Author: synthum molyart

body surfing somatics cognition moshido praxis matrix

Paolo Soleri honored this weekend in San Fran.! Digital Be-In & EcoCity conf.

After 40+ years San Francisco seems to be the first city on the Planet Earth/Gaia to get a clue about Soleri's work and ideas! Bucky Fuller mentions somewhere that on average it takes 50+ years for an Innovation to really catch on….so  10 more years to go!  Stewart Brand featured Soleri way back in the Fall of 1968 in the  Whole Earth Catalog! Arthur C. Clarke in his farewell video last Dec., 2007, said that it only took 25+ years for 1/2 of Humanity to get cell phones! That's over 3+ billion people!  A video last month showed the first cell phone being used 35+ years ago….    The Digital Be-In is pleased to be honoring urban designer  Paolo Soleri,who is appearing at the  Ecocity World Summit  in San Francisco, with a special presentation on his major contributions to the sustainable city movement.  

http://www.be-in.com/

     and today at 5 PM

5:00pm

Short Break

 http://www.ecocityworldsummit.org/program.htm

 See one of Soleri's earliest Arcologies, Asteromo! One of the first space colonies ever designed, circa 1969?!  fromhttp://pruned.blogspot.com/2006/02/asteromo.html

 

 

Michael Horowitz's Basel Talk!

 

Fri, 11 April 2008

Psychonautica031

This episode of psychonautica contains a talk by Michael Horowitz, from the recent World Psychedelic forum in Basel Switzerland. The title of the talk is 'The revolving doors of perception: deconstructing the myths and ambiguities of the psychedelic zeitgeist', Michael Horowitz talks about mythic events in Western history since the discovery of LSD 65 years ago.  

http://dopecast.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=327293

 Quick download link    see also MaxFreakOut link to talks  http://www.thegrowreport.com/Forums/forumdisplay.php?f=39

 

 

WARK! a UCLA 22 April 12:30 PM talk followUP^!

Ken Wark gave a mind-blowin' talk yesterday at UCLA!  Hopefullly, video/audio should be available from D!MA archives. A Wonderful flow of jargon, tags, andnew categories!  Someday we will have tags here on our WordPress app! Wark mentioned WordPress more than once.See a piece here from his new book due out laterfrom Sit  

Game

Sunday, April 13
The Guy Debord that is best known is the one who is the author of The Society of the Spectacle, but in many ways it is not quite a representative text. Lately there has also been a revival of Debord the film maker, but here I want to think about Debord is a slightly different light. So I will discuss not so much his writing or his films, and still less his biography, but a game. Beside being a writer, a film maker, an editor, and a first rate professional of no profession, he was also, of all things, a game designer.http://totality.tv/2008/4/13/game  

MACKENZIE WARK, GAMER THEORY

THEORY PROFESSOR CANDIDATE

 

April 22, 2008, 12:30 pm       »  

McKenzie Wark is the author of Gamer Theory (Harvard UP), A Hacker Manifesto (Harvard UP), and various other things.

http://www.dma.ucla.edu/events/calendar.php?ID=536

 

 

 

NYTimes covers "New Survivalism" in "Fashion & Style" section?

media trying to induce some kind of panic?  Steve Quayle on  CoastToCoastAm radio  is in extreme panic mode….The more Gloom & Doom is promoted the more unlikely it can ever happen. Predicting the future has a dismal success record!  

April 6, 2008

Duck and Cover: It's the New Survivalism

By  ALEX WILLIAMS

 

THE traditional face of survivalism is that of a shaggy loner in camouflage, holed up in a cabin in the wilderness and surrounded by cases of canned goods and ammunition.

It is not that of Barton M. Biggs, the former chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley. Yet in Mr. Biggs's new book, "Wealth, War and Wisdom," he says people should "assume the possibility of a breakdown of the civilized infrastructure."

"Your safe haven must be self-sufficient and capable of growing some kind of food," Mr. Biggs writes. "It should be well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc. Think Swiss Family Robinson. Even in America and Europe there could be moments of riot and rebellion when law and order temporarily completely breaks down."

more here  

 

Peak water developments….Our water footprints; see old Water Shed idea

How much Virtual Water is in your shirt?

