Benjamin's Blog

Appleseed 2010 Summer Wrap-Up

via www.youtube.com

Appleseed: the original distributed, open source social network platform (since 2004!)

The (Elvis) BULLITT Assembly Movie...

via www.larryvsharry.com

Elvis drops in to show how to assembly your Bullitt cargo bike. Very handy that the King is still around.

Bamboo in Queens « Scouting NY

Best of all: the owner set a path through the side of the bamboo. The overhanging foliage completely blocks out the sunlight as you get deeper, giving it the feel of a secret passageway.

via www.scoutingny.com

Bamboo in Queens - what a great landscape design. Lawns are utterly dull, and making something better like this doesn't take that much effort.

PARK(ing) Day 2010 is Friday, September 17th

PARK(ing) Day is an annual, worldwide event that inspires city dwellers everywhere to transform metered parking spots into temporary parks for the public good.

via parkingday.org

Tomorrow is Park(ing) Day!

3-D Printing Is Spurring a Manufacturing Revolution - NYTimes.com

A 3-D printer, which has nothing to do with paper printers, creates an object by stacking one layer of material — typically plastic or metal — on top of another, much the same way a pastry chef makes baklava with sheets of phyllo dough.

via www.nytimes.com

As envisioned by Neal Stephenson in "The Diamond Age," I expect 3-D printing to become the next big advance akin to the industrial revolution.

Councils 'could save at least £51m' with shift to ODF and open source

If just half of councils moved half of their employees from Microsoft Office formats to ODF the cost of running desktops could come down dramatically - it would save £51m. If all of the councils moved all of their employees off Office, the savings would be £200m

via www.guardian.co.uk

The UK is looking to purge inefficient expenses from government ledgers, and that puts software with attached license fees under close scrutiny when FOSS apps can do the same job...

Room to Read - About Us - Room to Read

Our Vision

Room to Read believes that World Change Starts with Educated Children. We envision a world in which all children can pursue a quality education that enables them to reach their full potential and contribute to their community and the world.

Our Mission

Room to Read seeks to transform the lives of millions of children in developing countries by focusing on literacy and gender equality in education. Working in collaboration with local communities, partner organizations and governments, we develop literacy skills and a habit of reading among primary school children, and support girls to complete secondary school with the relevant life skills to succeed in school and beyond.

via www.roomtoread.org

An exciting non-profit I've recently discovered. I think I'll add this to my preferred organizations for donations.

Special Report: Smart money in real estate is on smart growth | Reuters

His work shows that local governments reap much more in taxes from urban centers than from malls or "big box" retail like a Wal-Mart, but pay more to build suburban infrastructure such as sewers and streets.

In the city and county of Sarasota, for example, 3.4 acres of urban residential development consumes one-tenth the land of a multi-family development in the suburbs. But it requires little more than half of the infrastructure investment and generates 830 percent more for the county annually in total taxes: that's $2 million from the city structure and $238,529 from the suburban one.

What's more, suburban housing takes 42 years to pay off its infrastructure costs. Downtown? Just three. "I'm preaching to Joe and Jane Six-Pack who want to be subsidized. These (city) centers produce a tremendous amount of revenue and then hemorrhage it out to the suburbs," Minicozzi said. "We don't have a rational discussion on the true costs of the way we manage land."

via www.reuters.com

After decades of misguided policies funneling urban surpluses into suburban money pits, governments are finally beginning to realize the mistake. Let the suburbs pay their own costs instead of freeloading, and we'll see them quickly become unattractive to most American workers. The social and environmental improvements of town and urban life will be gravy.

Lexington: Build that mosque | The Economist

WHAT makes a Muslim in Britain or America wake up and decide that he is no longer a Briton or American but an Islamic “soldier” fighting a holy war against the infidel? Part of it must be pull: the lure of jihadism. Part is presumably push: a feeling that he no longer belongs to the place where he lives. Either way, the results can be lethal. A chilling feature of the suicide video left by Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the band that killed more than 50 people in London in July, 2005, was the homely Yorkshire accent in which he told his countrymen that “your” government is at war with “my people”.

via economist.com

This is what a reasoned analysis of the issue looks like.

Generating Labels and Business Cards in OpenOffice.org - Worldlabel Blog

via blog.worldlabel.com

Another great, in-depth post from WorldLabel. This one covers mail merge and creating simple business cards in OpenOffice.org.