A while back, I waxed enthusiastic about the Vertical Farm concept. Today, while dropping off a video at Hastings, I noticed that the September '08 Popular Science had a cover blurb about it. I bought the issue, and the very brief article inside said that a couple of locations in the world are actually doing feasability studies to implement the idea. While still a long way from pouring concrete, it's a step forward, and I'll be watching for more news.

The main cover article, though, was about cool things that students are doing at engineering and design colleges around the country. There were some pretty nifty ideas, including some for lunar RVs, and it sort of touched on my feelings that my life has, in many ways, been largely wasted.

It also seems to me that we're balanced on a very fine point. Tip one way, and we destroy our species. Tip the other way, and we have a bright future ahead of us.

I'm cramming for Monday's test. Well... with about 75% of my attention, I'm cramming for Monday's test. With about 25% I'm watching "Architectures Volume 1," a documentary series NetFlix recommended to me, and which I tossed in my queue quite some time ago, and am just now getting to.

I love architecture. I once applied to architecture school at North Carolina State University, but was not accepted. When I lived in New York City, I often walked around, looking up, because the most interesting architecture was above street level.

While most of the show has been background for my studies, I found my attention grabbed by the segment on Jean-Baptiste André Godin's Le Familisère de Guise. This is precisely the kind of architecture which fires my imagination. It's meant for families, for their long-term occupation. In fact, it has been in use since the 1859, though building continued on parts of it for some thirteen years after completion of the central block.

It proves what I've long said about the kinds of communities that would lead to the sustainability of a Lunar city -- that it must be built in a fashion which people want to inhabit for centuries, in order to justify the cost of constructing it in the first place. It must be a place that people think of, not simply as a place where they live, but as their home. A place where neighbors can interact, and children can play.

P.S. -- Jean Nouvel rocks my small, self-centered world.