Timelapse Films Of Environmental Degradation

Have you ever wonderful just how much the area that you live in has grown over the last three decades?

Time Magazine's website has published a searchable database showing what has happened to the Earth as populations, and the inevitable development they create, have exploded over that time period.

These are Landsat satellite images that have been assembled into three second animations. There are eight examples offered, but you can pop a location into the search box, bring up any area on Earth that you choose and see what's happened between 1984 and now.

The Sketchbook Project

As their website says, "The Sketchbook Project is a global, crowd-sourced art project and interactive, traveling exhibition of handmade books." It is made up of over 26,000 sketchbooks and is located at the Brooklyn Art Library in Brooklyn, NYC.

They also operate a traveling library that tours the country. Anyone, anywhere can participate by submitting a sketchbook for inclusion in the library and your work will see at least three cities on a tour.

Here's a short video they've produced. Traveling art. What a great idea.

Travel Photo of the Week

Keawakapu Beach, Kihei, Hawaii - Charles Laquidara

Note: Mr. Laquidara also has the distinction of being one of Boston, Massachusetts most beloved disc jockeys, helming a morning show, The Big Mattress, on the legendary WBCN from 1969 to 1996. I once had the honor of being on his show and providing sound effects for one his many zany flights of fancy.  Thanks Charles. We all had a great time.

The Infinite Resource: The Power Of Ideas On A Finite Planet

"The world is facing incredibly serious natural resource and environmental challenges: Climate change, fresh water depletion, ocean over-fishing, deforestation, air and water pollution, the struggle to feed a planet of billions."

So begins a two-part guest blog post from Ramez Naam, on Scientific American's website, challenging conventional views on the limits of the carrying capacity of the Earth.

His new book The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet, addresses the five basic problems that we face if the human race is to continue living successfully on the planet.

Part one outlines them as: feeding the world, deforestation, fresh water, ocean overfishing and climate change. Part two offers a plan to deal with each.

In her seminal work, Patterns of Culture, the great cultural anthropologist Ruth Benedict wrote that no civilization had ever woken up and realized that they could change the laws and rules by which they lived, that they could change the very culture that defined their ideas and behavior. The 1960s proved that idea wrong, but also showed the deep intransigence of any challenged culture. So deep in fact, that the so called culture war is still being fought today. The polarization of American politics is proof of that.

Whether we will fix our problems or they will fix us, as Sherlock Holmes once said, "The game is afoot."

Stewart Brand: The Man Who Changed The World For The Better

I've written before about The Whole Earth Catalog and how it changed my world. It gave me, as the subtitle promised, "access to tools and ideas."

I cannot underestimate how much its creator, Stewart Brand, has enriched my life and changed it and me for the better, through the Catalog and his other projects and ideas. I still have copies of all the editions (except for the first) and I have given many away to friends I thought would benefit from its wisdom.

Now comes support and confirmation from a new generation. Below are some quotes from an article by Carole Cadwalladr in The Guardian.

"Stewart Brand didn't just happen to be around when the personal computer came into being; he's the one who put "personal" and "computer" together in the same sentence and introduced the concept to the world. He wasn't just a member of the world's first open online community, the Well; he co-founded it."

"For nearly five decades, Stewart Brand has been hanging around the cutting edge of whatever is the most cutting thing of the day. Largely because he's discovered it and become fascinated with it long before anyone else has even noticed it but, in retrospect, it does make him seem like the west coast's answer to Zelig, the Woody Allen character who just happens to pop up at key moments in history. Because no one pops up like Stewart Brand pops up, right there, just on the cusp of something momentous."

"He has a sort of genius for being in exactly the right place at exactly the right time."

"It changed the world, says Turner, in much the same way that Google changed the world: it made people visible to each other. And while the computer industry was building systems to link communities of scientists, the Catalog was a 'vernacular technology' that was doing the same thing."

"Stewart was the first one to get it. He was the first person to understand cyberspace. He was the one who coined the term personal computer. And he influenced an entire generation, including an entire generation of technologists."

"No one was more influenced, or inspired by, Stewart Brand, than the founder of Apple. And while many credit Jobs with being one of the most creative agents of change in the late 20th century, Jobs credited Brand."

It's a long article and I could go on and on cherry-picking its passages, but I think it's time you go get inspired yourself.

Thanks to Lloyd Kahn (another person who constantly inspires me and a friend of Brand's) for putting me on to this article.

If Smartphones Are Making Us Less Productive, Why Are Employers Demanding You Bring Your Own?

Here are two articles, that taken together, beg the question: "Are trends in technology adoption making us less productive?"

The first comes from Computer World and it states that soon the company you work for will require you to provide your own smartphone for work. Undoubtedly your boss will also demand unfettered access to its files and other data.

The second comes from the Wall Street Journal and offers evidence that smartphones make you less, not more, productive at work.

I can hear the boss say, "Yes, you must subsidize my wealth by providing your own smartphone for work and if it makes you fail, we'll reward you with termination."

And people think they have to worry about government intrusion in their lives.

Fun Time! Slow Motion Exploding Lego House!

America's Pig Explosion

Although it started in southern states like Texas, there is a feral pig population explosion that has moved into northern states. The New York Times describes them as eating machines that "roam city streets, collide with cars, root up cemeteries, rototill fields, dig up lawns, decimate wetlands, kill livestock, spread diseases like pseudo-rabies, occasionally attack humans" and weigh 200 pounds or more each.

Between 1990 and now, their numbers have risen from 2 million to six million and although they are recognized as the blight that they are, there are no local, regional or national policies to deal with them.

That might be about to change, but that doesn't mean that the hogs aren't going to become the latest political football. If this concerns you, read the linked article for more details.

I say between snakeheads, nutria and the pigs, we could easily take care of some of our hunger problems in this country.

Reducing The Environmental Damage Of Doubling Food Production

This article in Scientific American states that to feed the world's growing, affluent populations, food production must double by 2050. The downside is the ecological destruction that must inevitably follow using current agricultural methods.

To do this we must change the way we farm and the way we eat. A research team from the University of Minnesota has proposed five ways to do this: improve crop yields, consume less meat, reduce food waste, stop expanding into rainforests, and use fertilizer and water more efficiently.

35% of crop yield is consumed by animals we use for food. As the article states: "If the world's top 16 crops were grown only for human food, instead of the current mix that includes animal feed and biofuels, a billion tons more human food would be available—roughly equivalent to three quadrillion kilocalories."

Travel Photo of the Week

Portland, Maine