I was talking with Ryan Lanham today about his Ocean Thermal Energy Foundation:

http://otec.pbworks.com/

As a futurist, I am very into alternative energy (like fuel cells), and Ryan starting telling me about the new OTEC design.

The older OTEC model uses thermal difference between ocean layers to power turbines, but the new design uses those differences to power desalinization and create raw Hydrogen, which can then be used in the emerging hydrogen economy.

This last week (and for a few weeks yet) I have been setting up and configuring a set of research tools for my work on panarchy.

One of the tools I'm evaluating is a special kind of wiki called Wagn. I fixed a few options and then customized the CSS; here's a preview:

What amazes me so far about Wagn is:

1. It stores everything as "cards"
2. It lets you include cards anywhere (like in other cards)
3. It uses collapsible/expandable headers for sections
4. It uses templates for formatting cardtypes
5. It relates cards using the "+" operator
6. It uses a WQL query language for searching, thus
7. It creates aggregates using advanced logic

I saw this:

Viacom uses copyright to censor racism protest

Madeline sez, "To protest the casting of white actors in Asian and Inuit roles for the live-action production of 'The Last Airbender,' (based on the animated series 'Avatar: The Last Airbender,' which features primarily Asian iconography, calligraphy, and fight choreography), fan Glockgal began making t-shirts that read 'This is not a tan' and "Aang can stay Asian and still save the world.' Viacom, one of the companies which owns a license for the series, has ordered Zazzle.com to take down her storefront.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/03/viacom-uses-copyrigh.html

I wonder about what would have happened during the civil rights era, if protesting had been vulnerable to copyright law. I wonder what rights we would not now enjoy.

This is why I am interested in the future of politics: because I feel that things like this matter. The future world is multicultural and likes it that way.

The bottom line for the civil rights is:

Is it still/really "free speech"
if the topic of your speech is copyrighted?

hmmm....

Decided to investigate a fascinating new tool called Nodebox, and found an application for network visualizations on which I put together a quick and dirty panarchy visualization. Since the data comes from an open collaborative database, some of the objects and relationships were not entered by me.

That's a nice serendipity feature.

http://nodebox.net/perception/?q=panarchy

I have been designing an information architecture for my research lately that is an amalgam and maturation of various ideas that I've been developing for many years.

I'm sure it will evolve further, but at present it looks something like this:

Inputs:

• Zotero for bibliographic management
• MediaWiki for text entry

Storage

• MySQL for wiki database
• MySQLite for Zotero database
• Flat files for Spotlight indexing

Outputs:

• http://localhost python scripts
• http://localhost php scripts
• Microsoft Word with my Zotero/Flock integration

I'm so energized about it that I decided to make a prezi of it:

http://prezi.com/43281/view

Zotero is a bibliographic management tool similar to EndNote except that it runs inside mozilla-based browsers. There is a template (".dot" file) for that integrates your use of Zotero with Microsoft Word and adds a citation toolbar, but it assumes that you are using the Firefox browser. I use Flock, because of all of the other tools that are built into it. Consequently, when I installed the Zotero.dot Microsoft Word template and clicked on the toolbar, I got an error stating that I didn't have Firefox open (which I didn't).

So, in order to get all of these parts to work together, I reprogrammed the template to work with Flock on OS X 10.5 "Leopard", and I'm releasing it here under a GPL license. Make sure it stays free and circulates widely.

ZoteroFlock.dot

Installation instructions are the same as Zotero's @ Word integration page.

http://computationallegalstudies.com/

This is the work being done at CSCS UMich by Michael Bommarito and Dan Katz. This is really good stuff and worth keeping an eye on.

I've known these guys for years.

Sometimes any change is good change. :-)

Just couldn't resist going to Worldle and kicking out this word cloud from one of my Panarchy papers. Looks cool.

Click the image for the Large version.

TheHub is a design project by Ben Congleton, Jina Huh, Jiang Yang, Nicholas Senske, and myself that won honorable mention at the University of Michigan Arts on Earth Workplay 2008 competition.

The Hub is an interactive crossroads at the center of North Campus. It is literally a hub of social activity, bringing together food and people in a comfortable outdoor environment. But it is also a hub of information which displays data in an engaging plaza designed to resemble the spokes of wheel. The Hub improves life on north campus because it provides a gathering place with games, art, and information.

Team member Ben Congleton has put our work online including links to video, renderings, and the final poster.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bcx/thehub/