"What you saw there was a scaled prototype, 35 feet in diameter. During the test run it arrived on-site in a dock attached to a trailer, then deployed, activated the turbine, and returned to the ground—all automatically. At its highest altitude of 350 feet, it successfully got the turbine to generate twice as much juice than it gets at tower height. We'd say Altaeros is one to watch."

"…Narratives are better than thumps, is the message; and in the field of human relations this might well be so, but here's the rub. Nature's not a person. Nature's not a mother. We are not fighting it but living it. The industrial landscapes pursued with such terrific thoroughness, the agricultural deserts as well as the suburbs, the minefields as well as the wind farms, the cities themselves, are the outcomes not of rage but of stories, narratives in the dream of the human domination of the world. That's why I hug the boy's head. It's good that he sees himself as a particle of nature, a being rather than a human being, and his life as fundamentally consumptive. He knows if he holds his breath he will die. He knows he must live in the present. So now I must try and teach him this: the bolt-ons and band-aids of the sustainability movement that try to manage our fear of the future are but another chapter in that book of domination. It will not, in the face of the red giant, ultimately sustain. And nature as we know it now, in this snapshot of human time, will not stay as it is, however we try to preserve it."

"The general idea behind the Hydra narrative in a broad sense (not just what Taleb has said/will say in October) is that hydras eat all unknown unknowns (not just Taleb’s famous black swans) for lunch. I have heard at least three different versions of this proposition in the last year. The narrative inspires social system designs that feed on uncertainty rather than being destroyed by it. Geoffrey West’s ideas about superlinearity are the empirical part of an attempt to construct an existence proof showing that such systems are actually possible."

"The potential home buyer today has seen pictures of Detroit, with former neighborhoods being gradually reclaimed by Nature or plowed under into farmland. Recognizing that his or her own city could become like that in 20 years time, the buyer will factor that into the price he or she is willing to pay. In the event of a Detroit-style decline, the house becomes worthless and the cost of ownership for 10 years or so effectively tripled (10 years x 5 percent is approximately equal to 50 percent of the home’s value, then add another 100 percent for the cost of throwing the house away). Suppose the buyer thinks that this has a 20 percent probability of happening. Given a typical person’s risk aversion, that might reduce the market-clearing price for a house by 25 percent."

"In my view, even the long-run estimates are too low. A sustained upward trend in prices will induce the development of energy-saving innovations (the reverse is true – when energy is cheap and getting cheaper, people invent new ways to use more of it). I suspect that the full long-run elasticity, including induced innovation, is near 1, meaning that if current real prices are sustained, consumption could fall as much as 70 per cent below the level that would be expected if prices had remained at the 2000 level."

"The friction between the quant and the poet could be represented by focusing on a few bickering individuals, or by trying to divide the greens up into Two Cultures. But it could also, perhaps more honestly and productively, be represented as a tension that is present within all. None of us is wholly, or even primarily, rational and analytical, and none of us is quite devoid of poetry either, though it is sometimes hard to find it. These divisions are themselves stories that we, in this particular culture, tell ourselves about how humans work. The quants and the poets are both needed, but I would argue that, right now, the poets ought to take the lead – if indeed that is ever something that poets are capable of. We have no shortage of arguments about numbers and machines, but we do have a great shortage of workable stories. That is to say: stories that don’t just have happy endings, but have convincing plots as well."

The group ended up recording a 6 song album, “Nighty Night,” in the space of 12 hours. You can listen to the full record streaming on Amanda Palmer’s site.

The Creative Commons-released material and somewhat egalitarian nature of the project has led to the online SFF and rock communities picking up the music and using it to craft their own original works. Below the cut, we list the coolest videos that have grown out of the project so far!

But the general agenda here is worth comment: like most of the other industry groups, BSA is very invested in proving that majorities of people approve of IP rights.  This feeds into a larger industry belief that, in the long term, the problem of piracy is one of cultivating respect for IP and, relatedly, demonstrating popular support for stronger enforcement measures.   Our view is that this notional ‘respect for IP’ is irrelevant in the face of (1) basic disconnects between high prices for media goods and low incomes, especially in developing countries, and (2) the ongoing rapid decline in the cost of digital technologies (that permit widespread copying, that need software, that facilitate music listening, and so on).

