The gay/hipster index (Richard Florida talks about the Creative Class)

Richard Florida has a new book out, "The
Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent." I read his previous book "The Rise of the Creative Class", and it clicked for me in no uncertain terms.

His thesis is that the US economy (this seems to generalise to most of the west, including Australia) has reorganised into a few groupings; the Creative Class who make up about 30% who are the professionals and designers and anyone who essentially thinks for a living; the Service Class who make up about 40%-50% and who do all the service jobs, and the rest, including working classes (manufacturing workers) and rural people, who are sliding out of view.

The Creative Class are urban dwellers who are the most productive, economically speaking, by far; they move to cool cities with technology, talent and tolerance, and business follows them there, or is created by them. The Creative Class is having all the fun, and driving the economy.

The Service Class are essentially serving the Creative Class, and having a bad time; they have low job security, poor pay, long hours. The manufacturing and agricultural workers aren't having any fun either.

His new book talks about the US losing its creative edge due to its increasing intolerance of difference, its exclusionary policy with respect to immigrants, and its failure to understand the class divide (Creative vs the rest), which is tearing their country apart (and driving the government-by-ignorance and ridiculous fundamentalist revival that is currently screwing everything up over there).

Interestingly, he mentions Sydney, Melbourne, and even South Australia (where I live) as really being on the ball with regard to attracting the Creative Class AND finding ways to include everyone in the benefits (not just the Creative Class members). Cool.

NASA Scientist: 'Mars Could be Biologically Alive'

NASA Scientist: 'Mars Could be Biologically Alive'

How cool!

NYPL, Digital Library

"NYPL Digital Gallery provides free and open online access to hundreds of thousands of digital images from NYPL collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, rare prints and photographs, and more. "

Worth checking out...

The RepRap project

RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-Prototyper.

Internet Archive

"Universal access to human knowledge"

These guys are preserving a *serious* amount of stuff in digital, searchable form. Websites, movies, music, books, etc etc etc, all Free (in all senses of the word I think).

Bionic suit offers wearers super-strength

Follow the link to read a New Scientist article on an exoskeleton developed in Japan, about to hit the market. There's also a larger picture of the leg-only version of the exoskeleton with the article.

"A ROBOT suit has been developed that could help older people or those with disabilities to walk or lift heavy objects.

Dubbed HAL, or hybrid assistive limb, the latest versions of the suit will be unveiled this June at the 2005 World Expo in Aichi, Japan, which opened last month. A commercial product is slated for release by the end of the year..."

The Whole-House Machine

The Whole-House Machine (Link)



"With a soft whir, the contour crafter’s head lays down inch-high extrusions of viscous concrete, one atop another, as a pie-shaped trowel smooths the surface. The head moves at 5 inches per second, which would create a 2,000-square-foot house in 24 hours."

My Little Golden Book About ZOGG

This is the best thing I've seen in a long time. This person has taken "My Little Golden Book About GOD" and rewritten it to be very, very funny. The entire resulting children's book, pictures and text, is there on the website. Hillarious!

From the site:

The Cuddly Menace

I was in a supermarket recently searching for a brown mustard-and-conditioner in one. It was while I was reading the ingredient label on a jar of Gouldens Dry Scalp Formula that I looked to the children's book rack and there spied the title "My Little Golden Book About God."

Now as anyone knows, my interest in life's headiest metaphysical mystery has led me on some strange journeys; from the highest mountain peaks of Peru to snort crystalized alpaca urine with an Incan shaman to the sewers beneath Istanbul to read 900-year old grafitti scrawled by the heretical Saint Phoqallyall. Having found no theological resolution in these rarified encounters I have left the door open to the chance that sublime truth may be found where I least expect it.

So it was with genuine anticipation that I opened the book, curious to know what the people at Little Golden Books believed small children who stick Beeferoni up their noses could absorb about the Inscrutible One.

You cannot imagine my horror, however, when my eyes met pages filled with saccharine, pastel artwork depicting cold-eyed androids that were clearly not of our realm. In a Beautiful Mind moment of schizophrenic clarity I saw the book for what it was: not a gentle introduction to life's most profound curiosity, but a primer for the parasitic offspring of an invisible invasion!

For the safety of our race (if any still remain) I have translated this book in the hopes that a resistance may arise. Read the baby powder scented Final Solution of our enemies from beyond, otherwise known as : My Little Golden Book About ZOGG