posted by jim | March 31, 2009

Living in a small house I am a fan of technologies that let me slim down or carry it with me. iPods are common in our house and I’ve been closely watching Amazon’s Kindle. Thanks to a friend I’ve just had the chance to take a look at the new Kindle 2. I was impressed. I found it very readable, slim, portable. The print is not backlit as on a computer, but can be read indoors or outdoors. The Kindle 2 is not only device you can read but will read to you (however it’s not read by a professional reader. The voice-male or female-is a bit robotic). The books you buy for a Kindle 2 can be downloaded anywhere you can pick up a phone signal.

If you have an iPhone (or the less expensive iTouch) you can pick up a free app from the iTunes store to read Kindle books from Amazon. The iPhone and iTouch are backlit, but you can control the size of the font. Also the iPhone and Kindle 2 will synchronize so that if you leave off at, say page 97, on your iPhone, you can pick up at page 97 on your Kindle.

It is easy to be glib about the new technology. Recently I bought a new book (old technology) weighing in at 651 grams or 1 pound 7 ounces of paper (tree, that is). A new Kindle 2 (weighing a mere 10.2 ounces) is said to hold up to 200 books. That is 287.5 pounds of paper (assuming my book is a Kindle average book). Exclude the energy of delivering those books to a bookstore, the storage space of having a book store, and the whole printing infrastructure, and I would have to say the Green side of me scores one for the Kindle–at least, on first blush.

Category: Electronics-Off the Shelf, Knowledge, Shelter & Household | No Comments »
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posted by jim | March 30, 2009

Category: Health, Mental Health DIY | No Comments »
Tags: Andrew Weil, DIY mental health, Health, Jon Kabat-Zinn, mind/body, mindfulness

posted by jim | March 30, 2009

My first practical introduction to really doing mindfulness was with Jon Kabat-Zinn. I had checked out a copy of his Mindfulness Meditation from my local library. Zinn is a Ph.D. in the Division of Preventative and Behavioral Medicine at the University Massachusetts Medical School. I found his introduction to Mindfulness very accessible. I’ve included an hour long introduction to mindfulness that he gave at Google. Looking at some of his other selections, I was pleased to see he has included mindfulness for parents, as well.

Category: Health, Mental Health DIY | No Comments »
Tags: DIY mental health, Jon Kabat-Zinn, mindfulness

posted by jim | March 25, 2009

Who would have thought that slacking was valuable? If you like to play games and solve puzzles on your computer consider downloading the game Fold It. Your playing the game can provide information on the best way to help computers fold proteins. Understanding protein folding could be valuable in understanding cancer, Alzheimer’s, and HIV /AIDS.

The blog Freakonomics talks a bit about the phenomena of using your slack for gain.

 

 
Consider the following: in 2003 alone, nine billion person-hours were spent playing the video game version of Solitaire — enough to create 500 Panama Canals. And as the popularity of highly “casual games” like Solitaire has grown in recent years, researchers have begun exploring ways to channel the enthusiasm of their players into experiences that solve very real problems.

One of those researchers is Professor Luis von Ahn, a winner of the MacArthur “genius grant.” Professor von Ahn created the ESP Game, which addresses the inability of today’s computers to identify random images.

The game works like this: two anonymous players are matched online without any means of communicating. Both players are shown an image (for example, a flowering plant) while a clock counts down. The players must then type words that describe the image, such as “plant.” When both players have typed at least one word in common, they both score points. More importantly, the players have also unintentionally taught the computer that the picture contains a plant!

More than 20 million labels have been harvested by the ESP Game in just a few years — the equivalent of several million dollars of free labor.

@ There’s Free Labor in Video Games – Freakonomics Blog – NYTimes.com.

Category: Community & Mutual Aid, DIY Community & Mutual Aid, Utopian Economics | No Comments »
Tags: community, Fold it, games, slack

posted by jim | March 25, 2009

Home owner’s associations are a strange part of the suburban and urban landscape. Archaic corporate entities that seem to fill with people overly concerned with house colors, what mailboxes look like, and whose not retrieving their trash cans within 24 hours. But I’ve always hoped for them as part of the solution. Wherever people can use their power to bargain collectively there’s a chance for  change.

