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geekgirl (r)osiex aka the metal cupcake publishing about interesting things for a really long time!
It;s a big tickle under the chin kind of website and you’ll have to spend some time trying to work out the flurry of events you may want to check out. But with a cautionary ‘only a few days to go’ flag that’s been raised, go and check out the last days of the Midsumma Festival 2008 in Melbourne celebrating 20 years of gay and lesbian arts, culture and community.
Delver, a search engine with a strong social twist. It returns search results from people in your social circle, and ranks them according to relevance and strength of connection to you. It’s no replacement for Google, but if you want to ask all your friends for advice all at once–without bothering them–it’s killer. Delver uses your implicit social network, which is much smarter than requiring users to specify in advance who their friends are. Read: Damn clever: Delver makes search social.
We’d just like to announce that we have a late-notice Redfern-Waterloo Tour of Beauty happening this Saturday afternoon (February 9th, 2008).
Most of the tour bus has been pre-booked by a group, but we do have some limited places available…Many of you who expressed interest in tours, but have never been able to make it along… now is the time!
The tour runs from 1pm, to about 5pm, and we will start from the CarriageWorks Forecourt (down the stairs on Wilson Street)- see here: http://www.carriageworks.com.au/here/here.
This particular Saturday is not your average tour. It’s been shaped by architect Jack Barton, who is usually a speaker on the Tour of Beauty.
Jack has a special interest in the urban planning issues surrounding the “bottom end” of Waterloo as it pokes into Green Square (a controversial re-development hotspot if ever there was one).
Jack is bringing his architecture masters students along, so there will be discussion about sustainable and creative design solutions in this part of Sydney, as well as our usual chats about the Redfern Waterloo Authority, Public Housing, indigenous land issues, gentrification and art.
Email us on info@squatspace.com to book a place on the bus (strictly limited) or show up at Carriageworks by1pm with your bicycle. Bring a camera, a snack and your curiosity and questions…
Remember to pull your films together folks. SquatFest is just under two weeks away at an exciting secret location (details soon!).
That’s right folks, for the 8th year now we will be bringing you SquatFest – The Anti-Tropfest Fest. Why? You must know by now, …”Because Tropfest Sux”.
See our beautiful altered logo here.
It will be at an exciting secret location on Sunday February 17, same night as Tropfest, but more on that later. For now, we want to urge you all to start pulling your films together, or even gettin em started. We will play any format.
simply send ’em in by post: SQUATSPACE PO BOX 391 Newtown NSW 2042 or get in touch with us to arrange a rendezvous/pickup:info@squatspace.com or, simplest of all, just bring ’em along on the night!
Cities are responsible for so many of the sustainability challenges faced by our urbanising world, but urban ecologists can help unlock the benefits of city living, say researchers in today’s issue of Science.
Urban environments act as microcosms of the challenges faced globally, which makes them real world laboratories for understanding and responding to change, concludes a team of ecologists from CSIRO, Arizona State University and the New Zealand Centre for Ecological Economics.
“As ecologists, the natural environment has traditionally been our main concern, but cities affect and are affected by changes in climate, land use, water and biodiversity,” says CSIRO’s Xuemei Bai, co-author of the paper.
“Cities are more than just planned spaces. Planners, engineers and architects should be working with urban ecologists to design, develop and redevelop projects suited to these complex, adapting and evolving environments.
“Because cities are largely designed ecosystems, we have an opportunity to use ecological principles in creating urban living and working spaces, housing developments, open spaces, and aquatic environments that can sustain biodiversity and ecosystem function, while also providing important ecosystem services on which the city’s population depends.”
More than 60 per cent of Australia’s population now lives in our five largest cities. Although urban population growth over the past century occurred on less than three per cent of the Earth’s surface, the impact has been global, with 78 per cent of carbon emissions, 60 per cent of residential water use, and 76 per cent of wood used for industrial purposes attributed to cities.
Original, effective responses to our urban environments – humanity’s primary home – are urgently needed, and urban ecologists are uniquely placed to take us forward.
Publication: N.B. Grimm, S.H. Faeth, N.E.Golubiewski, C.L. Redman, J. Wu, X. Bai and J.M. Briggs. “Global Change and the Ecology of Cities.” Science, February 8, 2008.
Background: www.csiro.au/people/Xuemei.Bai.html