Architect and planner David Pearson proposed a list of rules towards the design of organic architecture. These rules are known as the Gaia Charter for organic architecture and design. It reads:

“Let the design:

• be inspired by nature and be sustainable, healthy, conserving, and diverse.
• unfold, like an organism, from the seed within.
• exist in the “continuous present” and “begin again and again”.
• follow the flows and be flexible and adaptable.
• satisfy social, physical, and spiritual needs.
• “grow out of the site” and be unique.
• celebrate the spirit of youth, play and surprise.
• express the rhythm of music and the power of dance.”^[2]

Eric Corey Freed takes a more seminal approach in making his description:

“Using Nature as our basis for design, a building or design must grow, as Nature grows, from the inside out. Most architects design their buildings as a shell and force their way inside. Nature grows from the idea of a seed and reaches out to its surroundings. A building thus, is akin to an organism and mirrors the beauty and complexity of Nature.”^[3]

A well known example of organic architecture is Fallingwater, the residence Frank Lloyd Wright designed for the Kaufman family in rural Pennsylvania. Wright had many choices to locate a home on this large site, but chose to place the home directly over the waterfall and creek creating a close, yet noisy dialog with the rushing water and the steep site. The horizontal striations of stone masonry with daring cantilevers of colored beige concrete blend with native rock outcroppings and the wooded environment.

Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_architecture

http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddessig/2011/10/16/the-contrasting-psychologies-of-occupy-wall-street-and-the-tea-party/2/

This path to a better America, a better world, includes living with some fear that getting your needs met might mean hurting someone else about whom you care. Rather than the constant state of hyper-vigilance that comes from the Tea Party’s psychology of exclusion, OWS inclusion carries with it a sadness that no repair is ever perfect, that even the most exceptional America possible will still and always fall short of our aspirational ideals. And beneath the various critiques, like the ratio of CEO to worker compensation almost doubling in the last 10 years, there is a wild optimism at the wooly center of OWS. You see it at the marches, in the music, when you listen to people at Zuccotti Park organizing the clean-up to avoid police action. What becomes clear through a psychological lens is the optimism of cooperation and relationship, of being imperfect together, of searching for repair as community even while knowing no repair is perfect.

For Tea Party members, the world will always remain full of persecutory others (Obama’s the devil!!) while OWS holds out the promise of community, no, of communities of difference. The effort after inclusiveness can be so dramatically full of sympathy and concern for others that you may feel the movement respecting your subjective experience before they even know what their own point of view is. But if you knit together the union worker and ex-hippie, the college student sharing some shade with the cop, you find a belief that working together instead of against each other presents the very real possibility that people will end up not as triumphant winners but as people with enough—and in a radically inclusive networked world enough is, well, enough.

Viewpoint: Is the alcohol message all wrong?

Concerns are high over binge drinking

Many people think heavy drinking causes promiscuity, violence and anti-social behaviour. That’s not necessarily true, argues Kate Fox.

I am a social anthropologist, but what I do is not the traditional intrepid sort of anthropology where you go and study strange tribes in places with mud huts and monsoons and malaria.

I really don’t see why anthropologists feel they have to travel to unpronounceable corners of the world in order to study strange tribal cultures with bizarre beliefs and mysterious customs, when in fact the weirdest and most puzzling tribe of all is right here on our doorstep. I am of course talking about my own native culture – the British.

And if you want examples of bizarre beliefs and weird customs, you need look no further than our attitude to drinking and our drinking habits. Pick up any newspaper and you will read that we are a nation of loutish binge-drinkers – that we drink too much, too young, too fast – and that it makes us violent, promiscuous, anti-social and generally obnoxious.

Clearly, we Brits do have a bit of a problem with alcohol, but why?

The problem is that we Brits believe that alcohol has magical powers – that it causes us to shed our inhibitions and become aggressive, promiscuous, disorderly and even violent.

But we are wrong.

In high doses, alcohol impairs our reaction times, muscle control, co-ordination, short-term memory, perceptual field, cognitive abilities and ability to speak clearly. But it does not cause us selectively to break specific social rules. It does not cause us to say, “Oi, what you lookin’ at?” and start punching each other. Nor does it cause us to say, “Hey babe, fancy a shag?” and start groping each other.

