prison break for real

Photo: A4 size paper asking citizens' assistance in catching a prison escapee, at a highway McDonald's somewhere between Boston and New York.

Seriously. In 2010, at least put a QR code, so people can load this info to their smart phone.

efforts to regain trust

The child abuse scandals ridden church in Ireland now begins events in the church with drawing churchgoers' attention to the child protection policy, and the location where it hangs on the cold walls, near the entrance.

While the introduction of such policies and establishment of complaint hotlines might work in rebuilding people's trust, and even preventing child abuse from happening, it certainly leaves intact the systemic, institutional reasons behind the 'eventful' past of priests in Ireland.

illegal eligibility

The dynamics of...

Provision of trust and a body modified by (sometimes illegal) substance, in return for anonymity and money, for the purpose of studies, clinical testing of drugs, etc.

Photos: ads from the Voice (NYC weekly free magazine)

alternative currency for charity

Photo: bus ticket collecting box in a Dublin elementary school.

Buses in Dublin take only coins, and give no change. However, if you have to overpay, the difference is printed in your ticket as a 'refund', that you can claim at the Dublin Bus office.

Since most people don't make the way to this office for the 10-20-30.. cents per ticket, they are more willing to drop it in a charity box than real Euros. Actually such 'charity collection' can be also perceived as a service provided, people happily unload their tickets from their wallets.

As an unintended side effect, this public transport fare payment system fosters the giving mood in the city. Wonder if it was foreseen at design.

enraging waste of keyboard real estate

Most people never/very rarely use CapsLock. Some people really hate it even. A few will even go as far as self-handedly customizing their keyboards.

Interesting to see how some features from the birth of computing still haunt around and weather the lightning fast evolution of technology. Think slide presentations for example.

rule #17: enjoy the little things

luggage compartment on the heathrow express on an early january day.

the war against/for waste

This waste bin on the Sandymount DART station in Dublin promises that 70% of its content will be recycled. Nice to see, but far from a perfect solution.

From the marriage of increasing primary resource scarcity, hiking landfill prices, growing social awareness on one side and cheap-accurate-invisible object tracking on the other, hopefully soon we will see a transparent and precise, granular yet simple solution.

Today you pay for waste disposal at home, by the bin. Not when using public bins.
Imagine:
- paying for throwing away anything, anywhere.
- different micro-payments for each piece of waste at disposal, based on recycling-ease, material-value, total-volume-per-person-per-month, sorting.
- paying the harshest price (unsorted, etc..) up front at purchase for everything, to then get refunded for the difference (if any) at disposal.

Such system could encourage:
- making the effort to sort over not-sorting,
- buying (therefore also producing) packaging-light products, favoring easily recyclable materials, methods,
- fixing, reusing goods over throwaway culture,
- growing local, composting-biodegrading.