[Bits] Food and reading

Peak Energy and What That Means For Food
The rising cost of energy could be an opportunity to address big problems- a catalyst for positive change. With that in mind we must frame this not as ‘the end of the world’ but as the beginning of something better.
Food Sovereignty and the Collapse of Nations
Here in the United States about 40% of our population farmed for a living around the turn of the 20th century. By 1950 that number had dropped to 12%. Today fewer than 2% do the work of growing food in America as we too have industrialized and urbanized our population. The other 98% of us work at a job which provides us money that allows us to buy food from a small number of domestic producers and from others who grow it abroad. We have given up our own food sovereignty as a people and instead rely almost entirely on an economic system to provide us with meals.
Louise Fili design
Restaurant identity & food packaging. Beautiful typography.
Online, R U Really Reading?
Children like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. The discussion is playing out among educational policy makers and reading experts around the world, and within groups like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association.
What the Internet is doing to our brains
I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.
A different approach to reading RSS feeds
Instead of treating news like email (as most RSS readers do), Times presents you with headlines and photos from a variety of sources all in one place, letting you more easily discover the news you want to read. Like your own personal newspaper, you can put feeds into separate areas, create pages for different subjects, and more.


Reboot

Excluding a brief period last summer this weblog has been largely dormant since November of 2006. At first this was due to what I should have perhaps realised all along, that simply I didn’t have anything to say. But lately, and by lately I mean the past 8 months, I’ve wanted to have a place to write some thoughts and share the mundane with those few who might find it interesting (hi mom). A return to the bits I use to share when I started ‘blogging’ almost 9 years ago. I got hung up by wanting to redesign what is a dated visual and the contradictory desire to write longish articles of ‘importance’.
So here is the wireframe – in progress – and a return my stream of consciousness.


Waking the dead

I’m in Prince Edward Island, it’s cold and raining, and since it’s Sunday I am taking a break from client work. What better time to resuscitate a long dead weblog.


666 – Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia

Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell who does not have the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of his name. This calls for wisdom: let anyone with the understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person. Its number is six hundred and sixty-six.

Revelation 13:16-18
Prayer vigil targets Devil’s Day.
On June 6 2006 (6/6/6), the evangelical Ambassadors Ministries from Holland held a 24 hour prayer vigil to ward off ‘evil spirits.’ The prayer marathon began in Jerusalem.
Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia is a fear found in the Western Christian world, which originates in the belief that the Biblical verse, Revelation 13:18, indicates that the number 666 is linked to Satan or the Anti-Christ. Outside the Christian faith, the phobia has been further popularized as a leitmotif in various horror films.
Courtesy Wikipedia.


The Origin of the Wire Coat Hanger

hangers.jpg
From Design Boom (lack of sentences theirs):

the invention of the wire coat hanger is attributed to
albert j parkhouse in 1903.
albert worked for a company in jackson named
timberlake & sons.
john b. timberlake had managed to collect several dozen
enterprising inventor-type employees such as albert,
who made wire novelties, lampshades, and other ubiquitous
devices for their customer clients.

Read the rest.


Historical result for the wrong reasons

I would have bet money years ago that Bush would remain in power. This conviction came not because he is a great leader or possesses a brilliant mind but simply because the people who brought him to power completely control the framework of debate. These people could bring anyone to power. Bush has been derided for his lack of intelligence and experience from the beginning. His language, geared towards those with less than high school education, was deliberate – not only superficial and easy to understand – it’s almost comforting in it’s simplicity. It among other things, outside of the issues, obviously struck a chord with the American populace.
This election is an absolutely amazing phenomena. Such almost religious conviction surrounding a political party. This man can do no wrong. It’s hard to say exactly what this says about the majority of Americans. Does this mean that Americans support mobilising a gigantic war machine to invade a country at their leaders whim? Anyone who would give the war a moments thought would realise that the reasons for invading Iraq all proved wrong and many were outright lies. Is that ok for the American people? It’s all rather astounding.
Even if the world survives another four years of George Bush I’m afraid that the precedents started with him now will have an irrevocable effect on their country and the world for years to come. The lines separating corporate, theocratic, and political government has blurred and bleed. The decline of a great country may well have begun.