(Thanks Bill)
MonthApril 2010
A couple weeks I linked to to an article about a professor who replaced grades in his class with “experience points.” I didn’t realize it, but that was a blog write-up of another article which is more focused on applying his ideas to the work place:
Clearly defined goals and fair, incremental rewards are two game design techniques that could motivate the ‘gamer generation’ in the workforce, according to a US academic.
Lee Sheldon of the Indiana University believes managers may have to rethink how they engage the next generation entering the mainstream workforce.
“As the gamer generation moves into the mainstream workforce, they are willing and eager to apply the culture and learning techniques they bring with them from games,” said Sheldon, a gamer, game designer and assistant professor at the university’s department of telecommunications.
“It will be up to management, often of pre-gamer generations, to figure out how to educate themselves to the gamer culture, and how to speak to it most effectively,” he told iTnews.
iTnews: Employers: Look to gaming to motivate staff
I’ve been thinking about how to apply game design principles to the IT help desk at work to involve non-IT staff in solving problems.
Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, a professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University, has solved one of many problems on the way to successful bone implants: how to grow new bones in the anatomical shape of the original.
Dr. Vunjak-Novakovic and her research team have created and nourished two small bones from scratch in their laboratory. The new bones, part of a joint at the back of the jaw, were created with human stem cells. The shape is based on digital images of undamaged bones.
Tissue-engineered bones have many implications, according to a leading figure in the field, Dr. Charles A. Vacanti, director of the laboratories for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He has no connection to the Columbia work. “If your imaging equipment has sufficient high resolution, you can construct virtually any intricate shape you want — for example, the middle ear bone, creating an exact duplicate,” he said. “It’s a splendid example of tissue engineering at its best.”
New York Times: Replacement Bones, Grown to Order in the Lab
(via PSFK)
It’s not quite the Kama Sutra or The Joy of Sex but it does offer a similar kind of assistance: the first online sex shop for the Islamic world has opened in the Netherlands.
But there is nothing sleazy about “El Asira” — “Society” in Arabic. Indeed, the website looks positively demure. The home page depicts a street divided by a line; women customers click on the left of the line, men on the right. Inside the shop — navigable in Arabic, English and Dutch — customers can shop for massage oils, cocoa butter lubricants and aphrodisiacs such as Pure Power, a capsule that claims to “heighten male performance, desire and pleasure”. […]
“The image of women in the kitchen, submissive, dressed in a burka isn’t true,” he told the Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad. “There is a lot of love. Islam has a lot of respect for women. Our shop puts the woman at the centre of things.”
To be on the safe side, Mr Aouragh consulted Boularia Houari, who preaches in various Dutch mosques and gives lessons in the Koran. The imam told him: “It’s important in Islam that both men and women reach orgasm. If a woman is not satisfied, she will use impure methods such as masturbation or vibrators.”
Times: Online Muslim sex shop in the Netherlands is all halal
(Thanks Paul)
See also:
Fast Company’s interview with the founder
El Asira itself – though the site looks like it’s down again.
This is an interview by Arthur Magazine editor Jay Babcock from Mean Magazine in 1999.
WHAT ABOUT THE TECHNO-PRIEST BOOKS?
The Techno-Priest I write about the whole new industry of the CD-ROM, the new games in the world. The world is going to be dominated by the games, now. Video games. But more advanced than video games. They are audiogram games, no? The games directs the galaxies, and the ruler of the galaxy are the businessman, who is the Techno Priest. Business became religion.
I THINK WE HAVE THAT IN AMERICA, NOW.
Yeah, you have that and you don’t realize. [laughs] In America the god is the dollar, no? That is God. At one time the dollar will be sacred. And the industry will be the Church. That I am doing. Then the Techno Priest is the history of the high priest of that church, that industrial church. You need to learn to know how to make games, how to use the humanity, how to conduct the humanity to make the games, and to buy the games, etc. It is very interesting.
ARE YOU INTERESTED IN DESIGNING VIDEO GAMES YOURSELF?