My friends over at Blueberry Hill Cohousing fought the good fight to create a beautiful planned community with walking neighborhoods and a common house to share dinner together. I was privileged to participate in the early stages of the group and I know how difficult it was.

If your part of a home owners association or co-op the New York Times gives you a look at what it takes to turn yours green or political:

As the conservative writer Robert Nisbet notes it is the community and not the individual that was the irreducible unit of society for much of history.

Modernism has atomized us into employment at will individuals. In America we are proud of our individual rights which is one of modernities greatest triumphs, but the truth is that corporations hold tremendous power over our lives and yet no one speaks of Corporate Rights or questions them. Libertarians and Conservatives really believe their rhetoric when they speak of individual liberty and business in the same sentence. Everyone hates a committee unless it’s a cushy, rubber stamping corporate board, but if we atoms, we individuals, want to assert our rights we will have to get good at it.  

Robert Nisbet quotes the anarchist Joseph Proudhon in his Quest for Community “multiply your associations and be free.” I couldn’t agree more.

In a similar take on community empowerment, Treehugger suggests you start your own Cul de sac commune. You can share resources, compost piles, have pot lucks together, and you don’t need a board! Nobody can stop you; there is no law against it. What could be more anarchistic than a pot luck?

And might I suggest you leverage your buying power and negotiate with local businesses, and urge your local government to get a bus stop close by and to put in speed bumps.

Category: Community & Mutual Aid, DIY Community & Mutual Aid, Shelter & Household, Utopian Economics | No Comments »
Tags: Cohousing, corporate rights, Joseph Proudhon, Utopian Economics

posted by jim | March 24, 2009

If we were to speak of Corporations as Unions that give their members privileges excluded from others, would it be easier to make the same types of criticisms of corporations that we commonly hear of unions: that they are inefficient, lazy, corrupt? Does anyone at this point in the downturn doubt that? Well do you think of Andrew Carnegie or do you think of The Carnegie Steel Company; do you think of Bill Gates or of  Microsoft; Hank Rearden or of Rearden Metal; or more likely, CEO and the CEO’s (you fill in the blank)’s company? I fear we think of individuals, the Entrepreneur ,and the elephant in the room is all but invisible to us.

Maybe you’re reading this now “on Company Time.” Do you ever think of relatives or friends working without the privileges of a 401k, or Flexible Spending Account, or health insurance. I know those perks don’t seem so wonderful at the moment, but consider the alternative. And when our 401k seemed only to be going up, did we ever consider that we may have been seduced? Safe in the company fiefdom while our officers ran amok? 

Today the Supreme Court will hear a case involving Citizens United’s challenge to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. Citizens United made a movie it calls Hillary: The Movie (as in Hillary Clinton. “Citizens” wanted to distribute it during the 2008 presidential primary campaign) NPR reports Ted Olson, who as solicitor general in the Bush administration, the representative for Citizens United, openly  wonders:

“What is the matter with corporations? Are they inherently evil? Corporations — just as much as individuals — are entitled to protection under the First Amendment,”…

Olson says, reacting to the idea that Citizens United must identify itself and its funders during viewings:

“The Federalist Papers, which some people would call political propaganda — those were written under assumed names,” Olson says. “People are entitled in this country to put out their views without having to disclose whose views it is.”

Citizen’s United is “Dedicated to restoring our government to citizen control.” How do they define “citizen?” I really want to know. Meanwhile, historians are searching for the corporation responsible for writing the Federalist Papers.

Where’s the Libertarian outrage? Where’s our bonus? Fight the expansion of corporate rights.

