And then.....

there is a false nostalgia for primitive agriculture, based on limited transportation and the arduous conversion of raw materials into comestible commodities. Rarely is it admitted, much less emphasized, that cheap, quick food — including its embodiment through our sometimes obnoxious agribusiness corporations — is the single most important advance in human history.

- Writer Tyler Cowen on GMO food and the locavore movement. (via climateadaptation)

Reblogged 1 year ago from emergentfutures

44 notes

stoweboyd:

click the magnifier to expand

Almost unexplained in the @Work State Of Mind report (via Forbes Insights/Gyro) is this powerful infographic, which is going to require some noodling. For example, what do the authors intend by ‘cause’ in the upper left hand, at the intersection of Personal Point Of View and Organizational Psychology? Is it cause, as in a just cause? It seems to be that it must.

This diagram was dangling almost as an appendix, with this as a caption:

This framework depicts the individual in the middle of the whole @Work State of Mind. The highlighted area in lower left is where most business marketing activities have been focused historically.

Reblogged 1 year ago from emergentfutures

26 notes

When they look back at this era, Internet historians will mark Facebook’s Instagram acquisition as the symbolic moment when the Great Shift was confirmed. Significantly, it also came soon after Steve Jobs’ death. The device that Jobs created had, within the space of five years, allowed a 551-day-old company with 14 employees to become worth $1 billion. On April 9, 2012, Web 2.0 lost its mantle as the most important Internet paradigm. We are now starting the Age of Mobile.

- Hamish McKenzie, Web 2.0 Is Over, All Hail the Age of Mobile (via courtenaybird)

Reblogged 1 year ago from emergentfutures

87 notes

Things that matter…

Over the past year I have lost two relatives, both to horrible illnesses. My Dad is preparing to undergo treatment for liver disease, which will be very difficult for him and us as a family. Through this, I realize very few things “matter”.

Things that do not matter:

Parking tickets
Traffic
That your college jeans don’t fit
A bad hair day
Fights with your significant (or not-so significant) other(s)
That your boss is kind of a dick sometimes
People you don’t like/enjoy/respect very much

Things that matter:

Hugging the people you love and meaning it
Telling the people you love you love them
Taking care of your health
Smiling and laughing whenever you can
Spending time with those that are special to you, even if it means doing nothing much more than sharing space and small talk

I know this is all very “Hallmark Special”, but today I thought about something I wanted to tell my Aunt the next time I saw her, and realized she is no longer here and I saw pictures of my cousin and realized he is no longer here, either.

Posted 1 year ago

did-you-kno:

Source

Hooray!

Reblogged 1 year ago from did-you-kno

3,448 notes

scinerd:

How Humans Became Social

Look around and it’s impossible to miss the importance of social interactions to human society. They form the basis of our families, our governments, and even our global economy. But how did we become social in the first place? Researchers have long believed that it was a gradual process, evolving from couples to clans to larger communities. A new analysis, however, indicates that primate societies expanded in a burst, most likely because there was safety in numbers.

To the researchers’ surprise, the most sensible solution suggested that the solitary ancestor started banding together not in pairs, as scientists had thought, but as loose groups of both sexes, as the team reports online today in Nature. Given the modern distribution of social organizations, the most likely time for this shift was around 52 million years ago, when the ancestors of monkeys and apes split off from the ancestors of lemurs and other prosimian primates.

interesting

Reblogged 1 year ago from emergentfutures

1,099 notes

To Do’s for 2012

Ride dirt bike is Desert 100 event (so, yeah, it will be the poker run, but I am doing it anyway, and I think it counts)
Climb at Frenchman’s Coulee
Be in the mountains as much as possible, whenever possible
Get ticket to SIFF Secret Sunday Film series
Cook something on the grill that does not end up jerky-like, including vegetarian items
LA trip to see photography exhibit(s)
Continue to have every intention to finish Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, yet not do so. Again. 20th year in a row.
Continue to avoid roller coasters (even the kiddie one’s, Shelly Gramza)
Ski this winter, even if I can only make it to the pass
Look amazing in a swimsuit by Seafair
(It’s my list, and I decide I get to to go to 11). Probably, plan an event for my birthday if my sister of Shelly Gramza push me hard enough to do so.

Posted 1 year ago

So Kim Kardashian is getting a divorce, 72 days after a wedding that is variously reported to have cost $10 million or more. Just to put that in perspective, that sum could have built 200 schools in poor countries around the world for kids who desperately want an education. Then Kardashian could have helped transform the world, not just entertain it. And the schools would have lasted incomparably longer than her marriage.

