information-action ratio

Via the ever-resonate Kottke, maker of fine hypertext products, blog comes the documentary adaptation of the engrossing Tom Standage work on technology and innovation, The Victorian Internet. The curious tale of the development, peopled with many colourful characters, visionaries and opportunists with not unfamiliar foresight of the telegraph provides an fascinating and disarming reflection on contemporary achievements, which has created far fewer connections and shrunk the world less than our 18th century forebears.

as high as an elephant's eye

While the staple crop, one of the more domineering and hardy among agriculture, perfected by millennia of stewardship, presents nothing objectionable in itself—and quite the opposite if tended responsibly, corn management and corn policy (native to America but an invasive species) has grown into something untenable and potentially disastrous.
Without even addressing the myopic decision to tinker with the genetics of our food, the way corn is grown, the harvest almost exclusively diverted into feeding animals and automobiles and producing food additives and fillers, like the dreaded corn-syrup. Not counting acres and acres destined to become ethanol, biodegradable plastics or base ingredients for something more chemical and refined than flour or meal, this second-hand nutrition, feeding livestock rather than eating what we've reaped ourselves, reduces the efficiency of the land by some eighty-percent and more. Of course, through subsidies at the expense of the tax-payer and at the expense of the environment, creating vast tracks of monocultures and demanding more and more resources and land be used to satisfy exponential appetites with nascent returns, are eventually articulated as something more profitable to some, which is also something not valued-added for all.

billy goat's gruff

The Pre-Surfer offers an interesting glimpse at a very nimble population of domestic goats in Morocco that have mastered the skills of tree-climbing in order to reach berries and other delicacies. It is the argan berries though that have driven them up a tree: afterwards, the indigestible kernels of the berry are pressed into oil for a variety of health and cosmetic applications—for humans, sort of like civet coffee. There is a certain unexpected grace to see these determined creatures posed and poised.  I wonder whom has whom trained to perform.

footlights or starry, starry night

From Der Spiegel's international desk comes an important piece not only about only about about the grandeur of being able to see the stars and constellations and the muzzling scourge of light-pollution but, I think, even more to its credit waxes philosophical about the great electrification experiment and what it means that our nighttime is something aggressively alienated with some awful municipal flash light tag.

To divide day from night, even in a nominal way, has been something formative—the source of myths, wonder and a star to sail by since time immemorial until not so long ago, and to lose that dichotomy of time for the sake of productivity or for a sense of security means quite a lot. Along with initiatives to preserve dark patches of sky, a multidisciplinary body is meeting to discuss the meta-effects on human health and ecology. Many communities in Germany are doing quite a bit to stave off the glare, and efforts in France are quite impressive, mandating that store-fronts, office buildings and even street lamps are switched off. What do you think? Can you see the spine of the Milky Way from your backyard or is there too much ambient competition to appreciate the night?