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Capitalizing on the Value of the Elderly in Modern Society
As modern societies develop, become richer, and life expectancies increase, the ratio between the elderly, non-working population and younger, industrious population shifts towards unsustainability. In the United States in 2010, for every 100 working-age adults there are 22 non-working elderly. By 2030 there will be 37 non-working for every 100 working age adults. (from census)…
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Lawrence Lessig’s TED Talk on Reclaiming the Republic
Lessig talks about how the people have lost control of our government to those who have money. He tells stories of politicians and everyone connected to the political and legislative process evolving their thinking to appease their financiers. Deregulation is politically counter-productive because those involved get steady cash from lobbyists to manipulate those regulations. Total reform is…
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Beauty Can Make the World Safer
It’s amazing how appearances affect our behavior. Edi Rama, an artist and the former mayor of the capital of Albania gave an inspiring TED talk about transforming his city by adding color to old buildings and improving public spaces. Streets that used to be crime ridden became safer because they looked nicer. People are less…
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Arguments Against Owning a Home: Specialization of Labor
I recently read this article on TechCrunch by James Altucher entitled “Why Entrepreneurs Should NOT Buy Homes“. In discussing the topic with some friends, I was turned on to this article in the Wall Street Journal by economist Robert Bridges showing statistically why home ownership is almost always a poor investment. The idea rings true to…
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Inspiring Civic Hacking
Mick Ebeling recently gave a TED talk about the homemade eye-tracking device he and a bunch of hackers made to allow a paralyzed man to communicate, stephen hawking style. They did this with an off-the-shelf PS3 camera and some open source software for $50. That’s what I call a righteous hack. Most importantly it has…
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Three Alternative Inputs for Video Games
When you use a computer enough it can start to feel like the mouse becomes a part of you. Very quickly you forget about consciously moving it right or left to control the cursor as it becomes second nature. Essentially it is an extension of your physical self, with which you manipulate the screen as…
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Visualizing Wikipedia As One Large Node Graph
As a network visualization tool, node graphs are an intuitive method of communicating relationships between entities. I’ve been thinking a lot about the semantic web lately and thought it would be cool to visualize all of the links between articles in Wikipedia at once. I want to pull back and get the 10,000 foot view…
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Climate Data Mashup
The problem: people generally have very little perspective of the actual scale of the contributing components of climate change or the effects of different proposed measures to stop it. What percentage of CO2 emissions are a result of city residential electrical consumption vs agriculture vs vehicles? How much of a difference will legislation X make…