Judith Dobrzynski writes in The New Republic of the need for more darkness in the world.
The idea is an appealing one: reduce energy consumption and see more of the night sky. I wonder if cities could be competitive, see who could have the lowest light levels.
My favorite part of the post was the comment by William Yard who lives outside San Francisco: “We need dark, like we need to know where we aren’t and what time it isn’t, and to find what we aren’t looking for.” (hat tip to Andrew Sullivan)
I put cup hooks up, hung up the flag, and — the most difficult task — posted a picture to my blog.
Now I just need to get one of my sons to start the charcoal.
This photo was edited with the Photo Lab Daily app and I used the cut-and-paste function.
Had to try out the cut and paste feature:
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. — John Kennedy
Filed under: eutechnics, research, technology | Tags: futurology, star trek
In the future, everything will look a lot like Star Trek not because of the prescience of the show’s creators, but because of the desire of engineers to make things look like Star Trek.
The adjacent Bizarro cartoon reminded me of this maxim and I quickly thought, “What a great app, to have a tricorder on your iPhone!” A quick search of the app store found that there are at least four makers ahead of me.
Of course, they’re only novelty apps for now and (since I’m not such a diligent trekkie) what I was thinking of was not the tricorder but that wand “Bones” McCoy used. But the apps all look like great fun and if you do a YouTube search for tricorders you’ll find iPhone apps and other simulations of tricorders and you’ll find this concept video of a pen that holds terabytes of data and can project on walls. Apparently we will have wonderful tools in the future, but, as you’ll see halfway through the video, we’ll still have to downgrade the software to Windows XP.
Yesterday was a beautiful day for a walk. Saw many bicyclists and a couple of wheel chair riders and at least two groups of street hockey players. I stopped briefly to admire this decrepit bridge that links Oakland to Second Avenue. The concrete is flaking off but the iron retains its integrity. I also like the unique nature of its design.