Virtual Water  is a measure of all the water it takes to make the products you use.  Waterfootprint.orgcalculates that a new cotton shirt uses 2,700 liters. That's a tally of the water evaporated in irrigating and growing the cotton, and the water needed to wash away the fertilizers and dilute the chemicals used in the manufacturing process. With worldwide water shortages  set to become a major humanitarian crisis  this century, water waste is a serious new sin.  Read More"¦

http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/

Keep the InterNETS Free! Stanford FCC event for Net Neutrality

online liveJoin the conversation at the Free Press Action Network where we'll be live blogging during the hearing. We'll be discussing the hearing, current Internet policies, and what we can do to protect Internet freedom for the future.Live Chat During the FCC HearingDATE: Thursday, April 17TIME: 3- 10 p.m. ET / 12-7 p.m. PTLOCATION:  www.freepress.net/actionIn recent months, Comcast, AT&T and Verizon have been caught blocking, filtering and spying on your Internet activities. This event is one of our best chances to tell Washington policymakers that the Internet must remain open.  http://www.smartmobs.com/2008/04/16/tune-in-online-to-fcc-hearing-on-future-of-the-internet/

 

       okAn  FCC hearing  schedule for Thursday at Stanford University will focus on whether ISPs can shape, filter and even block content that travels over their networks. (The public –more than 1.5 million  of whom have spoken out against such violations – has a rare opportunity to testify before the commission during the hearing.)http://savetheinternet.com/=stanford  

IRC interview with Douglas Rushkoff, Tuesday, April 15th, 8PM ET

media maven out of NYC    Join us tomorrow at 8PM Eastern as we hold a live discussion with author, teacher, and documentarian  Douglas Rushkoff  in the #boingboing IRC channel, to talk about some of the work he's doing to move his studies in a "'new' direction," to focus less on the tech/media sphere and towards the nature of money and corporatism  

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/04/14/irc-interview-with-d.html

 tags go along here?  

Intensive crop culture for high population is unsustainable by Peter Salonius

from Culture Change.org


Intensive crop culture for high population is unsustainable Print
Written by Peter Salonius
Editor's note: The following essay by soil scientist Peter Salonius is Part One of his two-part series for Culture Change that bursts the delusion of agriculture's providing for a large human population long-term. If after reading it you have doubt, read the scientific basis for it: the second part in the series, "Unsustainable soil mining, past, present and future." (A version of the second part was published in the May/June,2007 issue of The Forestry Chronicle.) The author lives in New Brunswick, and he published in Culture Change in 2003 "Energy tax made easy: Modifying human excess with international non-renewable energy taxation" (see link at bottom). – JL

I am convinced that we begin unsustainable resource depletion (overshoot) as soon as we use (and become dependent upon) the first unit of any non-renewable resource or renewable resource used unsustainably whose further use becomes essential to the functioning of society, such as:

THE FIRST TONNE OF COAL
THE FIRST LITRE OF OIL
THE FIRST KILOGRAM OF FISSIONABLE URANIUM
THE FIRST BARREL OF FOSSIL WATER FOR IRRIGATION — and
THE FIRST HECTARE OF FORMERLY NUTRIENT CONSERVATIVE NATIVE FOREST or GRASSLAND/PRAIRIE PLOWED

This last category of unsustainable renewable resource depletion (excessive leaching/export of plant nutrients from arable soils associated with most agricultural practice, and more recently also with harvesting of nutrient-rich forest biomass) has been looming over us, unseen, for 10,000 years. We can expect that it will catch up with us shortly because most of us are dependent on foodstuffs produced by unsustainable farming, and fiber produced by unsustainable forestry.

http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=154&Itemid=1

Unsustainable soil mining: past, present and future Print
Written by Peter Salonius
[This is Part Two of Peter Salonius's two-part series. The first part, "Intensive crop culture for high population is unsustainable", can be viewed by using the link at bottom.] ABSTRACTHuman settlement has increased food production by progressively converting complex, self-managing natural ecosystems with tight nutrient cycles into simplified, intensively managed agricultural ecosystems that are subject to nutrient leaching. (Most agriculture is unsustainable in the long term.)

Conventional stem wood forest harvesting is now poised to be replaced by intensive harvesting of biomass to substitute for increasingly scarce non-renewable fossil fuels. Removal of nutrient-rich forest biomass (harvesting of slash) can not be sustained in the long term.

[Key Words: soil nutrient depletion, biomass harvesting, site productivity]

Introduction

A general discussion of the concept of sustainability was presented by Gatto (1995), who suggested that notions of sustainability "reflect different priorities and optimization criteria, which are notoriously subjective"; however, the goal of maintaining soil-productive capacity is not a subjective notion. In this paper I will show that long term sustainable terrestrial carrying capacity depends on the maintenance of self-managing, nutrient-conservative plant communities.

The dynamic cyclical stability of complex ecosystems has been shown, for most animal populations, to depend on the ability of predators to dampen overshoot and runaway consumption dynamics of prey species (Rooney et al, 2006).

http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=155&Itemid=1

Culture Change mailing address: P.O. Box 4347, Arcata , California 95518 USA, Telephone 1-215-243-3144 (and fax).

Culture Change was founded by Sustainable Energy Institute (formerly Fossil Fuels Policy Action), a nonprofit organization.

 

Six Degrees of Separation/Connection may be in trouble. Why can't 6/degrees find Osama bin laden?