The effects of alcohol on behaviour are determined by cultural rules and norms, not by the chemical actions of ethanol.

There is enormous cross-cultural variation in the way people behave when they drink alcohol. There are some societies (such as the UK, the US, Australia and parts of Scandinavia) that anthropologists call “ambivalent” drinking-cultures, where drinking is associated with disinhibition, aggression, promiscuity, violence and anti-social behaviour.

There are other societies (such as Latin and Mediterranean cultures in particular, but in fact the vast majority of cultures), where drinking is not associated with these undesirable behaviours – cultures where alcohol is just a morally neutral, normal, integral part of ordinary, everyday life – about on a par with, say, coffee or tea. These are known as “integrated” drinking cultures.

This variation cannot be attributed to different levels of consumption – most integrated drinking cultures have significantly higher per-capita alcohol consumption than the ambivalent drinking cultures.

Instead the variation is clearly related to different cultural beliefs about alcohol, different expectations about the effects of alcohol, and different social rules about drunken comportment.

In the UK, heavy drinking is associated with a range of stereotypes

This basic fact has been proved time and again, not just in qualitative cross-cultural research, but also in carefully controlled scientific experiments – double-blind, placebos and all. To put it very simply, the experiments show that when people think they are drinking alcohol, they behave according to their cultural beliefs about the behavioural effects of alcohol.

The British and other ambivalent drinking cultures believe that alcohol is a disinhibitor, and specifically that it makes people amorous or aggressive, so when in these experiments we are given what we think are alcoholic drinks – but are in fact non-alcoholic “placebos” – we shed our inhibitions.

We become more outspoken, more physically demonstrative, more flirtatious, and, given enough provocation, some (young males in particular) become aggressive. Quite specifically, those who most strongly believe that alcohol causes aggression are the most likely to become aggressive when they think that they have consumed alcohol.

Our beliefs about the effects of alcohol act as self-fulfilling prophecies – if you firmly believe and expect that booze will make you aggressive, then it will do exactly that. In fact, you will be able to get roaring drunk on a non-alcoholic placebo.

And our erroneous beliefs provide the perfect excuse for anti-social behaviour. If alcohol “causes” bad behaviour, then you are not responsible for your bad behaviour. You can blame the booze – “it was the drink talking”, “I was not myself” and so on.

But it is possible to change our drinking culture. Cultural shifts happen all the time, and there is extensive evidence (again from carefully controlled experiments, conducted in natural settings such as bars and nightclubs) to show that it doesn’t take much to effect dramatic changes in how people behave when they drink.

Alcohol education will have achieved its ultimate goal not when young people in this country are afraid of alcohol and avoid it because it is toxic and dangerous, but when they are frankly just a little bit bored by it”

These experiments show that even when people are very drunk, if they are given an incentive (either financial reward or even just social approval) they are perfectly capable of remaining in complete control of their behaviour – of behaving as though they were totally sober.

To achieve these changes, we need a complete and radical re-think of the aims and messages of all alcohol-education campaigns. So far, these efforts have perpetuated or even exacerbated the problem, because almost all of them simply reinforce our beliefs about the magical disinhibiting powers of alcohol.

The drinkaware website, for example, warns young people that a mere three pints of beer (ie a perfectly normal evening out) “can lead to anti-social, aggressive and violent behaviour”, that “you might start saying things you don’t mean and behaving out of character”, that alcohol is implicated in a high percentage of sexual offences and street crimes, and that the morning after “you may wonder what you did the night before”.

I would like to see a complete change of focus, with all alcohol-education and awareness campaigns designed specifically to challenge these beliefs – to get across the message that a) alcohol does not cause disinhibition (aggressive, sexual or otherwise) and that b) even when you are drunk, you are in control of and have total responsibility for your actions and behaviour.

Alcohol education will have achieved its ultimate goal not when young people in this country are afraid of alcohol and avoid it because it is toxic and dangerous, but when they are frankly just a little bit bored by it, when they don’t need to be told not to binge-drink vodka shots, any more than they now need to be told not to swig down 15 double espressos in quick succession.

Even the silliest teenagers would not dream of doing that. And not because they have been educated about the dangers of a caffeine overdose – although there undoubtedly are such dangers – but because it would just be daft, what would be the point?

