Dogs Allowed in Libraries? Book Boats? Heaven?

I found a really cool post over at Libraries & Life about innovative libraries around the world. In Scandinavia, dogs are allowed in libraries! (My corgi, Rory would be SOOOO happy!!!) In Norway, there are book boats! In Santiago, Chile, they really got creative; there are library "vending stations" in the subway, "bibliobikes," and no prohibition signs in the library! FIELD TRIP!!!!

Steampunk CD Player

Prof. Emilio Zuntaras' Bi-Orbital Spectral Audiometer (courtesy of Brass Goggles)


I can justify my steampunk obsession...Steampunk makes the world a better place because the culture is imbued with a DIY ethos and values things for their handiwork (read: durability) than their novelty. Often steampunk artisans recycle to make their projects, and when they don't they tend to keep them for a long time, thus helping save the planet. See??? Plus...SHINY!

Eco-Friendly Self-Cleaning Kitchen!

I MUST have this thing! The Aion Kitchen concept model uses the plants on top of the unit to make soap to wash dishes...after you PUT THEM IN THE SINK!!! YAY! Wow, I've been sucked in by pretty consumerism appealing to my laziness and my love for plants once again.

Poll!

Hey readers! I'm not totally self-absorbed (only a little), and I'm interested in everything, so I want to know what YOU want to see on my blog! To this end, I've posted a poll on the right hand side below the fold. Vote in it...or I will be sad. Like this. :(

Mapping the Future of Education

Sorry I didn't post yesterday, I've been working on a seriously overdue paper about the Congressional Hearings on the 1938 Amendment to the Federal Trade Commission Act. I promise, it's waaay more interesting than it sounds. Luckily, when I do goof off, I spend much of my time intrepidly exploring the corners of the intarwebs, seeking treasure for my beloved blog readers. Here's a site that maps predictions of the future forces affecting education in an information-dense, yet intuitive format (with pretty colors!). When you click on one of the colored boxes, it opens up, giving you information about that topic, plus links to "Read a Real-World Application," "Join the Discussion," or "Send Topic to a Colleague." It is rare to see a website that is simultaneously so informative and so well-designed. If you dig ideas about educational innovation, you will dig this site. Kudos to KnowledgeWorks for creating it.

Game Site Makes Me Ululate With Glee!

I am in love...with a blog. Avant Game is a blog focusing mainly on the untapped potential of the games industry to change the world for the better. (I bet you can see why I like it now.) Jane McGonigal (that's right, a lady!), the site's creator, describes herself as "a game designer, a games researcher, and a future forecaster." She fundamentally believes that the gaming industry has the responsibility to improve non-virtual reality, too. Here are some excerpts from a speech she gave at the Game Developers Conference on Friday that I found totally inspiring.

...as an industry, we’ve spent the last 30 years learning how to optimize human experience....as an industry, we’ve spent three whole decades figuring out how to engineer systems that fully engage our brains, and our bodies, and our hearts. And we’ve pretty much solved that problem.

That’s the good news. But the problem is, we don’t rule the real world. For the most part, we rule the virtual world, because it’s easier to optimize experience in a world entirely of our own making. The fact is the real world is too f’ed up, it’s too broken, we don’t want to deal with it. So right now, pretty much every one of our games works better than reality, because we are the best designers of human experience, and we’re applying all of our talent, all our insight to optimizing virtual experience. And you know what? That needs to end, starting today.

My rant is about the fact that reality is fundamentally broken, and we have a responsibility as game designers to fix it, with better algorithms and better missions and better feedback and better stories and better community and everything else we know how to make. We have a responsibility as the smartest people in the world, the people who understand how to make systems that make people feel engaged, successful, happy, and completely alive, and we have the knowledge and the power to invent systems that make reality work better...

Can we fix it? Yes. We have the technology and the knowledge. Should we fix it? Hell yes. We have the power AND the responsibility...

We can take what we’ve learned by making games and apply it to reality, to make real life work more like a game – not make our games more realistic and lifelike, but make our real life more game like – so that when people all over the world wake up every morning, they wake up with a mission, with allies, with a sense of being a part of a bigger story, part of a system that wants them to be happy. We can do it, we should do it, and I hope that we will do it.

I found the coolest little animated film called the bio-DaVersity Code. It uses talking animals acting out a version of the story of the Da Vinci code in order to explain biodiversity. It's pretty rad, actually. I really love that I could find it interesting, but I'm pretty sure a seven-year old could also get it. It can thus spark intergenerational dialogue in a way that, say, An Inconvenient Truth might not. Unless, of course, the child in question is my partner's little sister, who upon seeing Al Gore's film, declared that her New Year's Resolution was "to end climate change." I love that kid.

Race-based Disenfranchisement Alive and Kicking

Over 2,000 students at Prairie View A&M University, a historically black college in Texas, marched 7 miles from campus to Hempstead, the Waller County seat, where county officials had planned to site the sole polling place for early voting in the March 4 election. According to the University web site, "Waller County had reduced the number of early voting locations from about six around the county to only one at its courthouse [located in the county seat] because county officials said they could not afford to operate multiple early voting locations." The county later added 3 more locations due to pressure from the federal government, and while one will be in Prairie View, "there was not one announced for the Prairie View campus, convenient to students." Still, at least their activism produced results. Prairie View students, I know you're not reading this, but this white girl is proud of your willingness to stand up for all of our rights. If Chicago weren't so far from Texas, I'd be with you.

I am a firm believer in the right of citizens to vote as a core tenet of the process of maintaining a democratic republic. When anyone tries to abridge that right, it pisses me off. When the GOVERNMENT abridges that right, my head feels like it's going to explode!!! How is it that, in an age when a black man has a real chance at becoming our next president, this sort of thing can happen? And this is not an isolated incident. Policies across the country disproportionately disenfranchise black Americans, to the detriment of our democratic process.

Approximately 60% of the population of Washington, DC is black. The District lacks voting representation in Congress. To strike another historical chord of democracy, DC does have "No Taxation Without Representation" license plates. They used to adorn the presidential limo, but one of Bush's first acts as president was to remove them. It is widely believed that the continued refusal of Congress to grant DC voting rights is based on Republican fears that blacks' historical support for the Democratic party would make the District a consistently democratic district; I, however, think that if the Republicans were the ones to push a bill for full representation through, enfranchising the residents of DC, it would greatly improve their image in the city. (Full disclosure: I grew up near DC, hearing my Mom's stories about how excited her parents were when they could vote for president for the first time as residents of the
District, in the 1964 presidential election. They voted for Kennedy.)

As angry as race-based disenfranchisement of a single district makes me, I am truly horrified at the laws that disenfranchise ex-felons who have paid their debt to society. Simple ethical issues aside, racial profiling, biased laws (particularly drug laws), selective enforcement, and other issues mean that these laws disproportionately affect blacks. I also find it fascinating (in that car-accident, can't-help-but-look way) that of the 14 states that disenfranchise ex-felons in one way or another, 7 of them had poll taxes or educational requirements in the Jim Crow era. Coincidence? I think not.

Come on America. We are better than this!

Everything I need to know I learn from sci-fi

One of my main goals for this blog is to eventually get some good discussion going in the comments section, particularly involving the implications of ideas found in good books. So I'm recommending one. Neil Stephenson's The Diamond Age totally blew my mind and may completely change my life trajectory. So if you haven't read it, now would be an awesome time to do so. And since March is International Ideas Month (don't ask me how I know that), I will probably start an ongoing series of discussions then. If you miss one, don't worry! Just let me know! I'm particularly interested in practical ideas coming out of his his conceptualization of education. To be honest, (a small) part of why I started this blog was because I couldn't find enough information on that subject, which made me realize that was also true of a lot of other subjects. Perhaps this is because my interests are obscure, or perhaps simply because people don't think to write about them. In any case...ready yourself for the coming discussion. Otherwise I will be alone with my thoughts.

Homeless Time Travellers

Wow. Homelessness is no laughing matter, but this guy seems to be taking it with good humor. (Thanks 2Spare.) What actually makes me mad, though is that gridskipper can publish what amounts to a DC homelessness travel guide that trivializes homelessness but hides this behind a veil of sympathetic comments. I hate hipsters. Ok, so hate doesn't make the world better, but I sure wish they'd move on to their pupal stage of development, no matter what it is. (If you have any idea, leave it in the comments.) Trivializing homelessness is especially disgusting in the context of the recent tide of unprovoked violence against homeless people. Now that I've depressed you enough, here's something useful a graduate student did to educate people about this problem: Homeless: It's No Game a serious (yet fun and engaging) 2D video game about the problems of homelessness. Play it, and be inspired to go do something!

Face Transformer

So I got bored today, and discovered the Face Transformer. Upload a picture of your face, and it will estimate how you would look with a different race or age or if you were painted by certain artists. My favorite is the above picture of me as if it had been done by art nouveau painter Alphonse Mucha. Although I think I made a pretty hot East Asian chick, too.

Judge Threatens Free Speech in US, Xmas Islands to Rescue!

Wikileaks.org was created as a space where whistleblowers could anonymously leak information about governments, corporations, and other institutions, in an effort to keep them accountable, without the threat of retaliation. According to the New York Times, "It has posted documents said to show the rules of engagement for American troops in Iraq, a military manual for the operation of the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and other evidence of what it has called corporate waste and wrongdoing." However, Judge Jeffrey White of the Federal District Court of San Francisco issued a permanent injunction on Friday forcing the site's domain name registrar to disable and lock the domain name. This ruling came in response to a court case brought against the site by a Julius Baer Bank and Trust in the Cayman Islands based on documents published on the site that purported to show "reveal secret Julius Baer trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion.” Right...because banks in the Cayman Islands are known for their stellar records on helping the US government fight tax evasion. Luckily, this judge (like many of our lawmakers) was totally clueless about the workings of our beloved 'intarwebs.' New York Times journalists aren't, and those damned liberals love them some free speech. So, they let us know exactly how to access the page, both by IP address and through mirror sites in Belgium, Germany, and (I kid you not) the Christmas Islands. People all over the webs have been publishing these links, along with the forbidden documents, on their own sites. While this ruling will almost certainly be overturned, two things stand out: one, the US government is perfectly willing to censor the internet, just like all the big nasty furren' governments you hear about on TV, and two, people REALLY, REALLY don't like it. Are you listening, presidential candidates?

Obama comments on Cuba

Update...Obama is the first presidential candidate to come out with a statement about Cuba. He is also the only one who had previously publicized any plan to normalize relations with the country. He said:

If the Cuban leadership begins opening Cuba to meaningful democratic change, the United States must be prepared to begin taking steps to normalize relations and to ease the embargo of the last five decades. The freedom of the Cuban people is a cause that should bring the Americans together.

Now, what that means, translated out of politikspeak, I don't know. But at least someone in the public eye is talking about it.

Of exploding cigars...

Fidel Castro resigned as the head of state of Cuba today. He is succeeded by his brother, Raúl. Castro had led Cuba since the 1959 revolution. I'm going to be very honest here: somehow, I subconsciously believed that he would be in charge of Cuba forever. I knew, of course, that such a thing wasn't possible, but change just seemed so unlikely. My parents can barely remember the idea of Cuba before Castro; they were six years old at the time of the revolution. Residents of Washington, DC, still had not ever been eligible to vote in a presidential election. For God's sakes, Eisenhower was president. And now he has resigned. This opens up a world of possibilities.

American politicians could, at this point, end the embargo without losing face. Or, the next president could do so when he or she gets into office next year. 'Socialism' is gone, except in North Korea, where life REALLY sucks. (China totally doesn't count. They are a capitalist dictatorship with an extremely powerful and corrupt government. C'mon now.)

I have had a lifelong desire to see Cuba, perhaps because it was the only place, to my knowledge, to which I was always completely forbidden to go. I want to go before it is overrun with American tourists and transnational corporations. Many Americans probably want to go. I wonder how that would change both Cuba and the Americans.

I also wonder, if we lift the embargo, will Americans feel differently about Guantánamo? Will being able to go so close to it make us feel more responsible? Will it make us wonder what on earth we need a military base there for anymore anyway?

Corgis in a Pool

Corgis are one of my true obsessions in life, but these people make me feel like way less of a freak. At least I don't torment my dog-friend. (He's not a pet. Pets have owners. If another being can EVER force me to get out of bed before 9 am to go outside into the Chicago winter, there's no way I own them.)

'Slippers' for Democracy

Plusea has posted directions on Instructables for how to make improved 'Joy Slippers.' Joy Slippers are footwear-based controllers (the 'joy' comes from 'joysticks') with four embedded analog pressure-sensitive sensors. The current design is wired, but in the comments, Plusea says that she will be making a Bluetooth version soon. Right now, the Joy Slippers' main use is drawing with the feet; however, the possibilities for such controllers are much larger. What if we could teach (or reinforce, during practice) foot positions for dancing or sports with Joy Slipper-like controllers? How about teaching rhythm through the familiar mechanism of the human foot? If manufacture of such controllers became cheaper because of innovation spurred by the DIY experimentation of people like Plusea, it could democratize aspects of training for physical activities. In addition, if Joy Slippers were used to control the movements of characters in popular video games, it could increase fitness levels in many households, much as the Dance Dance Revolution and the Wii have. This is particularly true in areas where parents might not feel safe simply sending their children to "play outside" (although many politicians, secure in their upper-middle-class suburban enclaves, seem to believe in that as the answer to the world's problems.)

Steampunk Saves the Planet!

Ok, I'll admit it. I have an unhealthy obsession with Stirling Engines. But the idea that one of the most efficient ways to transform the sun's rays into usable energy is based on a technology invented before the American Civil War is just so fantastic! Now the world record for solar-to-grid efficiency has been broken with the help of...a STIRLING ENGINE!!! (Thanks to EcoGeek for the link.) The new record is 31.25% efficiency. Now if only the magic eco-power of shiny cogs and gears could be harnessed...

Knowing Your Rights Just Got Easier

The Public Library of Law (via Lifehacker) is a search engine for legal information, including court decisions, federal, state, and local laws, and free legal forms. If you need a form to make a living will, they have them available for every state. If you need information on buying and selling real estate, they have real estate handbooks. If you think you've experienced workplace discrimination, you can look up statutes and court cases on that. This is an example of what the net should be; a force for the democratization of information. ¡Viva las bibliotécas!

Hedgehog Love!

Hedgehogs: almost as cute as my corgi...but not quite. Check out this video I found (via The Daily Dish). Disclaimer: Although the hedgehog in this video is cute incarnate, it is illegal to keep a hedgehog as a pet in large parts of the US. Check local laws before trying this at home, kids.

Hillary Clinton and Tracy Flick!

I'm an Obama supporter, for so many reasons that I decided not to blog on the subject based on the idea that other people tend not to be more than 10-issue voters. I'm probably a 50-issue voter, if I think about it enough. It's kind of a problem. If you aren't into politics, or you, like my mother, support Hillary Clinton so intensely that a sense of humor is not an option, stop reading this post here.

For everyone else, this video comparing Hillary to Tracy Flick in the movie "Election" is so funny I almost cried.

Gamers to the Rescue!

If you're going to spend time playing games when you should be working, you might as well learn something. Games4Change is an organization that promotes digital games whose objective is social change. So instead of watching Strindberg and Helium for the umpteenth time, or playing the Plushies game (you know who you are), avoid work by playing games like Karma Tycoon, where you run a virtual nonprofit and "solve community problems, such as homelessness, in cities across the US," or try Melting Point, where you work to "balance the energy needs and economic growth of regions around the world against the accumulation of carbon dioxide (CO2)." If you find one you think is particularly cool, let me know in the comments. (I only have so much time to screw around, so I can't play ALL of them myself...one-year MA programs are killer on the work front.)

Puppets, Libraries, Ray Guns, and Copyright Law

Add a bottle of wine, and you've got a party! No, seriously. Funny and informative.

"Gizmo High"...Too High?

