Stuck in the daily grind, it is not always easy to lift our heads out to the heavens and realize how beautiful life in deep space really is. We either have to be an astronomer or have one of those trite motivational posters at work. If neither is your style, this is great alternative - The Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD). As the title so gently suggests, the site posts one picture a day, along with commentary by someone that is qualified to do more than just gawk.
What got me interested was this recent post. This isn't as much a picture as it is a series of pictures of the spacecraft Cassini, that rendezvoused with the Saturn system after leaving earth in 1997. A number of photographs from Cassini were collated, cropped and strung together in a stop-motion video. Fortunately a stop motion video in space is an oxymoron. And this is one video where each frame says well over a thousand words.
Apparently they are making is IMAX movie called Outside In. They couldn't have chosen a better trailer.
For a while now, we have been big fans of NPR, so much so that all of our radio dials - car, receiver, clock - are set to FM 89.7 WUWM. Unlike the TV however, none of the radio receivers have a screen. So we hardly, get to see how the voices on our radio actually look like. So when we came across these couple of videos, I had to figure out a way to share. The first one features voices from the Milwaukee station - WUWM.
The second one features voices from NPR. NPR is the national service that produces most of the programs that run on the local stations like WUWM.
The game Angry Birds, seems to be all the rage now. It is the top selling game on iTunes, and one of the most successful free games on the Android platform. It has apparently been downloaded 50 million times, and is responsible for 200 million fewer minutes of productive human existence each day. The game style itself is not new, but of course the execution of the game is snappy, beautiful and addictive. Yet, how many of us have paused to consider what we are really playing?
Apparently someone has, and made this video as proof.
The Story of Stuff - is a cute and conscientious effort at promoting a more responsible and sustainable way of living. Narrated by a breathless Annie Leonard, the main video (embedded below) is an exploration of our current consumption-based economy and how unsustainable it really is. Interspersed with cute stick cartoons, Annie describes the linear nature of western economies, with particular focus on America - starting from extraction through to disposal of various material goods.
The core idea is not revolutionary - be sustainable because our current way of life is most certainly not. But the presentation seeks to gain a leg up via two different approaches, cartoon factoids and conspiracy theories. All through the video, you find instances of figures and ratios written up on virtual blackboards. They may all be true, or they may just represent the worst case scenario - one would never know from how neatly they are packaged. And then there are the conspiracy theories, right from the government - big business nexus to the secret cabal of post war economists and marketing directors. By no means is all of it false, and indeed expecting to get anything more than that in 20 minutes is rather naive. But by the same token, I would be hard pressed to imagine that all of today's economy is nothing more than a carefully packaged, herd the sheep, dog and pony show (talk about animated analogies).
With the facetious itch out of the way, let's get a tad more serious. The problem with sustainability in my mind, is that it has facets of the prisoners dilemma. In effect if all of us try to live sustainably, then it is a huge payoff for everyone. But if some of us do it and the others do not, then it leaves those of us acting in a sustainable manner worse off than those who are not. That is the way the dice of today's economy is loaded. When Annie talks about external costs she is not joking. Living off by your own self is not only more expensive, but it is not supported by the way society is set up today. That is what makes sustainable living a catch-22 situation.
Who then do we turn to? The same government that we blame for secretly getting us into this mess in the first place? The big business who care only about profits above all else? Or is the answer a more inclusive - all of the above? And that is the big issue I have with the tone of the message. The big question isn't how can we live more sustainably, but how do we make sustainability a social & economic imperative? Not one or the other. I have not heard a great answer yet.
Nevertheless, the video is a great way to communicate the message and urgency of a more sustainable life - to quote - "Make 'em Safe, Make 'em Last, and Take 'em Back."
Came across this site called the Khan Academy. Apparently this guy - Salman Khan (for those with a Bollywood background - it is not him) - that has taken upon himself to record and publish educational videos about every topic on earth. Thankfully he is starting with K-12 subjects and already has almost 14,000 videos published on Youtube. What's more, all his videos are released under a Creative Commons license.
Ooh, nerdy RTS game time! Just stumbled across a game called Achron. It is set like a typical strategy game, with units, objectives, commands and opponents. But, the key difference is that units and players can move through time as they go about trying to defeat their opponents. Here is a quick introductory video...
Here is another that shows both players taking the option of going back in time to thwart each others' designs. So much fun!
