This is how to build the next world:

The story of an illegal garden in Brooklyn.

I’m keeping an eye out for articles on 3D printing – here’s a good one at The Economist.

Today I went for a drive in a brand new Nissan Leaf. The Leaf, as you may know, is an electric car.There aren’t that many true electric cars on the market (the Chevy Volt doesn’t count because it has both electric and gasoline power plants; the Leaf is all battery, all the time).

The Leaf is surely one of the butt-ugliest cars I’ve ever seen in my life, but otherwise it’s a pleasant ride. I took it out for a drive of about 25 kilometers, and was, of course, worried that the battery would run out. However, the car was fully-charged when I picked it up, and is capable of covering up to 140 kilometers on a charge, depending on driving conditions.

If I hadn’t known it was electric, I would not have been able to tell from the driving experience, except to say that the car was unusually quiet. The Leaf is comfortable, well-appointed, nicely detailed, and quite straightforward once you get past the fact that there’s no ignition key (you start it like a computer, by pushing a power button on the dashboard). The dashboard is reassuringly informative about the available charge, the distance remaining, and even an estimate of the time you’ll need to charge it back up. When you plug it in at the end of your day, there’s a flashing blue “charging”  light on the dashboard, easily visible from a distance, so that you might look at the car in the driveway, say, and you’ll know if it’s still charging. For today’s 25K trip, I racked up an estimated charging time of 2.5 hours. Kudos to Nissan for a brave innovation.

Rachel Maddow had a great show tonight, including an interview with the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and a clip from a recent address by President Obama, that frankly made me cheer out loud. Watch

the Rachel Maddow Show, 2011 Nov 21

I just found this on Time.com, in one of their lists of coolest inventions… I am ceaselessly amazed by what people are learning to do these days, with computers. File this under improbable tech:

How a Common Sandbox Is Battling Arizona’s Wallow Fire | Techland | TIME.com

Americans at their best. The filmmakers have created a “day in the life” snapshot of the global human world and of the Internet. I’m actually just sitting down to watch it, and can only bear witness to the first few minutes; but it’s immediately riveting and beautiful.

Batteries are getting better.

Here’s some news from MIT, about emerging technologies to make batteries lighter and quicker to charge.

These improvements may presumably make batteries better everywhere they are used, but in particular (if the innovations pay off and can be deployed at the scale of the auto industry), they bring the performance of electric cars (slow to charge, limited in range) closer to that of cars powered by gasoline.

I don’t know but I’d have to guess, a lot of money is flowing toward research into better batteries, especially for cars. From stories like the ones above, it sounds like this is starting to pay off.

I’d imagine that car manufacturers in particular can see, they need to make batteries work in a big way. Of course, auto manufacturers probably also live from the intention that the world to come will have even more cars than exist on the planet today.

Now here’s the thing: so far, the electric cars treated as a serious alternative in the market closely resemble the cars we’re used to, in their size, speed and comfort.

There is one great error or blindspot, I find, in much of the discourse about autobiles and what they must become. Cars like the Chevy Volt proclaim: business as usual! On one level, the Volt is plainly expensive transitional technology; but it sets an expectation. As/when batteries get better, your next next car (the affordable and range-anxiety-free EV that is surely in the pipeline as we speak) will let you kick the gasoline habit and this will be mostly painless. Happy motoring!

It’s important to ask, what are the unchallenged economic assumptions of a future where the global market for cars is growing? What has to persist, so that this can transpire? Here’s a problem that stays with us: what to do with the cars we don’t want any more?

You know, we had pretty cool toys in the 60s when I was growing up, but nothing that would touch this:

Oh, to be young. Of course, when I was a boy, of an age to have a toy like that: we used to go roaming about, all over the countryside. Kids don’t I think get to do that as much, any more.

Meet Herman Cain, if you haven’t already. I’ve been reading and hearing about this man for some time, and until now I’ve been a little mystified by his popularity.

Having seen this video, I think I understand Herman’s appeal.

This particular video only has 3,000 views, and I’m thinking, really, more people should see this guy.

As I write, Herman Cain has been gaining steadily in the polls, moving now to the front of the pack, in the Republican presidential primaries. In other words, he might well be going up against Obama for POTUS in 2012.

That video above is one in which a guy within spitting distance of being President of the US of A is quoting Pokemon, as a way of inspiring the crowd to greatness. Did you catch it? I sure didn’t, I learned about it from Rachel Maddow.

See also

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_on_Zanzibar

John Brunner: as a futurist, you rock.

Here is an article from Mother Jones about simple land use conflicts arising between Occupy Wall Street protesters and the people living around the original protest site of Zuccotti Park in Manhattan. I am going to go and look for video of this event, it sounds like it must have been an interesting encounter; and the author of the piece ends on a lovely hopeful note:

Occupy Wall Street Drummers
Driving Neighbors Batty

We make government, as these people are doing, to decide how we will live together. Good manners are the first prerequisite of good government.