Category: Utopian Economics | No Comments »
Tags: advocacy, Citizens United, corporate rights, The Corporation

posted by jim | March 23, 2009

 

I could live on basil, olive oil, and a few beans or nuts. Basil loves sun and heat. I once grew a mess of it in the South facing window of an office building. I grew it year round long after my plants outdoors had died off. Basil is tough: it’s easy to transplant. Keep moving it to larger pots and rich soil (composted soil works well) or  plant in your garden. When you want some, cut  the top off where you see two nodes growing from its base. Like the hydra the plant will grow two new heads. If you don’t need to eat your cuttings, put them in some water inside and in about 10-14 days they will start too root. You can plant them in small pots and start the process all over. Repeat. Share. Feed your neighborhood. Basil is truly a Utopian plant.

Pests are few. I’ve had Japanese Beetles and Leaf Hoppers munch on my basil occasionally but they are thwarted by covering them with permeable (to sun and rain) row covers.

Category: DIY Food, Food | No Comments »
Tags: basil, DIY Food, Food, gardening, herbs

posted by jim | March 19, 2009

LOS ANGELES – (Business Wire) Filmmakers Barry and Felicia Ptolemy (Ptolemaic Productions) along with partners (Therapy Studios) make their festival debut at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival (April 22-May 3, 2009) with TRANSCENDENT MAN, which makes its world premiere in the World Documentary Feature Competition on April 25. No distributor is attached at this time. See below for premiere screening details.

via TRANSCENDENT MAN Premieres at 2009 Tribeca Film Festival.

Not since Bucky Fuller has anyone so thoroughly developed a High-Tech vision of Utopia as Ray Kurzweil. Human beings merged with their technology (think that 20-something with the Blue tooth on her ear finds it hard to believe?) able to share thoughts and lives (c’mon you’re already on Facebook and Blogging, right) and live without dying (he is a Baby Boomer, after all). Ray Kurzweil needs to be taken seriously because of his pedigree. On Utopian Economics I hope to cover many different viewpoints: High Tech to Low Tech (to almost No Tech). I think we’ll all be better for the dialogue.

(more…)

Category: Utopian Economics | 1 Comment »
Tags: accelerating returns, Ray Kurzweil, singularity, technological singularity, transcendent man, transhumanism, Utopian Economics

posted by jim | March 17, 2009

I love cardboard. I’ve been working with kids lately to make wearable turtle and snail shells, and play houses from the stuff. It seems infinitely adaptable and strong. I’ve been mulling over design ideas in my mind for outdoor furniture as I’ve been doing the class and pulling loads of interesting pieces from dumpsters. Then I saw this post on Treehugger (take a look because they have multiple posts on cardboard products).

“The real DIY work begins @ Instructibles where Eric Guiomare describes how it can be done. You can get a quick look at him put together a piece below. You can buy a DVD to build your own cardboard furniture “from start to finish” @ Vine Street Works for about $35.

Treehugger originally found this @ Ponoko Blog

 

Category: Household DIY, Shelter & Household | No Comments »
Tags: cardboard, DIY furniture, DIY household, downloadable, furniture, recycled

posted by jim | March 6, 2009

Car sharing is not exactly what it sounds like. You are really renting a car, but with none of the hassles of going to an office and getting hassled about extra insurance that you probably don’t need.
About 75% of North Americans live in cities. Many of them simply don’t drive enough to justify the expense and hassles of owning a car – yet can’t give up the freedom of driving a car when they want to claims Carsharing.net, a a non-profit educational and promotional site, supporting the Car Sharing Industry in North America. Carsharing.net has an extensive list of car sharing programs around the world.

zipcar allows you to reserve a car online or by phone, go to the car (usually parked at convenient places such as metro or subway stations, unlock the car with the wave of their member card (looks like a credit card), and drive. You don’t worry about gassing, you don’t need auto insurance, just a valid driver’s license—it’s that easy.zipcar has locations in 14 cities. Your membership works in all zipcar cities. Zip in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, London, New York, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Portland, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver and Washington, DC.
 
 Hertz Connect currently offers car sharing in New York City, London, and Paris.

Category: Automobiles, Autos-Off the Shelf, Transportation | No Comments »
Tags: Automobiles, Autos-Off the Shelf, car sharing, Transportation