Liberty Park

After reading about Occupy Wall Street for several weeks, I decided that a trip to Liberty Park was in order. I am still processing my thoughts and feelings on what I experienced, but I can say this.

Although their demonstration seems to possess a distinct flavor from those of their European counterparts, the occupiers of Liberty Park should take solace in the fact that their activity is drawing attention to the systemic problems plaguing our global society. While most of us are content to live life from the sidelines, watching, documenting, or critiquing, they are playing an active role in shaping the fate of their environment.

This movement is still inchoate, but regardless of the outcome, they should be proud to know that when the moment came, they possessed the courage to act. Thank you for taking a stand and showing the world that the will to resist is alive and well in the American populace.

Photos

The Greed and Hubris of the Proudest Ape: Addicted to Risk

Canadian author and social activist, Naomi Klein, tries to identify the roots of our collective recklessness:

The assumption that we can safely control the Earth’s awesomely complex climate system as if it had a thermostat is pure fantasy.

If you happen to be a 35-year old banker taking home a hundred times more than a brain surgeon, then you need a narrative, you need a story that makes that disparity O.K.

Constantly being told that you are gifted, chosen and born to rule has distinct societal downsides.

We slapped Mother Nature around and won, and we always win, because dominating nature is our destiny.

The problem is that the story was always a lie. The Earth always did have limits, they were just beyond our sights.

We find ourselves trapped in a kind of narrative loop. Not only do we continue to tell and re-tell the same tired stories, but we are now doing so with a frenzy and a fury that frankly verges on camp.

This is how civilizations commit suicide, by slamming their foot on the accelerator at the exact moment when they should be putting on the brakes.

The result of a world run by overconfident, greedy and irresponsible men, where the good people acquiesce.

Source TED

Coming Home

The Story of Electronics

The Political Chemistry of Oil

The Psychology of Nature

By Jonah Lehrer of Wired:

I sometimes wonder if, when we look back at the mass cognitive mistakes of the 21st century, we’ll worry less about the internet and multitasking – people have been multitasking forever – and instead fret about our turn away from nature. The human species is urbanizing at an unprecedented rate. (In the next century, at least 3 billion people will migrate to cities.) And yet, we’re only beginning to understand how living in dense agglomerations of perfect strangers, surrounded by skyscrapers and concrete, actually effects the brain. This work on ecopsychology is an important start.

Alone

“Man is by nature a social animal….Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.”-Aristotle 328 B.C.

He eats mostly wild game, which he either hunts with his bow-and-arrow or traps in spiked-bottom pitfalls. He grows a few crops around his huts, including corn and manioc, and often collects honey from hives that stingless bees construct in the hollows of tree trunks. Some of the markings he makes on trees have suggested to indigenous experts that he maintains a spiritual life, which they’ve speculated might help him survive the psychological of being, to a certain extent, the last man standing in a world of one.

But how long can his isolation last? I get Facebook updates telling me what people half a world away are eating for breakfast. Corporations and governments are pushing deeper and farther than ever in search of bankable resources. How can it be that no one has flushed this man out already? In 2010, can anyone realistically live off the grid?

Nanotech tea bag creates safe drinking water instantly, for less than a penny

A new “tea bag” uses nano-fibers to suck contaminants and bacteria out of water, providing a desperately-needed, cheap solution for the billions of people without clean drinking water.

Pictures of Oil Spill in Dalian, China

Horrible.

Tech worker testifies of ‘blue screen of death’ on oil rig’s computer

A computer that monitored drilling operations on the Deepwater Horizon had been freezing with a “blue screen of death” prior to the explosion that sank the oil rig last April, the chief electronics technician aboard testified Friday at a federal hearing.

“Blue screen of death,” or BSOD, is a term most often used to describe the display shown by Microsoft Windows after a serious crash that has incapacitated a PC.

In his testimony Friday, Michael Williams, the chief electronics technician aboard the Transocean-owned Deepwater Horizon, said that the rig’s safety alarm had been habitually switched to a bypass mode to avoid waking up the crew with middle-of-the-night warnings.