Friday, October 15, 2010

Daily Thoughts 10/15/2010 (The Vertical Farm)

William Richards Castle (1849–1935) donated his collection of books on history of the Pacific (he was born and lived in Hawaii) to Harvard library.

Daily Thoughts 10/15/2010

I read some more of the book, The Dragonfly Effect on the train to work.  It has an interesting feel to it.  It basically says the strongest messages are backed by emotions that have a straightforward message.

I worked a bit more on weeding in the oversize 300s.  I also did a little more work on the survey for our website.  Hopefully, it will be up soon.  I also pulled a few books from our storage from 1854.

I started reading The Vertical Farm Feeding The World In The 21st Century by Dr. Dickson Despommier.  The book reads like someone took the some of the principles of a bioshelter farm and scaled them up to fit inside a skyscraper.  It is a mix of the far fetched and the practical.  He does site John Todd briefly for his work on "living machine" water purification systems.  There is a very utopian feel to the writing.  Dr. Despommier uses ideas like "cradle to cradle", natural capitalism and other ideas from ecological design.  I can see the ideas being first tried out in smaller three or four story urban organic greenhouses before they attempt to put them in skyscrapers.

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