Urban Life // Current

Newsflash Breaking News from Los Angeles,CA!!!!

Breaking News!!! Just added to Federal Most Wanted List Authorities in Los... more

larcenyleader
added this
13 days ago
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0 comments

Urban Instincts that Looks the Same. How the Life and the Journalist Practice Copy Always Themselves

..an urban instinct from san francisco to naples from the 50s to the present days that... more

dia_offman
added this
14 days ago
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1 comment

Drift Away: A Slow Glide Through Misery’s Homeless Mind

“Drift Away” is a beautiful, but sadly melancholy 4-minute short film directed by... more

disembedded
added this
1 month ago
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2 comments

Lord Hector Diono Challenges Radio Around The Globe

Here is one for the music charts. Lord Hector Diono releases a visual chronicle on his... more

Hoodwatchmedia
added this
4 months ago
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1 comment

I nani - Primitivismo Urbano

La realtà dei Nani Urbani, con la sua poesia, bella o brutta che sia.

primitivismourbano
added this
4 months ago
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1 comment

Train/Bed: Only One of Eight Million

“Train/Bed” is a 2-min. stop-motion short film by Lam Thuy Vo. The film was... more

disembedded
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4 months ago
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2 comments

Tracking trash: Project aims to raise awareness of how garbage impacts the environment

What if we knew exactly where our trash was going and how much energy it took to make it disappear? Would it make us think twice about buying bottled water or "disposable" razors?

A team of MIT researchers today announced a major project called Trash Track, which aims to get people thinking about what they throw away. Trash Track relies on the development of special electronic tags that will track different types of waste on their journey through the disposal systems of New York and Seattle. The project will monitor the patterns and costs of urban disposal and create awareness of the impact of trash on our environment - revealing the last journey of our everyday objects.

"Trash is one of today's most pressing issues - both directly and as a reflection of our attitudes and behaviors," says Professor Carlo Ratti, head of the MIT SENSEable City lab. "Our project aims to reveal the disposal process of our everyday objects, as well as to highlight potential inefficiencies in today's recycling and sanitation systems. The project could be considered the urban equivalent of nuclear medicine - when a tracer is injected and followed through the human body.

"The study of what we could call the 'removal chain' is becoming as important as that of the supply chain," the lab's associate director, Assaf Biderman, explains. "Trash Track aims to make the removal chain more transparent. We hope that the project will promote behavioral change and encourage people to make more sustainable decisions about what they consume and how it affects the world around them."

Trash Track will enlist volunteers in two target cities - New York and Seattle - who will allow pieces of their trash to be electronically tagged with special wireless location markers, or "trash tags." Thousands of these markers, attached to a waste sample representative of the city's overall consumption, will calculate their location through triangulation and report it to a central server, where the data will be analyzed and processed in real time. The public will be able to view the migration patterns of the trash online, as well as in an exhibit at the Architectural League in New York City and in the Seattle Public Library, starting in September 2009.What if we knew exactly where our trash was going and how much energy it took to make... more

leahl
added this
4 months ago
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1 comment

Coming down fast

I ganzi alle giostre ... A Kunming, capitale dello Yunnan in Cina, c'è uno strano... more

cinaoggi
added this
5 months ago
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0 comments

Catch me if you can

Le evoluzioni di un giovane traceur cinese nei sobborghi di Kunming. Foto di... more

cinaoggi
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5 months ago
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0 comments

YOUNG PEOPLE TELL US OF THEIR EXPERIENCES AND FEELINGS TOWARDS GUN AND KNIFE CRIME IN THE UK

This is a consultation documentary so all the voices are credible not manipulated by... more

AccessMovingImage
added this
6 months ago
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0 comments

MIGHTY MOVIE PODCAST » Marc H. Simon & Matthew Makar on NURSERY UNIVERSITY

If you don’t have kids or live outside of New York, you hear about the nightmarish... more

DanPersons
added this
7 months ago
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0 comments

MIGHTY MOVIE PODCAST » So Yong Kim on TREELESS MOUNTAIN

Ohhhhh, the pitfalls director So Yong Kim faced in making the protagonists of her... more

DanPersons
added this
7 months ago
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0 comments

Self-Watering, Self-Regulating Container Garden

Wait, you live in a cramped urban cell apartment with maybe a sliver of silver roof to... more

Greenpointer
added this
7 months ago
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2 comments

Nature: Why Do We Care?

"Why should we care about nature? Should we care about it for its own sake — or for our sake, because it happens to make us happy or healthy? These might not seem like the brightest questions. Few people need convincing that the destruction of rain forests, the mass extinction of species and the melting of the ice sheets in Greenland would all be very bad things. Do we really need to list the reasons?

We do. After all, in many regards our species has already kissed nature goodbye, and we are better off for it. Technology has come to be more diverse than the biosphere. In 1867, Karl Marx observed that there were 500 types of hammer made in Birmingham, England. In 1988, Donald Norman, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, San Diego, suggested that the average American encounters 20,000 different kinds of artifacts in everyday life, which would be more than the number of animals and plants that we can distinguish. And right now, there are about 1.5 million identified species on Earth — impressive, but nothing compared to the more than 7 million United States patents.

This is mostly good news. No sane person would give up antibiotics and anesthesia, farming and the written word. Our constructed environments shield us from heat and cold and protect us from predators. We have access to food and drink and drugs that have been devised to stimulate our nervous systems in magnificent ways. We sleep in soft beds and have immediate access to virtual experiences from pornography to classical symphonies. If a family of hunter-gatherers were dropped into this life, they would think of it as a literal heaven.

