity University is to be unveiled today.
The singularity, if you’re unfamiliar, is a term coined by Vernor Vinge that refers to the rapid acceleration of technological change*. For an example, think of how quickly computers have evolved. Here’s a graph of the exponential growth in mass use of inventions, courtesy of Ray Kurzweil:
As the singularity approaches, mass use of inventions increases exponentially
Funded by Google and NASA, the college will start out with 9-week programs on the following topics (and even shorter ‘executive seminars,’ presumably for the b-school kids who want to monetize the singularity rather than get into the nuts and bolts of it):
1. Future Studies & Forecasting
2. Networks & Computing Systems
3. Biotechnology & Bioinformatics
4. Nanotechnology
5. Medicine, Neuroscience & Human Enhancement
6. AI, Robotics, & Cognitive Computing
7. Energy & Ecological Systems
8. Space & Physical Sciences
9. Policy, Law & Ethics
10. Finance & Entrepreneurship
I checked my calendar before typing this all up, as this sounds like the sort of thing Google would try to pull as an April Fools’ Day joke. (Remember paper Gmail?)
The thing is, it’s not. If you actually get into the program, you can go and study nanobots or cognitive computing for a couple months with some of the brightest folk around.
Just don’t be surprised if the place renames itself Robot State (or Tech Tech, as #1 quipped) after the machines take over the campus.
* – In science fiction, some use the term to refer to the point at which machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence. This may sound a bit outlandish, but with quantum computing nearly a reality thanks to the development of teleportation (yes, teleportation’s real; no, you can’t teleport yourself to Hawaii), this is entirely possible, as quantum particles work a lot more like neurons. They have multiple states, as opposed to the zeros and ones of the binary code that drives virtually all present-day computers.Filed under: Adventures, Creativity, Uncategorized | Tagged: awesomeicity, futurism, Google, nanobots, NASA, NASA Ames Campus, technological singularity, The singularity | 3 Comments »
Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel
Posted on December 24, 2008 by Eddie
Here’s how much of a nerd I am: When I go to parties, NPR shows up (I’m the chap in the bottom left of the second photo in the NPR article).
Sunday marked the second annual Major League Dreidel championship, held at Fontana’s in the Lower East Side. NPR and the History Channel were present for the festivities; match footage will likely turn up in a Lewis Black documentary to come out next year.
The competition’s put on by the fine gentlemen who run Brewskee-Ball, a competitive skeeball league, and proceeds from the event go to The Survivor Project. Metal band Gods of Fire (see above photo) played a face-melting show prior to the dreidel competition.
Suffice to say that it was awesome, and I’ll be going back next year.
Filed under: Adventures, Music | Tagged: Chanukah, dreidel, face-melting, Gods of Fire, He'Brew, Major League Dreidel, metal, moses | Leave a Comment »
And we’re off!
Posted on December 23, 2008 by Eddie
The Space Fellowship is reporting that Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, which will likely be the first privately owned and developed passenger spacecraft, had a successful maiden flight today.
While this piece of news isn’t that “big,” it’s still unspeakably awesome. That ungainly-looking thing (well, it’s just the wing that’s ungainly-looking; the rest is pretty sleek and looks vaguely aquatic) is going to carry people into space. And given the demand for tickets to ride in it, other companies will ramp up efforts to get in on the deal. At which point Virgin, Scaled Composites &c. will have to make an orbital craft.
You can see where this is headed…
Filed under: Adventures, Business, PSA | Tagged: awesome, space, space travel, SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactic, W-wing | Leave a Comment »
Narrative development
Posted on November 22, 2008 by Eddie
So, since there’s a light trickle of literary people to my blog, I’m going to type up what are the beginnings of some thinking I’ve been doing about narrative theory (using this term a bit loosely). And I’d like to know what you think.
In the thousands and thousands of pieces of writing I’ve read over the last couple years, a pattern has started to emerge, and while I haven’t approached these in anything resembling a scientific manner, I do think, based on the improperly gathered evidence, that there is a hierarchy of needs related to narratives, and that the more of these needs are met, the more successful a narrative will be.
