http://www.wellingtongrey.net/miscellanea/archive/2007-03-26–endless-tangents.html

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/

Technorati Tags: blog, design, graphicdesign, maps, teaching, socialstudies, tools

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http://www.popart.com/news/event-detail.aspx?id=88

$149 to sit from 8am-3pm, listening to the following people talk about sustainability marketing:

Bill Scott, Flexcar
Jason Graham-Nye, gDiapers
Ian Yolles, Nau
Brian Rohter, New Seasons Market
Kierstin De West, Conscientious Innovation

I could see New Seasons & Flexcar, but the rest of those? Am I just being grumpy?

Technorati Tags: business, commercial, nau, pdx, sustainability

http://www.ilea.org/lcas/franklin1990.html

Through a lifecycle energy analysis, plastic is the better bag. At current recycling rates two plastic bags use less energy and produce less solid, atmospheric, and waterborne waste than a single paper bag. Moreover future improvements only increase preference in plastic bags. Increasing recycling rates and reducing the 2-to-1 ratio through proper bagging techniques would further the energy preference for plastic bags.

Although, there was a study that this article was based on that *may* have come to a different conclusion (see the first footnote).

This site was kind of nice anyway, if you haven’t seen it before — http://www.ilea.org/index2.html

Technorati Tags: efficiency, environmentalism, ilea, research, sustainability, tools

== Jane magazine’s guest blog consists of reader-submitted photos and descriptions… ==
http://www.kottke.org/remainder/07/05/13452.html
(from kottke.org)

Jane magazine’s guest blog consists of reader-submitted photos and descriptions of their breasts. The results are both unerotic and fascinating. Because of the portrayal of women and men as near-perfect sexual objects in the media, movies, and porn, it’s easy to forget the extent of diversity of people’s bodies. “I used to think they were horrible compared to all we see in fashion mags…but now I LOVE my body and my BOOBS!!!” NSFW, I guess. (link)

On the topic of plants and growing things…

Beans growing in a “room divider”
http://coroflot.com/public/individual_file.asp?from_url=true&sort_by=1&portfolio_id=465120&individual_id=113294

This was definitely an idea I had for my house. I was thinking grass on top of bookshelves originally – because we have a large south-facing window in the living room.

I saw this and a Miele indoor grow system today:

http://www.embryo.ie/miele/

I thought of those huge windows in the future employee breakroom, and how nice it would be to have some edible things growing in there. Fava beans in the winter, climbing/flowering pole beans in the summer?

Not that any of this will be news to you…

== Confronting Prevailing Wisdom ==
http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2007/05/a_tide_against_.html
(from Evolving Excellence)

Today I had the privilege of participating in the Manufacturing Business Conference, which is an annual event put on by Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. There were three keynoters and four panel discussions on Onshoring, Sustainable Manufacturing, Challenges of Outsourcing to China, and the Role of Operations in M&A and Private Equity. I must hand it to the Kellogg students that organized the conference; it was probably the most logistically perfect event I’ve been to in years.

Technorati Tags: blog, business, efficiency, lean, manufacturing, offshoring, outsourcing, puppy, sustainability

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/5/12/02418/8290

The new Harper’s (June 2007) contains a stunning and powerful “Notebook” essay titled “Climate, Class, and Claptrap,” by Garret Keizer — a minister, if I recall correctly. Keizer writes as well as Wendell Berry, but with a kind of righteous anger that the more ponderous Berry tamps down. This essay is about the contradictions inherent in the environmental community’s fast embrace of “green capitalism” and wondertoys.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html?ex=1327640400&;amp;en=a18a7f35515014c7&;amp;ei=5090&;amp;partner=rssuserland&;amp;emc=rss

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy.

Technorati Tags: food, nytimes, sustainability

http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/18621/page3/

“There were three evaluations required at the inception of a product idea: a marketing requirement document, an engineering requirement document, and a user- experience document,” Norman recalls. Rolston elabo rates: “Marketing is what people want; engineering is what we can do; user experience is ‘Here’s how people like to do things.’”

I really like that idea of “a user-experience” document. Or at least the idea that the user experience – not the feature or change itself – is a documented requirement in a design. Maybe this is already implicitly part of the DCR process.

I see the user-experience as being a critical part of implementing any kind of change (not just product-related) – how do people like to do things, how do we do things now (if there is a difference) and what does this change have to do with both of those things?

Technorati Tags: apple, design, products, userexperience, softwareengineering, research, software, tools