Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 769

Wanna build your own window farm?

*Hey, they're urban, hydroponic, vertical and crowdsourced.

http://windowfarms.org/

*And they're Favela Chic. Boy, are they ever.

*While you're at it, why not move *yourself* into a recycled windowbox:

http://www.been-seen.com/article.cfm?id=11083

Meanwhile, on the Alaskan climate-crisis front

AKGovSarahPalin Great news for Eagle's flood victims – manufacturer's construction crew will build first pre-fab house Thursday! about 7 hours ago from web


AKGovSarahPalin Appreciate all the men & women fighting AK's wildfires across state. Latest details @ http://tinyurl.com/nms7cd & http://tinyurl.com/ma6tnf about 7 hours ago from web

AKGovSarahPalin Flew over McGrath area burn, met idolized smokejumpers (for bravery, strength, love of outdoors!) I appreciate their work in volatile areas
4:45 P

The Gothic "Ghost Properties" of the London Rich

*Boy, they're coming thick and fast today. I'm not even looking for these; the

Gothic High-Tech is creepin' out of the woodwork like a poltergeist.

*From the Murdoch-owned WALL STREET JOURNAL, which would probably

be the house organ of Gothic High Tech if it wasn't for BUSINESS WEEK

which is trying to sell itself for one dollar.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124752462689735243.html

By JENNIFER MARTINEZ

LONDON — At an abandoned home with yellowing newspapers on its front stoop, Paul Palmer peeks t

I see that parkour is professionalizing.

*Three million YouTube hits. That must be scaring up a few celebrity appearances

for this talented gentleman. Unless he's too busy hitting the gym to bother

to do them.

*Via @GreatDismal

Depression-stricken homeowners to be demoted to renters

*You may notice that this intriguing idea is remarkably similar to the "Renew Newcastle" scheme, but on a continental scale.

*Actually, if it were "Renew Newcastle," the unemployed
and unemployable would be placed in a new classificatory scheme, "custodians,"
given free wifi, and allowed to run around more-or-less occupying
dead American suburbs whose buildings are doomed and falling apart anyway.
A rather looser and artsier plan than this one, but this plan is just a straw in
the poll winds anyhow.

Spime Watch: Trash Tagging and Removal Chains

*Thanks, #vanderbeeken!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8149183.stm

(…)

"Initially, 3,000 pieces of rubbish, donated by volunteers, will be tagged in New York, Seattle and London.

"Trash is almost an invisible system today," Assaf Biderman, one of the project leaders at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told BBC News.

"You throw something into the garbage and a lot of us forget about it. It gets buried, it gets burned, it gets shipped overseas."

The Trash Track aims to make that process

Learning from Las Vegas

*Gothic high-tech style. "The housing industry basically got into the casino business."

Swarming with starchitects.

http://www.thingsmagazine.net/2009/07/complexity-and-contradiction.htm

(((One of the many links at the ever-illuminating THINGS:)))

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jun/26/las-vegas-citycenter-recession

"A joint venture between the casino operator MGM Mirage and Dubai World, the vast CityCenter development in Las Vegas is the biggest privately funded construction project in the

Vague Scientist

*Hey, it works for me (and I'm not even British).

The Space Squelette

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/12/AR2009071201977.html

(…)

After more than a decade of construction, it (((the International Space Station))) is nearing completion and finally has a full crew of six astronauts. The last components should be installed by the end of next year.

And then?

"In the first quarter of 2016, we'll prep and de-orbit the spacecraft," says NASA's space station program manager, Michael T. Suffredini.

That's a polite way of saying that NASA will make

It's not that I agree with him: it's that he's ahead of his time

*This British guy is having a fit of "dark euphoria." This is what the next decade feels like; it involves genuine panic and profound loss, and it's also hilarious. This is not a one-off; this is the first robin-of-spring for a cultural temperament that's going to last quite a while.

*The breakthrough comes when people realize this is not a "dystopia" — this is our open space, this is the new public realm. We could "worship insects" if we want, but we might find ourselves doing astounding thin