Last week Jason and I were catching up over the phone. Discussing upcoming projects, aspirations, recent roadblocks, cities, traveling, work and life with a healthy dose of examination and contemplation. He mentioned 180° South being a very appropriate film for the subject matter. Katie and I watched it this past weekend.

The only thing I’ll say about it, one of my favorite pieces, and the film itself is gold and a must watch, was the line about process, from Yvon. Something to this effect:

IF YOU COMPROMISE THE PROCESS, YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE GOING IN, AND AN ASSHOLE COMING OUT.

Here’s to now.

Maya Lin’s Green Memorial. What Is Missing? focuses on extinct and vanishing species, and incorporates sculpture, video, sound, hand-held electronics, printed material and an interactive website. More at Maya Lin’s Studio.

I recently completed a design project with Share Our Strength for their No Kid Hungry Pledge. A great group of people and an extremely important effort:

I want this sticker to give people a way to show their individual support and get them excited about an America that is ending childhood hunger by 2015. We need a sustained effort. We need commitments made each and every day by all of us who have enthusiastically signed up, and that’s what I wanted to show with the repeating “I pledge” of the background. It’s like those sentences we used to have to write on the chalkboard in school when we did something bad. But this time, we’re doing something good. We’re pledging a better future. Over and over and over until it becomes reality.

You can still get the sticker by taking the pledge and making a small donation to the campaign. Please do, and put it in a high traffic area. Let it serve as a reminder that we all need to do our part to make NO KID HUNGRY a reality.

Read the full post. Make a donation. Spread the word, NO KID HUNGRY.

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Today, August 26th, is Youth Literacy Day and you can help 826 writing centers continue to make a difference in the lives of over 22,000 students each year. Make a donation of $8.26 today by texting “WRITE” to 20222 or giving online here.

Download, Print, Post the Flyer

Longevity.
Maintainability & Transparency.
Evolvability & Scalability.

Go slow, expect restarts, and expect bad weather. From the Long Now Foundation, established to creatively foster long-term thinking and responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.

In October 2009, the Designers Accord convened over 100 progressive individuals from academic and professional institutions all over the world for two days of highly participatory discussion, planning and action around the topic of design education and sustainability. The main activity was small-group brainstorming focused on answering these questions:

via Core77.

The Creator’s Project by Intel and Vice has a pretty interesting piece on Nick Zinner from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Enjoy!

@ MoMA

Katie and I made a trip to New York City recently. Paola Antonelli, curator at MoMA, spoke in Omaha last fall on design and our world. One of the things covered was her recent acquisition of the “at” symbol. We like to say that’s why we went. To see this: @.

@ Natural History Museum

@ The Guggenheim

@ Ellis Island

@ Empire State Building

@ Ground Zero

Such an amazing city. The buildings, the art, the design, the history, the hustle and the bustle. The food, the people, the culture and the hugeness. Yeah, we had a good time.

How the world really works, as opposed to how we were told it worked. The LA Times has a great article about the documentary, which opened late last year: Apocalypse now: ‘Collapse’ and the end of the world as we know it.

In the future, will we be able to control the weather? Do we already?

Owning The Weather: We’ve always wanted to control the weather. Now we may have to. OWNING THE WEATHER is a film about weather modification and climate engineering. The desire to modify the weather has been around forever; but with the threat of catastrophic climate change, water wars, and intensifying hurricanes, a new breed of weather control called “geoengineering” has emerged.

A really great documentary. Illuminating and a bit unnerving. In the face of runaway climate change, the need to keep Earth happy for humans may very well lead to some highly unusual solutions. And consequences.

Owning the Weather trailer from prewarcinema on Vimeo.