Off the Top of My Head

secretrepublic: smartercities: What Can Urban Planners Learn...

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 16:59:09 -0500

smartercities:

What Can Urban Planners Learn from SimCity? | StateTech

The newest version of SimCity, the 24-year-old video game that made urban planning cool, is set to arrive in March. The game allows users to build and manage a city, forcing them to make decisions about education, energy, water, sewage and transportation.

This may be a new guilty pleasure soon.

"A 2013 Toyota Prius has an 11.9 gallon fuel tank. The Hess station near my apartment in Brooklyn is..."

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 16:58:05 -0500

“A 2013 Toyota Prius has an 11.9 gallon fuel tank. The Hess station near my apartment in Brooklyn is charging $3.85 for a gallon of regular unleaded which means you’ll drop $48.82 on a fill up from empty to full. The Federal government’s cut: $2.19. Let’s say that instead of charging per gallon, we treat gas like any other commodity and slap New York City’s 8.875% sales tax on the final price. The Federal government’s new take: $4.34. You’re paying an extra $2 when you fill up and the HTF is essentially doubling its current tax intake.”

- Theodore Brown on rethinking the way gasoline is taxed in the US. (via thisbigcity)

Historical Nonfiction: Toponymy

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 16:44:08 -0500

Historical Nonfiction: Toponymy:

historical-nonfiction:

The title means the study of place names, their origins, and their uses. Here are a few interesting ones

Over 1,500 years after they occupied parts of Spain, the Vandals, a Germanic tribe, are still present in name: the region in the south known as Andalusia is merely “Vandalusia” with the…

mothernaturenetwork: Supreme Court to hear soybean farmer’s...

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 16:42:44 -0500

mothernaturenetwork:

Supreme Court to hear soybean farmer’s case against Monsanto

Monsanto charges that Vernon Hugh Bowman used their patented soybean genes without permission.

"20th-century land use won’t help your city attract and retain 21st-century people. It just won’t."

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 16:41:36 -0500

“20th-century land use won’t help your city attract and retain 21st-century people. It just won’t.”

- Kaid Benfield (via secretrepublic)

A Beginner's Guide to Crazy Wisdom

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 16:41:26 -0500

A Beginner's Guide to Crazy Wisdom:

utnereader:

Crazy wisdom is more than a tradition—it’s something you can taste and try. A good place to begin is with The Essential Crazy Wisdom, by Wes “Scoop” Nisker (Ten Speed Press, 2001). It’s a somewhat sketchy history of the crazy wisdom tradition around the world—but its strength lies in its wonderful assemblage of life-changing quotes and stories. Tidbits like “Reality is a wave function traveling backward and forward in time” (physicist John L. Castri), “Only the shallow know themselves” (Oscar Wilde), and “God has no religion” (Mahatma Gandhi) keep your brain nicely off-balance, and Nisker’s Buddhist-tinged skepticism about ultimate issues like God is bracing, even though it gives somewhat short shrift to the devotional side of crazy wisdom.

adventuresinlearning: A powerful quote from Mission Hill K-8...

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 21:07:45 -0500

adventuresinlearning:

A powerful quote from Mission Hill K-8 School founder, Deborah Meier, from episode one of A Year at Mission Hill! #YearatMH

occupyedu: Show your support for the students, Teachers and...

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 18:27:13 -0500

occupyedu:

Show your support for the students, Teachers and Parents boycotting Standardized Tests around the country! Message me your pictures and I will share them on Occupy Education!

YES!!

newyorker: Paris, the “capital of the nineteenth century,” as...

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 18:25:57 -0500

newyorker:

Paris, the “capital of the nineteenth century,” as Walter Benjamin called it, was meant to be painted. Its streetscapes, with their exquisite filigree and ornamental splendor, seem to be art itself, an ethereal creation that’s as wondrous and enduring as nature. The city’s lines and details seem to have been conceived as the very brushstrokes in which they’re captured. The great paintings of Paris keep its industrial vigor on the margins, whereas New York, the capital of the twentieth century, wears its working energy on the outside…

Yet, even if the walls of the Met’s Bellows exhibit weren’t festooned with quotations from the artist attesting to his ambition to fill his canvasses with the raw energies of life and finding them exemplified on the streets of New York, the paintings themselves provide ample proof that the city offered him a unique subject—one with which he wrangled mightily…

Continue reading Richard Brody on George Bellows’s paintings of New York, on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through February 18th: http://nyr.kr/WKIGOn

utnereader: “When you think of 1950s Atomic Age design, a...

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:22:43 -0500

utnereader:

“When you think of 1950s Atomic Age design, a handful of images probably pop into your mind: The Ball Clock. The Marshmallow Sofa. The Sunburst Clock. What you probably don’t realize is that the designer of these Mid-Century Modern icons spent decades living in obscurity, filling his upstate New York farmhouse with 300-some whimsical handmade paper sculptures of animals, Pre-Columbian and Southeast Asian figures, Cubist abstractions, and African masks.”
— Lisa Hix, “Paper Wizard: Mid-Century Modern’s Unsung Visionary Gets His Due,” Collectors Weekly.

mothernaturenetwork: Lightning flash from severe thunderstorm...