Yes. Last year I did in L.A. They’re doing that now. I went there and proposed, I say, Listen, I want to make this type of story, are you interested? They said, Yes, sure. I made two games of, and I am making a game of the Meta-Baron, then they are doing. I think, “There is a new artform.” Very interesting.
AND IF YOU COMBINE THE GAME WITH THE INTERNET—
Yes. It is normal. Why is important? Because in the future world, the humanity will work less and less. And will have more and more time for them, the games. And then we will get bored. See my meaning? We are animals, we are bored. And then the games will be the most important thing. You know now, the world, no? All the world we have are games. We see the world through television, like games. You are in America, you know that. You have the live television—when a person is killing somebody, you see that on the television, you can follow that. Life is becoming a show, a game, no? More and more.
SO YOU HAVE TO DESIGN A BETTER GAME—
Yes I think it is important. An artist needs to go there.
Disinfo co-founder and current Dangerous Minds host Richard Metzger is interviewed by Joseph Matheny on the latest Gspot.
(Photo by Audrey Eschright / CC)
Jeremy O’Leary is a steering committee member of the Multnomah Food Initiative and was an initial organizer of the City of Portland Peak Oil Taskforce. He’s a member of Portland Peak Oil, Transition PDX, and the Portland Permaculture Guild. He’s a contributor to the online publication The Dirt and maintains his own blog Biohabit. You can view his presentation on “20 Minute Neighborhoods and Emergency Response” here.
Klint Finley: What do you think the biggest/most important food security problems we have in Portland are?
Jeremy O’Leary: During the City of Portland’s Peak Oil Taskforce, we had a conversation with the management of Safeway where we learned that, for example, an apple from Hood River would be driven to LA and then back up to Portland. I think this example indicates one of the many problems with the food system. Many of the food issue we have in Portland are similar in other areas.
One of the things we have discussed in the steering committee meetings for the Multnomah Food Initiative is our area has one of the highest levels of hunger.
Which personally I’ve always found odd as we are also one of the leading cities for the local food movement. The following is from Multnomah Food Initiative:
Why a Food Initiative?
Multnomah County is at the epicenter of the local food movement. There are countless food-related, grassroots efforts being made in the community, as well as numerous projects and initiatives led by local government. The prevalence of local Farmers’ Markets and growing interest in organic gardening indicate strong community support for local food, but we must do more. To achieve a truly sustainable, healthy and equitable food system, all partners must help reach a common vision and share responsibility for the implementation of a strategic action plan.
It makes more sense than ever to implement a local food initiative. Despite the energy generated by local food in communities throughout Oregon, statistics show that our food system is broken:
Oregon is ranked second in hunger by the United States Department of Agriculture.
About 36,000 Multnomah County residents access emergency food boxes each month.
Half of all adults in Multnomah County are either overweight or obese.
Chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke are on the rise
Half of all Multnomah County children will be on food stamps at one point in their childhood.
Only a small percentage of the food that we consume is grown locally (estimates indicate 5-10%).
We lack a coordinated strategy to ensure the vitality of our local food system.
One thing I’ve been puzzled by is how if you don’t have food in your house for tonight, it is a social justice issue. However if you don’t have food in your house for 72 hours (standard Red Cross recommendations) it is an emergency management issue.
Just to narrow the conversation a little, as the food system is more than a little complex, just talking about organic food sold at places like People’s Coop, New Seasons, Wild Oats … the fact that stores only have a three day supply of date sensitive food is one aspect that I’m concerned about.
More broadly speaking I sometimes think that the best way to describe our food system is (mind you I have a somewhat dark sense of humor) is Death by Convenience.
How is that even though we’re one of the leading local food cities, we still only produce about 5-10% of the food we consume here?
It is in the same vein as the discussion of Portland being the Greenest City in the US, basically we are being graded on a bell curve. I’m always filled with pride and terror when it is pointed out that Portland is leading the charge on sustainability.
Just how problematic is the fact that we only produce about 5-10% of our own food? Do we export a lot of food? And do you know what they’re counting as local? For example, would they be considering Forest Grove local?
This may seem like an aside but it is related….
In Yellowstone national park, analysis of trees prior to 1850 shows that 50% of the nitrogen was of marine origin. 50% of the nitrogen arrived in the form of salmon. So it is not as if a long supply is necessarily a bad thing.
