Tag: exploration

Studio D retrospective

This year we published a number of foundational research reports including Isa Pa EcoCash on mobile money adoption in Zimbabwe. It’s a good example of a project that required an experienced team and a nuanced appreciation of the political swirl that can occur. It also revealed the distortions between official quant data and what was happening on the ground.

Mars Biosafety

It’s looking more and more likely that Mars might already be inhabited—by Martians. Very tiny ones. Conley’s office serves to prevent NASA from doing to Martians what European explorers did to Native Americans with smallpox. Because Mars lacks Earth’s history of abundant life, it has that much more raw material for Earth’s bacterial stowaways to devour—should any of them, say, come into contact with water, find a niche they can survive in, and start to reproduce. “The whole planet is a dinner plate for these organisms. They will eat Mars.”

Urban Under

The book is motivated by an intense desire to see: to reveal the underground circuits of utility tunnels, sanitation services, transportation networks, and everyday labor that writhe beneath the surface of the urban world. By doing so, it hopes “to foreground the connections between space and politics that converge underground.”

M-42

The sub-basement of Grand Central Terminal is New York City’s deepest basement, at least that’s what they’ll tell you. It’s also likely the safest and one of the most secure places in all of the 5 boroughs. It was never included on blueprints for the building, and its exact location remains confidential to this day. To make it all the more mysterious, the room is called M-42, which sounds like something straight out of The X-Files.

Upwards bound

Interstellar had more plot holes than wormholes, but this is still amazing.

What is happening? Suddenly, there’s been a wave of … inspiration! As if in tempo with Christopher Nolan’s INTERSTELLAR, there have also been several short movies that aggressively confront and take down the cynical theme that’s dominated this dismal century (so far). The way so many of YOU have given in to the seductive propaganda of limitations and despair. These wondrous pieces fight back by offering us visions of wondrous possibility.

First… try on this spectacular ode to courage – and our outward spirit – is by Max Shishkin, using the Interstellar score as background, taking us on a tour of vivid SF cinema images of space.
Even better is one of the best things I have ever watched, period. Invest 4 minutes! Scenes all taken (or extrapolated) from reality, not sci fi! This is what being human must be about… or else, why bother?)

Coda: Centuries tend to change direction dramatically, in their 14th year. Could this be our sudden veer? Backing away from the cliffs of cynical despair and getting back on trajectory toward confidence and daring and wonder?

Make it so.

What it takes to explore

This is nuts

In the story of how European Space Agency researchers are scrambling to locate—and possibly move—the Philae probe, which they successfully landed on Comet 67P 2 days ago, there’s an interesting comment about computer vision and the perception of exotic landscapes.


“It’s an entirely manual process, because the complex and bizarre landscape of comet 67P defies any kind of automated search. We don’t have an algorithm for this”