My wife on mind-altering parasites:

There are dozens of similar behavior-altering parasites, each as fascinating as the next. Most of these parasites are specialized to a single species of host. The large majority infect insects or creatures on the low end of the evolutionary scale. There are some exceptions, including Toxoplasma gondii which lives in cats and infects humans. Toxoplasma gondii also infects rats and makes them lose their fear of cats- an infected rodent will waltz right up to cat’s hangout spot, only to be eaten and live inside the cat’s intestines long enough to get back to its preferred host, a human. Studies are still being done on the effects of Toxoplasmosis, but it seems to produce introverted and anti-social tendencies in the host, along immune and neurological problems.

Prime Surrealestate: Mind-Altering Parasites

My wife on mind-altering parasites:

There are dozens of similar behavior-altering parasites, each as fascinating as the next. Most of these parasites are specialized to a single species of host. The large majority infect insects or creatures on the low end of the evolutionary scale. There are some exceptions, including Toxoplasma gondii which lives in cats and infects humans. Toxoplasma gondii also infects rats and makes them lose their fear of cats- an infected rodent will waltz right up to cat’s hangout spot, only to be eaten and live inside the cat’s intestines long enough to get back to its preferred host, a human. Studies are still being done on the effects of Toxoplasmosis, but it seems to produce introverted and anti-social tendencies in the host, along immune and neurological problems.

Prime Surrealestate: Mind-Altering Parasites

Michael Eliason and Aaron Yankauskas, of Brute Force Collaborative, have a great case-study up on a recently completed 'Passivhaus' housing project in the Lodenareal complex in Innsbruck, Austria

Developed by Neue Heimat Tirol and designed by architekturwerkstatt din a4 with team k2 architekten, the new building will provide well designed and highly energy efficient homes for low-income residents:

Those are some impressive stats! Click here to see the full case-study and learn more about the construction assemblies and heating systems, as well as find more images and links to further information on the project.

For another good case study by Michael Eliason and Aaron Yankauskas, see: "Freiburg: A Model of Sustainability"

Photos by Christoph Lackner; via Brute Force Collaborative

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(Posted by Amanda Reed in Green Building at 1:30 PM)

My wife’s intro to Wilhelm Reich and alternative psychology:

The underpinnings of the human mind and our behavior as an extension are naturally fascinating. It’s no surprise that Sigmund Freud caught on fast in the 1940?s and was a household name by the 1960?s. But what once held so much potential became more of a racket for years and years of expensive and sometimes cruel treatments that may never leave patients cured, or worse, the mentality that pharmaceuticals alone can cure all of our social problems. Traditional psychotherapy is characterized by a therapist who acts as an authority figure, and generally, a session includes the patient talking extensively as the therapist silently analyzes. It can take months or years to get anywhere, because as many therapists have noted, patients tend to exhibit defense mechanisms for their inhibitions, anxieties, and neuroses. Some will even express hostility towards the therapist. A good therapist has to be able to work past the defenses, known as resistances and negative transferences. Only then can breakthroughs happen.

Alternative psychology opts to take a different, and usually faster approach to breakthroughs- and many practitioners include the use of body language analysis, or the incorporation of movement or exercise as therapy techniques.

Prime Surrealestate: Wilhelm Reich and Alternative Psychology

See also: The Reich biographical comic book

My wife’s intro to Wilhelm Reich and alternative psychology:

The underpinnings of the human mind and our behavior as an extension are naturally fascinating. It’s no surprise that Sigmund Freud caught on fast in the 1940?s and was a household name by the 1960?s. But what once held so much potential became more of a racket for years and years of expensive and sometimes cruel treatments that may never leave patients cured, or worse, the mentality that pharmaceuticals alone can cure all of our social problems. Traditional psychotherapy is characterized by a therapist who acts as an authority figure, and generally, a session includes the patient talking extensively as the therapist silently analyzes. It can take months or years to get anywhere, because as many therapists have noted, patients tend to exhibit defense mechanisms for their inhibitions, anxieties, and neuroses. Some will even express hostility towards the therapist. A good therapist has to be able to work past the defenses, known as resistances and negative transferences. Only then can breakthroughs happen.

Alternative psychology opts to take a different, and usually faster approach to breakthroughs- and many practitioners include the use of body language analysis, or the incorporation of movement or exercise as therapy techniques.

