The wild possibilities of printing food
September 25, 2011
from
http://futureoftech.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/14/7765055-the-wild-possibilities-of-printing-food
The wild possibilities of printing food
By Lakshmi Sandhana
Typically, 3-D printers are discussed in light of the efficiencies they bring to industrial design and fabrication. They will soon help chefs create foods that can’t be made by hand if Cornell Creative Machines Lab, or their peers in the industry, can make them accessible.
The newest 3-D food printer, now being honed at CCML, can produce: tiny space shuttle-shaped scallop nuggets (image above); and cakes or cookies that, when you slice into them, reveal a special message buried within, like a wedding date, initials (image below) or a corporate logo. They can also make a solid hamburger patty, with liquid layers of ketchup and mustard, or a hamburger substitute that’s made from vegan or raw foods.
First Noosphere World Forum
September 8, 2011
A friend sent me to this website: http://www.noosphereforum.org/
It took a while for me to get beyond the artwork. Unfortunately their presentation is in reversed type (white over a background) so I took this text from this page http://www.noosphereforum.org/drupal/?q=node/6 and reformatted it so I could read it. Now, I haven’t yet read the other pages, but this seems to me an important initiative. The analysis feels real. It ties in with what I have felt in my bones for most of my lifetime: We are in a once-in-a-species-lifetime transition and it’s a good and hopeful thing!
Arguing about whether climate change is manmade or natural seems to me somewhat beside the point. (It’s clear enough that it’s happening, and, more to the point for me personally, I have “known” since the 1970s that we would live long enough to see Antarctica, or a large part of it, come out from under the ice. That tells me that it isn’t some catastrophic anomaly, but part of a larger picture that I, and of course countless others unknown to me, sensed decades ago.) How much of it is being caused or aggravated by human activities is a matter of debate. The fact that people on all sides of the issue are using it to advance their own agendas is also beside the point. If people could find a way to make hay out of the fact that the sun shines and then, suspiciously enough, doesn’t shine, every 24 hours, they would. The facts the scientists or researchers on one side of an issue are cooking the books doesn’t mean (a) that those on the other side aren’t doing it too, or (b) that the book-cookers may not be correct regardless. (After all, even if cheating is all-pervasive, somebody still has to be more right than others.) Ad hominem arguments are irrelevant, though I notice that the dirty bastards on the other side of the issue use them all the time.
(If that last sentence didn’t make you smile, re-read it. If, re-reading it, you take it as a statement of fact, you’ve gotten too deeply enmeshed in your ideology.)
The importance of addressing the issue as part of the larger noosphere issue is that things seen in context are less likely to be seen distorted; less likely to giver rise to accusation and counter-accusation, and far more likely to lead us off into new, even exciting, mental vistas.
This is another case of my commentary being as long as the piece I’m passing on! Okay, here it is.
Steve Jobs’ view of the future we have lived to see
August 15, 2011
My good friend Rich Spees alerted me to this archived article from Widred magazine. Read it and weep. Or, read it, anyway.
How we really learn — or could learn to learn
June 25, 2011
This article — long article! — is in the Atlantic Monthly. It isn’t so much about programming (writing code) as it is about the way we learn, and the way that we could be taught to learn. Turns out, it’s simple enough, conceptually. Naturally, that isn’t the way it’s taught….
How I Failed, Failed, and Finally Succeeded at Learning How to Code
JUN 3 2011, 10:19 AM ET
JAMES SOMERS – James Somers is the chief technology officer of BookTour.com. He blogs at jsomers.net/blog.
TED and Hans Rosling – educational and entertaining
May 27, 2011
I’ll tell you, the combination of high-speed internet, and TED talks (http://www.ted.com/), and especially Hans Rosling, is a time-absorber of major proportions. Not a time-waster, at all, because it’s highly educational (and entertaining) — but it’s so addictive!
Then there is Rosling’s own site, www.gapminder.org. Try these.
