:discomedusa:

vela creations

another great link from treehugger.com

vela creations 'is an in-depth resource for off grid living.' 

their website includes a blog about their life and sustainable homestead projects, (free) plans to make your own Chispito wind generator out of scrap and readily available materials, and a store selling off grid/ homesteading reference books.

as i am slowly working towards creating a homestead of my own, i find  vela creations work to be extremely inspiring!

their amazon shop is a great resource- in my home, we joke (but not really!) that we have all this post apocalyptic survival information bookmarked, but it will be inaccessible should we ever need it in a pinch!

anathem

oh, joy!  a new neal stephenson novel!

'Philosophy! Theology! Global catastrophe! Adventure!

Neal Stephenson's "Anathem" pulls off what most writers would never dare attempt -- it is simultaneously a philosophical argument and a ripping good yarn.'

review by Andrew Leonard on salon.com.

also for your persual:
the official site & a reading on longnow.org

(books ordered through this link to amazon.com kick back a percentage of the profits to the long now foundation-

'established in 01996* to develop the Clock and Library  projects, as well as to become the seed of a very long term cultural institution. The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to today's "faster/cheaper" mind set and promote "slower/better" thinking. We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.')

my copy is in the mail!  i can hardly wait!

thanks for the tip, rebecca!

plastic ocean

"A vast swath of the Pacific, twice the size of Texas, is full of a plastic stew that is entering the food chain. Scientists say these toxins are causing obesity, infertility...and worse."

yeah, this is really disturbing.  i just read the article 'plastic ocean' in best life magazine.  i strongly recommend everyone read this account of the state of plastic pollution in the world's oceans. 

i only hope that the world can pull together to undo the (massive amount of) damage; otherwise it may be 'children of men' without the possiblility of a hopeful ending...

some particularly chilling excerpts:

"...This swath of sea contains six times as much plastic as it does plankton"

"You could take your (blood) serum to a lab now, and they’d find at least 100 industrial chemicals that weren’t around in 1950."

"Except for the small amount that’s been incinerated—and it’s a very small amount—every bit of plastic ever made still exists"

etc...

more links about plastic in the ocean here.
things you can do to help at we are what we do
information on banning plastic bags

strange attractors

strange attractor
(chaos vocabulary, continued.)

' An attracting set that has zero measure in the embedding phase space and has fractal dimension. Trajectories within a strange attractor appear to skip around randomly.'
(mathworld.com again)

(above: a dejong attractor from postulate.org)

also,

'Strange Attractor:  Celebrating unpopular culture'

'...we declare war on mediocrity and a pox on the foot soldiers of stupidity. join us!''

wow!  i'm so excited to have found this site!  strange attractor's website is plastered with jellyfish, radiolarian-looking things, and other oddities. apparently, this strange attractor is a publisher of interesting oddities, as well as a uk resource for events and music.

here's a blurb about their third jounal:

Trip in a Vicorian time machine; wig out on psychoactive fauna; swing to the sounds of Martin Denny and the sex poetry of Arthur Koestler; ponder the occult roots of modern art and the literary kingdom of Redonda; gawp at the history of extra-uterine conception and recto-genesis; marvel at the house of dolls and the subterranean domain of Joseph Williamson; and more, more, more...

 

(fun blog, too: 'further:strange attractor & beyond')  i think i'm a fan!

neal stephenson

The Diamond Age (or, a  Young Lady's Illustrated Primer), by neal stephenson, embodies- through page-turning science fiction- the vision of the one laptop per child project. 

great read.  though i think i prefer Snowcrash. 

and while i'm plugging neal stephenson's books, i highly recommend The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World. 
more historical fiction than sci-fi, but so worthwhile.  action, adventure, romance, pirates, alchemy, politics, the calculus, etc.  it all comes together in the end.  seriously.  read it.