Life interferes with blogging and vice versa. To integrate the two better, I bought a little paper notebook that I take everywhere so I can write down potential blog ideas. I think this used to be called a journal, or a notebook, but I call it my iBlogger.
Last week I attended a panel on urban transportation given as part of the UN World Environment Day hosted by the City of San Francisco. Jaime Lerner, a former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, aways south of Sao Paulo, talked about the transformation of his city from one dependent on cars to one rife with plentiful public transport and walkways. He said that within two years, any city can do the same -- without a large infusion of cash. To get the citizens of Curitiba to recycle their trash, Lerner set up a six-month training program in all the elementary schools to teach children how to recycle. The kids then taught their parents, and everyone ended up recycling. Lerner feels recycling, living close to work, and not using a car for short trips are three quick ways to stop and even reverse the greenhouse effect.
Once in a while i google myself. The other day, I did a search and discovered that most of my citations are on blogs. You know blogs are important when that happens, yet most companies still ignore them. A friend and I started a consulting service to develop ways to track the influence of blogs for companies that want to know what people think about them and their services on the blogosphere. We're still developing tracking and rating criteria, but we already have a client. It feels like another Gold Rush.
Peter Hirshberg (www.atomicbomb.com) has a lot of original ideas. He used to work at Apple, and as part of the Amelio diaspora, he's gone on to work for many different startups. Peripatetic, his mind makes connections by looking under stones.
Another connector is Charles Ostman, a physicist and founder of Fourth Venture, which is converting former Soviet military technologies into alternate energy applications. His latest passion is to put solar panels into outer space and have them beam back energy, like a microwave. "Anything is possible," says Ostman in double-speed time (one needs a slowdown machine to figure out what he's saying). Ever the optimist, Ostman thinks that "Al Gore might have been denied his chance, but his ideas are taking effect." He recommends we read "The Party Is Over" by Richard Heinberg.
I got an advance copy of the July/August issue of Sierra magazine, and it's all about technology saving the environment. There's a story about technically innovative wunderkinder, which includes a piece on the UCSD anthropologist Natalie Jerijimenko. She's a breech-birth thinker -- always thinking upside down -- and although sometimes one needs the mental equivalent of forceps to figure out what she's trying to do, she makes one realize we should not take our way of thinking for granted.
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