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:21:37 -0500

mothernaturenetwork:

Lightning flash from severe thunderstorm seen from space

Lightning flash was outgrowth of a line of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes that swept the Eastern and Midwest U.S.

woodendreams: (by papierhexe)

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:19:57 -0500

woodendreams:

(by papierhexe)

theatlantic: Why the ‘Citizen Militia’ Theory Is the Worst...

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:19:39 -0500

theatlantic:

Why the ‘Citizen Militia’ Theory Is the Worst Pro-Gun Argument Ever

The history of the postbellum South offers another cautionary story of unregulated and extra-legal political violence. The founders of the Ku Klux Klan purported to be defending the rights of the white community against the tyranny of illegitimate Reconstruction governments, black enfranchisement, and federal military occupation. And for several years, the Klan used this rationale to carry out a gruesome campaign of systematic violence, murder, and political intimidation.

War, particularly civil war, is by its nature violent. Official state armies are not immune from the tendency to inflict unjustified violence on civilians. But in America today, this prospect is far more remote, and far less terrifying, than the notion of armed citizens striking out against a perceived enemy, answering to no authority other than their own individual prejudices and passions.

Read more. [Image: Flickr]

futurejournalismproject: Visualizing Gun Laws State by...

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 18:00:28 -0500

futurejournalismproject:

Visualizing Gun Laws State by State

The Guardian has a great interactive showing the broad variation in state gun laws.

For example, take “Shoot First” laws:

Twenty-seven states have enacted “shoot first” laws that allow a person to defend themselves in public using deadly force with no duty to retreat. Some of those states have slightly restrictive laws that only apply when a shooter is in a vehicle and others have weak laws that are defined through a combination of case law, jury decisions and statutes, and only provide shoot-first protections during criminal trials, among other circumstances.

Image: Screenshot, Gun Laws in the US — State by State showing an overview of Iowa, via The Guardian. Select to embiggen.

nationalpost: Lost without a map: Despite a globalized society,...

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 17:59:59 -0500

nationalpost:

Lost without a map: Despite a globalized society, university students can’t locate the Atlantic Ocean
Judith Adler started getting suspicious five or six years ago. She can’t pinpoint why, or what, exactly, it was, but the sociologist at Memorial University of Newfoundland had a gnawing sensation, while looking out at the students taking her course on families and the cultural traditions of families the world over, that the undergrads in her room had no idea where in the world some of the places she was talking about actually were.

So the professor did what professors do and gave them a pop quiz consisting of a blank map and a series of questions.

“I asked them to indicate where on the map South America is, where Africa is, and Antarctica, the Arctic, and to circle Europe, label Australia and show where Asia is and label the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans and Mediterranean Sea — and I’ve become much simpler in what I have asked over the years,” Ms. Adler says.

“A sizeable proportion of the class would reliably have no idea where the Mediterranean is. Some students would circle Africa and indicate that it’s Europe, and if asked to locate England and Ireland, they would put them in Africa. I have had students that aren’t able to correctly label the Atlantic Ocean, even though we are on it.”

woodendreams: (by Fragga)

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 23:29:51 -0500

woodendreams:

(by Fragga)

utnereader: Idling While Canada Burns: lessons we can learn...

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 16:34:29 -0500

utnereader:

Idling While Canada Burns: lessons we can learn from First Nations.

The grassroots Idle No More movement is a First Nations response to environmental destruction and Canadian policies, new and old.

YES!

adventuresinlearning: Schools That Change Communities Trailer...

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 16:29:44 -0500

adventuresinlearning:

Schools That Change Communities Trailer (by BobGliner)

Oregon High School Featured in New Television Documentary

Kennedy Alternative High School in Cottage Grove Oregon will be among five schools featured in a new one hour documentary, Schools That Change Communities, which will air on OPB Plus, throughout most of Oregon, Sunday night, Jan 6, at 8 PM as part of beginning its nationwide broadcasts. Produced by Bob Gliner (Lessons From The Real World), this unique, engaging documentary turns the current focus of education on its head. While most US schools keep their students bottled up in classrooms as a way of increasing test scores, this very upbeat special focuses on a diverse rang of K-12 public schools in five states that instead break down the walls between the school and its neighborhood. By viewing their communities as classrooms, students are not only invigorated, but also motivated to learn the basics and how to think critically and engage in solving problems they and the larger world they inhabit now face.

At Kennedy Alternative High School students spend much of their time outside classroom walls helping Cottage Grove develop a sustainable environment.

Greg Smith, a professor of education at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, is also featured as a commentator on the documentary.

For more about the documentary and to watch a trailer visit Bob Gliner’s website: Docmakeronline.com.

Join IDEA for an Live-tweet during the broadcast of this film. Sunday 8pm PST using the #ideachat hashtag!

Maybe we can find it on YouTube

utnereader: Abandoned Soviet-era theme park in East Berlin.

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

utnereader:

Abandoned Soviet-era theme park in East Berlin.

mothernaturenetwork: Some drivers go out of their way to hit...

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 23:57:09 -0500

mothernaturenetwork:

Some drivers go out of their way to hit turtles

A Clemson University student found that 1 in 50 drivers intentionally hit box turtles, a species that’s in decline.