Recently in society Category
As the title of the below video suggests professional bike messengers are a bit crazy.
I have a fixed gear myself and never had the courage, let alone the skill to ride through the city so carelessly and two doorings over 10 years (one not my fault and one regrettably so) have done wonders to affect any potentially detrimental courage I may have been cultivating. Minus the ability to stop quickly (as is the case on a fixed gear) these riders are relying solely on the ability to maneuver at high speeds and in tight confines to avoid accidents.
Just yesterday I was riding up Walnut Street on the right side of a moving car in the center lane as a messenger was on the left side of the same car. That car, without using any turn single, abruptly pulled left into a parking garage entrance and ran the messenger off the road. Fortunately he didn't crash and no one was hurt. But as you can see below, accidents still occur. In this case, it appears to be the fault of a reckless cyclist who attempts to cut across the front right bumper of a moving van. Though it is admittedly hard to tell.
NY Times columnist Paul Krugman lays out the right plan for solving two immense problems at once:
1. Economic depression
2. Environmental ruination
Let's today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it's telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall -- when Mother Nature and the market both said: "No more."
He says - surprise, surprise - that Americans need to "greenify" (my word) the marketplace. Or else.
"Just as a few lonely economists warned us we were living beyond our financial means and overdrawing our financial assets, scientists are warning us that we're living beyond our ecological means and overdrawing our natural assets," argues Glenn Prickett, senior vice president at Conservation International. But, he cautioned, as environmentalists have pointed out: "Mother Nature doesn't do bailouts."
Tonight the TED Prize recipients will make their wish live from the annual, inspirational conference featuring the best and brightest future-shapers of the world.
What a wonderful book idea over at Snarkmarket. They're exploring emergent fields of the kottke-termed Liberal Arts 2.0.
I'd like to get more into this later but here is a totally unorganized synopsis from the ongoing discussion of what LA2.0 is.
Art
Design
Photography
Music
*
Languages
Literature
Philosophy
*
History
Politics
Economics
*
Mathematical Sciences
Natural Sciences
Biological Sciences
*
Food
Per Jason in the comments section:
Here's the list I came up with shortly after concocting the term for a talk I did in early 2007:
Graphic design, freakonomics, photography, programming, film, remixing, video games, food, advertising, internet life skills, journalism, fashion.
To be sure the concept must be explored more, but the idea is that young people need a new skill set these days.
There is a new home economics to learn - as they discuss on the aforementioned pages - and video games are no longer the exception (now they are the rule).
