I think it’s funny and the perfect way to bring back MySpace. The whining tones of missing your girl and wanting to get back together, they help you get over the moment of – I’m so over MySpace. And then you can see the new design for what it is – focused on music and fans, pictures and sharing links.

But can MySpace – with all the brand recognition – get something going?

The market is full of similar social networks with the same features. The only advantage is to serve a niche – like resumes with Linkedin or photos with Pinterest – and music is MySpace’s niche. If they can maintain focus on that, build some momentum, and bring some respect back to the name, then I think they have a chance.

I’m interested.

***

Don’t forget to sign-up for an invite to the New MySpace.

From a high of 6.3 pounds of trash per day in 2005, Californians have lowered their output in 2011 to a record-low of 4.4 pounds/day. Good news for the state with the highest population, and yet compared to the national average – 4.4 pounds – that’s not much of a drop, more like stopping the excess.

But don’t count out Californians yet – the numbers show strong a downward trend that may leave the rest of the country behind. The state diversion rate (recycling, compost) is 65% – among the highest in the country – with plans for 75% by 2020. In comparison, the country is only at 34% – meaning some states must have horribly low rates.

There is also a strong downward trend among Californians and their trash. The drop was 30% – 1.9 pounds – in the last 5 years, while the rest of the country dropped 0.24 pounds in that same time. And the government is hoping to continue this decline – as the economy bounces back – by signing into law AB 341.

Which among many new rules, forces businesses to start recycling – the only sore spot in this story. At work Californians produce 11.3 pounds of trash – much more than at home. This is largely due to workplace practices that don’t promote recycling and state laws that let office buildings avoid recycling. This new law should remedy that.

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A beautiful short film by John Lynch set to the music of Sam Bauer – and the combination shines.

From the filmmaker:

I was so involved in my DSLR work, I had the impulse to look at some 16mm footage. To see what I used to shoot on my trusty old vintage 16mm Bolex.

It was refreshing to see moments in footage presented exactly the way they were filmed. No effects were necessary for the texture and feel. A quality that celluloid film will always have over digital.

I met Sam Bauer a few years ago on a project. We became friends and he expressed interest in doing a cut and composing a score to my cinematography. I gave him a series of out-takes from my 2003 South Africa Trip that became a part in “Change the Subject” (released in 2004).

Sam was the editor of Donnie Darko so he possesses natural affinity for sound design and score. This is Sam’s interpretation of the footage.

It was is refreshing to see this after so many years.

J. Lynch

A well written, entertaining piece by Tony Horwitz about his visit to the museum of Vice Presidents:

It is a nonpartisan collection of stories and artifacts on all 47 vice presidents – the only museum in the land devoted to the nation’s second-highest office. This neglect might seem surprising, until you tour the museum and learn just how ignored and reviled the vice presidency has been for most of its history. John Nance Garner, for one, said the job wasn’t worth a bucket of warm spit.

Humor is laced throughout the piece, but not because of the author – because Vice Presidents have been so ridiculed. Some deservedly so – like the drunken gambler who had congress dock his pay – and some not so, like the small-town lawyer who was nearly president during World War I, when Woodrow Wilson had a series of strokes.

Though that same lawyer quipped, “one ran away to sea, the other was elected vice president, and nothing was ever heard of either of them again.”

A fun read – The Vice Presidents That History Forgot.

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Reuters has put up an interesting piece – calling the iPhone 5 the product of Tim Cook. Citing the Apple Maps rollout and possible blunder. “The speed of the global launch that astounded” analysts by getting millions of phones into stores with supply chain perfection. And most importantly for fanboys, his role in the Keynotes where he appears at the end and beginning with brief messages.

It’s the new Apple under Tim Cook and he is molding the company that Steve built – into his own image – again from Reuters:

He has introduced a dividend to pay out part of the more than $100 billion cash stockpile, raised salaries for a rabidly loyal but low-paid workforce in the Apple stories, and sped up product rollouts.