Prime Surrealestate: Wilhelm Reich and Alternative Psychology

See also: The Reich biographical comic book

SF: Given his influence on Magickal theory and practice (The Cut-Up, Third Mind, Dream Machine and his writing) who would you say was William’s largest influence? Crowley, Spare, none of the above?

JG: Pardon me but I don’t see many direct influences by William’s thought upon Magickal theory — the other way around, heavens, yes.

But Burroughs considered Crowley a bit of a figure of fun, referring to him as “The Greeeaaaaaat BEEEEAST!” in that behind-closed-doors, queeny comic delivery he used sometimes: his voice rising straight up in pitch, into an hysterical falsetto. You can hear it in lots of tapes, I’m pretty sure.

William knew quite a bit about Crowley’s life and work, and he certainly dug deep into the Necronomicon (anonymous but often attributed to Crowley) when it became available in a snazzy, black-morocco, tooled-leather hardback binding. He appreciated much about Aleister Crowley. Influenced by him? I don’t really see it. And to be truthful, I knew more about Austin Osman Spare than William did, in the beginning.

Pop Damage: Taking the broooooaaaaad view of things: A Conversation with James Grauerholz on William S. Burroughs and Magick

Hrrmm, no one influenced Burroughs’s views on magic? What about Brion Gysin? And was Gysin familiar with Spare?

Interesting interview none the less.

SF: Given his influence on Magickal theory and practice (The Cut-Up, Third Mind, Dream Machine and his writing) who would you say was William’s largest influence? Crowley, Spare, none of the above?

JG: Pardon me but I don’t see many direct influences by William’s thought upon Magickal theory — the other way around, heavens, yes.

But Burroughs considered Crowley a bit of a figure of fun, referring to him as “The Greeeaaaaaat BEEEEAST!” in that behind-closed-doors, queeny comic delivery he used sometimes: his voice rising straight up in pitch, into an hysterical falsetto. You can hear it in lots of tapes, I’m pretty sure.

William knew quite a bit about Crowley’s life and work, and he certainly dug deep into the Necronomicon (anonymous but often attributed to Crowley) when it became available in a snazzy, black-morocco, tooled-leather hardback binding. He appreciated much about Aleister Crowley. Influenced by him? I don’t really see it. And to be truthful, I knew more about Austin Osman Spare than William did, in the beginning.

Pop Damage: Taking the broooooaaaaad view of things: A Conversation with James Grauerholz on William S. Burroughs and Magick

Hrrmm, no one influenced Burroughs’s views on magic? What about Brion Gysin? And was Gysin familiar with Spare?

Interesting interview none the less.

Udi Tirosh wrote in to share this camera flash hack:

Like using off-camera flash units for your photography, but tired of having to walk over to them to adjust the flash power? Well, you could certainly throw some money at the problem and get a set of fancy wireless remotes for them. If you are handy with a soldering iron, though, you might want to take a look at Domjan Svilkovic's instructions to control your flash settings with a TV remote control. He took a cheapo flash, and added a PICaxe microcontroller that waits for 'volume up' and 'volume down' signals, then activates a set of transistors on the remote to simulate button presses. Now, where did I put my flash units...

The venue was the old Co-Op building on London Road, Brighton, familiar to most people who live in the city. Opened in 1931, the Co-Op was the largest department store in the city when it closed 3 years ago. It has been neglected since... A large department store, wandering around it was incredible to see how quickly it had fallen into such a bad state. It reminded me of the first few chapters of The World Without Us, where Weisman talks about the processes that would take place around, inside and on our buildings should humans disappear. Indeed, it could be a study of such processes—damp creeps in everywhere, stripping render from the basement walls and warping and tearing the plywood paneling upstairs. Plant life eases through gaps and cracks. Carpet has lifted and the building has a terrific smell of decay. Yet in the stockrooms, still evident, is graffiti from the early 70’s—name checking footballers that have long since retired, bought pubs and passed on. Locally, there has been calls, growing stronger and stronger, for the owners or the council to inhabit the building. This is where dreamthinkspeak stepped in to temporarily transform the former department store into an incredible series of set-pieces, opening up such a familiar building to a public for the first time in three years, curious to see what had happened the their local shop.

Astronomically inclined visions of the apocalypse accumulate in accelerated fashion by way of wayward zombie-sats.

Apocalyptic aspirations aside, take out too many satellites and doom-sayings  will be curtailed by network failures and spotty service.

Satellites themselves, perjoratively described as “zombies,” have retrieved a new found freedom as they wander and wonder through the cosmos, dropping their typically designed functions, enjoying the attractions of the terrain.

