Scientific American recently ran An Earth Without People, an article about just how fragile and maintenance intensive our infrastructure is. Larger images from the article can be found at mondolithic, and other interesting visualizations are out there.

There was an interesting piece on the Brian Lehrer Show this morning about No Impact Man, a guy and his family ("10 legs and a tail") who live in Manhattan and are trying to live the next year with no net impact. There is also an interesting piece in the New York Times about him. There's a bit of the "Super Size Me" self-promotional aspect to the whole thing, but it's obviously a worthwhile message.

A few examples of difficult it is:

electricity (my computers!): bad
biking: good
fruit from South America: bad
locally-grown food: good
trash (take out containers): bad
shitting in a bucket: good
etc.

I'm most interested in it as a guide to some useful ways I can reduce my own impact. Particularly, in buying locally grown food. I've been pushing a lot in my house recently to reduce the amount of trash that we generate, which I think is way too much as it is. I'm willing to allow myself some luxuries, if I can manage to reduce my consumption considerably.

Anyway, it's a interesting read, with lots of good food for thought.

I've been following this story in New Orleans of a doctor and some nurses accussed of "murdering" patients in the chaos following Katrine.

It seems pretty clear to me, at least from the NYTimes article, that she was doing her best to act responsibly and as morally as possible under incredibly extreme circumstances. Yet the attorney general of Louisiana is bent on prosecuting her for murder. Nevermind that all of the patients would have died anyway, just more painfully and slowly, as the US government essentially left them there to die in a sweltering sesspool.

This is happening at the same time as Bush's veto of a bill to fund stem cell research (note: this in the first veto in Bush's entire career, the longest a president has gone without a veto since Thomas Jefferson in 1801). In a speech Bush gave yesterday, surrounded by dozens of white babies, Bush said that the bill, which would "kill" things that aren't actually alive, violates his "principles on the sanctity of human life". Meanwhile, we wage war in Iraq killing thousands of Iraq's, and fully support Isreal's slaughter of Lebanese.

"Culture of life" my ass.

well, the universe begs to differ. actually, the universe doesn't beg or differ. the universe couldn't possibly care any less about you and your problems. or all of humanity for that matter. or all of the life on this pathetic little ball of rock floating through this vast emptiness of nowhere. in fact, if the universe did care, which it doesn't, this is probably what it would say. but the universe will probably just say it anyway, because it can.

I just read interesting article by George Monbiot after being spurred to check out his web site from an article my dad sent me.

The linked piece talks about his perception of the relationship between car-driving and libertarianism in the UK, and some of the inherent contradictions and conflicts that come from them.

While i'm not really a big fan of the speed cameras that Monbiot seems to support, i do recognize them as some kind of counterbalance to some of the uglier forms of road rage and other socially-destructive habits encouraged by the private automobile. My biggest qualms with speed cameras and the like are related to situations where the society has basically forced driving on nearly everyone (e.g. roads and low population density, but no public transport, like many places in the US), and then uses the fact that you are in a private vehicle as a tool for selective (read: discriminatory) law enforcement.

This month's American Scientist has a neat, short article about the Archer Fish, a species of fish that gets its food (flying or crawling bugs) by spitting watter at them and knocking them down. This appears to be done by visually tracking their prey, even across the refractive air-water boundary.

A friend just sent me a link to an article about using the socratic method to teach third-graders binary math. It's a pretty fun read, and neat to see the kids in the article pick up 1's and 0's.

The author, Richard Garlikov, also has more thoughts about the socratic method, its usefulness in teaching, and how much work it actually is to get right. He also has a number of other interesting philosophy/politics/education/math/science articles, written in a fairly dry, geeky tone.

In doing research for a museum exhibition on the First Nations of Canada, I've been reading the treaties signed between them and European settlers over the centuries. The legacy of treachery and disregard is terrible, as we know. I wanted to share the following text, which I found heartbreaking. Wish we had even an OUNCE of the same spirit today.

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According to Iroquois oral tradition, a belt consisting of two rows of coloured wampum recorded a treaty between the Mohawk and Dutch colonists in 1613, as well as subsequent agreements concluded with the French and the British. A description of the Two Row Wampum, symbolizing peace and friendship, appeared in Indian Self-Government in Canada, the report of a special parliamentary committee. It read, in part:

I've seen a couple of references recently to the beautiful mathematical/scientific art of Bathsheba Grossman. Very impressive stuff that is almost entirely enabled by technology. She uses computers, laser etching, 3D printing, and maybe most interestingly, direct-metal printing, which is something I had not been familiar with. It's really nice how she gives detailed explanations of how she makes the pieces.

Some of you may remember a couple of years back, when Massachusettes was the first state to attempt to legalize gay marriage, there was a big rally in Cambridge where the first marriage licenses where being given out at midnight. There was also a bunch of insane protestors from Kansas. Well, I guess they're still at it, only this time they are protesting at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq. I guess they claim that god hates and is punishing the US (by killing soldiers, among others) because the US condones homosexuality. This time, however, politicians are getting outraged, saying it's disrespectful and trying to ban protests at funerals.

Granted these people are batshit insane, but it seems funny to me that it's not so disrespectful when they're just going around the country publicly preaching death to gays, but when it's at a funeral, of a soldier no less, then it's crossed a line. Maybe we should start by making it a priority to respect the living, then worry about respecting the dead.