What you’re looking at there is an attempt to visualize the results (so far) of a workshop run last year in Stockholm that attempted to define the boundaries of a “safe operating space” in which the ecosystem of the planet can operate without veering towards catastrophe. The 28 scientists worked out nine categories that they were comfortable setting some safe… Read more →
Tag: environment
SF Authors Say Smart Things: KSR on climate & social justice
Does the word postcapitalism look odd to you? It should, because you hardly ever see it. We have a blank spot in our vision of the future. Perhaps we think that history has somehow gone away. In fact, history is with us now more than ever, because we are at a crux in the human story. That’s from the conclusion… Read more →
A Linkpost Before Sleeping
I think I’m going to soon look at setting up the site with “asides”, so that instead of gathering up large buckets of links that I have only a few comments on, I can just drop them in as “asides” between my longer and more content-y posts. In the meantime, another (possibly final) agglomeration of miscellaneous links. This might be… Read more →
On Shortages, Mostly Food
I read a lot of news. I read magazines. I follow news blogs. I make a very concerted effort to keep up with what’s going on in the world, and to get the information from several perspectives. And yet somehow I’ve found myself thinking, quite frequently, over the last month that this whole “food shortage” thing somehow “snuck up” on… Read more →
Thursday Night Gallimaufry
And once again, we have my quick opinions on a variety of things I’ve run into in the last little while. I am fascinated with the mystery of what WalMart might be doing in their giant, mysterious data center. I’m guess that it might be related to “lowering prices every day”, but doing so by means that your average consumer… Read more →
Watts on Earth Hour
Some of my cynical thoughts on “Earth Hour” tonight are echoed, and then turned up to 11 by Canadian hard SF author, Peter Watts. Hundreds, maybe thousands of Torontonians will celebrate the event by climbing into their SUVs and driving out to Downsview Park, there to light candles in the darkness. The Eaton’s Center up at Yonge and Dundas is… Read more →
Once more unto the breach
…to close a bunch of tabs before Firefox memory issues eat my computer. Let us begin with my praise of BibliOdyssey. They pulled me in earlier this month with the scans from an antique geomancy almanac, and I’ve been exploring their archives since then. Wow, is there a lot of stuff in there for a bibliophile to gawk at. Cosmological… Read more →
A Targeted Miscellany
A Sunday link list, of things that made me think of specific people. For my lovely wife, to share with her radical feminist associates, is the story of the most famous pirate of all time. Especially the bits about the pirate laws governing female prisoners. And the end of the story. Also for her yet another story about people who… Read more →
Miscellany: Your lab fees at work.
For a long time now I’ve been asking to be cremated and buried or scattered, rather than being embalmed and buried whole. This is primarily because I find the whole embalming thing a bit icky and unnatural, and secondarily because as an engineer I realize that the conventional burial model doesn’t scale with geometrically expanding population. However, I think I’ve… Read more →
