The University of Hasselt (Belgium) announced today that Belgian and Dutch scientists have successfully replacing a lower jaw with a 3D printed model for a 83 year-old woman. According to the researchers, It is the first custom-made implant in the world to replace an entire lower jaw... The 3D printer prints titanium powder layer by layer, while a computer controlled laser ensures that the correct particles are fused together. Desktop Fab is not just for oil-based goo!

Big challenges to living in NYC (esp if you want to make a Start Up - Urban Development) - Urban Design - see Engine Failure (more)

In 2003 Joel Kotkin co-wrote (with Jonathan Bowles) Engine Failure about the Nyc Challenges in Urban Development, esp post-WorldTradeCenter. (more)

e.g. letting small investors invest in Private Capital (e.g. for Start Up-s) (more)

the Freedom to create Wealth Inequality (heh) (more)

The World Economic Forum published (back in October, I guess it's being discussed because Davos just happened) and piece on "The Great Transformation" and needed global policy changes. The 4th area, Job Creation, is getting fresh discussion. The key to mitigating a catastrophic situation is to provide young people with the capability to create their own jobs: to move from the pure concept of UnEmployment to the concept of micro-EntrepreneurShip (One Man Show). This will require fundamental changes in educational systems (Educating Kids), nurturing a societal spirit of entrepreneurial risk-taking, allowing true gender equality – to integrate the other half of hidden talents – and making Innovation and the support of innovation a key imperative in public and private life. The success of any national and business model for competitiveness in the future will be less based on capital and much more based on Talent. I define this transition as moving from capitalism to “talentism”. (more)

Steven Malanga on rankings of Economic Freedom for New York State (ranked worst) vs others. Revealingly, a map of the U.S. color-coded by how states rank in economic freedom would look much like today's political map. The blue states that went heavily Democratic - in the Northeast (except New Hampshire!), industrial Midwest and California - all score low on economic freedom. The red states of the South and the Central Plains rank highest. (Red Vs Blue, Economic Development) (more)

Culture jamming, coined in 1984,[1][2][3] denotes a tactic used by many anti-consumerist social movements[4] to disrupt or subvert mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate Advertising. Guerrilla semiotics and night discourse are sometimes used synonymously with the term culture jamming... Culture jamming sometimes entails transforming mass media to produce ironic or satirical commentary about itself, using the original medium's communication method. Culture jamming is usually employed in opposition to a perceived appropriation of public space, or as a reaction against social conformity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_jamming (more)

Teacher Tom has good advice on Raising Kids (or Educating Kids). Just hang out while she's doing whatever it is she's doing... Try to not even talk unless you have something urgent or informative or heartfelt or very funny to say.

R U Sirius converses with Douglas Rushkoff. The real problem with Culture Jamming, like I say above, is that it's just another game of Cross Fire. I'm tired as hell of AdBusters, too. But it's still an important thing for kids in high school, say, to be exposed to. Easier than Debord, anyway... The other big unacknowledged fact in all this is that it's a bit facile to say that the Market and corporations brought down the state and the public sector. I think we did that. StarBucks isn't evil for creating a place for people to socialize. They're filling in a gap that was left behind by those of us who felt it was more important to get away from black (African American) folks and move to the planned Suburb-s than some corporation or advertisement. (Though you could argue GM did all this by closing the streetcar.)... We're stuck in some post-modernist's dilemma, worrying about who is stuck in whose frame. I don't care anymore. I've got a baby (Geeks With Kids). I'm out building Play Ground-s in abandoned lots, and investing my money in Alternative Energy companies. And writing books designed to get people to wake up and experience a bit of traction with reality. (Real World)

Term first proposed by Henri Bergson and later expanded by Karl Popper. (more)

In New York City, we’re seeking to dramatically expand our capacity in the applied sciences to maintain our global competitiveness and create jobs. Over the course of many months, we asked hundreds of New York City’s business leaders, academics, community groups, and entrepreneurs to identify ambitious, achievable initiatives that the City could undertake to achieve local economic growth. We heard a consistent theme: there is an unmet demand here for top-flight scientists and engineers. (Nyc Challenges) (more)

a liquidy (blob) object (more)

place for Educating Kids, not paid for by Big Government (more)

People who have to worry most about Raising Kids, Personal Finance, and lots of other things...

distributed memory caching system (Caching Proxy Server?) to improve Scalability, esp for Data Base-backed systems (more)

Busy Parents, what are your biggest hopes/concerns/fears? (And for bonus points, what are you doing about it?)

MIT professor (more)

There's a Fab At Home project for a DIY 3-D printer for Desktop Fab. While several commerical systems are available, their price range - tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands of dollars - is typically well beyond what an average home user can afford. Furthermore, commercial systems do not usually allow or encourage experimentation with new materials and processes. But more importantly, most - if not all - commercial system are geared towards making passive parts out of a single material. Our goal is to explore the potential of universal fabrication: Machines that can use multiple materials to fabricate complete, active systems. (more)

As scientists understand it, Single Celled organisms first began evolving into more complex forms more than 500 million years ago, as they began to form multi-cellular clusters. What isn’t understood is just how that process happened. But now, biologists are another step closer figuring out this puzzle, by successfully replicating this key step – using an ingredient common in the making of bread and beer – ordinary Brewer’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae). While helping to solve evolutionary riddles here on Earth, it also by extension has bearing on the question of biological Evolution on other planets or moons as well.