Progressive Meandering

I have to say that I don’t like the “tradition” of - when asked - not telling people your political orientation and financial situation. It’s too Victorian in values for my liking. I reckon one’s political stance is very much centred around what one values, and what one values is very much a part of who you have decided to become based upon your past.

This encompasses the view that we all have a few values which shape all our decisions, and ultimately our lives. Although these may change as our experience changes, ultimately there are always strong attachments to these concepts which we adhere to as our personality. These are difficult to know, however, yet this does not mean that they do not exist. If they did not exist, what would the consequence be? An ever shifting personality… as new experiences come our way that we naturally adapt to them. Interestingly, this does not mean that we would have no personality whatsoever.

The not telling of your political stance is very much a cover-up, a façade… How can one decide to hide from one’s beliefs and values in the eyes of the public, if it is in fact beliefs and values that shape your actions? If they don’t shape your actions, then what does… Your façade based upon what you believe the public expect?

To create concepts means that we generalise; generalising means that we wrap something up to make it simple; making something simpler than it is means we reject all the information available; rejecting the entirety of the information means that we become ignorant.

By conceptualising public opinion (in order to create your façade), surely you fall into ignorance because everyone has different ways of looking at things. One step, therefore, to avoid falling into ignorance is to know what you believe, why you believe it and to act on it.

I suppose some might call it “being yourself.”

I came across perspectv courtesy of Josh Catone on Sitepoint. It’s a very nicely implemented term comparison interface, providing News, Blog and Google search comparisons for up to five terms. Follow this link to open the page below. Let’s take a look:

As you can see, first it shows a graphical comparison of your terms. Below you’re treated to a three live feeds, recent: tweets, blog posts and news items, featuring your search terms. I particularly like the smooth drop down update effect for these feeds, and the inclusion of a pause button:

It cleverly switches graph styles depending on the number of search terms used:

And provides a widget you can embed anywhere you choose:

All in all, a very well considered interface striking a good balance between useability and aesthetics.

I’ve just bumped into this fantastic clip by David Hubert via Abduzeedo.

David writes:

I really wanted to make a video of London while I was there earlier this year but I didn’t had any camcorder, so I took pictures instead. In fact I took more then 3000 pictures and put them all together in less then 2 minutes.

I mixed it with the track ”Harder, better, faster, stronger” from Daft Punk live record ”Alive 2007”

Pump up the volume and enjoy.

London (harder, better, faster, stronger) from David Hubert on Vimeo.

I particularly love the way David has thought “outside the box” and used his digital camera to implement a technique normally restricted to those with video cameras. Remember, the tools aren’t the limitation, what you think you can do with them is!

Bridgette Steffan of INHABITAT writes:

Outside of Rio de Janeiro, on a beautiful little beach with amazing blue water, sits a little house with a flowering roof that shades and protects like a big tropical banana leaf. Designed by Mareines + Patalano, the open air abode is meant to encourage interaction and connection between man and nature. With verandas and open spaces in between rooms and no corridors, the tropical beach house is an ideal place for social gatherings and parties. The open layout also takes advantage of trade winds that blow in from the sea, providing natural ventilation and passive cooling.

Truly stunning. My words can’t possibly do this justice! Enough said.

Mike Chino at INHABITAT writes:

Recently St. Lucie County in Florida announced that it has teamed up with Geoplasma to develop the United States’ first plasma gasification plant. The plant will use super-hot 10,000 degree fahrenheit plasma to effectively vaporize 1,500 tons of trash each day, which in turn spins turbines to generate 60MW of electricity - enough to power 50,000 homes! Cutting down on landfill waste while generating energy is a pretty win-win proposition, and the plant will also be able to melt down inorganic materials to be reused for other applications, such as in roadbed and heavy construction.

I think it’s important to remember that, while reclaiming as much energy as possible from a process is admirable, this process is NOT a green electricity source. It will always require more energy to vaporise the waste than is recovered by using the “syngas” to drive turbines.