- Nicholas Kristof (via northamericanscum)

(Source: witheredroots)

Reblogged 1 year ago from pandarican

1,216 notes

futuramb:

stoweboyd:

arig:

A Virtual Keyboard for iPad & iPhone

We live in the future. No, seriously, we do. This laser virtual keyboard ($170) is proof of it. It syncs with your iPad or iPhone over bluetooth so that you can type on any surface. Check out the video of it in action.

You can even choose to have simulated keyboard sounds, just in case silent typing isn’t your thing. Can you imagine full school classes or workplaces where everyone is typing on lasers? So crazy. The size of the cube laser device is just a bit larger than a matchbook and the battery lasts for 2.5 hrs.

(via brit)

I remember seeing this in the NYT years ago. So cool.

This might make the iPad usable for me. Note the up and down keys, missing on the iPad screen keyboard, making it impossible to use Tumblr in Safari. I will have to try.

I agree, even if the touch interface is excellent for some things, it is still difficult to manage without arrow keys…

Check it!

(Source: brit)

Reblogged 1 year ago from emergentfutures

1,084 notes

Rest in Peace

We say this when someone passes. Tonight I mean it.

My family lost someone who may have craved that “rest”. He fought a courageous and long battle with a terrible illness. I do not know what life was like for him, but I am sure it was difficult, confusing, and at times very painful.

He seemed to love his family and friends very much and took great joy in them, and they in him. I did not spend much time with him since his family lived abroad for most of respective childhoods, but I love them as if we grew up in the same town. My family is like that.

I was able to spend time with my Aunt, his mother, on a vacation a few years ago and we spent a lot of it talking about her kids. I felt much closer to her and her children after that trip so I made sure to keep tabs on them even if we did not see each other as much as we wanted to. He was always on my mind since I knew he faced a hard road. At one point he lived very close to me, but we did not connect. I regret that now.

Of all of the times I have used the words, “Rest in Peace”, I have never meant it as much as I do now.

Posted 1 year ago

Amber Cole: I Am Amber Cole’s Father(via @Jezebel)

I am Amber Cole’s father. I am angry, confused and completely at a loss. I love my daughter. I want to guide her without suppressing her. That is not always easy. Children need protection from their worst inclinations.

(Source: jezebel.com)

Posted 1 year ago

Valleywag: Steve Jobs Called Fox News a 'Destructive Force in Our Society'(via @Gawker)

Rupert Murdoch must have imagined Steve Jobs would be a feisty dinner guest. Even still, the News Corp. chairman couldn’t have foreseen that, in one night at the mogul’s Carmel, California ranch, Jobs would call his tech people incompetent, get a guy fired, and say that Fox News was literally…

Posted 1 year ago

<Yawn>

My goodness, I am at a level of tiredness that is quite significant. I think I was too active the last few days and did not let my body heal itself with rest. Sleep probably won’t be a problem tonight since my pain level is very minor and I have stopped taking pain pills. I spent most of the day in bed, and when I went out the couch I feel asleep.

Tomorrow I have a friend coming over to visit. While I can be alone quite easily, I do enjoy having someone here. My friend, Heather, spent a few nights here after my surgery and it was nice to have her in the other room. We didn’t talk much, and each did our own things (I slept; she worked on lighting and sound cues for a Romeo and Juliet Ballet).

I love having people over in my new place. It is comfortable and I hope other’s view it as a place to feel welcome and relax. I think with my visitor tomorrow and sound night sleep, I will perk up.

This is also the first night I won’t have to sleep propped up at 45 degree angle, so that will be nice.

Posted 1 year ago

Ecosystems outlast organisms.

-

- Seth Godin, Cities don’t die (but corporations do)

Cities do die, actually, but very slowly. Usually cities decline when there is a cultural collapse, or when the cost of rebuilding aged infrastructure is more expensive than migrating.

However, Seth’s real point is that cities are more resilient than companies. And this is true because companies select people that fit in and reject those that don’t. Cities work the opposite way: people elect to live in specific cities, and they do so for their own reasons. They make the city fit their needs, and they become part of a myriad of semi-independent social scenes.

Cities are connectives, with people headed in many directions, loosely cooperating — obeying the traffic rules, and paying taxes — while companies are collectives, where people must subordinate themselves to a strategy and the strong ties of an organization. Cities are more resilient, flexible, and cheaper to operate than companies. Cities are superlinear and companies are sublinear.

And, as a result, the larger cities get, the more productive they become, the more responsive and adaptable they become: which is the opposite of companies, which become slower, less adaptable, and less productive (per capita) as they become larger.

(via stoweboyd)

Reblogged 1 year ago from emergentfutures

54 notes

cannabiiscuit: