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I have no idea. I thought I told you about it.
beachjustice: How did I not know about this until now?
Posted on July 4, 2010 via beach justice with 1 note
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bringonbluesky: Cars are officially on fire downtown. This G20 thing was such a fucking good idea. Good job guys!
Posted on June 26, 2010 via girl anachronism. with 398 notes
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I can’t help but think of the various attempts to ban minarets in Europe. There is a sense in which making an invisible mosque feels like a defiant repudiation of that. But even moreso, it says “forget your rules about towers, we’ll rewrite our entire city to build a place of worship”.
What if a mosque was not a building? What if it vanished into the fabric of a city? Seamless with the streets, connected directly to the pulse of daily life, and open to anyone and everyone at anytime, The Vanishing Mosque becomes more visible, more iconic, and more integral to the spiritual and cultural workings of a community than any building with doors and walls ever could. RUX-The Vanishing Mosque
Posted on June 18, 2010
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theworldwelivein:Kinderdijk, Nieuw-Lekkerland, Holland © ~ Floydian ~
Posted on June 16, 2010 via ... the world we live in with 321 notes
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![ONE OF THESE, PLEASE
spime: This paper describes Kinematics [PDF]: a novel construction toy for children consisting of both active (shape-changing or rotating) and passive building blocks. In comparison to similar systems, the active components of Kinematics do not require programming or recording. This allows children to focus on reassembly and direct observation of the resulting movement from simple changes made to a constructed structure.](http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l3u63pHBaN1qaqm2ao1_500.png)
ONE OF THESE, PLEASE
spime: This paper describes Kinematics [PDF]: a novel construction toy for children consisting of both active (shape-changing or rotating) and passive building blocks. In comparison to similar systems, the active components of Kinematics do not require programming or recording. This allows children to focus on reassembly and direct observation of the resulting movement from simple changes made to a constructed structure.
Posted on June 11, 2010 via spime with 10 notes
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Posted on June 10, 2010 with 1 note
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There is also the problem that ‘culture’ names a rather amorphous entity. Human beings produce culture in the same sense that they produce carbon dioxide: they can’t help it, bu the stuff has absolutely no value in itself. It’s just there. It is one thing to attribute a group’s characteristics to its culture, as Boas did; it is another thing to elevate that culture into a discrete set of traditions and practices in which the members of the group can take pride simply because they are, willy-nilly, theirs. Culture is only a response to the conditions of life; when those conditions—and in modern societies they change continuously—cultures change as well. “Frenchness” is as variable as “finchness,” and no more worthy of respect as a thing in itself. It’s all a question of what people make of it.
Louis Menand in The Metaphysical Club, page 407 (via madregale)Posted on June 9, 2010 via ALEXIS MADRIGAL with 6 notes
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The basic tenet of the Internet is openness: you don’t need to forfeit all privacy, but if you want to protect it, don’t post publicly. The debate about quitting Facebook certainly takes on a different hue when exposure, not secrecy, becomes the critical fight. In the past few weeks, both Pakistan and Bangladesh shut down Facebook in response to the group Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, because it is considered blasphemous to create images of the prophet. Facebook has been slammed by clerics in Egypt and Syria for being a gateway to adultery; and a woman was shot in Saudi Arabia after her father discovered her chatting online with a man she met on the site. Increasingly, the idea that everyone should be able to log on, publish, upload, download, update, or tweet at will—and whim—seems vital.
This argument does not match the title. Privacy is a form of freedom, not the opposite of freedom. Part of being free to say what you want means being free FROM snooping and people who shouldn’t be hearing what you have to say not being able to.
We have a whole area of rights around this - the freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. It’s why the government can’t read our mail in most free countries. When sites like Facebook make it hard to keep your doings private, you put yourself at greater risk of discovery. This has a chilling effect on your speech.
In the world where “if you want to protect it, don’t post publicly” holds sway, the woman in Saudi Arabia has two choices: get shot for for chatting with men or don’t talk to men at all. That’s not freedom. The thing that could have freed her from her father’s insane grip is secrecy; she lives and is free only insofar as she is able to keep her private life away from his murderous gaze.
Julia Baird, “Freedom Should Trump Privacy Online” (via newsweek)
Posted on June 6, 2010 via Newsweek with 43 notes
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Montreal’s done this conversion too. They sell books and little art objects and all kinds of stuff.
beachjustice: Unused Cigarette Vending Machines Now Sell Books (via GOOD)
Posted on June 5, 2010 via beach justice
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It can be hard to predict the future through the haze of nostalgia
Jonah Lehrer examines The Shallows - What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains - By Nicholas Carr - NYTimes.comPosted on June 5, 2010 with 1 note
Being a collection of quotations, images, and the occasional moving picture relating to the obsessions and themes that drive
Quiet Babylon.
GENESIS 11:1-9
1 Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words.
2 It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly." And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar.
4 They said, "Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth."
5 The LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.
6 The LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them.
7 "Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another's speech."
8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city.
9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.
1 Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words.
2 It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly." And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar.
4 They said, "Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth."
5 The LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.
6 The LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them.
7 "Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another's speech."
8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city.
9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.
