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Abstract:Lost, sometimes, in the more metaphorical interpretations of food and power is the basic crudity of food as stored energy. Muscles turn the chemical energy stored in food into mechanical energy, which enables work to be done. Power is the rate of doing work. Food, literally, is a store of power. In the wake of World War Two, Europe faced a shortage of coal and oil, the two most important sources of chemical energy that threatened to gum up the transport of goods from place to place. There was, however, no shortage of unemployed men. Geoffrey Pyke, the quintessential British boffin, pointed out that people are actually much more efficient than steam engines at converting chemical energy to mechanical energy. Pyke’s proposal, that trains could be moved by cyclo-tractors, locomotives powered by the muscular effort of twenty to thirty men, themselves powered by sugar, went nowhere. The paper looks at the background to Pyke’s proposal, its reception at the time and the future of food-powered machinery.
🔖 Integromat – The glue of the internet
Integromat is an easy to use, powerful tool with unique features for automating manual processes. Connect your favorite apps, services and devices with each other without having any programming skills.
Life and loss in Little Haiti, where residents find themselves in the path of a land rush.
Haitian migrants fled a violent dictatorship and built a new community in Miami’s Little Haiti, far from the coast and on land that luxury developers didn’t want. But with demand for up-market apartments surging, their neighborhood is suddenly attractive to builders. That’s in part because it sits on high ground, in a town concerned about sea level rise. But also, because Miami is simply running out of land to build upon.
In the final episode of our series on “climate gentrification,” WLRN reporter Nadege Greene asks one man what it’s like to be in the path of a land rush. Before you listen, check out parts one and two.
In this episode, we hear from:
- Louis Rosemont, artist in Little Haiti
- Carl Juste, photojournalist for the Miami Herald
- Ned Murray of Florida International University
- Greg West, CEO of Zom Living development firm
- Jane Gilbert, Chief Resilience Officer for the City of Miami
Reported and produced by Kai Wright and Nadege Green. This is the final installment of a three-part series produced in partnership with WLRN in Miami. WNYC’s health coverage is supported in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Working to build a Culture of Health that ensures everyone in America has a fair and just opportunity for health and well-being. More at RWJF.org.
Overall a great series, but their narrative was weakened a bit for me in this final episode with the discussion of the myriad of other economic factors that could potentially be at play. Exactly how much do climate change and gentrification play in the displacement of Little Haiti? What percentage?
2 shots of Lagavulin 16 Year Old Islay Single Malt Scotch Whisky
This #FeedReaderFriday I’m recommending:
- Maggie Appleton (feed) for her thoughtful blends of design, thinking, and anthropology
- Manton Reece (feed) for his spectacular work in bringing humanity to the web through Micro.blog
- Kathleen Fitzpatrick (feed) for her publishing experiments and generous thinking
And all three for their kindness and thoughtfulness in technology spaces.
Browsed through their annual sale. Today was the last day and it was pretty slim pickings. Got a few dragon books for Evie.
My new favorite pandemic related store sign seen in the restroom:
Originally, MDX was mostly built for interactive documentation. It wasn’t until shortly after that we saw it start to see adoption on blogs in order to embed components.
Some of these interactive examples here look pretty cool. I wish he’d done a better job of describing MDX and what it is without having to dig around to find it.
👓 My Roommate’s Tik Tok Fame Made My Life Hell | Flip.lease
The perils of moving in with an influencer.
February 11, 2020 at 06:00PM- February 11, 2020 at 09:00PM
Bar Celona, 38 E Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91105, USA
🔖 Foldscope – The Origami Paper Microscope | Kickstarter
See the invisible with a powerful yet affordable microscope that fits in your pocket. Curiosity, discovery, and science for everyone!
A microscope in every pocket is surely a great idea.
They also have a journal article on PLoS ONE. [1]
References
[1]
J. Cybulski S., J. Clements, and M. Prakash, “Foldscope: Origami-Based Paper Microscope,” PLoS ONE, vol. 9, no. 6, Jun. 2014 [Online]. Available: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0098781 [Source]
Repost of John Carlos Baez’ Biology as Information Dynamics
I'm giving a talk at the Stanford Complexity Group this Thursday afternoon, April 20th. If you're around - like in Silicon Valley - please drop by! It will be in Clark S361 at 4 pm. Here's the idea. Everyone likes to say that biology is all about information. There's something true about this - just think about DNA. But what does this insight actually do for us? To figure it out, we need to do some work. Biology is also about things that can make copies of themselves. So it makes sense to figure out how information theory is connected to the 'replicator equation' — a simple model of population dynamics for self-replicating entities. To see the connection, we need to use relative information: the information of one probability distribution relative to another, also known as the Kullback–Leibler divergence. Then everything pops into sharp focus. It turns out that free energy — energy in forms that can actually be used, not just waste heat — is a special case of relative information Since the decrease of free energy is what drives chemical reactions, biochemistry is founded on relative information. But there's a lot more to it than this! Using relative information we can also see evolution as a learning process, fix the problems with Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection, and more. So this what I'll talk about! You can see slides of an old version here: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/bio_asu/ but my Stanford talk will be videotaped and it'll eventually be here: https://www.youtube.com/user/StanfordComplexity You can already see lots of cool talks at this location! #biology
Wondering if there’s a way I can manufacture a reason to head to Northern California this week…
📺 “The West Wing” Galileo | Netflix
Directed by Alex Graves. With Rob Lowe, Dulé Hill, Allison Janney, Janel Moloney. The President and NASA plan a TV event for a probe's landing on Mars; satellite photographs show a suspicious-looking fire in Russia; Leo asks Toby and Josh to decide on the next postage stamp; Sam and C.J. have personal reasons for not wanting to accompany the President to a concert.