"The idea part is cheap. Try to think of an idea that’s actually worth something on its own. “I wish I’d thought up the web browser.” Bullshit. The web browser had been thought up at least twenty years before those high-energy frogs coded one up on NeXTstep (c.f. Dynabook, 1968). It was the actual shipping product they wrote that caused the internet revolution, not the idea."

"So, for large complex financials, capital cannot be measured precisely enough to distinguish conservatively solvent from insolvent banks, and capital positions are always optimistically padded. Given these facts, and I think they are facts, even “hard” capital and leverage restraints are unlikely to prevent misbehavior. Can anything be done about this? Are we doomed to some post-modern quantum mechanical nightmare wherein “Schrödinger’s Banks” are simultaneously alive and dead until some politically-shaped measurement by a regulator forces a collapse of the superposition of states into hunky-doriness?"

"Studies about productivity declines when working more than 40 hours a week surface with disturbing regularity. As a developer your creativity declines, you make more mistakes, you miss existing issue etc., to the point where you're doing more harm than good. Should I even mention the health concerns when you spend that much time engaged in the same activity (they even had rules about spending too much time at work in the Soviet Union, and those guys were all about putting in the time for the good of the people). What about diet, you can only survive on coke for so long – poor John couldn't even make it to 40."

"Florida assured Tessa that Detroit's plight "is not something I'm particularly happy about." He told her his wife is from Detroit. And then he told her that his friends who live in Detroit are making it as "freelancers" who "commute on an irregular basis" to work on projects somewhere else. He had recently given a speech to Detroit airport officials, who told him that the airport would remain viable. "That airport provides connective fiber," he told her. "Finding local employment is going to be a lot harder. So you either have to say, can I commute to work, by plane perhaps, or do I have to look for a place that has a better set of opportunities for me?"

There was no way to know if the answer was satisfactory: Tessa from Detroit was off the air."

"Section Eight Design was selected as the winner for their partnership with Teton Valley Community School, a non-profit, independent school in Victor, Idaho. The proposal, pictured above, focuses on scalability and a connection to the outdoors, taking advantage of the school's location at the base of the Teton Mountain Range. In addition to classrooms and meeting spaces that the school will build incrementally as they raise funds, gardens, farm animals, and local, drought-resistant flora will be integrated into the school's fabric to promote community, environmental responsibility and a "sense of place.""

Interesting but innocuous HBR commentary on stuff we've actually all been doing for a while out here in the world

"Where we are now, and we already know that we are there, is in a much more permeable and fluid society and a much more permeable cultural environment where the difference between producers and consumers is much more blurred. Where this category of users has become absolutely central to everything we do. So when we talk about newspapers, we have to think about the users who communicate with a commercial organization like TPM, the users who basically get together and make their own new party presses, like DailyKos or Townhall, like the users who make up YouTube, like the users who make up Wikipedia. Suddenly you have radically decentralized practical capacity to act. And what do people do? They act."

"As the speed of technological progress continues to accelerate, innovation threatens to outpace architects’ and designers’ working knowledge of materials thereby limiting their applicability. In order to stay at the cutting edge of design, a knowledge of the uses, properties, and sources of new materials is essential. A companion to the Transmaterial books written by Blaine Brownell and published by Princeton Architectural Press, Transmaterial online is intended to be a clear, concise, accessible, and carefully edited resource that provides information about the latest and most intriguing materials commercially available."

Graph #2 is particularly interesting

"An important addition to the growing international dialogue about the commons can be found in the new anthology, Genes, Bytes and Emissions: To Whom Does the World Belong? (discussed in this previous blog post). Recently released in German, the essays in this book are now available online in English.

The book was edited by Silke Helfrich and published by the Heinrich Boell Foundation; Helfrich is the former director of the Foundation’s Mexico City office, which hosted a major conference, Citizenship and Commons, in December 2006. The collection, whose title in English is To Whom Does the World Belong? offers a thoughtful and provocative array of viewpoints on the commons. (The links below connect to pdf files of the essays.)"

