If you're reading this...

by citisven

...you are probably on a computer. Or some sort of hand-held device. Smart phone. Pod. Pad. Berry. Tablet. Insert [catchy name of the next latest greatest cool and hip new gadget about to hit the market].

What the manufacturers of these shiny new objects fail to tell us is what goes into making them and what happens after we're done with them.

Annie Leonard, the producer of the acclaimed The Story of Stuff video, just released her latest work, The Story of Electronics.

I think it's well worth watching and pondering.

continued at Daily Kos....

Texting on the Farm: Mobile Technology Provides Farmers with Useful Information in India

by NourishingthePlanet

According to the U.N. Population Division, over 70 percent of Indians live in rural areas and over half of all Indians are farmers. Yet access to technology and information in many areas is limited, meaning farmers are often left uninformed and at the mercy of erratic weather and disease and pest outbreaks. And even in good growing conditions, farmers may not have access to price information that could help them negotiate with buyers or decide which markets to bring their products to.

But across rural India, mobile phones are quickly becoming an indispensable tool for farmers, helping to shrink the information gap.

http://blogs.worldwatch.org/...

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The GOP has identified the number one threat to our "Fredoms"...

by Renzo Gasolini

And evidently it is fiendishly disguised as a 260 mph train

Because the Chinese have one, and we don't. And by God the Republicans are going to make damn sure it stays that way

China unveils 260mph train line

"A new high-speed rail line has been opened in China amid boasts from officials over the use of domestic technology to set world records...

...The China-made CRH380 train has been clocked at almost 262 mph - a world speed record - though it will usually operate at a maximum speed of 220 mph...

The line was opened as China prepares to have 10,000 miles of high-speed rail in operation by 2012...

Ten Thousand Miles of of High Speed Rail (HSR) by 2012? Holy fucking yikes!!

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Pique the Geek 20100926: Sustainability (and Connexions) Part the First

by Translator

I have been thinking about sustainability for a long, long time.  Unfortunately, in my scientific analysis, it not possible if we continue on the route that we have chosen.  This is an extremely complex topic, and might even deserve its own, new, date.  I am thinking that Wednesdays might be a good time for it.  This is more speculation than science, so it does not properly belong on Pique the Geek for the long term.

This will be the most controversial topic that I have ever tackled.  I may be dead wrong in some of my speculations, but a lot of thought has gone into them.  I offer no easy remedies but do ask the hard, horrible questions and illustrate them with facts.  I will ask that you, my readers, tell me whether this deserves a new series, uncoupled from Pique the Geek. Please read further.

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Line-dried clothing: an "uncivilized" energy smart choice?

by A Siegel

Amid their enthusiastic embrace of western consumer technologies, increasingly affluent Chinese are leaving one appliance behind: clothes dryers.  According to Washington Post front-page reporting,

For reasons practical as well as cultural, most Chinese consumers simply  don't like clothes dryers. Don't want them. Don't trust them. Won't buy  them. And even when they have them around, won't use them.

Business interests complain, in the article, that the dryer market isn't "fully developed".  A PRC domestic brand "stopped  producing dryers since last year because they don't sell."  The only people in China interested in dryers seem to be foreigners and Chinese who have lived overseas.

This is, evidently, something bad.

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Design Challenges and Design Awards

by gmoke

http://www.core77.com/...
1 Hour Design Challenge:  Emergency Shelters
Core77 sponsors these one hour design challenges from time to time.

http://www.core77.com/...
Betacup Design Competition
The object was to replace the disposable cup.

http://www.taipeicycle.com.tw/...
international bike design contest
Annual event based in Taiwan.

http://www.electroluxdesignlab.com/
Electrolux Design Awards
Sponsored by the appliance firm and focused on the home.

http://nationaldesignawards.org/...
National Design Awards
Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Week: October 9–17, 2010

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Humanity in One Million Years (Part 2)

by Troubadour

In part two of this series, I extend the historical and biological concepts articulated in Part 1 into predictions for the near future.  Although Part 1 is quite lengthy, I advise reviewing it before you proceed with this entry, just to get a sense of my underlying thinking and overall trajectory.  In the current diary, I take a look at the present state of humanity from a high-level perspective and apply energy-maximization principles to predict change over the next decade.  In each subsequent Part, the scope of time examined will increase by an order of magnitude and specific states increasingly blended into recursive patterns of long-term change.

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Even the MSM is catching on!

by don mikulecky

So many times in my diaries about the nature of technology someone claims we can find a fix for anything.  Now even the MSM questions such arrogance.  In the NYT we have this:Our Fix-It Faith and the Oil Spill  A growing number of reductionist trained scientists and engineers are beginning to understand the limits to the Cartesian reductionism that serves as the philosophical basis for their understanding of the real complex world.  Physics supplied them with a good model of reality for dealing with machines and mechanisms, but not for  most complex systems that make up the real world.  The surrogate model we worshipped does not do it.  Read on below for more.

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