[keeping it out of the fire]
[pedal to the metal]I finally got myself onto a race track, banging doors with other cars.
It's only been 25 years in the making.
Note the car number.
-cosine67
Sunday, 20 February 2011
Ready, set, take off
[keeping it out of the fire][pedal to the metal]I finally got myself onto a race track, banging doors with other cars.
It's only been 25 years in the making.
Note the car number.
-cosine67
Thursday, 23 September 2010
machines have begun ruling the planet
I was one of the few luddites who saw that every new machine was not only a brilliant idea, but a great way to put a person on the unemployment line. Pretty soon everything will make itself and so we'll have nothing left to do except scrounge around in supermarket dumpsters for food.
this was found on Alternet
[originally on Archein, by Joe Costello]
We Just Went Through 200 Years of Radical Economic Upheaval -- The Next Economic Era Offers Us a Chance to Control It
Proposing a 'design economy' -- the more we participate in it and share it, the better we all live and the more sustainable and stable it can become.
I. In contemporary economic discussion, the idea of the Industrial Revolution is frequently presented as something bland, neutral and inevitable. Instead of conveying a sense of historical turmoil, disruption and the overthrowing of established cultural, political and economic institutions dating back millenia, we simply throw off the term, “Industrial Revolution” with little regard that it represented a fundamental reordering of human life. In many ways this is understandable, as the Industrial Revolution triumphed, becoming industrial rule, industrial economy, industrial bureaucracy, and industrial life -- the industrial status quo. In large swaths of the world, industrial economy is so dominant, it leaves the sense the world has always been that way and only a fool could imagine it being any different. Most amazingly, this has all been accomplished in less than two centuries -- an historical blink of the eye.
Today, we confront an era of equal historical change. Further understandings of the natural world and resulting new technologies are beginning to impact industrial society to a degree as fantastic as industrial knowledge and technology transformed agrarian society. While agrarian civilization lasted over 10,000 years, the reign of industrial society has been relatively brief; nonetheless, it is being usurped. This transformation is rapidly intruding on our lives, yet still not quite recognized beyond a general trepidation that things don't seem to quite work like they did before. The great collective social anxiety of the Industrial era, never satiated, now confronts a new transition for which the tools, skills, thinking and institutions are little developed, if they exist at all.
Maybe the most essential understanding we can have in such a time is the simple recognition of change. The Industrial era, for many reasons, is transitory. It is inherently unstable, and incapable of truly meeting the challenges and problems it created. For in the end, industrialism tries conforming or forcefully overwhelming life's great diversity into a few narrow homogenous environments, which are unhealthy and unsustainable for both the individual and the system as a whole.
The Industrial era's greatest strength, an uncompromising faith in technology, is also one of its greatest weaknesses. The simplistic adoption of any given technology, without an understanding or systemic feedback mechanisms to track its impact on society, is the ethos of a child, an immature civic morality. To paraphrase the technology thinker Marshall McLuhan, first we shape technology, then technology shapes us. We still grasp to understand how technology shapes us, yet we rapidly transform from industrial technologies to a new era, for lack of a better term, of information technologies.
-Cosine67~~
this was found on Alternet
[originally on Archein, by Joe Costello]
We Just Went Through 200 Years of Radical Economic Upheaval -- The Next Economic Era Offers Us a Chance to Control It
Proposing a 'design economy' -- the more we participate in it and share it, the better we all live and the more sustainable and stable it can become.
I. In contemporary economic discussion, the idea of the Industrial Revolution is frequently presented as something bland, neutral and inevitable. Instead of conveying a sense of historical turmoil, disruption and the overthrowing of established cultural, political and economic institutions dating back millenia, we simply throw off the term, “Industrial Revolution” with little regard that it represented a fundamental reordering of human life. In many ways this is understandable, as the Industrial Revolution triumphed, becoming industrial rule, industrial economy, industrial bureaucracy, and industrial life -- the industrial status quo. In large swaths of the world, industrial economy is so dominant, it leaves the sense the world has always been that way and only a fool could imagine it being any different. Most amazingly, this has all been accomplished in less than two centuries -- an historical blink of the eye.
Today, we confront an era of equal historical change. Further understandings of the natural world and resulting new technologies are beginning to impact industrial society to a degree as fantastic as industrial knowledge and technology transformed agrarian society. While agrarian civilization lasted over 10,000 years, the reign of industrial society has been relatively brief; nonetheless, it is being usurped. This transformation is rapidly intruding on our lives, yet still not quite recognized beyond a general trepidation that things don't seem to quite work like they did before. The great collective social anxiety of the Industrial era, never satiated, now confronts a new transition for which the tools, skills, thinking and institutions are little developed, if they exist at all.
