Why was Irene so costly?

Hurricane Cost Seen as Ranking Among Top Ten - NYTimes.com: "Hurricane Irene will most likely prove to be one of the 10 costliest catastrophes in the nation’s history, and analysts said that much of the damage might not be covered by insurance because it was caused not by winds but by flooding, which is excluded from many standard policies."

Fine, but the real reason for the huge flooding cost is the unreasonable human addiction to to building near water. We should in recreating society build communities of sufficient size that they qualify as cyber-cities or units of cyber-metro areas. These would best be placed along existing interstates at altitudes that render the possibility of flood damage nearly impossible. Make no mistake. Sprawl must go and will no doubt be bulldozed or otherwise eliminated. We are going to have new cities. A new society. New opportunity for real community.  It is the key to recovery and future prosperity. We need to discover and celebrate the human in one another.


Global Online Privacy

None of these education solutions will work

What's Your Single Best Idea For Reforming K-12 Education? - Yahoo! News: "But while plenty of wealthy businesspeople agree the education system needs their support, there is little consensus on what to do. Some people like the Waltons are big supporters of charter schools, which now represent 5% of all public schools, up from 2% a decade ago. Others like Michael Milken and Bill Gates think hiring and training better teachers is the best solution."

Create a cyber city that is secure and pleasant to be in

Car free

With diversity and room for work and commerce

Entertainment and play

Turn everything into kiosks operated by one or two persons

Make curiosity the reason why education works

Make the student seek it out by offering

Choice and freedom to move in one's own way

In short a society must function to make education possible

Ours functions as a product of our advertising corporate melange

A society that functions propery will promote community

Community can hardly exist in a sprawl culture

Therefore education fails not merely because kids can't read

But because the ones who can are indoctrinated

By advertising to idolatry of consumption

That is a lethal value

Global Online Privacy

The solution for dying rural communities

Shannon Hayes: Saying Goodby to the P.O.: Thousands of small-town post offices are on notice for closure. Radical homemaker Shannon Hayes on what that will mean for the communities who love them.

The solution for dying rural communities

Is to become pioneers in the creation of

Car free communities of sufficient size to enable a vital local economy to develop

This could mean consolidation of communities into clusters containing up to 10 K

The result would enable development of what I call cyber-cities

These have residences, work places, services, commercial ventures, public places - everything - mingled and designed to work together

This is the successor to sprawl commuter society

Global Online Privacy

Extreme weather argues for my notion of human settlements

3 die as storm hits Belgium fest; US band safe - World news - Europe - msnbc.com

A recessed stadium like shell with a retractable roof, the skeleton to which we attach the mass produced spaces we require to create a varied and interesting and walkable human community.

Global Online Privacy

This is the tip of the iceberg

Law Students Sue Their Schools - The Daily Beast: "Maybe they'll get their tuition's worth after all. Lawsuits were filed against Michigan's Thomas Cooley Law School and New York Law School. The lawsuits, which seek class-action status, allege that the schools inflated their post-graduate job prospects by advertising the percentage of graduates who get any kind of job within nine months of graduation—even jobs that don't have anything to do with the law."

The entire apparatus of education is terminal because it is built on the false American dream which only worked for people making over 100K. As that dream crumbles so will every institution that employees the highly-paid and generously pensioned. Those who remake society at the community level will win the ultimate reward. Those who capture the vision of future walkable cyber cities will own the economy of the future.


Global Online Privacy

Imagine real neighborhood schools

Learning should begin with the curiosity and will if the childSchool has everything backwardsGreat children are stuffed into regimented boxes to be moulded by great teachersWe need schools that are entirely child drivenWhere kids can walk among various kiosks where there is one affable, computer savvy expert who likes kids for each kioskThere is a big screenThe affable person brings up the most original video on learning this or that that she has ever discoveredA few kids hang around to watch.A walkable community with kiosks of this sort is a viable alternative to education that is reified and factory-basedWe need to start with the community and get the cars out of the actual space where people liveA community of 10K can exist in an area with a mile diameterAnd no more than four stairless levelsIn such areas children can create their own education and discover their own interests and talents and move at their own chosen speed(To reprise a lyric)None of this will happen until people insist that the present system is broken
Global Online Privacy

On the subject of protection from fire there are two logical courses

On the subject of protection from fire there are two logical courses. The first is to defeat isolation so saving help is near at hand. The second is to conceive of an entirely new way of building and designing human habitations.One that would defeat from the all but the most remote possibility of fire. This can be done by moving to my cyber city which is made up of spaces that are mass produced and which are impermeable to fire. The walkable communities that these spaces would populate would have the requisite protections needed to avoid fire from the outside - as in forest fires. The construction in itself would eliminate the need for most present fire protection apparatus.   MoreGlobal Online Privacy