It’s not news to anyone that Jarred and I were space geeks at an early age. Not too many people I know could start a story with “when I was at Space Camp…” (something we can both say legitimately…I think Jarred went for a decade or something).
But anyway, I went to Space Camp as a 10 year old in 1995 and I distinctly remember seeing these elaborate models and renderings of the eventual International Space Station. Even as a young kid, at the time I thought that these plans seemed a bit TOO big, a bit too overwhelming in scale and in the amount of international cooperation required. It seemed to be a vision of the distant future, much like our simulated flight to Mars (which, if memory serves correctly, ended in disaster).
Well, I’ve been happily wrong since the International Space Station started coming together 10 years ago. These pictures of the station over its lifetime are phenomenal. Do yourself a favor and check out the rest; here’s a tease:
This makes complete sense but is nevertheless a major shift in higher ed IT. Wonder what the cost savings look like (I imagine they’re significant):
Officials at Boston College have made what may be a momentous decision: they’ve stopped doling out new email accounts to incoming students. The officials realized that the students already had established digital identities by the time they entered college, so the new email addresses were just not being utilized. The college will offer forwarding services instead.
Starting next year, freshman enrolled at Boston College won’t be given an actual email account complete with login and inbox, just an email address. This address, in the format of johnsmith@bc.edu will simply forward mail to the student’s already established inbox, be it Gmail, Windows Live Mail, Yahoo Mail, AOL, or whatever else they may be using.
Jason from 37Signals argues that, while completely ugly and elementary, the Drudge Report is actually a well-designed site. For instance:
The Drudge Report is one page. Every visit and every visitor is focused on that one page with a headline and three columns. He knows exactly what people are going to see, he knows exactly how people are going to see it. There’s no mystery page here that hasn’t been redesigned or mystery page there that’s throwing an error. It’s one page to look at at one page to work on. It is what it is. It doesn’t try too hard to be something it’s not.
This NY Times post on bamboo is largely positive, and attributes bamboo criticisms to group funded by the lumber industry. The truth of the matter, from all that I’ve read, should not surprise you: bamboo CAN be environmentally sound compared to traditional building materials or other types of wood; but, with the rise in demand for bamboo, many producers are clearing forests to plant bamboo plantations. Any time you’re clearing a biologically diverse area and replacing it with monoculture, growing the new (desired) plant product is going to require many more resources (water, pesticides, etc) and detract from the environmental services provided by the world’s natural forests.
Matt Yglesias wonders why conservatives don’t link their future to quality of life issues like sprawl, traffic, and lack of public transportation:
[T]o my way of thinking[,] an enormous amount of good could be done if conservatives were more interested in applying really basic free market principles to transportation policy. For example, why not allow developers to build as much or as little parking as they want to build when they launch a new development? [...] How about fewer restrictions on the permitted density of development? Why not reduce congestion on the most-trafficked roads through market pricing of access? It happens to be the case that most of the people who are interested in these issues have liberal views on unrelated political issues, but the specific set of views at hand don’t draw on any deep ideological principles, it’s just application of basic economic thinking to the issues and, as such, is something that should be completely accessible to conservative politicians looking to show that conservative ideas can be relevant to the concerns (environmental concerns, quality of life concerns, economic growth concerns) of a set of people who are disinclined to think of themselves as conservatives.
These HDR images (I’ll admit my complete ignorance when it comes to photography and tell you that I don’t even know what HDR stands for) are stunning.
Setting aside for a second my concerns that (a) this video will cause tens (hundreds? God I hope not) of people to think (unrealistically) that they too could raise a friendly, cuddly, pet lion; and (b) the music contained in this video has no place on this blog, please enjoy the cuteness (thanks Jane):
I came across a great site the other day through advertising on Kottke . Just to be clear, the site is NOT a sponsor of this blog but I’m sharing this link anyway because I think the products and concept are great. 20×200 works on a simple model:
We introduce two new pieces [of art] a week: one photo and one work on paper. Each image is available in three sizes. The smallest size is reprinted in the largest batch – an edition of 200 – and sold at the lowest price – $20. Hence the name 20×200.
They have a lot of great art, and the price is right for young professionals in uncertain economic times (I purchased this piece ). New pieces are posted on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
[B]eing in natural settings restores our ability to exercise directed attention and working memory, which are crucial mental talents. The basic idea is that nature, unlike a city, is filled with inherently interesting stimuli (like a sunset, or an unusual bird) that trigger our involuntary attention, but in a modest fashion. Because you can’t help but stop and notice the reddish orange twilight sky – paying attention to the sunset doesn’t take any extra work or cognitive control – our attentional circuits are able to refresh themselves. A walk in the woods is like a vacation for the prefrontal cortex.
Good magazine looks back at previous presidents’ accomplishments in their first 100 days in office with a cool graphic. All the “first 100 days” talk seems a bit ridiculous to me, but here’s hoping… [Hat Tip: Matt Yglesias]
The Republic of Maldives, sensing an uncertain future with rising sea levels threatening their islands, is allocating a portion of the national budget to purchasing land from neighbors. As you might imagine, there are a number of complex laws at play here, and there’s no real precedent for a nation relocating because its homeland…drowned.
This piece has been making the rounds in my Twitter network. The title is provocative: “Recycling is Bullshit,” and it’s an interesting brief (albeit one dimensional) history of how we wound up emphasizing “recycle” over reduce and reuse (hint: think about which of those three requires the least amount of personal sacrifice…); a few teaser quotes:
Recycling is simply the transfer of producer responsibility for what they produce to the taxpayer who has to pick it up and take it away.
[...] All because Coke and Bud and Coors and the glass companies convinced us that they don’t fit in the circle of producer responsibility, where products are designed to be taken back.
I’ve been using dual monitors at work for a while now (laptop screen and external monitor), but I just stumbled across this old Lifehacker post with great tips for making the most of multiple screens.
Top Chef: The Computer Game is out just in time for this week’s premier. Somebody buy it and let me know what it’s like to “cook” on your screen. Good times.
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