Or maybe not. There is a considerable mismatch between the world in which our minds evolved and our current existence. Our species has spent almost all of its existence on the African savanna. While there is debate over the details, we know for sure that our minds were not adapted to cope with a world of billions of people. The life of a modern city dweller, surrounded by strangers, is an evolutionary novelty. Thousands of years ago, there was no television or Internet, no McDonald’s, birth-control pills, Viagra, plastic surgery, alarm clocks, artificial lighting or paternity tests. Instead, there was plenty of nature. We lived surrounded by trees and water and animals and sky.""Why should we care about nature? Should we care about it for its own sake — or for... more

St_Alia_10191
added this
7 months ago
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18 comments

Seed balls: For the guerilla gardener in you!

Seed balls have apparently been around the environmentalist movement for a while. But... more

ajcowley
added this
7 months ago
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0 comments

vega bond - libuš

vega bond - libuš "jednotné pat másla" "single pat of butter"

zyphichore
added this
8 months ago
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0 comments

Floating Cities Could Be Just 3 Years Away

Imagine a brand new civilization, already considered "Western" in it's first day of... more

thornman
added this
9 months ago
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3 comments

StandWeUnited® -- Americans Making a Difference

A site that will gather and display innovative ways by which individual Americans are... more

GeoBat
added this
9 months ago
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0 comments

Creative Cities Rejoice: You Will Recover

"Creative types come to New York to exchange ideas with like-minded people, but also... more

St_Alia_10191
added this
9 months ago
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0 comments

Eric Holder: America "Essentially A Nation of Cowards" on Race Discussion

Excerpt:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In a blunt assessment of race relations in the United States, Attorney General Eric Holder Wednesday called the American people "essentially a nation of cowards" in failing to openly discuss the issue of race.

In his first major speech since being confirmed, the nation's first black attorney general told an overflow crowd celebrating Black History Month at the Justice Department the nation remains "voluntarily socially segregated."...Holder urged Americans of all races to use Black History Month as a time to have a forthright national conversation between blacks and whites to discuss aspects of race which are ignored because they are uncomfortable.

Link to rest of story: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/18/holder.race.relations/

Okay, this is not your opportunity to bash Eric Holder. If you feel so moved to, write the guy a letter.

So what do you think? Is America, with a Black President, ready to talk openly and unabashed about race? Okay, everyone make room on the dance floor for the Black/White race dialog battle...and I am sure, we can get some Latino and Asian spice in the mix, since their plight and message seems so overlooked. And then, just for kicks, some racially ambiguous and biracial people can stand on the fence and look at the whole clash. I will be on the turntables scratching an urban rendition of "Koombyah". Let's keep it civil. I think it's important to question people's assumptions, perceptions, beliefs, and feelings about a particular race, their racial understanding and the picture of culture in American life and society. We NEED to talk about this stuff instead of walking on eggshells or calling anyone ballsy enough to bring it up as racist.

I went to YouTube and of course, the n-word was unleashed like a Wimbledon match, people calling Holder a "trader" (their spelling, not mine) and the worst Attorney General ever (after less than 1 month?). I couldn't help but sigh and think if we don't converse about these issues, people are going to slip culturally even further behind in cultural response in the US, and we will sweep these issues further under the rug for the next generation to deal with. Dialog is important...it requires an open mind, the acceptance that sometimes you are ignorant to facts, the capacity to learn, but also to be informed and teach that information to others. Okay, now to the impending chaos...

...are you a coward when it comes to talking about race? If not...prove it. I am curious to know, what has shaped your racial IQ? Family? Friends? School? Experiences (good and bad)? Music? TV? How have you learned what you have learned about other races besides your own? Do you talk to people about these understandings? If so, is it serious? Is it a joke? Is it received well? Let us here on Current be some of the first to partake in the "Courageous Race Discussion"!Excerpt: WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In a blunt assessment of race relations in the United... more

HaloedGriot
added this
9 months ago
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10 comments

tagged w/ Urban Life

Newsflash Breaking News from Los Angeles,CA!!!!

Urban Instincts that Looks the Same. How the Life and the Journalist Practice Copy Always Themselves

Drift Away: A Slow Glide Through Misery’s Homeless Mind

Lord Hector Diono Challenges Radio Around The Globe

I nani - Primitivismo Urbano

Train/Bed: Only One of Eight Million

Tracking trash: Project aims to raise awareness of how garbage impacts the environment

Coming down fast

Catch me if you can

YOUNG PEOPLE TELL US OF THEIR EXPERIENCES AND FEELINGS TOWARDS GUN AND KNIFE CRIME IN THE UK

MIGHTY MOVIE PODCAST » Marc H. Simon & Matthew Makar on NURSERY UNIVERSITY

MIGHTY MOVIE PODCAST » So Yong Kim on TREELESS MOUNTAIN

Self-Watering, Self-Regulating Container Garden

Nature: Why Do We Care?

Seed balls: For the guerilla gardener in you!

vega bond - libuš

Floating Cities Could Be Just 3 Years Away

StandWeUnited® -- Americans Making a Difference

Creative Cities Rejoice: You Will Recover

Eric Holder: America "Essentially A Nation of Cowards" on Race Discussion

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