"Entries should be functional designs that reveal the beauty of the wood.

Eligible entries are limited to one sheet of plywood.

Entries must be flat-pack designs, either using no hardware, or with the use of up to 20 pieces of EcoSystems: Alpha hardware. For PDF instructions and 3D files of the Alpha hardware, please visit Design Green Now.

EcoSystems will provide CNC (computer numerically controlled) routing manufacturing of the winning entry. The wood used is 1” Appleply, a 17 ply panel that has a rotary-cut White Maple face. In addition to being FSC wood, the panels are NAUF (No Added Urea Formaldehyde) and come with a no VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) clear finish."

"Most of the ag trials that I have read about seem woefully incomplete. They seldom do a competent job of characterizing initial conditions, and seldom do a complete analysis of the interventions they try. For example, they may amend soil with manure or compost, but don't have an accurate analysis of the materials applied, as if all manure or compost was the same.

Use of a SRB for trials could make the trials more useful, but offering biochar testing services might be even better. It would complicate subsequent cross-trial comparison and analysis, but would also yield information about the value of various char formulations. All of the trials would be improved by the use of competent testing to characterize soils, water and even seeds. Records of local micro-climates during the test period would be of value too. Not all places are the same and not all years are the same."

"Our study shows the extent and severity of land degradation measured in terms of loss of net primary productivity, making allowance for climatic variability. Overall, a quarter of the world's population depends directly on these degrading areas. The worst-hit areas are Africa south of the Equator, SE Asia and S China. The worst-affected countries, with more than 50 per cent of territory degrading are, in Africa, the Congo, Zaire, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Sierra Leone, Zambia and the most affected (95 per cent degrading) Swaziland; in Asia, Myanmar, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Korea and Indonesia. In terms of the rural population affected, the greatest numbers are in China, with nearly half a billion, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Brazil. The usual suspects, such as the African Sahel and around the Mediterranean are much less affected."

"Throughout the trip, we met with a diverse group of sustainability luminaries, including global systems scientist Will Steffen, Australian Minister for Environment, Heritage and the Arts (and former Midnight Oil frontman) Peter Garrett, Aboriginal activist Isabelle Coe and sustainability guru Phillip Sutton. Though their areas of expertise varied, they expressed a common interest in finding new ways for individuals to think and collaborate for the sake of the 'whole.'"

"With a massive network of roads and an average of more than three parking spaces per car (less in dense cities, more in the suburbs), auto-focused transportation infrastructure contributes mightily to the heat island effect, which worsens air quality and increases energy used on air conditioning. And while asphalt that uses lighter-colored rocks can offer some relief, the basic problem is the amount of paved surface itself, and cars demand the most pavement per person of any form of transportation -- (by the way, anyone got a link to one of those photos or graphs comparing the amount of pavement needed by 100 people driving, walking and taking the bus?)"

"So again, the foundation can help the collaboratives process what is happening - in real time as they "rapid prototype" - and make sense of what is happening. Does what they are doing feel like its going in the right direction? What have they been surprised about? What did they notice? What do they need to learn about? Who can they learn that from? For this kind of learning to lead to breakthroughs, the foundation as network guardian will need to make sure the reflection process includes participants and observers as well as the organizational staff. "

"The essential problem is the tragedy of the commons. Global warming and concern about CO2 emissions is a global, social problem that has extraordinary long term impacts, but when you look at it on an individual level, the marginal returns that a selfish individual can gain by ignoring the greater good far exceeds the marginal cost to that individual in the short run. In the long run, though, everyone pays more."

"The health of our communities, our planet, and ourselves depend on how we plan, design, and construct the world between our buildings. Green Community explores the origins of our precarious ecological situation and introduces communities large and small where citizens, political leaders, planning and design professionals, developers, and government agencies are working together for a more sustainable future."

