Coding with Fountain Pens

This news from Cairo is heartbreaking: A full inventory of the Egyptian Museum has found that looters escaped with 18 items during the anti-government unrest, including two gilded wooden statues of famed boy king Tutankhamun, the antiquities chief said Sunday. I can’t help but think of Neal Stephenson’s Anathem, where mathic monasteries preserve knowledge for […]

Tags: longnow, museums

A new article from space.com sheds some revealing light on the recent collision of an Iridium satellite with a defunct Soviet military satellite. I think there was a common impression that Norad would pick up the phone and call operators if they saw an impending collision so that they could maneuver to avoid it. It […]

The Map Room put up a nice slidshow showing the huge growth of the Las Vegas metropolitan area over the last 20 years. What I found most alarming though was that you can actually see the water level declining in Lake Meade as the city grows. Granted, I’m not sure if this is just an […]

I’ve been following the Long Now Foundation and their quest to build a 10,000 year clock for several years now.  This episode of BoingBoingTV showcases some of the physical artifacts the foundation has machined, including an orrery, and a chime system developed in part by Brian Eno. There are a lot of challenges associate with […]

Truly new thinking always has to break through a barrier of skepticism before gaining wider adoption.  I’m sure this is true of Urban Farms, an idea that at first blush sounds slightly crazy, but may have real benefits.  It seems that in a world of increasing transportation costs, producing food right in an urban center […]