It’s Official: The End is Near

...inted out that separate stories on childhood obesity, air pollution and suburbanization are all related. Today’s WSJ is a reminder of how this associational game increasingly paints a picture of a mad and dystopic science fiction reality. Along with the story on feeding livestock junk food, we have a story on Fermat Capital Management L.L.C., a money management firm led by a biophysicist that sells bonds, “linked to natural catastrophes, such as h...

Read…

Root Simple Redesign

...the switchover, except for the fact that commenting will disappear between the 6th and the 10th. You are welcome to leave comments on the Root Simple Facebook page. During the switchover period we’re going to feature a rerun of our most popular posts....

Read…

Sheltered

A page from Shelter. Maker, builder, publisher and author Lloyd Kahn left a great comment on my rambling review of the documentary Spaceship Earth. Lloyd said (in reference to the title of Buckminster Fuller’s 1969 book Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth), “In 1973, in our book Shelter, I wrote “Calling Earth a spaceship is like stepping out into a clear night in New Mexico and saying, “Wow, it looks just like the planetarium.” If you aren’t fa...

Read…

Make Magazine: Online and Free

...co-founder Palmer Luckey’s interest in funding the company, and a GoFundMe page started for it.] I wrote an article on drip irrigation for Issue 18 and have to say that it was a pleasure to work with the Make editorial team. Unlike other publications I’ve written for, the editors at Make knew a lot about the technical details of the subject matter and worked hard to ensure accuracy. Speaking of technical details, the only thing I’d change if I wro...

Read…