Efforts like the 100 mile diet are interesting, but it really depends on how the food arrives. Grain shipped in via trains from the mid-west is considerably better then strawberries flown in from Chile.
As for what food we export, I don’t have specific information about that.
Taking a completely different angle on things… I did my own sociological experiment by going to the one of the local gun shows and talking about sustainability to self-described “right-wing gun nuts.”
Basically, if you ask whether it’s a good idea to take a typical single family house and re-design it so you can live without power fairly well for a week if it is January or July, to have a large pantry, rain water cisterns, veggie gardens, fruit trees, … the response to this was basically “duh.”
My conversations with the “gun nuts” led me to the view that it is much better to focus on what you want and stop. The key detail when talking about a problem: you can debate whether that problem is actually a problem then never actually start effectlvely talking about actions.
It seems like the environmental movement has progressed from talking about renewable resources, to sustainability, and now to resilience. What exactly is resilience?
I can’t speak for the environmental movement, just for what I’m focusing on which is community and resilience. I think part of the focusing on resilience is that it is a more accurate meaning of sustainability…. how you sustain yourself/family/community is a rather important detail.
Sustainability seems to have been mostly about a long term vision, which is great, but doesn’t do you much good if you don’t have a vision for tonight or next week.
I think resilience is an example of what folks want.
Based on your experience on the gun show, do you think there’s more overlap between the left and the right if you re-frame what you’re talking about as resilience instead of “environmentalism”?
On the community level, very much so. On the level of Washington DC, I have no idea.
(Above: an example of a rainwater cistern at Columbia Credit Union in Vancouver)
What can individuals do to improve their community’s resilience – whether that be in Portland or elsewhere?
I would suggest one of the 1st steps is to re-enforce the school buildings to withstand an earthquake, use the food certified kitchens in the schools to process locally grown food, and store emergency provisions at the schools.
If you mount solar PV panels on the roofs and place HAM radios there you can be fairly sure of having islands of communication even if things go really sideways.
You would need to have rain water cisterns at the schools, which could also be used for the urban orchards and the veggie gardens.
More broadly speaking, knowing your neighbors and being on good terms with them is possibly the 1st thing to do. It’s only then that conversations about sharing resources can be possible.
It sounds like you’ve picked schools as the epicenter for resilience in communities. Why?
At least in the case of Portland, they are arranged so there is usually a school within a 1/2 mile of you at any point in town. Community centers, churches, a mall…. these would of course work as well.
(Above: The Columbia Ecovillage)
Transition PDX is interested in applying permaculture principles to the city. Are there good working examples of urban permaculture already?
As applied to dirt, very much so. The Columbia EcoVillage would be a good example that is more or less open to the public. For me permaculture comes down to good design, which translates into other disciplines.
In the case of my backyard, I have things lined up so I’m getting fruit consistently from early may until late Sept. Once the Kiwi matures, I can get another harvest in late November.
People who rent, instead of own, single family houses can have a hard time applying permaculture to their homes. Is there anything at all people who live in multifamily housing can do in terms of applying permaculture?
Yes, for this I would refer folks with what Leonard Barrett has been doing – Permaculture for Renters.
Above: Image from the Permaculture for Renters post Create a Container Food Forest
So what Leonard is doing is also applicable in multi-family housing?
Admittedly I’m not the best source of suggestion around permaculture for folks who don’t have some land to work with. You can do some pretty nifty things with container gardening on a balcony for example. But there are also examples of folks finding ways to share resources or buy things in bulk together.
What is the minimum amount of space needed to grow enough food for one person to survive? And for one person to have a reasonably healthy diet?
Quite a bit fits inside. I would point to books by John Jeavons such as How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine. I would also point to materials by Toby Hemenway such as The Self-Reliance Myth.
I guess we’re just about out of time, so I will ask one last question: If people reading this interview come away with only ONE message, what message should that be?
Using “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs” as a point of reference, society seems to spend the vast majority of our focus on whether we are sufficiently amused. This is an arrangement that by definition is unsustainable.
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