Philadelphia Shows People eat Better when Good Food is Available

Surprise, surprise!

The coolest thing about this story, beyond the basic notion that people eat better when better eats are in hand is that study was done while helping people who need help. The City subsidized vegetables through food stamps and measured the results!

Now they have evidence by which to make decisions about nutrition improvements! Amazing notion: we can make better decisions with better information.

The second cool thing is that just having a neighbor supermarket does not improve nutition!

Take a look:

http://www.grist.org/farmers-market/2011-08-31-green-for-greens-philadelphia-subsidizes-fruits-and-vegetables

Economist Thinks Business Can Learn From Art

I know that sounds like an Onion headline, but a recent Economist magazine blog post, the art of management, makes some interesting assertions in the service of rhetoric:

• Artists routinely deride businesspeople as money-obsessed bores
• Businesspeople assume that artists are a bunch of pretentious wastrels

The truth of either is perhaps not the point. The key take-away of the article for me is that there is a tremendous gap in understanding of the creative process and its potential. There are a few folks that seem to be trying to close that gap.

Our Most Imaginative Art Form

Math is fun. Really. But how does geometry figure in a blog about sustainability? First though, fun? Really? I think so, but I’m kind of a geek. The figure at left is reproduced from a charming yet brief volume titled “A Mathematician’s Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form”. Now, the artists in the crowd may bristle a bit at author Paul Lockhart’s claim. But hear him out:

If there’s anything like a unifying principle in mathematics, it’s this: simple is beautiful. Mathematicians enjoy thinking about the simplest possible things and the simplest possible things are imaginary.

For example, if I’m in mood to think about shapes–and I often am–I might imagine a triangle inside a rectangular box. I wonder how much of the box the triangle takes up—two thirds maybe?

Green Buildings Worth 13% More

Research on Green Buildings is growing. A recent and apparently comprehensive study by a Dutch researcher identifies a number of benefit, for owners and developers, of green building. This is borne out in my own experience. We have been working with a real estate investment trust to assess their portfolio for potential LEED EB certification. They have said that non-green buildings are headed for rapid obsolescence. This research was reported in Environmental Building News under the title Non-Green Office Buildings Sacrifice 8% in Rent Revenues. The direct link is at Sustainable Property Research.