Towards an orbital urbanism, all manner of space craft now echoing Guy Debord in their satellite footprints amidst heterogeneities and densities of debris

Comets and other old-school astrological signs are obsolesced in this schema, while light pollution alone  may condemn all prophecy-mongering astronomy on its own terms.

On 31st of August 2010 Pavlovsk Experiment Station of VIR had an unscheduled inspection. The station was visited by representatives of the Public Chamber, the Accounts Chamber as well as representatives of the Russian Housing Development Foundation. This inspection was a result of instruction given by Dmitry Medvedev for this situation to be scrutinized. After visiting two plots the commission was convinced that, indeed, the disputed plots harbor plants that make a part of the Vavilov collection of plant genetic resources. As a result of field inspection — Nadezhda Shkolkina reports — representatives of the RZhS Fund stated they will postpone an auction for an uncertain period.

Hot off the press. A light at the end of the tunnel? Fingers crossed. But let’s keep up the pressure!

Grist has a new series of interviews up on people who are working to change America's food system in inspiring ways. Yesterday they posted an interview with Gene Fredericks that is worth a read; it introduces Fredericks's new venture: Big Green Boxes.

Big Green Boxes aims to bring a new, high-tech, and sustainable approach to feeding the city. The main idea is to re-use vacant warehouse spaces and fill them with fish ponds, waterfalls, and edible greens and herbs to provide year-round fresh and affordable produce in a closed-loop nutrient cycle. As Fredericks describes it:

Our goal is to be a sustainable and profitable business that provides tasty, preservative- and pesticide-free fresh food, grown in the community for the community; that creates new jobs; revives some neglected real estate; and offers some pretty interesting educational exposure to green technologies.

What makes Big Green Boxes different from many other urban agriculture projects is its high-tech business approach:

Additionally, BGB will take advantage of innovations in lighting, daylighting, alternative energy generation, water collection, and composting to make their growing spaces more energy efficient than greenhouses....with even more efficiencies expected to develop over time:

Read the full interview for more on BGB, including a description of their 'aquaponics' growing system.

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(Posted by Amanda Reed in Food and Farming at 12:00 PM)

Bicycle parking in front of David Baker’s house, managed by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

San Francisco has recently sprouted an increasing number of clever and improvisational public spaces. Every one of them was designed to be temporary, with the possibility of becoming permanent. And all of them have been discreetly carved out of the city’s 25 percent surface area that’s normally reserved for cars, not people. Last week urban designer Andres Power was the first person ever given a “Street Champion” award, at a party thrown for the Great Streets Project by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and architect David Baker. The party raised nearly $6,500 for the Great Streets project, and raffled off a new PUBLIC bike. A photo auction that included an image by Tim Griffith, who provided the cover for Metropolis last month, raised $2,200.

 The story of how these spaces, both temporal (Sunday Streets) and physical (Pavement to Parks ) come to pass is a saga with many heroes, and a few villains. One space, Castro Commons, is now a permanent park. After the event, I caught up with Power and asked him about city politics, community input, and other matters.

(more...)

In The Messenger, email messages are displayed letter by letter on three alphabetic telegraph receivers: a large array of 26 talking washbasins, each intoning a letter of the alphabet in Spanish; a chorus line of 26 dancing skeletons and a series of 26 electrolytic jars with metal electrodes in the form of the letters A to Z that oscillate and bubble when electricity is passed through them.

SmartLED SolarTherm is a minimalist information display consisting of an RGB LED, a watch, and an microcontroller. The chip contains a temperature sensor whose reading is displayed as light pulses.

When we got our first look at the cycle track on SW Broadway one year ago this week, it was an exciting time. Mayor Adams had fulfilled one of his "100 day" promises and -- after talking about it for nearly four years -- we finally had our first, physically separated bikeway in the central city. Combined with new buffered bike lanes downtown (on Stark and Oak), we were off and running into a bold new era for our bike network.

"From the mayor's perspective, it's a success."
-- Catherine Ciarlo, Transportation Director for Mayor Adams

But what's happened since then? Has the cycle track been a successful experiment? If so, are there plans to improve and/or extend it? What's the current thinking from the City on separated bikeways in general?

This one year anniversary seemed like a good time to ask those questions.

Chris Monsere is an assistant professor at Portland State University. He's the principal investigator on an evaluation being done on the cycle track to help PBOT decide how it's working.