What we should be aiming for is a culture where you don’t need alcohol-education programmes, any more than we now need coffee or tea education programmes.

If I were given total power, I could very easily engineer a nation in which coffee would become a huge social problem – a nation in which young people would binge-drink coffee every Friday and Saturday night and then rampage around town centres being anti-social, getting into fights and having unprotected sex in random one-night stands.

There are cultures where drinking is not associated with violence

I would restrict access to coffee, thus immediately giving it highly desirable forbidden-fruit status. Then I would issue lots of dire warnings about the dangerously disinhibiting effects of coffee.

I would make sure everyone knew that even a mere three cups (six “units”) of coffee “can lead to anti-social, aggressive and violent behaviour”, and sexual promiscuity, thus instantly giving young people a powerful motive to binge-drink double espressos, and a perfect excuse to behave very badly after doing so.

I could legitimately base many of my scary coffee-awareness warnings on the known effects of caffeine, and I could easily make these sound like a recipe for disaster, or at least for disinhibition and public disorder.

It would not take long for my dire warnings to create the beliefs and expectations that would make them self-fulfilling prophecies. This may sound like a science fiction story, but it is precisely what our misguided alcohol-education programmes have done.

Over the past few decades the government, the drinks industry and schools have done exactly the opposite of what they should do to tackle our dysfunctional drinking. I remain perhaps stupidly optimistic that eventually they will find the courage to turn things around and start heading in the right direction.

This is an edited version of Kate Fox’s Four Thought broadcast.

Austerity was a deliberate ideological choice by Prime Minister David Cameron’s ruling coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, elected 17 months ago. It has failed and can be expected to keep failing. But neither party is yet prepared to acknowledge that reality and change course.

Austerity is a political ideology masquerading as an economic policy. It rests on a myth, impervious to facts, that portrays all government spending as wasteful and harmful, and unnecessary to the recovery. The real world is a lot more complicated. America has no need to repeat Mr. Cameron’s failed experiment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/opinion/britains-self-inflicted-misery.html?_r=2

Press Release

Green Party

Friday, October 14, 2011

The Green Party is pleased to announce its candidate is

Clive Durdle

for the Aldborough by-election on Thursday, 10th November 2011.

Introduction

Clive, although a newcomer to the Borough from Golders Green, has lived here for 36 years! He has attended Christ’s College Finchley and Eastbourne Grammar Schools, the University of Manchester and London South Bank University.  He has a degree in Social Administration, and a Master’s Degree in Urban Policy.  He is a Chelsea supporter.

He has worked as a psychiatric social worker; a housing manager; the Director of Redbridge Disability Association and as a consultant with refugees; the Somali and Bengali communities; extra care housing for older people, and disabled young people.  He is the chair of Redbridge Sustainability Forum and the former chair of a housing association, Solon Cooperative Housing Services.

Clive writes

“ I want to achieve a feeling of hope, of a strong community working together to resolve the issues we face.  Aldborough is a beautiful village like ward with some remarkable features and resources and people.  It needs some thought and care. I recently worked on the census here and got a reasonable feel for the ward.  I was very pleased to see the street parties for the Royal Wedding, and the consistent concern for neighbours that I found.”

“If elected, I would want to hold a “Future Search.”  This involves inviting us to meet together to look at our history, where we are now and where we want to be. I am aware of a whole series of local issues, and would approach these matters not on the classic quite bureaucratic way of reporting matters to officers who then respond, but by working out together ways forward with us all.”

“The Italians in the Renaissance used the idea of opera, how can we together create something we love?

What is the effect of our actions on our great grand children?”

For example, are there people with gardens who are not able to keep them as they like?  Would other families like an allotment?  Is there a problem about introducing them to each other?

Vote Clive Durdle Green Party and together we can begin to create together the neighbourhood and world we want.

Notes for editors

clivedurdle@me.com

Clive Durdle

4 Toronto Road Ilford Essex IG1 4RB

0794 198 8846

Printed & promoted on behalf of Clive Durdle by Steve Lambert, Election Agent,

3 Howard Road, London, E17 4SH (Tel. 020 8520 0676).

By GUY GUGLIOTTA

Published: September 5, 2011

LOS ANGELES — There is, perhaps, no more uplifting musical experience than hearing the “Hallelujah” chorus from Handel’s “Messiah”performed in a perfect space. Many critics regard Symphony Hall in Boston — 70 feet wide, 120 feet long and 65 feet high — as just that space.