I found this article in the Washington Post. It's about a public high school in Northern Virginia where the school system buys so much technology that the teachers complain. First, this is a prime argument for more nationally equal school funding. While the teachers at T.C. Williams complain about too many gizmos, the teachers in nearby DC public schools are lucky if the buildings aren't crumbling and the metal detectors that they do have are working. Second, this seems like less of a problem of too much tech than of badly chosen tech. Technology, like money, isn't something you can throw at a problem in order to solve it. It has to be carefully applied in the right ways, in the right amounts, to the right places.

The school in the article hurried to issue students laptops, and is now "constantly trying to play catch up with the technology." It seems to me that one of the big problems in educational technology is that in many cases, the software simply has not caught up with the hardware, so schools end up buying expensive equipment whose functionality is artificially limited. Even when good software is available, schools often don't know about it. Smart teachers are secure in the fact that any attempt to replace human interaction with technology would be worthless, so their jobs are safe from this new tech. They will respond more positively to technology when they see how it can help their students. And right now, they're just not seeing it.

EfficienCity

Greenpeace UK's website has a cool little simulation called EfficienCity that shows a bunch of climate-friendly innovations implemented without much change in the way people live. I think that the graphical, nonlinear interface is definitely a step in the right direction in terms of drawing people's interest. On the whole I tend to think that these things would be more effective if some sort of interactivity were involved, creating a sort of game, but if Greenpeace made a game about a climate-friendly city, it would probably suck. A lot. Of course, the changes shown in the simulated city would work better in places where people live in more concentrated areas with access to public transit, but it's nice to see semi-realistic possibilities of what people could do. After all, if we need to cut emissions to 80% less than 1990 levels by 2050, we have to get started now.

Climate Special on National Geographic

"Six Degrees that Could Change the World" is showing on the National Geographic Channel tonight. The program shows what could happen as the temperature increases, degree by degree, due to global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted that by 2100, global temperatures will have risen to somewhere between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees above 1990 levels. 6 degrees is a doomsday scenario. Unfortunately, there is a significant problem with all of this information, as with much information in the field of climate change. Explaining a crisis is useless without translation. Scientists, along with much of the world, measure temperatures in Celsius. Americans measure temperatures in Fahrenheit, and most have NO CLUE of the conversion rate. They assume 6 degrees means Fahrenheit, which means they think it's about half as bad as it actually is. No wonder so many 'climate skeptics' seem to be Americans. (Disclaimer: I'm an American, born and bred. I also grew up in Washington, DC, where an increase of even 6 degrees FAHRENHEIT in the summer could increase the death rate pretty significantly based on the heat alone.) I suppose my point here is that before blaming Americans for ruining the planet, make sure that you aren't ignoring less-intuitive aspects of American culture that might make even communication on the topic harder. Another example of this is our heavy reliance on cars. I've hated cars since I was in a nasty accident a while back. I still need to use them, because our public transportation system is simply insufficient, even in areas where people live in higher concentrations. I'd be glad to pay higher taxes for better infrastructure, but I can't do it by myself. If there were fewer tractor trailers on the roads where she lives, my mom wouldn't drive an SUV. (The nurses in the hospital after my SUV was T-boned by a pickup truck said that my partner and I probably would have been dead had we not been driving one.) We could have more long distance freight rail. But we don't. And not all Americans can afford to live in cities. The ones who can, can afford to tell everyone else how good it is for the earth, but they're idiots if they think people live in Delaware and drive to DC for work because they LIKE the 4-hour commute. (Yes, I met someone who does this every working day, God bless him.) We need to involve people in change rather than lecturing them. Maybe then we can get something done.

Another Blog?

Many seem to have accepted ever-increasing specialization as the path to solving the problems of our increasingly complicated society. I decided to start this blog because I think that synthesizing information from many specialties is the only way to overcome our problems. Because of this approach, I constantly have to search far and wide on the internet to find information on many of the topics that interest me most deeply. There certainly has been no central place for information on truly innovative ideas about how to change public life, education, libraries, video games, politics, the economy, and the environment for the better. If this sounds broad, it is. My aim is to create a place where people who are interested in "making the world a better place," using all the information available to them, no matter what the disciplinary source, can go to find and discuss that information. Hopefully this will help make that change