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/ted-and-reddits-10-questions-to-hans-rosling/
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/hans-rosling-asias-rise-ted-india/
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/hans-rosling-ted-talk-2007-seemingly-impossible-is-possible/
Copyright law and Germany’s history, and us
August 22, 2010
In my short 20-year career in publishing, I have seen the evolution of the concept of copyright, and I don’t much like what is happening. Instead of being centered on protecting the author’s right to his own creation, it is becoming a profit-center for the publishers, who routinely charge exorbitant fees for simple fair-use quotations within another person’s work. The predictable effect is to lessen the use of quotations, and the longer term effect is going to be erosion of support for copyright as a concept.
We can hardly think of publishing without copyright, but Bucky Fuller reminded us that it originated as a royal grant of monopoly power. I — speaking as author and publisher — think we may have reached the point at which copyright is more harmful than helpful. Maybe it is time for us to invent a new form of protection of an author’s rights. Or maybe going bare would be no more harmful than the present system.
This article is from the German periodical Der Spiegel, via SchwartzReport.
No Copyright Law:
The Real Reason for Germany’s Industrial Expansion?
FRANK THADEUSZ – Der Spiegel (Germany)
Did Germany experience rapid industrial expansion in the 19th century due to an absence of copyright law? A German historian argues that the massive proliferation of books, and thus knowledge, laid the foundation for the country’s industrial might.
Using the Internet to Save the Rainforest
July 20, 2010
As usual, life proves more complicated, more unexpected, more ingenious than might have been predicted. From Der Speigel http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-698511,00.html via SchwartzReport, as so often.
06/08/2010 11:11 AM
Using the Internet to Save the Rainforest
How an Amazonian Tribe Is Mastering the Modern World
By Juliane von Mittelstaedt
The Surui people from the Brazilian rainforest are fighting to stop the destruction of their homeland. But instead of bows and arrows, they are using the Internet, GPS and Google Earth. Next they plan to start carbon emissions trading.
Chief Almir Narayamoga Surui spins the globe in front of him past Copenhagen, Bristol, and Washington. He loves playing on Google Earth, and hopping from one continent to another. It’s become something of an addiction. I ask him what interests him about Bristol. “I don’t know,” he replies. “I’m just looking.” The virtual Earth in front of him continues turning, and finally reaches Brazil, and here the 35-year-old chief, who was born on the floor of a hut in the rainforest, zooms in on a large green triangle surrounded by brown, the outlines sharp as if drawn with a ruler.
The ‘Learning Knights’ of Bell Telephone
July 13, 2010
Sometimes people learn more than is good for the people who sent them out to learn. From http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/opinion/16davis.html?pagewanted=1 via Front Porch Republic www.frontporchrepublic.com
The ‘Learning Knights’ of Bell Telephone
By WES DAVIS
Published: June 15, 2010
FIFTY-SIX years ago today, a Bell System manager sent postcards to 16 of the most capable and promising young executives at the company. What was written on the postcards was surprising, especially coming from a corporate ladder-climber at a time when the nation was just beginning to lurch out of a recession: “Happy Bloom’s Day.”
It was a message to mark the annual celebration of James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” the epic novel built around events unfolding on a single day — June 16, 1904 — in the life of the fictional Dubliner Leopold Bloom. But the postcard also served as a kind of diploma for the men who received it.
“We have heard enough of despair”
January 19, 2010
My brother sent me this obit of George Leonard from the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/us/18leonard1.html?emc=eta1). The name wasn’t familiar to me, and as I read it I was amazed to see how much we owe him.
Rice Field Art
January 12, 2010
Some real beauty to be found on this site: http://www.hemmy.net/2007/09/23/rice-field-art/
This URL, which came to me via a friend, demonstrates something that ought to be obvious but apparently isn’t obvious to everyone: The need to create beauty is a deep human need. It has nothing to do with economics (and certainly nothing to do with politics). Take a look at these lovely photos with that thought in mind. None of the people who participated in creating these designs benefited economically as as individual, I imagine. Would that make it any less satisfying?
