Very 19th Century, Very HDT

The commons are back--in the woods, in the town square, in the community of ideas, which sounds too mystical but you get the point. If not, here's this:
Joichi Ito is the CEO of Creative Commons. He is a co-founder and board member of Digital Garage and the CEO of Neoteny. He is on the board of Technorati and helps run Technorati Japan. He is a Senior Visiting Researcher of Keio Research Institute at SFC in Japan

Hedging Your Predictions


It is supposed to be a hedge hog? That's what the Oregonian says:
"Chriki", an African Pygmy Hedgehog faced the media and sunshine today at the Oregon Zoo. The little guy, whose name means "blessed" in Swahili, saw his shadow which in theory means that we have 6 more weeks of winter here in Portland. "Chriki" was held in the hands of David Bragdon, the Metro Council President, who explained that the old European tradition of weather prediction belonged to the hedgehog, but when early immigrants to the United States discovered there were no hedgehogs, they substituted the groundhog. Rob Finch/The Oregonian

Lego My Skyline


Plastic landscape painting is (here) poetic.

Mass of Men


The New York Times crowded elevator story--Fairway supermarket on the Upper West Side has an elevator that is slow and crowded and the only way to get your cart or stroller up to the second floor--points out that the crowded elevator is the only way the organic foods section. The photo is of an organic shopper situation: the crowds are reported to be happy, in some sense, apparently even in their surliness. Men (as well as women) massed are less desperate, and certainly less quiet in lives momentarily underlined in the seconds spent between organic and non-organic, which is very organic, even using elevator power.
But if the store is a gladiatorial arena, the elevator is, surprisingly, “a haven — an oasis of civility,” said Bernice Price, a neighborhood resident and elevator veteran. “People make a quick assessment of the spatial restrictions, and they help each other. There is a lot of silent communication. People don’t seem to push.”

Of course, even if they do push, you might make the argument that they are happier pushing than sitting in an empty parking lot. Then again, you might not.