Maybe the most essential understanding we can have in such a time is the simple recognition of change. The Industrial era, for many reasons, is transitory. It is inherently unstable, and incapable of truly meeting the challenges and problems it created. For in the end, industrialism tries conforming or forcefully overwhelming life's great diversity into a few narrow homogenous environments, which are unhealthy and unsustainable for both the individual and the system as a whole.
The Industrial era's greatest strength, an uncompromising faith in technology, is also one of its greatest weaknesses. The simplistic adoption of any given technology, without an understanding or systemic feedback mechanisms to track its impact on society, is the ethos of a child, an immature civic morality. To paraphrase the technology thinker Marshall McLuhan, first we shape technology, then technology shapes us. We still grasp to understand how technology shapes us, yet we rapidly transform from industrial technologies to a new era, for lack of a better term, of information technologies.
-Cosine67~~
Sunday, 30 May 2010
Architectural curiosities from Bristol
I don't know what this was at one time, but the black part is a bowl with a pipe leading below, to...
the river down below. Is this the first public urinal in modern Bristol, 'erected' in 1816?A landmark? to piss in?
[1970s throw-away architecture. the old courthouse, and new skateboard park]
[St. John's conduit. A lot of fuss about fresh water. We'll be doing that again if global warming continues]
[sundial on the side of a church. It was not keeping time, beyond a shadow]-Cosine67~~
Thursday, 6 May 2010
travel disasters mean we're too mobile
[pic - the ash cloud]Two related things:
snow blizzards in December/January
the six days of flight moratorium in April
I was caught by the first one. My flight was delayed by 3 days, and one overnight stay in an airport.
Here's what I discovered:
every morning, there are 8 flights from this airport to Paris. Is it possible that 2500 people want to go from N.Italy to Paris? Or are the airlines trying to push out their competitors by losing money in the short term?
I've got news for them. Banks will give them and their competitors far more than enough money to choke on. That kind of tactic will take years to declare a few winners. In the meantime, the environment pays the price.
more
soon
-Cosine67 ~~
Wednesday, 5 May 2010
Track day at Thruxton
You could choose from one of these formula cars, or some slow Ferraris, Porsches and so on. As I discovered, the race cars had rev limiters set at 4500 rpm. Still, it's a big track and I got in lots of miles.If you pay a bit extra, they'll hook up a camera to your car and you get a nice DVD of your ...trip through the shrubs.
These are the training 'wheels'. The Cayman! by Porsche. Fine cars, even if they're not racecars, per se.Here's the pitlane, below and some of the machinery arrayed.
-Cosine67 ~~
coming soon - Tiff threads the Needel in a BMW
Thursday, 18 February 2010
update: ridiculously expensive cars
A fool is born every minute. The rich ones will buy these cars:
[Zenvo]
[Tramontana, of Spain]
[SSC]
[Aston Martin]
Info from Yahoo/AP
Soon to be seen at the Geneva Motor Show next month (4 March 2010),
some of the world’s most incredible, most costly production cars:
checkitout: on yahoo/AP
[Zenvo]
[Tramontana, of Spain]
[SSC]
[Aston Martin]Info from Yahoo/AP
Soon to be seen at the Geneva Motor Show next month (4 March 2010),
some of the world’s most incredible, most costly production cars:
1 - Zenvo ST1: £2m
top speed: 232mph
Two million pound price tag for this 'one of 15' Danish sizzler. Mad.
2 - Koenigsegg Trevita: £1.5m
3 - Bugatti Veyron: £1.3m
4 - Aston Martin One-77: £1.2m
top speed: 205mph
Approximately 60 have been sold, but before the 77 production run is complete Aston has apparently raised the price from £1m to £1.2m.
5 - Pagani Zonda Cinque Roadster: £1.2m
top speed: 217mph
Pagani's beautifully crafted Zonda Cinque Roadster is a gorgeous thing, but then so it should be at over £1.2m.
6 - Ferrari 599XX: £1.2m
196mph
This Ferrari is so special you can't drive it on the road, though it features all of the company's technical knowhow.
7 - Lamborghini Reventón Roadster: £1m
top speed: 205mph
Tiny number production run for this big money Lamborghini Roadster.
8 - Maybach Landaulet: £800,000
top speed: 155mph (limited) chickensh*t
Maybach range topper costs silly money and makes you look ridiculous - money really can't buy taste.
9 - SSC Ultimate Aero: £400,000
top speed: 257mph (the King- what a way to die)
The world's fastest production car is relatively inexpensive in this company and relatively unknown.
10 - Tramontana R-Edition: £360,000
Weird, wonderful and very expensive. One for those wanting something completely different.
checkitout: on yahoo/AP
Saturday, 6 February 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