Reached this morning in his office, Monsere said the evaluation is primarily survey-based. They've been asking people who drive, walk, and bike on Broadway a series of questions about it. Monsere is still tabulating results, but says one thing that's "jumped out" has been concerns from people trying to walk across the cycle track. "From the pedestrian survey, I noticed mentions of cyclists not stopping at the red light." (Note that these are T-bone intersections without motor vehicle cross-traffic.) In addition to the surveys, PSU is also using video footage in their evaluation.

Echoing those preliminary survey findings, Ian Stude, the Transportation Options Manager at PSU and a member of the City's Bicycle Advisory Committee, says "It seems people [using the bikeway] are struggling to see the traffic signals." He'd like to see PBOT install some bike-specific traffic lights as well as curb extensions on the east side of Broadway to shorten the crossing distance. (The Mayor's office says they're currently searching for a location to experiment with bicycle priority signals.)

"We'd really like to see it enhanced beyond what's there now and extended to offer that same level of comfortable treatment throughout downtown."
-- Ian Stude, PSU

Stude feels the Broadway cycle track is a "good first step." He reports many glowing reviews from riders he describes as "interested but concerned." But those same people, Stude adds, also express a lack of connectivity. "They want to ride that type of facility from the Broadway Bridge all the way into PSU. We'd really like to see it enhanced beyond what's there now and extended to offer that same level of comfortable treatment throughout downtown."

Stude hopes the evaluation and one year of having it on the ground will give PBOT the information they need to do something "really bold." "Hopefully, what they'll learn will give them what they need to push forward to take it to the next level."

Mayor Adams' Transportation Policy Director Catherine Ciarlo says they too consider the Broadway cycle track a success. "We get mostly good fedback on it. At this point, I have not gotten any negative feedback on it. From the mayor's perspective, it's a success."

If the Broadway cycle track is a success and the Mayor's office feels separated facilities are important, are there plans to improve and extend it? No. At least not right now, says Adams' Chief of Staff Tom Miller.

"When mayor launched the cycle track last year," Miller told me via telephone yesterday, "he said it was experimental. Based on analysis that should be done in a matter of weeks, we'll decide whether to scrap it, extend it, or more likely do something in between."

One issue that remains is whether or not the Broadway cycle track is a good demonstration to base future plans on. The location PBOT chose -- SW Broadway from Clay to Jackson -- lacks major features that need to be understood before more cycle tracks can be implemented downtown. These features include motor vehicle cross traffic (to assess right-turn and signalization issues) and businesses directly adjacent to the facility (to address what are sure to be concerns from the downtown business lobby about parking and customer access).

Ciarlo, the Mayor Adams' transportation advisor, said a true test of a cycle track with right-turning motor vehicle movements has yet to be done. "The next challenge," she said, "is to test a cycle track in a location where there are right turns. That's going to be a difficult design challenge and it will be important for us to tackle that challenge."

Researcher Chris Monsere said his evaluation will have some important results, but he also acknowledged that as for "the main thing people are worried about, those conflicts of right-turning traffic, we won't be able to make any conclusions about that."

PSU's Ian Stude agreed that PBOT installed the cycle track in a "relatively safe location" for an experiment (in terms of its engineering and political difficulty), but he thinks a major driveway into a parking lot at SW College and the right turn where the cycle track ends at SW Jackson will give PBOT and PSU plenty of solid evaluation data.

"Our intention is to hit a 25% mode split by 2020 and we know that as a city we need to adopt strategies that yield more and greater separation to grow that mode split."
-- Tom Miller, Mayor Adams' Chief of Staff

As for separated facilities in general, Ciarlo says Mayor Adams, "Continues to believe that separated facilities are an important piece of the way we will achieve our goals to attract the 'interested by concerned' cyclists and we plan to continue to press for them going forward."

When asked about their progress on installing separated bike facilities, Miller pointed out several projects currently on the horizon (two-way cycle tracks planned for South Waterfront and as part of the SE Corridor Project, on NE 7th as part of the Eastside Streetcar, and on N. Williams). "Our intention is to hit a 25% mode split by 2020 and we know that as a city we need to adopt strategies that yield more and greater separation to grow that mode split."

While both Miller and Ciarlo understand the importance of separation, it's clear that they're moving forward cautiously. "It's fair to say we're in experimental mode rather than wholesale street realignment mode," Miller explained. "Dedicated right of way for bicycles is a brand new phenomenon for American streets, including in Portland, so we're still working on it."

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