Now we’ve reached a point where more than half of the world lives in urban areas, we need to address the problems associated with shipping foodstuffs from where they are grown. One solution that wins points for both elegance and simplicity are the “vertical farm” skyscrapers being proposed by scientists from Columbia University. I’d love to see these things cropping up in my home town, and the logistical benefits should be obvious. Whether anything comes of it remains to be seen, of course; as the scientists themselves say, the theory is sound, but they “need the money to make it a reality.” [BoingBoing]

I used to go to a music festival at least once a year, but I kind of gave it up after 2001 … my youthful enthusiasm was finally conquered by my fondness of sleeping in my own bed. But I still miss the mad atmosphere of Glastonbury and its imitators, if not the mud and overpriced junk food. I wonder if SecondFest, a virtual music festival taking place in Second Life over the weekend, will be able to deliver the same sort of experience?

Speaking of Second Life, Warren Ellis has been documenting the micropolitics of The Wastelands, the sim environment where he and I own plots. The arrival of a new tract of land (ironically enough named The Great Fissure) has reopened a rift between the RPG purists and the influx of new residents. There’s no escaping group dynamics, especially in an anarchic environment like SL.

The space tourism industry is really getting pretty confident about itself. Take the Virginia-based outfit with the SEO-optimised name of Space Adventures, for example, who are hoping to have the contracts for the first private expedition around the Moon inked by the end of this year. It may sound far-fetched, but they’re convinced they can pull it off with little more than a modified Russian Soyuz module and other existing technologies.

Anyone want to lend me $100 million?

In a culture of increased paranoia about copyright and intellectual property, it’s a relief to see that not everyone wants to lock up their creations. Far from it – Canadian science fiction novelist Karl Schroeder is more than happy to know that people are designing RPG scenarios and campaigns in the world he created for his ‘Virga’ sequence of novels, and is inviting those doing so to share them publicly.

Plastics are a problem; they use valuable resources in their manufacture, and they’re a nightmare to recycle into anything useful. Or they were – a company called GRC have developed a type of giant multi-frequency microwave that shakes hydrocarbon plastics apart and turns them back into oil. There’s a bit of a trade-off there, I guess – we need to stop using oil if we possibly can, but equally anything that turns unwanted plastics into something other than landfill has got to be a winner. And it seems that the whole planet is finally waking up to pollution issues – even China intends to start levying higher fees and taxes on companies that fail to curb their emissions.