tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5468631352102294695.post196788110697283979..comments2024-01-18T01:02:10.807-08:00Comments on Story colored glasses: Lonely for ...Cynthia Kurtzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16185088323080774635noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5468631352102294695.post-8924982761709466352012-10-25T10:25:12.602-07:002012-10-25T10:25:12.602-07:00The "biophilic design" video is amazing....The "biophilic design" video is amazing. Thanks for that link. At first I was confusing "biophilia" with "biomimicry" which, to my mind, is somewhat mistaken. The stuff I've seen on biomimicry seems to take only a few bits of what nature does and translate into something much less natural. Biophilia, on the other hand, is more complementary than extractive.<br /><br />I could not watch the Grand Designs video in the link you sent (not available in your country) but found it on vimeo here: http://vimeo.com/28848933. It is so VERY good that I had to stop watching it so I can share it with my son. We have been building our own small playhouse in the woods for years (a bit each year), but this makes me want to start all over again with logs rather than "dimension" lumber. I'll just queue up another five-year project ;) <br /><br />As to the ability to work with rounded (real) wood, my guess is that this is another of the skills people have lost without knowing it (some more than others). I have a new dream vacation: to help build a house with Ben Law. (Curious, I looked up his Prickly Nut Wood and found it's ten acres. Apparently that is a large plot for the UK, because our 15 acres is an embarrassingly small plot around here. Most of my neighbors have 50-100+ acres. I wanted 100 acres but on our budget could either get that or a house. My husband, to his credit, said let's live in a tent, but I said I need a kitchen. I wish I'd gone for the tent and built THAT house!)<br /><br />Thanks again for the great info! Tell your spiders hello for me!<br /><br />CynthiaCynthia Kurtzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16185088323080774635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5468631352102294695.post-56704191487206948092012-10-23T13:01:46.428-07:002012-10-23T13:01:46.428-07:00Thank you for the wonderful links. I hadn't he...Thank you for the wonderful links. I hadn't heard of the hypothesis before. My ex was a great carpenter, I remember he used to help build yachts at one point and he had to do a lot of bathrooms because many colleagues found them difficult - they could use saws to make rounded cuts but fitting them was down to perception and angles.<br /><br />I liked this Grand Designs show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdIZldSomHA , about Ben Law http://www.ben-law.co.uk<br /><br />I only recently discovered biophilic design from this video (http://vimeo.com/27874539) <br /><br />Going to read Ursula LeGuin's book - sounds a perfect autumn read, <br /><br />Thank you againAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5468631352102294695.post-5589413238163623532012-10-22T11:43:41.553-07:002012-10-22T11:43:41.553-07:00Wow, a conversation! Glad you replied, anonymous. ...Wow, a conversation! Glad you replied, anonymous. Have just ordered Ancestor's Tale, which sounds fascinating. <br /><br />Another thing you might find interesting is the "carpentered world hypothesis" and the Mueller-Lyer illusion. Here is an interesting lecture on the topic:<br />http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Modules/MC10220/visper04.html<br /><br />I find this sort of thing makes me rethink everything. If even the way things appear to the "unaided eye" has been changed by (as you so well put it) the boxes and lines we get into and travel on, what are we now? And what are we becoming? <br /><br />I also found (in looking for the carpentered thing) the work of Sue Thomas, which seems related and also fascinating. <br />http://travelsinvirtuality.typepad.com/<br /><br />I like how she said (somewhere on her blog) that technology and nature can be synergistic rather than at odds. I'm all for that. It also reminds me of Ursula K. LeGuin's book _Always Coming Home_ which makes a related point. <br /><br />Thanks for chatting ;)<br /><br />Cynthia<br />Cynthia Kurtzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16185088323080774635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5468631352102294695.post-12479990531696027202012-10-21T12:14:44.541-07:002012-10-21T12:14:44.541-07:00Hello, thank you for replying. That is so true abo...Hello, thank you for replying. That is so true about spiders being aware of us and our habits. When I went away for a few days recently, I finally got to the point where I had faffed around with packing and taking everything down to the door. And one spider suddenly springs out and goes racing up the wall in the opposite direction as I was going down the stairs - it seemed to know I was going and it was going to have the house to itself and its friends/relatives. <br /><br />That's a brilliant point re internet and spider webs, I don't think we would, I wonder who made the initial connection - maybe there's something for a future internet or whatever it's going to be that is nothing to do with webs at all. <br /><br />I'm reading An Ancestor's Tale at the moment and got to a point where we've gone back past chimps, gorillas and now at an ancient rabbit and we're shortly heading back towards birds, so I don't know how we think we have become so separated from everything either when we seem to be a part of so many species. <br /><br />We talk about trips where we get reconnected and grounded, but our understanding of gravity has us pinned down anyway. It is strange talking about the natural world as if it was something different - tv maybe helps shape that too - I remember a natural world series being on since I was a child. Machines are boxy - getting into a box and going in a series of lines and getting out of a box into another box - it's very odd how we have imposed some kind of linear order on everything around us.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5468631352102294695.post-79678342476866061332012-08-22T11:32:30.146-07:002012-08-22T11:32:30.146-07:00Anonymous commenter, thank you so much for your in...Anonymous commenter, thank you so much for your insightful comment! My first thought when I read it was, online connectiveness makes a nice analogy for spiderwebs! They got there first and deserve the merit of first place. A question: if the world had no spiderwebs in it, would we have built the internet?<br /><br />Also: I used to think the spiders in my house were a sort of natural overlay, an ongoing nature program having nothing to do with me. Then I realized that the spiders WERE interacting with me, only I was too blind to notice it. Try this: take a bowl of old fruit and put it somewhere in your kitchen. Fruit flies will gather around it, and spiderwebs will gather around the fruit flies. Are the spiders paying attention to what you do? Of course they are. Do they build webs where you sit? Of course they don't. They know all about you and your habits. There is nothing strange about that. What's strange is that we have forgotten it happens. It's almost like people think they are living on some kind of virtual overlay layer that lies against yet separated from the world, which is now called not "the world" but "the natural world." Strange.<br /><br />At least that's the way it seems to curmudgeonly me. When I talk to people about the weather these days, they talk about rain like it's a nuisance, even in the middle of a drought. I say what about this weather? And they say, yeah, hope it's sunny today; I'm planning to go out on the boat. And I say but we desperately need rain! And they say, we do? To their minds, "we" is people using machines, and people using machines never need rain. The idea that "we" includes the dry ground and the thirsty plants seems to be dying out. Strange. Hopefully I'm just over-reacting. :-)<br /><br />Thanks again for the conversation!<br /><br />CynthiaCynthia Kurtzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16185088323080774635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5468631352102294695.post-17186142829823171442012-08-19T02:51:38.738-07:002012-08-19T02:51:38.738-07:00I fairly recently started living on my own again a...I fairly recently started living on my own again and found a few spiders in the house - they sprinkle themselves offline around the physical spaces and do their thing. It is familiar story but they do seem to make a nice analogy for some of the online connectiveness and self-architecture where they choose the geometric shape of how walls, corners, beams become connected in seconds with webs. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com