wool & stars

A friend told me about the TED web­site–incred­i­ble! It would be easy to spend hours there. Here are a cou­ple of the many inspir­ing & thought-provoking pieces found there.

First, mycol­o­gist Paul Stamets lists 6 ways the mycelium fun­gus can help save the uni­verse: clean­ing pol­luted soil, mak­ing insec­ti­cides, treat­ing small­pox and even flu.

Sec­ond, James Howard Kun­stler: “In James Howard Kunstler’s view, pub­lic spaces should be inspired cen­ters of civic life — the phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of the com­mon good. Instead, he argues, what we have in Amer­ica is a nation of places not worth car­ing about. Reengi­neer­ing our cities will involve more rad­i­cal change than we are pre­pared for, he believes, but our hand will be forced by earth crises stem­ming from our over­con­sum­ing lifestyle. ‘Life in the mid-21st cen­tury,’ Kun­stler says, ‘is going to be about liv­ing locally.’”