I’m sitting in a Lenscrafter store this weekend while my companion buys glasses. The selection of reading material is limited to Field and Stream and GQ, two magazines I’d probably never pick up. Not being a Bambi killer, I go for the GQ. After working my way through the obligatory 75 pages of clothing ads I get to the editorial. To my surprise there are two hard hitting, investigative journalism-style pieces against the Bush administration including this call for impeachment of the Vice-Maniac Cheney. It’s very well done and given his insane warmongering of late, calling for confrontations with China. Iran and Pakistan, something we should take seriously.
By the way, Field and Stream had a great illustrated piece (sorry, no link- there’s a large picture of a dead animal prominently featured on the site and an article about booth babes at a trade show but I couldn’t find an online version of the survival piece- if you want to go there you’re on your own) of how to not get lost in the woods. Really well done. So maybe I should try reading a little further afield (couldn’t resist!).

James is an artist/writer and this post on the weirdly warm winter we experienced up until a few weeks ago is perfect: a beautiful photo comic strip that captures the poignancy of the changes we are witnesses to.
Very highly recommended.

Thanks to WorldChanging for this.

WeatherBill, a site where you can buy weather hedges and gamble on weather patterns via a trading system, is another indication that climate change can be monetized in ways no one would have considered a few years ago. The increasing unpredictability of local weather conditions has created an opportunity to arbitrage different people’s bets on how the weather might affect them.

While the site is dullsville, the concept is going to be huge, assuming they cover themselves adequately. Add this to the carbon credit schemas as a new way to speculate on global warming.

This one hits all my categories which in itself is a pretty big rave. TED is a conference of people from the Technology, Entertainment and Design worlds that takes place each year in Monterey. It costs a lot to attend ($4400. last time) and it’s by invitation only (although you can apply to be invited) so most of us aren’t likely to experience it in person. This is too bad because a lot of really brilliant people get up and do brief talks and demos about things they’re working on or interested in, things that may change the world.
Fortunately they’ve posted these presentations on the TED Talks site and anyone can watch, download and even grab code to embed them into your site or blog. I was orginally going to embed the Al Gore talk from last year but decided instead to provide info and the site link so you can explore what TED has to offer. This is another incredible web resource, one that reminds me of what a remarkable information age we live in.