kuniform

don't ask, just eat.

Aquaponics, a Gardening System Using Fish and Circulating Water

via nytimes.com

This is awesome... Now, I wonder if Lora will let me make one in our garage... hmm....

City Forward

via cityforward.org

Awesome stuff from #citycamp. Wish this boy had crashed it, but biz travel during the week and sick kids over the weekend kept me away.

Jeff Rubin: Riding Hard and Fast on Energy

via paul.kedrosky.com

I'm glad I didn't see this on a Monday. Any time the world changes this much it is both terrifying in its scope and exhilarating in its possibilities.

As a right brainer, I have an aversion to finance and numbers. I loved geometry as a student, but derided economists as money-grubbers. Now, as a business owner, I have a more rationalist/objectivist viewpoint, though I still think Ayn Rand was a whack job, sorry!

Where's my green stapler?

Trying out the green stapler Mark gave me as a gift. We'll see how the binding holds on that 'staple.'

Tangible earth

The tangible earth project is an incredible demonstration of the power of innovation and user experience.

The project created an interactive globe unlike any other: It's a 10 million to 1 scale globe approximately 1.2 meters in diameter. Using this globe, people can explore all aspects of the environment of earth: atmosphere, day and night, light pollution, cloud cover and more. It's a fascinating example of a mashup of internet data sources, data visualization, and the user interface principle of natural mapping (no pun intended). 

Superfreakeconomics and the environment

So, we're watching 20/20 tonight like good dorks, and this review of
Superfreakeconomics comes on. The wife is all excited, because she
loves this kind of thing, and read Freakonomics.

Then, they start talking about the environment and how cozy they are
with Nathan Myhrvold and all they learned from him about it. I felt
all the respect I had for Levitt and Dubner drain slowly away. Need to
know how to get your Windows box to stop blue screening all the time?
Talk to Nathan. Fix the planet? Um, no. Not even close. He's the guy
who blue screened your computer in the first place.

For more about all they got wrong, see this takedown at Climate
Progress. As a non-scientist into local foods, I am really curious
about how they determined agribusiness is better than local farms.
They talk first about how much more efficient mass transportation is,
even from half a world away, than local transportation, then mention
how production accounts for 85% of energy use and transportation is
more or less inconsequential.

I am really curious to see that 85% breakdown and how they determine
efficiency. If it's nutritive quality, it's not completely conclusive
that local foods provide better nutrition, but it seems to be that
way. If it's in the volume of food produced, agribusiness will win
that one, everytime, but at what cost? Did they consider the impact of
the chemicals, fertilizer, machinery and groundwater runoff?

Really disappointed, but happy to have added Climate Progress to my RSS feeds.