Climate, Carl Zimmer, Page 2

Our Choice by Al Gore. iPhone or iPad

Reviewed by Dan Fagin (guest reviewer)

If you’ve heard Al Gore give a speech, watched An Inconvenient Truth or read anything the former vice president has written, you probably know that two of his obsessions are the innovative use of information technology and the visual image of a spinning Earth, as seen from space. So it’s no surprise that both are central to his first true e-book: Our Choice. Created for the iPad and released in the spring of 2011, it’s anything but a cut-and-paste digital version of the 2009 print volume, as Gore’s previous digital efforts have been. This time, the text has been tricked out with all sorts of digital-only features. There are dozens of unfolding photographs, tightly edited videos and startlingly clever interactive graphics. There’s even a page where you can blow into your iPad’s microphone to spin the blades of an on-screen windmill. Really.

The introductory image sets the tone. It is, predictably, a striking view of our planet, spinning serenely, seen from space. Touch it, Gore’s voice instructs, and when I comply the Earth spins quickly in the opposite direction for a few seconds before stopping and resuming its normal rotation. But now the surface has changed. Huge typhoons loom menacingly near Japan, India and Mexico, and a whopper hurricane is bearing down on Florida. Most of Africa (not just the Sahara) is parched brown; so are Italy, Spain and portions of the American Midwest. The familiar solid white of the Greenland ice sheet now includes patches of exposed land. (You can get a rough idea of how it looks, without the movement, by running your mouse over the planet here.)

Continue reading “Blowing Windmills and Seeing the Future: Al Gore’s Our Choice” →

Livingarchcover Living Architecture: How Synthetic Biology Can Remake Our Cities (TED) by Rachel Armstrong. iPad, Kindle, Barnes & Noble.

Reviewed by Annalee Newitz

In the opening section of her long essay, Living Architecture (based on a TED talk), materials designer Rachel Armstrong lays out the problem facing all urban residents in a crisp, moving description of Sendai in the wake of the 2011 earthquake. Buildings in the coastal region of Japan had buckled and crumbled, and its streets pulsed with contaminated water. First responders tried to rescue a dog, but found that it wouldn't leave until they followed it to an area where they discovered another dog, barely breathing. Both animals were taken to safety and given medical attention. What this sad scene underscored was that in the face of disaster, all forms of life try to help each other survive.

Encapsulated in that tale of two dogs is also the problem and, possibly, a solution to troubles in modern cities. As Armstrong explains, metropolitan areas will be home to nearly two thirds of the Earth's population in the next half century, but they are breakable, dangerous, and depend on unsustainable forms of energy. Still, those cities are filled with life that can make it through disasters that shatter buildings. Armstrong, whose research touches on synthetic biology, asks whether it might not be better to build cities that are as resilient (and compassionate) as the lives inside of them.

Continue reading “All the Beautiful Bioreactors” →