21 NOV 2017 by ideonexus
Urban Communities as Post-Apocalyptic Settings
As far as Brown is concerned, many abandoned urban communities are postapocalyptic in nature. Such places are rife for community-born transformation. "If you look at cities in the US right now, there are cities or communities in apocalyptic situations," says Brown. She references challenged areas in New York City, New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, Cincinnati, and her new home, Detroit. "Detroit used to be this booming industry town. This used to be a big, booming factory town. You coul... 1 
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notes12 OCT 2014 by ideonexus
Teleporters Homogenize the World
In Munich he walked.
The air was warm and clean; it cleared some of the fumes from his head. He walked the brightly lighted slidewalks, adding his own pace to their ten-miles-per-hour speed. It occurred to him then that every city in the world had slidewalks, and that they all moved at ten miles per hour.
The thought was intolerable. Not new; just intolerable. Louis Wu saw how thoroughly Munich resembled Cairo and Resht ... and San Francisco and Topeka and London and Amsterdam. The st... 1 notes
notes31 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
All Human Accomplishments are Works of Muscles
Muscles are in a most intimate and peculiar sense the organs of the will. They have built all the roads, cities and machines in the world, written all the books, spoken all the words, and, in fact done everything that man has accomplished with matter. Character might be a sense defined as a plexus of motor habits. Folksonomies: biology
Folksonomies: biology
1 Which carry out the will of their owners. All human character "might be a sense defined as a plexus of motor habits."
18 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
Nuclear Winter
In discussing the state of the atmosphere following a nuclear exchange, we point especially to the effects of the many fires that would be ignited by the thousands of nuclear explosions in cities, forests, agricultural fields, and oil and gas fields. As a result of these fires, the loading of the atmosphere with strongly light absorbing particles in the submicron size range (1 micron = 10-6 m) would increase so much that at noon solar radiation at the ground would be reduced by at least a fac...Folksonomies: environmentalism
Folksonomies: environmentalism
1 notes
notesAn explanation of the science behind this concept and the back-of-the-napkin calculation.
12 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
Earth's Curve, Flat Maps, and the Fastest Route Between T...
Imagine, say, that you wanted to travel from New York to Madrid, two cities that are at almost the same latitude. If the earth were flat, the shortest route would be to head straight east. If you did that, you would arrive in Madrid after traveling 3,707 miles. But due to the earth's curvature, there is a path that on a flat map looks curved and hence longer, but which is actually shorter. You can get there in 3,605 miles if you follow the great-circle route. which is to first head northeast,... 1 notes
notesBecause the Earth is a sphere and maps are flat, the fastest route between two points on a map is actually a curved line and airlines take this into account when plotting flight paths.
28 AUG 2011 by ideonexus
Religion Influences Responses to Epidemics
The Christian tradition, set by the example of Jesus as a healer, stands out, Hughes says. Helping the sick was one way to ensure a trip to Heaven, so risking death from a disease's spread was encouraged. Other religions did not promote such extreme altruism. Islamic teachings basically disavowed the existence of contagious disease, despite some Arabic scholars thinking otherwise at the time. Thus Muslims believed there was no sense in trying to avoid sick people, and the emphasis was on cari... 1 notes
notesA person's religion may prompt them to overcome their survival imperative and assist the contagiously ill, while people moving into cities are drawn into religion for the support group it provides.
10 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Naturalism Improves Perception
Nature study also heightens our perceptive
abilities: we see, hear and smell more, and more
keenly, because of them. In the cities, our senses tend
to atrophy. The relentless commercial badgering of
signs, and the general dullness and ugliness of city
landscapes, push the urban walker into the safe
cocoon of his mind and further out of his senses.
Simply spending time out in pastoral or wild
landscapes counteracts this tendency. Spend a day in
the woods and you will begin to hear a bit more a...Being attentive to nature heightens our senses because of the enjoyment we get from listening, seeing, smelling, and feeling it.