Not to mention opening up Apple to charities – by offering a matching gift program. These are things Steve never would have done, but the world seems okay with that. Shoppers are eagerly buying the iPhone 5, traders are buying Apple stock – it’s still going up – and  the company is still growing.

The only remaining question is can Tim Cook come out with a new product. So far he has only improved and continued the existing line. And that is always a company’s biggest challenge.

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Summer is coming to an end and it’s time to pick all that basil. Don’t forget or you might find all the leaves fallen off. And thanks to some friends and HomeGrown.org for this easy recipe – drying basil in the microwave:

• Wash and dry basil.
• Place leaves on a paper towel in microwave and cover with another paper towel.
• Let the microwave run for 30 seconds. Turn leaves over and run for another 30 seconds.
• Repeat as necessary (can take 1.5 minutes).
• Before storing (whole or crushed), make sure all moisture is gone (option: place in plastic wrap overnight to get rid of moisture).

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For the 75th anniversary of San Francisco’s Bay Bridge the city is installing a world-class art installation. It will feature 25,000 white LED lights strung all across the bridge – some 1.5 miles wide and 500 feet high. And will be on display from February 2013-2015.

An artist rendition:

The artist is Leo Villareal who creates pieces composed exclusively of light. One of them is on permanent display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.:

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A Passive House certification is one of the highest available for energy-efficient homes. And this residence hall in Belfast, Maine demonstrates that, “space heating costs for TerraHaus are less than $300 per year ($30 per student), a big improvement from the two poorly insulated housing units it replaced, each with an annual space heating cost of about $500 per student.”

That is a 94% reduction in energy bills – helped out by the rooftop solar panels. The dorm sleeps 10 students and features chemical free building materials and durable fixtures to survive many school years. There is a solar water heater, an ultra-efficient (88%) HRV system that circulates in fresh outdoor air, and windows that absorb and keep in sunshine during the winter (50% solar heat gain).

The walls and roof were constructed to minimize any heat loss during the winter. They were measured for thermal efficiency using R-values and the walls achieved a value of 50 and the roof 80-100. The typical home has R-values ranging from 18-25 for walls and 50-60 for ceilings.

It’s an impressive home and worthy of the Design Award it received.

Learn more:

• TerraHaus – first Passive House-certified residence hall
• Construction firm – Go Logic

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I’m a big fan of the crew at Misfit Pictures and the last movie they made – Manufacturing Stoke. It opened my eyes to the DIY community in surfing and inspired me to get out in the ocean, and I bet it will do the same for you.

There next project is just getting started - called What the Sea Gives Me - and you have the chance to be a part of it. There is a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the movie – and get awesome goodies – but first more about the film:

- It will be a feature-length documentary comprised of intimate and candid interviews with some of the ocean’s most extraordinary ambassadors.

- We will give you an honest and personal look through the eyes of those who thrive under the most extreme water conditions, those ensuring the proper care of the oceans for future generations and those who simply derive a sense of pure joy from the sea.

- The goal is to raise ocean awareness on a global level while reminding the viewer how closely we are all connected to the sea; and, to introduce you to a unique group of people we find absolutely captivating.

It looks to be an amazing movie and I hope you become a part of it.

Donate $5 or $25 or $100 and join the Kickstarter campaign:

• $5 – supported by credit, thank you from the filmmakers
• $25 – DVD, pre-release limited edition – credit, thank you
• $50 – VIP tickets to premiere screening – DVD, credit, thank you
• $100 – Signed original Matt Beard art print – tickets, DVD, credit, thank you

A home profiled in Wired has six very interesting zero-carbon elements, but it’s the last two that fascinate me – thick walls and ultra-efficient windows. Thick walls mean “two 8-inch-thick concrete layers that protect the interior from outside temperature fluctuations. On hot days, the concrete absorbs and retains heat, keeping rooms cool; at night it slowly releases that heat to maintain steady temps around the clock.”

