Barry Lambson: July 2011

Saturday, July 30, 2011

If you don't know who Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson is, you need to know him . In this compilation video he lays out why NASA is important, why it inspires and how little it actually costs. I grew up(lol that's relative) dreaming of space travel and astronauts, I remember crying when the Challenger blew up, I remember talking about astronauts in school, and I remember designing moon bases. What happened to all that? Have we really allowed Sci-Fi movies/books/comics/mini-series to take over our yearnings for exploration? Let them satiate our need for discovery? Are we telling our kids that the next frontier is planetary travel? That they could actually be the ones to go to Mars? A like Dr Tyson points out, many may ask why is that important? How is it significant? What purpose does it serve? Well he lays out some great points, educational and otherwise. And frankly after seeing stuff like this, and this, and this, I worry about what our focus is on as a nation. I realize this is a 1st world problem, but in light of the "budget crisis" and our massive decline in educational standings around the world, it seems we ought to "reboot"

Friday, July 22, 2011

Happy Friday

Sesame Street breaks it down from Wonderful Creative on Vimeo.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Fascinating...

Chin up, America. China ain't so great. That 10% GDP growth they've been having? A lot of it is fake. Take this investigate report that looks at the big trend over there of Chinese ghost cities and ghost malls. China is building ten of these cities a year, cities that can serve millions, with rows of apartment complexes, shopping malls, and universities. But almost no one lives in them. By pouring materials and resources and labor in, the government can keep national GDP at its state-mandated levels, even if its not meeting any real demand. It's like someone is playing SimCity with all cheat codes, but this is a game China is going to lose.

With 64 million of these apartments sitting empty, too expensive for most Chinese to rent - artificially inflated prices keep "value" up high, which is also helpful on the spreadsheets - they've created the largest property bubble in history. The tiger's paper is wearing thin.

via the consumerist http://goo.gl/OYIBw