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Hey so here is a very cool family-centric idea. Levi and I spent the other evening (it was raining) with all of the kids in car driving around looking for something to do. We have done the bounce houses, the art museum, old sac, all of the malls, more old sac, all of the parks and so on. We were driving around saying, “Man why aren’t there more things to do with the kids, are we just not that creative?” We ended up going to the library which turned out to be pretty cool in fact, but we still left wondering why there aren’t more things to do crafted towards kids’ interests.

I am not here to answer that question but I did just run across this place that my friend has been to in Portland. Yeah I know, Portland shmortland, darn it why are they so cool!! Anyway the Air Play Cafe is a family-centric music venue that has kids’ sing-alongs in the day and mellow music at nights that you can take the kids to. You can have a beer while the kids eat cheerios and little fishies at the bar. I haven’t been yet but I plan to go when we are up there during Christmas. I’ll let you know.

I just read this account of Friday’s madness and it begs the question: are we that desperate for something to get excited about, something to throw our passion into?

If so what has the world come to? Are there not enough injustices in the world for us to put this energy into instead? I guess we all think its better to ignore all that and go do whatever it takes to get a deal on a new Bissel upright compact vacuum. So sad.

Throngs of Black Friday shoppers stampeded a Wal-Mart employee as they rushed into the Green Acres mall in Valley Stream minutes before it opened.

“When the doors opened, all hell broke loose,” a law enforcement source told The Post.

An unidentified man, believed to be a store employee who tried to restrain the oncoming juggernaut, was knocked to the ground at 5:03 a.m.

He was rushed to a local hospital but declared dead at 6:03, police said.

Four other people were hospitalized, including a 28-year-old pregnant woman. She was knocked to the store floor a short distance from where the 34-year-old man was trampled and her fate was unclear.

The other three people taken to hospitals suffered minor injuries.

Items on sale at the Wal-Mart store included a $798 Samsung 50-inch Plasma HDTV, a Bissel Compact Upright Vaccum for $28, a Samsung 10.2 megapixel digital camera for $69 and DVDs such as “The Incredible Hulk” for $9.

Levi

We used to need each other, I mean really need each other, but today things are different we need our government but never actually have to interact with it. We need food but only have to nod a the cashier and we are out of there. We need money for all these things but can work from home. But you see things were not always this way. Once a long time ago we actually had to depend on our community for our daily needs.

It’s clear to see that the progress we have made as a society and the progress we are going to make is only going to make us more self sufficient. The more we innovate the more automated our lives become and the less we actually have to do for ourselves but there is something lost that is really sad.

In 1693 Jakob Ammann lived in Switzerland and was fed up with the encroachment of new technology on his life (I know what possibly could have been that invasive in 1693?) and decided to start what is today know as the Amish lifestyle or as the call themselves “Plain Folk.” [Read more →]

I am a big fan of renewable energy and today you have a chance to join me in sending a message that its important to all of us.

Just go here and sign your name. Because big changes need to start today.

Levi

On a sunny November in 2006 near the corner of Mission and 1st st in San Francisco someone fed a typical parking meeter. It was the coin drop that would be heard around the world. You see the coin was not meant to park a car but instead a park. REBAR a creative landscape design group had the idea to get people thinking about parking spaces and their wastefulness. “What if we parked a park in one of those spaces instead?” And the idea was born. In only 2 years the concept was replicated in over 200 cities around the globe. Park(ing) day is just another way that communities are forming with the help of the Internet. Just try and organize something so large scale in 1990. You could not do it with a 20 million dollar budget, but today with something as simple as a website and a PDF how-to manual, a good idea can grow around the world. Whats better is the concept is bringing people together and getting them to think differently.

Makes me wonder what other spaces can be rethought if only for a few hours to help bring communities together.

There has been so much focus on how the internet is making the world “flat” and connecting us to eachother no matter the distance but in reality I think that the most impact the internet has and will start to have even more in our lives is locally.

If are lucky enough to be one of the 15,000 people who live in Bourne England you are sure to know about the site that Rex Needle put together simply called Bourne. Not only does it give a detailed account on the daily coming and goings in the town it has a little about hundreds of residents. Sites like this are evolving and in my opinion will soon play a much more major role in the way a town works. Just like a newspaper kept us all in the loop for the last 100 years a website has the ability to connect us but on a much more real level. When information flows both directions we have a real chance to get stuff done.

If you happen to work in a few blocks in Downtown Seattle you have most likely heard of MSG150 a site run by a few guys who work in the area that started reviewing each and every restaurant in a 6 block radius of their job. Soon the group grew and each review has an opinion of every item on the menu of every restaurant they visit. The site is just one more step in the evolution of a hyper-local Internet. Just imagine what it will be like in the next 10 years.

Jessie posted an interesting question on her blog that I have been thinking a lot about today.

I have stolen the post and and am posting it here.  -Shhh-

I was listening to the radio the other day and they were talking about how people are not spending as much and it was a bad thing. I could not help but feel very differently about it. Is it really such a bad thing? I understand that it effects peoples jobs and I am sorry for that but is there a way that we can spend less and it be ok? I think that if this Christmas people decided to make more presents that would be a good thing. Or to give to an organization to help the hungry in someone’s name instead. Can this really be all bad? Have we gotten ourselves into a place where we have to spend, spend, spend for everything to be alright or is there a way to adjust? These are the questions running around my head today. What do you think?

I do love this time of year.

Once you climb four flights of stairs in a nondescript warehouse on 2nd street in San Francisco you are likely to get lost looking for the door to Citizen Space. There is a small sign on the door and it’s easy to miss. But once inside you can see that the concept is anything but under the radar. Lined up in a row one after the other are ten Ikea desks and one large table in the back. If you want you can drop in and use a desk for free or if you want your own desk full time you can pay $350 for it. The concept originally started in 2006 by Tara Hunt and Chris Messina is to create a collaborative space where ideas flow not one direction but many and new people with new ideas are welcomed as a part of what makes the place special. The space was rented and started with a simple concept, it was time to create the perfect work environment. Coffee Shops were getting annoyed by the 5 hour table hogging and the living room is not all that good for getting the creativity flowing. So Citizen Space was born. Once the rules were in place they started talking Online about the concept and a few other people noticed. Then quite a few people noticed and today there are well over 200 Coworking sties all over the world. What did they do that had not been done before? They simply started with what kind of community and collaborative space they wanted in mind. They threw out the old landlord tenant model and decided that someone needed to define the space first for it to work well. They make idea sharing central to the theme and instead of getting a closed door-stuck in the mud environment they get to actually make things happen.

Thanks Dan for sending this post over today….Interesting stuff when you look close at the details.

The people of the USA consume an alarming quantity of resources. It’s really hard to get an idea of just how big the problem is. Artist Chris Jordan’s “Running the Numbers: An American Self Portrait” does a pretty good job of conveying just how wasteful, among other things, we are as a society.