And the windows, “three coats of glazing give these windows more than twice the thermal resistance of standard double-paned glass.”

Both focus on the thermal energy efficiency of a home. With the goal of completely insulating a home – no heat lost or gained, no cool air lost or gained. Several homes are being built with the goal of 100% efficiency and that completely alters how a home functions. Things like the heat created by our 98.6 degree bodies become important. Facing a home in the sun (cold climates) or away from (hot climates) becomes essential.

And a lot of this can be accomplished with simple building materials, like concrete walls – which can easily be incorporated in building new homes. And the more complicated materials, like nanotech windows discussed in the article, can be placed on existing homes:

There’s some revolutionary nanotechnology that’s about to go into the glass—different kinds of coatings that make them five to 10 times more energy-efficient than double-paned windows. These windows are as energy-efficient as walls.

With these improvements the energy costs of heating and cooling should plummet, and traditional heaters and HVACs can be downsized or turned off for weeks at a time.

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The #1 innovation of 2011 - the pocket microscope – is a marvel of the cellphone age. For $10 a phone can be turned into a laboratory and offer poor areas – with no hospital – access to sophisticated medical tests. From The Scientist:

Diagnosing malaria or other blood-borne illnesses used to require analyzing cell slides under a bulky, costly light microscope—which can be difficult to find in impoverished, remote locations. Enter LUCAS (Lensless, Ultra-wide-field Cell monitoring Array platform based on Shadow imaging), an easy-to-use, pocket-size holographic microscope that weighs less than 50g, uses inexpensive, off-the-shelf parts.

The parts attach to the camera and can analyze blood and saliva samples; testing for diseases like HIV and malaria and discovering water quality problems. Listen to Professor Aydogan Ozcan – the same one who discovered the 3D motion of sperm cells – explain it himself:

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Times have changed and women are changing them. From Jezebel:

A new study has found a possible reason for the much-vaunted decline in marriage: people are afraid of having to go through a divorce. And women are more likely than men to fear getting “trapped” in a relationship they can’t easily exit.

And exiting is the new factor. Now that women can leave marriages and have the financial stability to do so – everything is changing. They are even avoiding getting married in the first place. Preferring to stay single longer and closely evaluating the men in their lives. While men seem more open to marriage than ever before.

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There are many who dream of owning the smallest home they can find; a strong reaction to those who dream of owning a two-story mini-mansion. Here is a CNN profile of a young couple who did just that – moving their two kids, cat and dog into a 168 square foot home (on 3 acres of land):

“The things we have are beautiful, enriching our tiny space. We got rid of so much and kept the beautiful things,” Hazi Berzins said. “Freeing ourselves from consumer debt and living mortgage-free has cleared the clutter to help us see what is truly important: our relationships, our happiness, each moment.”

And Mayor Michael Bloomberg agrees – or he wants to improve the city’s studios – as he announced a contest to design and build 1.8 million studios in Manhattan. Each unit is to be less than 300-square feet and contain a kitchen and bathroom.

New Yorkers love their studios, young quirky families love their tiny homes, how about you – do you enjoy your small or large space?

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If nature finds the best way, then move in a spiral pattern to get there the quickest, from the UCLA Newsroom:

The team developed a lensless computational imaging platform that accurately tracked more than 24,000 individual sperm cells in a large volume. This involved observing the individual rotations of each sperm cell, including helical movement patterns, rotation speed, and linear and curved distances traveled.

90% of them move in a right-handed spiral – damn I’m left-handed – and they move fast for microscopic entities, 20-100 micrometers/second.

That’s a big difference in speed…one sperm cell could be 5x faster than his brother.

Image demonstrating three-dimensional motion of human sperm cells. (source: UCLA)

source: design squish

To learn more about the best plants for wall gardens – and their history – visit Low-Impact Living.

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Tom Sims is a legend in all board sports. He had the largest skateboard company in the world – in the early 80s. Built the first snowboard when he was 12, and created half-pipe and freestyle snowboarding, and the first professional snowboard.

