Some Fun Stuff
Saving the Earth
If you're at all interested in saving the Earth, and making sure it doesn't end up a gigantic junkyard of discarded glory, you might also be interested in this site:
The Aichi Prefecture in Japan won the honor of hosting the 2005 World Exposition. One of the noble focuses of this Expo is their goal of "offering to the people of the world an opportunity to come together and discuss the many global issues that face humankind." Of being "a place to bring together the world's talent to create a model community for the future where humans can live in harmony with nature" You can find a lot more information about the expo and it's goals at the Expo Facts Page. Don't forget to explore the contextual menu to the left. The best part of this is that the site will "exist as an integral part of the domestic woodlands", and their statement that "the living relationships between humans and nature will be explored through various exhibits and events that focus on a renewed interest and devotion to creating sustainable lifestyles for future generations."
Nature Still Owns Us
Luke Wroblewski, at Functioning Form writes about a similar topic in his post "Designed By Nature". (Actually this is the starting point for a series of links that eventually got me to the Expo 2005 web site.) He links to a page about Janine Benyus, a biologist writing about "biomimicry." The article sums up her book with the following statement:
I thought this was fascinating. If you want to learn more about Biomimicry, Functioning Form also linked to this article.
The basic idea is that nature has spent billions of years going through successive refinements to its systems, and by now it's so far past what we can do with our meager technological ability, that we should be learning what we can from nature. Professor Greg Parker sums it up very nicely, saying, "If we're lucky enough to find something close to what we require in nature, then it's very likely to have been highly optimized, and we're unlikely to do much better."