Six Degrees has problems

ScienceFriday.com's version

Chances are you've heard of the 'small world' idea of six degrees of separation. But is it correct?

The idea traces back to an experiment begun in 1967 by Stanley Milgram, in which he tried to trace how many acquaintances it would take to pass a letter between two randomly selected people. The result that entered the public consciousness was that in general it took six steps or fewer to bridge the gap between any two people. But is that result accurate? Judith Kleinfeld,

http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200801256

tags, 6 degrees, Kevin Bacon Effect, six degrees, Milgram,

"your papers, please!", Air travelers to need permission to travel TSA

from

—
Edward Hasbrouck
<edward@hasbrouck.org>
<http://hasbrouck.org>


The deadline for public comments on the USA Transportation Security
Administration's proposed rules to make would-be travellers obtain
individualized prior permission for all journeys by air to, from,
overflying, or even *within* the USA is this Monday, 22 October 2007.

If you have a chance before 5 p.m. Washington time on Monday, I urge
you to go to http://www.regulations.gov and tell the TSA what you
think of their scheme. You don't have to be a citizen of the USA to
submit comments, and you can even do so anonymously. The docket
number is TSA-2007-28572, and there are more details at:

http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001286.html

latest " 'Net Neutrality" outrage by Tel-Co's: How Comcast blocks your Internet traffic

from http://machinist.salon.com/

How Comcast blocks your Internet traffic

The broadband company's audacious scheme to interrupt your data proves why network neutrality rules are crucial.

By Farhad Manjoo

Oct. 19, 2007 |

Bless the Associated Press for unearthing, through careful and diligent investigation, Comcast's shameful, hidden Internet traffic-management scheme.

Comcast, the AP determined, actively manages data on its network by using software to essentially masquerade as its subscribers' machines. When non-Comcast Internet subscribers request files from your Comcast-connected machine — as happens in peer-to-peer file-sharing applications — Comcast's technology steps in and tells the non-Comcast subscriber you're not available.

This is a difficult story to explain, but it's quite important. For years, consumer advocates have been demanding that Congress and/or the Federal Communications Commission impose "network neutrality" regulations that would force broadband providers (like Comcast) to treat all data on a network equally. Lawmakers have so far failed to do so.

Broadband providers, meanwhile, insist that they do treat all traffic equally, but they reserve the right to use certain technologies to "manage" data on their network. The Comcast plan suggests that broadband providers mean something very broad by "traffic management" — including, it appears, purposefully stepping into your network sessions to shut them down.

To understand why this whole process is so egregious, let's look at it in FAQ format.

What is Comcast doing, and why?

google? Doyle? Ecodelics psychedelics psybernetics autopoiesis? lsd?

from Rose Rose on realitysandwich

Google is the first psychedelically informed superpower to shape the noosphere and NASDAQ. I don't mean that Googlers (necessarily) are all seasoned psychonauts, or (necessarily) take 4:20 breaks on-campus, or are well represented (necessarily) at Burning Man. Nor am I saying that psychedelics "caused" Google, any more than a Stanford education did. I do mean that the core mission comes right out of the psychedelic atlas: a vision of super-connectivity and super-conductivity that is a hallmark of the psychedelic landscape. An exceptional treatment of this theme is Rich Doyle's book Ecodelic!, forthcoming from the University of Washington Press in 2008. Every search returns a new (always new because always shifting and adding and growing) set of filaments connecting the searcher's quest to their potential grail. Every quest or re-quest weaves the mycelial mat of connections more densely: among people, data, images, jokes, video, ads, text messages, music, maps, and cultural artifacts of every communicable variety.

http://www.realitysandwich.com/google_and_myceliation_consciousness

Haber-Bosch process has often been called the most important invention of the 20th century

this ties in with the earlier post on Peak Phosphorus

from Juergen Schmidhuber's site

Since age 15 or so Prof. Jürgen Schmidhuber's main scientific ambition has been to build an optimal scientist, then retire. In 2028 they will force him to retire anyway. By then he shall be able to buy hardware providing more raw computing power than his brain

Their Haber-Bosch process has often been called the most important invention of the 20th century (e.g., V. Smil, Nature, July 29 1999, p 415) as it "detonated the population explosion," driving the world's population from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 6 billion in 2000.

Haber-Bosch process:

Under high temperatures and very high pressures, hydrogen and nitrogen (from thin air) are combined to produce ammonia.

Nearly one century after its invention, the process is still applied all over the world to produce 500 million tons of artificial fertilizer per year. 1% of the world's energy supply is used for it (Science 297(1654), Sep 2002); it still sustains roughly 40% of the population (M. D. Fryzuk, Nature 427, p 498, 5 Feb 2004).

http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/worldpopgrowth1.jpg

http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/

tags needed