A 25-minute short video covers his early years, from Vice’s Powder & Rails:

Aristotle: Marble Portrait Bust

Every now and then, I like to consult the wisdom of the great philosophers, as a matter of existential hygiene.

Or, as John Mayer puts it, to contemplate: Am I living it right?

As far as philosophers go, Aristotle ranks amongst the best of the best, considered one of the most influential founding figures in Western philosophy.

A polymath, he not only studied almost every subject possible at the time (384 BC – 322 BC), but made significant contributions to most of them. In physical science, he studied anatomy, astronomy, embryology, geography, geology, meteorology, physics and zoology. In philosophy, he wrote on aesthetics, ethics, government, metaphysics, politics, economics, psychology, rhetoric and theology. He also studied education, foreign customs, literature and poetry.

Suffice it to say, he did a lot of studying…a lot of thinking.

So I appreciate this nifty little chart he put together (okay, he didn’t actually create a chart) that serves as a tidy set of guidelines for living:

Aristotle’s 12 Virtues and Associated Vices of Excess (via bcresources.net)

Of course, these are a diluted interpretation of his compiled thoughts and books on ethics referred to as Nicomachean Ethics, which originally consisted of ten separate scrolls, and is understood to be based on notes from his lectures at the Lyceum, which were either edited by or dedicated to his son, Nicomachus.

But for the sake of this post, and our attention-limited lifestyles, the visualization works.

Another reason I like Aristotle? He believed man’s highest good is happiness. Not pain, not suffering, but happiness. And, according to Aristotle, the attainment of happiness ultimately depends on the activation of our individual powers and talents. Self-realization produces the happiest life; whereas, the individual whose potential remains unfulfilled will inevitably suffer extreme frustration and discontent (via Ideas of The Great Philosophers).

So there you have it. A little bit of philosophy, a little bit of ethics, to guide your day and light your way.

And I recommend reading Aristotle…smart guy.

In Bunpei Yorifuji’s new book, Wonderful Life with the Elements, each element in the periodic table has personality. From the scary poison of Beryllium to the battery power of Lithium. And not to forget Carbon:

It’s wonderful book and worth buying for only $10. More images from the book are available at Brain Pickings.

I also recommend Bunpei’s past work, the humorous Tokyo Metro “etiquette” posters – Do It At Home.

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Our homes were never designed for energy efficiency. So what happens when designers, architects, and engineers approach the problem?

From the European Solar Decathlon:

“The house generates twice as much energy in Hungarian conditions and three times as much in Madrid as the house itself spends,” the Odooproject team states. “This amount is able to serve two other house’s needs, or provide a 70-kilometer (43.5-mile) long travel distance – daily – for an electric car.”

Designs like these bring us closer to taking homes off the electrical grid. And that is something I’ve heard engineers say is the solution, and the where the trend is going.

Photos of the home:

The central idea is the home is 100% energy-efficient. In winter that means the slightest amount of heat from the sun gets trapped in the house, and can provide the majority of winter heating.

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From a Calgary Herald report:

“The Holy Grail is figuring out how to get the public engaged on this issue. The problem is that the typical output of climate studies is statistical information that’s impenetrable to most people,” said Karen Akerlof. “If you can help people feel they’ve actually experienced what’s happening, they may be able to better acknowledge the risks.”

Researchers found 27 per cent of people felt they had personally experienced global warming…(this feeling) was so meaningful, it positively predicted concern for local risks related to climate change: think forest fires, drought, changes to animal and plant species, and public health.

This is obvious but still worth reporting because I’m finding people more open to the question, do you think this is global warming?

Mostly I receive warm responses and pleasant discussions. Which is so different from years ago when it would spark political arguments or a heated debate on the merits of being environmental.

I want to urge you to ask the question and discuss it with people. You may find yourself engaged in a charming conversation. And maybe pass along a green tip or receive one in return.

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