In passing…
While it has nothing to do with what this blog is notionally “about”, it seems a good idea to link to this fine piece about Google by Tom Slee, for reasons that may become apparent to any reader who clicks through, and if you are a reader with a blog I urge you to do so too (especially if by chance your blog is a searchblog). However, by happy coincidence, I find that Tom’s fine self-pimped piece about toilets says wise things about how to drive environmentally friendly innovation which fit into the themes of this blog on their own merits:
The story shows that the state/market dichotomy is false, and that the phrasing of the question is at fault. Posing the issue as “state versus market” loses touch with reality in the face of this intricate cross-pollination between municipalities, the US Environmental Protection Agency (who is likely to develop a labelling system based on the Veritec tests), Veritec itself (which is a private consultancy) and quasi-state bodies such as the Canadian Water and Wastewater Association. The closer we look, the more dependent on the specifics it becomes…
Perhaps the message is that, when we look closely enough, economics falls apart and gives way to sociology and psychology. Perhaps it is that history is, after all, made by individuals, specifically individuals who are prepared to spend hours developing “test specimens” and flushing them down toilets over and over and over again. Perhaps it is that we need to seek a Buddhist-like middle way between the Scylla of the market and the Charybdis of the state, but a middle way that has a more human side to it than the metric driven public-private partnerships.
On the basis that this could be taken to mean “let a thousand flowers bloom”, here are some photosynthetic toilets as a final adhesive with which to cement these ideas firmly into the fabric of this blog.
Image from (nz)dave under a creative commons license
Arthur C. Clarke, 1917-2008
From Profiles of the Future
One thing seems certain. Our galaxy is now in the brief springtime of its life—a springtime made glorious by such brilliant blue-white stars as Vega and Sirius, and, on a more humble scale, our own Sun. Not until all these have flamed through their incandescent youth, in a few fleeting billions of years, will the real history of the universe begin.
It will be a history illuminated only by the reds and infrareds of dully glowing stars that would be almost invisible to our eyes; yet the sombre hues of that all-but-eternal universe may be full of colour and beauty to whatever strange beings have adapted to it. They will know that before them lie, not the millions of years in which we measure eras of geology, nor the billions of years which span the past lives of the stars, but years to be counted literally in the trillions.
They will have time enough, in those endless aeons, to attempt all things, and to gather all knowledge. They will be like gods, because no gods imagined by our minds have ever possessed the powers they will command. But for all that, they may envy us, basking in the bright afterglow of creation; for we knew the universe when it was young.
Pictures: Hubble ultra deep field image from NASA; “Minehead Blue” by Gary Newman, all rights reserved (and with many thanks)
Mars and an oak tree
March 6, 2008, 8:29 am
Filed under:
Trees 
I’m more marginally martian than mainly martian these days, but my old enthusiasms are remembered in some interesting places — so I was happy to be invited to talk about the new “Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art” contemporary art show at the Barbican on Radio Four’s Front Row yesterday. I’m afraid I don’t have time to blog on it now, except to say a) the concept is a bit overdone, b) there’s good stuff and not so good stuff there and c) Michael Craig-Martin’s An Oak Tree (pictured) is in the first of those classes. It reminds me hugely of Stranger in a Strange Land, and has the advantage of being a lot shorter (nb that’s a cheap jibe, not a serious diss). Here’s part of the artist’s accompanying text; if you want to imagine the Answerer as Michael Valentine Smith in order to grok it more fully, be my guest…
Q. To begin with, could you describe this work?
A. Yes, of course. What I’ve done is change a glass of water into a full-grown oak tree without altering the accidents of the glass of water.
Q. The accidents?
A. Yes. The colour, feel, weight, size …
Q. Do you mean that the glass of water is a symbol of an oak tree?
A. No. It’s not a symbol. I’ve changed the physical substance of the glass of water into that of an oak tree.
Q. It looks like a glass of water.
A. Of course it does. I didn’t change its appearance. But it’s not a glass of water, it’s an oak tree.
More on Oak Tree here, and here’s the listen-again realplayer link to hear the program, for those interested — martian stuff about 15 minutes in. The listen-again link will rot in a week.
Oak Tree image copyright Michael Craig-Martin — used with respect but without permission
