Yule Heibel's Library tagged smartplanet →  View Popular, Search in Google

Well, hear, hear.
QUOTE
“Ugliness is so grim,” urban beautification advocate Lady Bird Johnson once said. “A little beauty, something that is lovely, I think, can help create harmony which will lessen tensions.”
UNQUOTE

urban_design urban_forest trees smartplanet

"State of the art integrated food production": so cool!
QUOTE
The Plant is a three-story aquaponic farm in Chicago’s Back of the Yards Park, a neighborhood that inspired Upton Sinclair’s critical look at the meat-packing industry (among other things) in The Jungle. But this story’s far from dystopian, as an exciting new project is transforming a former meat-packing plant into a producer of fresh produce and new businesses.
UNQUOTE

urban_agriculture aquaponics green_buildings chicago smartplanet

I want smart windows on my house. I want a smart house.
QUOTE
On Thursday, New Energy Technologies announced a new complementary conductive wiring system that will transport electricity over glass windows laid out in a fine grid-like pattern that’s virtually transparent. United States Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) scientists collaborated on the technology.

Architectural glass has can be found on many modern buildings. Apple has become renowned for encapsulating its stores in massive glass panels, and large glass windows have shrouded skyscrapers for decades. The business concept behind New Energy’s system is to retrofit these conventional glass structures.
UNQUOTE

smartplanet windows solar_power energy glass

I think I knew this already. ;-)
QUOTE
People tend to think of specific individuals as having performance anxiety, but it may actually be a whole gender.

A new study show that men’s cognitive performance declines if they will be told a woman will watch them. And that’s it. The woman doesn’t actually have to watch them and they don’t even need to see her for their cognitive functioning to suffer.
UNQUOTE

psychology smartplanet gender women

Who would have thunk? Interesting video.
QUOTE
A city’s typeface. It’s not the first thing I think of when I imagine ways to make a city great, but in Chattanooga, Tenn. they make a strong case for the importance of having a custom typeface for the city.
UNQUOTE

chattanooga typeface design urban_design branding smartplanet

Must-see.
QUOTE
The film, “Thinking Cities,” focuses on how cities are using Information Communications Technology (ICT) to start to come up with these solutions. It highlights interesting projects in cities like Boston, Seattle, and Stockholm where ICT is being used right now to address issues like waste, energy use, and civic engagement.
UNQUOTE

cities geoffrey_west urbanization smartplanet

Not surprised, actually:
QUOTE
...this week, scientists revealed that adult women have ovarian stem cells that are capable of becoming eggs.
UNQUOTE

smartplanet fertility women

Good strategies from Ben Keenan for tapping into your creativity:
QUOTE
SP: Do you have any strategies or tips on how we can be more creative?

BK: Sure, here are five:

1. Get the question right.

Before you consider the possibilities, you need to knuckle down and articulate the problem you are trying to solve in a single sentence. A problem well stated is a problem half solved.

2. Stop yourself from trying to solve things right away.

Years of rote education has drilled the question answer response into all of us.

You need to suppress that part of you that wants recognition and reward, and consider all the ways into the problem. Fill a page full of little boxes and try and put a thought in every box. Not an idea, but a thought, anything and everything that might solve the problem. Your goal is to fill the page, not answer the question.

3. Things won’t make sense after a while and that is normal.

We are not wired to consider possibilities when confronted with a problem, we are wired to jump out of harms way, that’s why the creative process makes you feel flustered, and like you aren’t getting anywhere. Understanding this helps you push through it and just keep going, it’s only after things stop making sense that the really interesting thoughts arrive.

4. Go do something else.

After you’ve a had a burst for an hour or two, go do an expense report, your time sheets, something that requires your full concentration. While you are applying conscious thought to this task, your subconscious will be sifting through all knowledge you’ve offloaded about the problem.

5. Keep a pen and paper handy.

Once your subconscious has done its job, the answers will come to you thick and fast. Usually, if we are not having any luck on a solution, I’ll just go at it for an hour or so at night, sleep on it, and an idea will come to me while I’m on my way into work the next morning. We all do this without realizing we do it, it’s why your best ideas often happen in the shower.

SP: Lastly, are there any resources / training links for people who are interested in exercising their creative muscle?

BK: There are many, I am a hoarder of them at my Thought Police site and I regularly tweet about them on @warmcola.
UNQUOTE

smartplanet ben_keenan creativity reference how_to

John Maeda on Twitter.
QUOTE
Q: You’re very active on Twitter. In fact, you’ve said that your new book, Redesigning Leadership, is based on some of the “micro-posts” you’ve Tweeted about leadership and innovation. Why did you decide to start using Twitter?

A: First and foremost, I think of myself as an artist and designer, and I’m also the president of a college. Being the president of a college, your role is to be the authoritative leader. I own that and I embrace that fully, but at the same time, as an artist, I want to express my creativity in some shape or form. I can have a show once a year somewhere in the world and that’s okay, but every day I have to make art somehow, and making art is about taking emotion and making it into something. I found that using Twitter gives me the chance to have a gallery online where I can share different thoughts that I’m forming and thinking and struggling with. Also, I have very little time, so I use little micro-minutes to just summarize something and put it out there.
UNQUOTE

john_maeda risd creativity smartplanet interview

Pretty amazing, when you think about it: a house built from shredded decommissioned European currencies, a protest against the Euro being foisted on Ireland...
QUOTE
A cheap flood of credit at the introduction of the single currency caused an extensive property bubble in the early 2000s. However, following its rapid decline, the euro has left Ireland amassed with derelict and empty building, and faced with a deep recession which forced it to accept a humiliating EU bailout last year.
UNQUOTE

ireland euro currency art architecture smartplanet

Very effective video, and sobering commentary.
QUOTE
And if you’re wondering about the link between CO2 and global warming, here’s what the data from NASA shows:

The carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was about 285 parts per million in 1880, when the GISS global temperature record begins.
By 1960, the average concentration had risen to about 315 parts per million.
Today it exceeds 390 parts per million and continues to rise at an accelerating pace.

While scientists don’t expect temperatures to rise consistently year after year, they do expect those figures to continue climbing over decades with extreme temperatures predicted in the next two to three years due to increased solar activity and the effects of El Nino on the tropical Pacific region.
UNQUOTE

climate_change nasa video smartplanet global_warming