Rashid's Blog

Photo of completed stage of Pocket Court Project near Asheville, N.C. (Tom Low)

Last February and before that, in December, I posted “Is this possible anymore?” and “Christmas card community” about village architecture. Both mentioned architect Tom Low’s plan for a village near Asheville, N.C.  At the time, the pocket neighborhood he had in mind existed mostly in his head. Maybe there was some beginning foundation work. There were drawings evoked, it seemed to me, by French villages that had piqued my interest in “Is this possible anymore?” (We can land a man on the moon, so why can’t we …”). Coincidentally, I am reading a 1999 novel, Timeline, by Michael Crichton that takes place in villages and castles along the Dordogne River, near the town pictured in the bottom photograph. Its protagonists find themselves transported to 1357.

Anyway, Tom has now posted to the…

This 23 June 2017 video about rangeomorphs is called Gone! Why Ancient Fractal Creatures Vanished.

From the University of Cambridge in England:

Big, shape-shifting animals from the dawn of time

July 10, 2017

Summary: Major changes in the chemical composition of the world’s oceans enabled the first large organisms — possibly some of the earliest animals — to exist and thrive more than half a billion years ago, marking the point when conditions on Earth changed and animals began to take over the world.

Why did life on Earth change from small to large when it did? Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Tokyo Institute of Technology have determined how some of the first large organisms, known as rangeomorphs, were able to grow up to two metres in height, by changing their body size and shape as they extracted nutrients from their surrounding environment.

The results, reported in…

I’ve always been struck by the undeniable power of nature. It destroys—as it did on a late Sunday afternoon in May, in Joplin, Missouri, six years ago when an EF5, mile-wide tornado chewed through the city in 38 minutes. It left 161 people dead, 1,150 others injured, countless more traumatized–and the rest of us watching and aching for them all. Aside from the human toll, it also caused billions of dollars in damages, and left thousands of trees decimated, uprooted or maimed.

Joplin was devastated. It needed to recover in every sense—physically, emotionally, spiritually. Many stories have been told in the aftermath of how the city drew together, rose up, and rebuilt.

But one story that’s not been told is about how nature, the thing that brought the destruction, has been the very thing that is bringing much needed emotional recovery to the community. Nature heals too. This is the…