"The biggest problem with dystopian fiction is not its pessimism. I do think there's a serious issue about who's interests are best served by making people fear the future, but I think the biggest problem with most dystopian fiction is its laziness and derivative quality. Lazy futures act like visionary static, crackling and dirtying the signal-to-noise ratio, making it harder not only for truly insightful futures to be found, but corrupting the ability of normal people to see why those visions are worth understanding."

"Of course it’s crazy to imagine retargeting our industrial capacity in such dramatic fashion, and turning it on a dime, isn’t it?

Not necessarily. For months I’ve been meaning to blog a segment from a Lester Brown podcast, which I can’t find now, but here’s the same point from his book Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization:..."

"... This program is revenue-neutral, and will help to make roads more accessible to low-income drivers by charging people for actual road use rather than for car ownership. The system will also benefit drivers by reducing the amount of time stuck in traffic.

One interesting quirk of the system: because a straight vehicle tax is being swapped for a per-mile fee, cars will actually become cheaper and car ownership should therefore go up. Total miles driven, on the other hand, will drop. This sort of “mobility as a service” arrangement may become more common in the future. For example, Shai Agassi has been on a tear recently with Better Place, which aims to sell electric vehicles on a pay-as-you-go cell phone model."

"One item in the Transition tool kit is “reskilling” – reviving energy-frugal skills that past generations took for granted, such as how to repair something rather than buying new and how to grow and preserve food. Says Proulx-Lough, who has spent time in Totnes twice this year: “A workshop on darning socks – that’s practical action, and an excuse to do things together!”
Among other Transition activities:

• Planting nut trees on street corners and orchards in the city.

• Signing up 50 people to buy solar hot-water heaters so the units can be purchased at a discount.

• Interviewing seniors who recall what living a low-energy life was like.

• Holding bicycle-repair workshops"

"A warning from Sunpower (SPWRA) last week is a sign that big solar companies are in trouble. US solar demand will not catch up in 2 years, even with solar tax credits in place. Overall, the solar sector may have some weakness in the short term, though I remain bullish long term."

"Back in May this year, California announced an 800MW solar farm project as a part of plans to cut greenhouse emissions. As we can see, the state is really warming up to achieve its goal. No doubt other cities in the state will also come up with similar plans to tackle the greenhouse gas emission. Beginning in 2007, the California Energy Commission managed $350 million targeted for new residential building construction. It will use funds already allocated to the Energy Commission to foster renewable projects between 2007 and 2011. According to the California Energy Commission, the so called "New Solar Homes Partnership" will focus on new residential construction."

Someday we'll build our studio this way.

"There are some efforts in progress to develop perennial grain producing grasses to overcome one of the costly and destructive characteristics of food plants: cultivation. The yearly need to break the soil to plant a crop is an expensive labor and material consuming activity, and it degrades soil. It's a non-trivial objective. A cross of some sort that produced perennial C4 grain producing grasses that are able to produce in a wider range of temperatures would be as revolutionary as earlier efforts that produced shorter grain plants that put more of their energy into seed than stalk."

"This conservative myopia dates back to President Reagan, who gutted Jimmy Carter's multibillion-dollar research and development budget for renewables, and ended the tax credits for wind and solar. The sad result is our country is now a bit player in what will probably be one of the biggest job-creating industries of the century, an industry we launched. We had 90 percent of global-installed wind capacity in the 1980s. Today we have one major wind manufacturer, General Electric, with about one-sixth of the market.

Clean energy shouldn't be a partisan issue. But it is. And that means those who who want this country to be a leader in clean energy -- those who want to avoid catastrophic global warming and avoid the worst of peak oil -- need to start becoming single issue voters."

Thinking about the network of publishing and print media distribution, as well.

"... If the bus company has to meet labor, environmental, and equipment standards to cart passengers around for a fee, it could easily be undercut by unlicensed shared-ride operations, it says. Whether that turns out to be true or not, Trentway finds itself in the same basic situation that existing business like Encyclopedia Britannica faced when free or low-cost upstarts like Wikipedia threatened to crowd-source their core product into oblivion"

General point: "How can people of good conscience within such populations change the cultures that are stifling them?"

Porous concrete

Still a very centralized effort, it seems. And supply shortages driving up costs of equipment.