way over budget…, originally uploaded by trixiebedlam.

The work of Trixie Bedlam gets better and better.

Space Shuttle STS-126 Launch, originally uploaded by hyku.

The picture is by Josh Hallett who I had a great time speaking with in the same session on social media at the Sarasota Design Summit in Florida recently.

After I said I was planning to visit NASA while in Florida, he told me he was going to be attending the night launch of STS-126.

I got to see STS-126 on the pad at fairly close-quarters (well, a couple of miles) but he got this shot, which I think you’ll agree is fairly magnificent.

I can’t quite believe we can count the number of times we’ll see this again on our fingers.

Message for Obama, originally uploaded by moleitau.

Meg‘s started a Message For Obama group pool over on Flickr. Here’s mine.

Predictable, eh?

Vbama, originally uploaded by moleitau.

Far, far away.

22082008_112920, originally uploaded by JulianBleecker.

The “Drift-Deck” by Julian Bleecker.

www.nearfuturelaboratory.com/projects/drift-deck/

Sarasota, Florida, originally uploaded by moleitau.

I’m in Sarasota, Florida for http://www.sarasotadesignsummit.com/

Very interesting to be here so close to the election…

EamesPunk T-Shirt, originally uploaded by moleitau.

From The EamesPunk Manifesto:

“We will take our pleasures seriously. We will remember that everything connects. We will live and breathe powers of ten. We will accept constraints, but we will never accept compromise. By learning of the process of problem solving we will structure the information to be conveyed. No detail is insignificant, the detail will make the design. We will learn that the process of arriving at the solution is what counts. By separating sciences from the arts, the hand and the machine, work and play, we only cheapen our experience, the human experience. By integrating parts into a meaningful whole, we understand the connections.”

Neal Stephenson reading ‘Anathem’ at Foyles, originally uploaded by moleitau.

I attended a reading by Neal Stephenson at Foyles bookstore this evening. He read a couple of passages from his latest book ‘Anathem’ before a wide-ranging Q&A prior to a signing.

I was lucky enough to be able to ask him a couple of questions. Aleks called me greedy, but I felt like the characters he describes in Anathem that only get to ask questions of the elders periodically… Who knows when I’d get to do this again?

My first question was around the fact that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the passages in his book, The System of the World where the birth of the modern financial system is described. I asked him whether he had been asked to comment on where that has led, to the current apparent systemic failure of that world.

He said he had, but hadn’t been able to come up with anything more insightful than the essay George Dyson had written about the current situation “Can You Have Your House And Spend It Too?’. He advised we all google for “Dyson” and “tally sticks” – thanks to Sascha Pohflepp for getting there first…

It’s a great read, but I’d still like to read Stephenson’s take.

My second question a little later, was about his role in Nathan Myhrvold‘s Intellectual Ventures.

His answer surprised me.

I had imagined that as a writer, he wrote scenarios or stories from possible futures as briefs or devices to frame invention or discovery in some way.

From his answer it seems that he uses his time there as an escape from writing, to engage in using his hands and mind in a different way in his afternoons from the mornings of writing fiction.

Can’t wait to see what comes from that…