Enlarge This Image

David Ahntholz for The New York Times

Tyson Yaberg of Audyssey Laboratories listened to an experimental system at the University of Southern California. Audyssey’s goal is to make dens and living rooms sound like concert halls and movie theaters.

Multimedia

Tuning a Room

Some 3,000 miles away, however, a visitor led into the pitch-blackness of Chris Kyriakakis’s audio lab at the University of Southern California to hear a recording of the performance would have no way to know how big the room was.

At first it sounded like elegant music played in the parlor on good equipment. Nothing special. But as engineers added combinations of speakers, the room seemed to expand and the music swelled in richness and depth, until finally it was as if the visitor were sitting with the audience in Boston…..

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/business-brains/medical-8216tricorder-device-competition-coming-in-2012/18826?tag=nl.e662

I would go further – full security and identity protection, full integration with building management systems, a whole range of accessibility apps, like able to tell someone accessible routes and even act for blind people as a form of sonar.

I recently tried on some noise cancelling headphones, so why not ability to control sensory input?

Medical ‘tricorder’ device competition coming in 2012

By Joe McKendrick

Star Trek’s Dr. “Bones” McCoy made no bones about the state of 20th Century medicine — invasive, primitive, “Dark Ages,” were a few of his pejorative terms for modern medicine. In the 23rd century, Bones and other starship crew members used hand-held devices called “tricorders” that instantaneously diagnosed people’s injuries or sicknesses — and healed them as well. “It’s a wonder anyone made it out of the 20th century alive,” he once sniffed.

 

Mobile phones as doctors? This vision will be tested, starting in a few months. Photo Credit: X-Prize Foundation.

 

If you’re reading this post, it can be assumed you were one of the ones who made it out alive, and the good news is you may not have to wait until the 23rd century for tricorder therapy. Early next year, the X Prize Foundation — noted for competitions to in private space travel and moon probes — announced it will be launching a $10-million-prize competition to any team that can design the first functioning tricorder,

Man builds Hobbit house for 3k

by ajs88 » Wed Sep 21, 2011 12:41 pm

I’ve just read a wonderful story about a man who has built a hobbit style home for him and his family. He had no previous experience and was allowed to build the house by the ownder of a forest who wanted someone to live there to look after it. The house itself is stunning and they even have a greenhouse for growing veg next door, solar panel and wood burning stove.

full story here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article … 3-000.html

The world’s first 3-D printed car [video]By Tuan C. Nguyen | September 22, 2011, 6:00 AM PT

In miniaturized form, it makes for a fine kid’s toy. But Jim Kor knows that when you’ve spent the last several years talking up plans to build the world’s first 3-D printed electric car, nothing short of a drivable vehicle will do.

Last week, the mechanical engineer, with the help of his design and engineering team, finally made good on his promise by unveiling a fully functional prototype at the at the TEDx conference in Winnipeg. Dubbed Urbee, the two-seater features an exterior body generated entirely usingthree dimensional additive manufacturing, a process in which parts are printed out layer by layer. In all honesty, the prototype can only be considered a partially 3-D printed vehicle since only the body panels were produced this way. However, the team hopes that won’t be the case with future versions.

Underneath the hood is a single-cylinder ethanol-powered engine and electric motors that enable it to function as a hybrid. A top output of 8 hp means that performance may be limited, though it makes up for this by offering serious fuel efficiency in the range of 200 mpg on the highway and 100 mpg when navigating city streets. It’s also built to last 30 years.

So why not a mobility buggy version?  And why precisely are mobility buggies not capable of 100 mph?  Discrimination?

Practicality tends to take a back seat when you combine sci-fi cult status with custom chopper building – and there’s no room for a pillion passenger on the Lightcycle. We first spied Parker Brothers Choppers Lightcycle project last year when it surfaced in gas-powered form, now the company has released video of a fully-electric version of the neon-packing two-wheeler in action. The electric motor may be quieter, but this one’s still guaranteed to turn heads.

All-Electric Lightcycle (Screenshot from Parker Brothers video)

Image Gallery (6 images)