The Sunday Diigo Links Post (weekly)

• The Long Emergency: An Interview with James Howard Kunstler – O’Reilly Broadcast

  I despise the way JH Kunstler has managed to make what should be well-placed criticism of the system into an ideological cult that’s infused with hocus-pocus and now – egad! – “neo-medievalism” and celebrating the failure of “the Enlightenment mental model.” There’s so much wrong with his approach that the kernels of usefulness (which are there) get lost. If you listened to Kunstler, you’d never know about all the good work that is being done. Furthermore, does he really think that personal mobility devices (i.e., some form of car) are going to disappear? So why trash the Rocky Mountain Institute – or why trash NASA because it’s not focused on teaching Americans how to garden? Aside from that, anyone who “predicts” the future ought to be taken with a bucket of salt.

  tags: james_kunstler, futurismo, predictions, o’reilly, peak_oil

• small change: the winter mind

  Maria wrote a really good post about creativity and depression – whether alleviating depressions (say, through medication) nixes the creative impetus – and I left a long(ish) comment, with references to Twyla Tharp’s notion of the creative *habit*.

  tags: maria_benet, depression, creativity, twyla_tharp, habits, comments

• Creative Class » Blog Archive » The Great Retrofit – Creative Class

  I’m bookmarking this Richard Florida/ Creative Class blog post since it’s one I left a long(ish) comment on, this time around the need for buildings to be adaptable.

  tags: retrofit, adaptability, housing, built_environment, comments

• Creative Class » Blog Archive » Design and the Crisis – Creative Class

  Left a comment on this entry by Richard Florida. His post was actually about design, and how it could change under economic pressure. But then someone left a comment about how bad urban ‘density’ is and that it benefits only developers and tax-hungry governments. Well, I couldn’t let nonsense like that stand, so I posted a comment in defense of urban density. File it under “really, some people…!”

  tags: urbanism, density, comments, design

• U.N. Says ‘No,’ Climate Hackers Say, ‘Yes We Can’ | Wired Science from Wired.com

  Interesting alternative take on the news item around ocean iron fertilization, which is intended to create an algae bloom that’s supposed to absorb CO2.

  tags: climate_change, hacking

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.