Hey folks.
As you’ve probably noticed, Tropophilia has gotten awfully lame in the past few weeks. Jarred and I have been posting in a trickle, not the steady stream of new material, insightful commentary, and played-out geek jokes you’ve come to expect from this site.
We started Tropophilia in January with the goal of deepening our own knowledge of change in its many forms, and sharing those explorations with anyone who cared to read. 200 posts (this is #200) and close to 7,500 visitors later…I’d say we’re off to a good start.
To be clear this isn’t a “goodbye, cruel world” post announcing that Tropophilia is shutting its virtual doors. To the contrary, we’re simply letting you know what to expect from now on. You see, Jarred and I started with a pace and set of expectations for ourselves that are unsustainable. And when we couldn’t meet our internal goal of two posts a day, we felt guilty. No more. Here’s our promise to you:
- Monday Links delivered every Monday morning…or soon thereafter
- At least two posts per week from Jarred, and two from me
- In addition to Monday Links and our four weekly posts, plenty of Satellite Challenges, Questioning Things posts, and Asides…hell, we might even resurrect the long-forgotten TROPOphy (and even re-name it?)
- Responses to every comment, as quickly as possible
We’re still actively seeking guest bloggers (info here), so please don’t hesitate to put an idea into writing. We also hope to be announcing a new contributor or two soon…but we’ll hold off until that’s a sure thing. In the meantime, we hope you continue to read and subscribe to the site. This started out as a fun endeavor; Jarred and I are pretty confident that we can bring back the fun (and the funk) by scaling back just a tad.
Thanks so much for reading, commenting, linking, and caring. On with the show.
-Taylor
June already? Welcome to summer. A few of these links are old because I’ve been out enjoying the weather…and the North Carolina Wine Festival.
- I’ve been digging the heck out of PolicyMap lately. It’s basically a GIS application for those of us who don’t know how to use real GIS. Which is to say, it’s lots of data over-layed with maps. Demographics, socio-economic data, education levels, Super Fund sites, etc. Fun to play with, and maybe even useful (depending on your line of work).
- The NY Times reports on high schools that are trying to prevent their students from over-scheduling:
[N]early half the students at Briarcliff High School have packed their schedules so full that they do not stop for lunch, prompting administrators to rearrange the schedule next fall to require everyone to take a 20-minute midday break
Wal-Mart’s goal to work with laundry detergent suppliers to shrink the packaging of every liquid laundry detergent product on the shelf is completed. Water has been pulled out of the bottles, and now all of the laundry detergents are compacted by a factor of 2 or 3.
I love this kind of small change with a big impact for two reasons. First, this change is so practical. Though it has been literally years in the making, it is just at first blush a little occurrence until you think about the effort and the impact of a change to all of the detergent bottles that are sold at Wal-Mart shelves across the country. [...]
Second, these changes are great b/c they end up being about more than just Wal-Mart. Because this was done in partnership with the suppliers of detergent focused on efficiency across the entire supply chain, the impact will be seen at the rest of the retail over time too. Soon, every bottle of laundry detergent will be compacted in every store.
- Wired’s Gadget Lab provides a bit of follow-up on the e-book debate that’s familiar on this blog. They point out a fatal flaw in Kindle and other e-readers: the screen, like any cell phone at some point in its life, will probably break:
Books, while more bulky in, well, bulk, are substantially more durable. And being analog, when they break, they’re still readable. Try using your Kindle after you drop it in the bath. With a book, you have a slightly swollen wad of paper, but it’s still serviceable. And if you leave a book on the subway, you have only lost one $10 title, not a $400 gadget.
- Jarred’s Satellite Challenges just got more interesting, because a new plug-in allows Google Earth to be used through a browser (instead of as a separate application).
- Finally, if you’re looking for a good summer dessert: Katherine and I made this Strawberry Tart for a few friends last week and it. was. awesome. Easy to make, too (though lots of whisking).
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