science (11)

Cool Tools- My Favorite Website

As I’ve said before, this is the 21st century online Whole Earth Catalog. Same M.O.: People like us writing reviews of cool stuff for other people like us. It’s embarrassing how many things I’ve obtained after reading about them here. These aren’t frivolous purchases; all the stuff is useful to me, stuff I’d never have known about otherwise.

I must point out I have a massive conflict of interest here. I’ve written a lot of CT reviews, and these guys are good friends.

That said, I periodically want to turn people onto this rich source of ad-free advice. It’s just madly useful. Take a look: https://kk.org/cooltools

Write a review and they’ll send you an email of new tools weekly.

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Stewart Brand’s Summary of Jesse Ausubel’s SALT Talk “Why Nature is Rebounding”

Nature rebounding? Agriculture doing well? Huh? I wish all this were true, but I find this analysis troubling. What’s wrong here? What parts of this are right and what parts are not? I’m posting this for comment.

I don’t like Stewart’s (and probably Jesse’s) take on GMOs. Gardeners, people who work with the soil and respect natural processes know intuitively there’s something wrong with the GMO juggernaut. And I’ve just found out that Kauai is a proving grounds for the GMO giants: Dow Chemical (makers of napalm, right?), Syngenta, DuPont and their like seem to be poisoning Kauai and its people in their brilliant blending of genetic manipulation, poisons, and profit.

We are as gods, right? Wrong.

In the next few days I’ll post my observations on all this. It’s especially vivid because I just saw huge fields of genetic experiments (nary a weed in sight) on the road from Waimea to Polihale Beach.

—LK

Read More …

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Super-high resolution image of Andromeda from Hubble Telescope

From my friend Mickey

(Full screen please):

“Speaking of Tiny Places to live, here is an interesting video.

Each bright light is a star cluster or supernova. All the other points of light are stars. 100 million of them. They form a section of the Andromeda Galaxy which, in turn, is only a tiny piece of what we see in the night sky. And so many of those stars have planets orbiting them; many more planets than stars in this video, but unseen.

Makes our Earth seem very small. Tiny, actually.”

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I’m Doing 2 Presentations on Tiny Homes on the Move at the Maker Faire in San Mateo This Weekend

This thing is huge — 50,000 people. And fun! Surprising to me because I’m hardly nerd-oriented. There’s a wide range of things going on here, from ultra-geeky to downhome funk. This’ll be the 4th time I’ve gone and I always have a great time. It’s savvy, friendly, interesting, and very well run. I wander all over the large fairgrounds with my camera. It’s great for kids, all kinds of robots wandering around, ingenious mobile vehicles, 3D printing (hot right now), the “HomeGrown Village” hall for gardening, homesteading, building, food preservation, etc.

   I’m doing 2 presentations on Tiny Homes On The Move:

    -Saturday May 17th, 3:30 PM on the Maker Square Stage in the Homegrown Village

    -Sunday May 18th, 3:00 PM on the Center Stage. Click here.

-Kevin Kelly will be talking about his best-seller Cool Tools at 1:30 PM Saturday on The Center Stage.

-Snowboarder Mike Basich (our star builder in Tiny Homes) will be talking about his remote mountain homestead and homemade ski lift at 2:30 Sunday on The Center Stage (just before me).

One thing: traffic is heavy. Check out the Faire’s suggestions. You can bring a bike and park a mile or two away. General Faire info here.

Finally: Lew and Evan will be manning a Shelter Publications booth in one of the maker halls on how we make books. They’ll be giving away free copies of the Tiny Homes on the Move mini-book and selling copies of the full-size book for $20 apiece (cheaper than Amazon).

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Grandpa Launch

I just got this email from my friend John Hulls, whose dad recently passed away. Brought tears to my eyes.

“Hi, Lloyd,

One bit of sad news, Robin, who always enjoyed his visits to W. Marin, meeting you and reading your blog, passed away. He stayed alert till the end, and rather fancied what the children’s author, Phillip Pullman (The Golden Compass) did for his dad, which was to scatter his ashes by means of 4 Guy Fawkes skyrockets. Robin told me not to try it because of the huge fines in Massachusetts for illegal fireworks. However, I discovered a loophole in the model rocket laws, (private property/calculated flight plan, and stay out of controlled air space) and we scattered his ashes over his favorite sailing spot. The grandkids all got together to help build the rocket, which I modified, and you can see the results in this video. He would have been delighted to be on YouTube, too.

 – John”

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Logarithmic Spirals From the Garden

For lunch today.

“…Romanesco broccoli resembles a cauliflower, but is of a light green colour…with the branched meristems making a logarithmic spiral. In this sense the broccoli’s shape approximates a natural fractal; each bud is composed of a series of smaller buds, all arranged in yet another logarithmic spiral. This self-similar pattern continues at several smaller levels. The vegetable is rich in vitamin C, vitamin K, dietary fiber and carotenoids.…The number of spirals on the head of Romanesco broccoli is a Fibonacci number.…”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanesco_broccoli

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Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools

This is the single most useful site/blog on the web for me. I can’t say how many useful things this blog has turned me on to. It’s like the electronic Whole Earth Catalog, but what’s better is that it uses no paper, and it’s daily.

Kevin Kelly, ex-Whole Earth Review editor, founding editor at Wired mag, author, photographer, explorer, runs this operation, with daily reviews of useful stuff.

“Cool tools really work. A cool tool can be any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or website that is tried and true. All reviews on this site are written by readers who have actually used the tool and others like it. Items can be either old or new as long as they are wonderful. We only post things we like and ignore the rest. Suggestions for tools much better than what is recommended here are always wanted. Tell us what you love.”

Easiest way to get there is to go to kk.org, then click on “Cool Tools” at the left.

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