The UK Has Become The First Country In The World To Be Placed Under Investigation By The United Nations

Yet despite decades of relegation to roles as tourist attractions or advertising gimmicks, airships may be on the verge of a comeback. This resurgence will be fueled not by impractical nostalgia or fandom, but by incredible advances in airship technology that have made these craft both immeasurably safer than their predecessors, and perfect vessels for certain niche conditions. And it seems like this phoenix-like rebirth of everyone’s favorite forgotten tech might just begin in the Canadian north.

How Modern-Day Dirigibles Can Plug The World’s Transit Gaps   | GOOD

“We have an opportunity to re-think how we regulate city activities for the public interest. I think the big opportunity is to harness the data streaming out of all of these activities and use it to enable a more permissive, but more accountable, “2.0” regulatory regime.”

- Nick Grossman

By focusing on peer-to-peer urbanism, we would be able to create more functional and enjoyable communities while using less resources through sharing — both on and offline. By working collaboratively, there’s an opportunity to create solutions for the masses at a lower cost for the government, and therefore for tax payers. It’s problem solving by community.

Check out the interesting examples of user-generated urbanism, agile urbanism, and today’s peer-to-peer urbanism movement in Nick’s post. 

(via loyalcx)

The Fantastically Strange Origin of Most Coal on Earth

The absence of the tiniest creature can shape the world in the biggest way.

Ever wonder how coal formed?

The bottom line is that there is no longer a financial or technical excuse to leave low-income and vulnerable people at risk in prolonged power outages. 

We’ve seen the breakthroughs in clean energy technology from Tesla and SolarCity, but these companies are primarily marketing only to big commercial customers that want to reduce their utility bills. While this is a good way to build the early markets for clean energy and solar-plus-storage systems, vulnerable residents don’t have time to wait for these innovations to trickle down to their communities — not when they are economically feasible today and mean the difference between protection and tragedy.

(via Build Affordable Housing That Can Weather the Next Superstorm – Next City)

A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

Maps like these allow us to see the city in a new light – not just as a massive consumer of energy, but also as a potential powerhouse.

Dr Anne Maassan on the solar potential of cities.  (via thisbigcity)

Fly to Mars without leaving home!

A couple people asked me about this little clip from my “Why Do We Go To Space” video (<- requisite plug for my YouTube show). What you’re seeing on my iPhone screen there is a 360-degree panorama of the Martian surface as captured by the Curiosity rover.

You can view it here. It works great on your computer, but the real magic is when you view it on your phone or tablet.

Congratulations. You’re a space traveler!

Ubiome is an unusual startup. The three-year-old sequences the collected microbes in the human body and sells $89 kits to those curious to understand their own microbiome better. Now uBiome founders and academics Jessica Richman and Zachary Apte — who’ve raised $6.5 million from investors like Andreessen Horowitz for the San Francisco company — are taking an even more unusual step. They’re launching an AngelList Syndicate to fund other microbiome startups.

uBiome’s Founders Launch A Microbiome Syndicate on AngelList | TechCrunch

Traditional secrets to keeping cool—investigating Okinawan textiles

When Yoko Nomura moved from warm, dry California to the subtropical island of Okinawa, she was struck by the stifling heat and humidity. Searching for ways to survive the Okinawan summer months, Nomura, from the Science and Technology Group at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), discovered a traditional secret to keeping cool: a material called Basho-fu.

Basho-fu is an Okinawan textile fabric made from banana plant fibers. Originating from the 13th or 14th century, Basho-fu was used to make traditional Okinawan kimonos. Basho-fu kimonos were popular among all classes of people in the Ryukyu Kingdom, which ruled Okinawa from 1429 to 1879. Basho-fu textiles were highly durable for hard labor such as farming and fishing, and were comfortable to wear in the hot and humid subtropical climate of Okinawa.

The expertise required to make Basho-fu textiles has been passed down through generations of craftspeople in Okinawa. However, the traditional craft is now under threat from a shortage of banana plant materials and an infiltration of modern methods.

In an effort to rescue and document this important part of Okinawan folk culture, researchers from OIST, in collaboration with the University of the Ryukyus and the Kijoka Basho-fu Association, used scientific techniques to characterize Basho-fu materials and to compare traditional and laboratory Basho-fu production processes.

Read more.