One of the things that I am becoming aware of more and more is that from the very beginning of my life there have been two voices. one voice saying, “Henri, be sure you make it on your awn, be sure you can do it yourself, be sure you become an independent person. Be sure…more
“So you’d think that, to a first approximation, the Earth is inhabitable by human beings…In fact, to a first approximation, from the perspective of prospective interstellar colonists, the Earth is uninhabitable…Currently, a random meat probe dropped on the Earth’s surface has something like a 15% chance of finding it survivable. But a random sampling over…more
“The high-speed rail line between L.A. and San Francisco, will take twenty years, assuming there are no delays. In contrast, the first transcontinental railroad took seven. We aren’t going to build our way out of this highly congested world. It’s going to choke us.” – Kazys Varnelis on the collapse of complex societies
“City ideas have to do with a particular moment in time, a scene, a movement, other people’s work, what critics say, or what’s happening in the zeitgeist…The opposite of city ideas are ‘natural ideas’, which account for the big leaps forward and often appear to come from nowhere. These ideas come from nature, solitude, and…more