Every morning working from the Lanai; equipped with sunrise & coffee.

Best viewed large. (via Zim)

The Southern Utes, one of the nation’s wealthiest American Indian communities thanks to its energy and real-estate investments, is a major investor in the professor’s company. It hopes to gain a toehold in what tribal leaders believe could be the next billion-dollar energy boom.

But from the tribe’s perspective, the business model here is about more than business. “It’s a marriage of an older way of thinking into a modern time,” said the tribe’s chairman, Matthew J. Box, referring to the interplay of environmental consciousness and investment opportunity around algae.

(via the NY Times)

(via Eric Alba)

Lately I’ve been mentally summing up the healthcare argument like this:

“We have much to gain [from ensuring every person has health coverage]”

Versus:

“We have much to lose [from changing the status quo]”

Recently I’ve been exploring my hypersensitivity to being controlled. I used feel guilty about it. When I examine the past, in situations where this has led to a negative outcome, that negative outcome has been the destruction or compromise of a relationship with the other person. The thing they were trying to force me to do was rarely, or poorly done if at all.

I was not able to satisfactorily articulate my considerable distaste for external control, and my preference for comprehension. I’ve been asking “why” my entire life, and have hit a wall many times because of people feeling threatened. It’s a challenge to ask people to reformulate their orders into an expression of needs.

My brain likes pattern matching, and is near-constantly trying to reconcile the multiple inputs it receives. For better or worse, I call it systemic algebra. When it receives new input that doesn’t match the pattern of the increasingly complex model of the world in my head, it adjusts the model.

In this sense, getting older has had an overarching theme of both increased comprehension and decreased comprehension. There are parts of the system which I will not understand, perhaps ever. Those black boxes are unpredictable, and that the only reasonable thing I can predict is that they’ll resolve with whatever needs to happen.

Or more concretely: I trust that people will do the right thing for them, given their worldview.

I think some people would argue with this idea, saying it leaves no room for altruism; that a martyr acts “selflessly” to further the needs of the community. I think motive is inherently selfish—not in a pejorative sense, but that needs are ultimately part of the individual. A person’s actions are a function of attempting to meet the need which is immediately strongest.

Fasting, asceticism, self-inflicted injury, suicide, workaholism or similar behavior are fulfilling an unmet need for control or power. I think prayer is probably the most simple behavior a human can engage in that fills a power need. The idea is seductive—that by talking (in your head) to someone or something that’s listening can have a material effect on the real world. This is incredibly powerful.

This is still a thought in progress.

Concrete + glass tumbler from 25togo. On sale at Charles & Marie.

CITY RAIN concrete glass is made of high water-absorption concrete with idea of wet street and glass window, the ingenious combination of two kinds of hard materials – glass and concrete with low contrast gray and simple lines presents a unique taste for the glass.

The process of making concrete product is a work needed a lot of patience and carefulness. It consumes time and energy to take care of products even when the products have already finished. From the beginning of making molds and accurately calculating the percentage of admixture, to the end of keeping the cement wet, the procedure is longer than a week and not to mention that all the processes are made by hand.

Hat tip @k.

The St. Louis City Museum is a giant multi-story jungle gym for kids and adults with claustrophobic mazes, chutes and stairs, wire tunnels arching 50 feet off the ground, a ferris wheel and a school bus hanging off the roof of the building.

People are wed there, and people live there.

The space is constructed—perhaps grown—like a epiphyte on an old St. Louis building, entirely from reclaimed pieces of the city. It has an authenticity that transcends its entertainment value—I hope to visit every time I am in this city.