For simplicity’s sake, I’ve tentatively called it the CASE Hierarchy. You’ll see why after the jump.
Read more »
Filed under: Creativity, Writing | Tagged: creative process, Creativity, how to fight off the zombie hordes, literary theory, narrative, storytelling, Writing | 2 Comments »
Oh, right, this
Posted on November 22, 2008 by Eddie
I just discovered that TOR linked to my blog from their site, and I suddenly have traffic.
So, now that you’re all here, I have a movie recommendation for you:
See Mongol. It’s out on DVD now, so I’d imagine there are any number of ways you can procure a copy.
If you know nothing about Mongol, it’s a two-hour martial epic about the lost years of Genghis Khan, and is (hopefully) the first film of a trilogy. The director, Sergei Bodrov, displays an unexpected ability to portray a medieval culture without it feeling terribly anachronistic. It also feels very non-Western, though the fact that Bodrov is Russian makes this no surprise.
If you can’t deal with subtitles, go back to watching what’s-his-face smolder in Twilight. If you can, you might like this one. It’s got an old-school sensibility, which means it depends on storytelling and manpower (and womanpower — wait until you meet Temudgin’s foil) to do its thing. If you let it, it can lead to thinking on the nature of nationalism, and also of the ancient struggle between civilization and the sort of anarchy that comes when one is near to a state of nature.
Go rent it, or buy it, or download it (legally, of course), before I get into any sonorous pondering. 
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: mongolia, Movies, sergei bodrov, tor.com | Leave a Comment »
Why I love “Gossip Girl”
Posted on September 4, 2008 by Eddie
I’ve never watched the show, and I don’t think it’s the sort of thing that’d really interest me, but I love Gossip Girl.
Why?
They used a quote from the Parents Television Council1 in an ad promoting their latest season.
I predict that the PTC is most likely ‘incensed’ about this. No doubt they’re hard at work on another petition2 right now!
Read more »
Filed under: Advertising, Photos | Tagged: Advertising, cougars, Gossip Girl, Parents Television Council, PTC, subversive literature | Leave a Comment »
Folkspeak
Posted on September 4, 2008 by Eddie
Roger Cohen wrote a pretty good op-ed today on his return to the US from abroad. He talks about the ridiculousness that airports have descended into in recent years (you’re not supposed to make light conversation with TSA officials, you should always have your papers ready &c.). The following sentence cuts to the heart of the changes in the last seven years:
“Even if it’s a homeland, at least it’s not a fatherland.” Read more »
Filed under: Language, Politics | Tagged: 2008 election, airports, Barack Obama, Emeka Okafor, folk, folks, homeland security, intergalactic mercenaries, OED, rhetoric, Roger Cohen, Sarah Palin, TSA | Leave a Comment »
Inside Pixar
Posted on September 2, 2008 by Eddie
The latest issue of the Harvard Business Review has an article on Pixar’s work culture. If you’re at all interested in the business of creativity, you should check it out. It’s written toward a general audience, and is not particularly academic (it’s written with MBA types in mind), which makes it really readable.
Pixar does things differently than the rest of Hollywood, in that they have a stable of directors (Brad Bird being probably the most talented, IMHO) and work on projects entirely in house. On the surface, this isn’t so different from other animation studios, but there’s a key difference in that they develop all their ideas in-house (so don’t bother trying to sell them the rights to your screenplay).
The overriding idea behind Pixar’s form and function is to get good people, give them the power to get things done, build up a culture that pushes them to do their best and challenges every decision, have as little bureaucracy as possible, and focus on continuing education and ties to the academic world. It’s sort of like if Disney’s Imagineers were able to work with outside civilization more, or if a business were run like a yeshiva.
Question: What other industries do you think the Pixar model would work well in? Should book publishing do this, or should it stay with the author-agent-editor-publisher-marketing people-bookseller model?
Filed under: Business, Creativity | Tagged: art, book publishing, content provider, creative process, Creativity, giant hairy wombat, management, Pixar | Leave a Comment »
