It is absolutely touch and go

[Jcrowley]

"If humanity does not opt for integrity we are through completely. It is absolutely touch and go. Each one of us could make the difference." R. Buckminster Fuller

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

1. Pardon My Ignorance For Not Knowing Who R. Buckminster Fuller Is.

But I absolutely love the quote.

[ClassWarrior]

2. Architect/philosopher/dreamer.

Discoverer of the geodesic dome.

NGU.

[nebenaube]

3. the dome came from his discovery of 'bucky' balls...

Fullerenes (or something like that, college was a long time ago). A molecular structure called a dodecahedron?

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

7. "Buckminsterfullerines"

Bucky was a gentle giant. I stand in awe of him.

[drm604]

12. That's incorrect.

Fullerenes were discovered much later and were named after him because of their resemblance to his dome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodesic_domes

The second dome that could be called "geodesic" in every respect was designed just after WWI by Walter Bauersfeld,<1> chief engineer of the Carl Zeiss optical company, for a planetarium to house his new planetarium projector. The dome was patented, constructed by the firm of Dykerhoff and Wydmann on the roof of the Zeiss plant in Jena, Germany, and opened to the public in 1922. Some thirty years later R. Buckminster Fuller apparently came up with the idea independently and named the dome "geodesic" from field experiments with Kenneth Snelson and others at Black Mountain College in the late 1940's. Although Fuller cannot be said to be the inventor, he exploited and developed the idea, receiving a U.S. patent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fullerenes

The fullerenes, discovered in 1985 by researchers at Rice University, are a family of carbon allotropes named after Richard Buckminster Fuller. They are molecules composed entirely of carbon, in the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, or tube. Spherical fullerenes are sometimes called buckyballs, the C60 variant is often compared to the typical white and black soccer football, the Telstar of 1970. Cylindrical fullerenes are called Carbon nanotubes or buckytubes. Fullerenes are similar in structure to graphite, which is composed of a sheet of linked hexagonal rings, but they contain pentagonal (or sometimes heptagonal) rings that prevent the sheet from being planar.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

6. Thanks. (To The Poster Below You As Well). He Sounds Brilliant And Fascinating.

Progressive, I take it?

[catnhatnh]

10. Check out this link...

...to a car of the future he built several of in the '30s in Bridgeport Connecticut.

http://www.damninteresting.com/index.php?s=dymaxion

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

13. That's Wild! But Forgive Me For Saying This:

I'd swear if you put a big hotdog on top it would be the Oscar Mayer mobile LOL

[ClassWarrior]

16. Which was designed by another visionary...

...Brooks Stevens, who's credited with inventing industrial desgin.

NGU.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

17. LOL I Tell Ya, There Is Just No Stopping The Wealth Of Knowledge That Can Be Found On DU!

:toast:

[ClassWarrior]

18. Cheers!

:toast:

NGU.

[Canuckistanian]

4. A modest example of his work

The U.S. Pavillion at Expo '67. The pictures give you no idea of the scale. It was enormous. I was there.

What a magnificent structure.

[dbt]

5. There is NO excuse for not knowing about this man.

Especially when you presume to lecture people about "contrails."

:evilgrin:
dbt
Remember New Orleans

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

9. If Only...

...I knew what the hell you were talking about LOL

[Jcrowley]

11. Books

A good place to start would be either "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth" or "Critical Path". But here is the full list:


"4-D Timelock", 1928.
"And It Came to Pass - Not to Stay", 1976.
"Earth, Inc.", 1973
"Education Automation", 1962
"Grunch of Giants", 1983
"Humans in Universe", 1983
"Ideas and Integrities". 1963
"Intuition", 1972
"Nine Chains to the Moon", 1963
"No More Second Hand God", 1963
"Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth", 1963.
"Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking", 1975.
"Synergetics 2: Futher Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking", 1979.
"Synergetic Stew: Explorations in Dymaxion Dining", 1982.
"Tetrascroll", 1975.
"Utopia or Oblivion: The Prospects of Humanity", 1969.

• "Whenever I draw a circle, I immediately want to step out of it."
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

• "You must choose between making money and making sense. The two are mutually exclusive."
-- Buckminster Fuller in 1983


• "What are the resources? What are the tasks necessary to make 100% of humanity a success? How can we ever do so without ever advantaging one human at the expense of another? How may we render all the world and all its treasures enjoyable available to all men without having one interfering with or trespassing upon the other? How may we reform the environment so that the integrity of all society is not violated by the free initiatives of the individual nor the integrity of the individual violated by the developing welfaring advantage and happiness of the many? Man is born a potentially complete success. The reasons humanity loves its children is that they start off in such perfection of potential. Man, as designed, is obviously intended to be a success just as the hydrogen atom is intended to e a success. It is only the fabulous ignorance of man and his long and wrongly conditioned reflexes that he continually allowed the new life to be impaired albeit lovingly and unwittingly".
--R. Buckminster Fuller NASA Speech, June 1966


• “Think of it. We are blessed with technology that would be indescribable to our forefathers. We have the wherewithal, the know-it-all to feed everybody, clothe everybody, and give every human on Earth a chance. We know now what we could never have known before-that we now have the option for all humanity to make it successfully on this planet in this lifetime. Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will b a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment.”
-- Buckminster Fuller 1980


• “Humanity is moving ever deeper into crisis - a crisis without precedent. First, it is a crisis brought about by cosmic evolution irrevocably intent upon completely transforming omnidisintegrated humanity from a complex of around-the-world, remotely-deployed-from-one-another, differently colored, differently credoed, differently cultured, differently communicating, and differently competing entities into a completely integrated, comprehensively interconsiderate, harmonious whole. Second, we are in an unprecedented crisis because cosmic evolution is also irrevocably intent upon making omni-integrated humanity omnisuccessful, able to live sustainingly at an unprecedentedly higher standard of living for all Earthians than has ever been experienced by any; able to live entirely within its cosmic-energy income instead of spending its cosmic energy savings account (i.e., the fossil fuels) or spending its cosmic-capital plant and equipment account (i.e., atomic energy)-the atoms with which our Spaceship Earth and its biosphere are structured and equipped-a spending folly no less illogical than burning your house-and-home to keep the family warm on an unprecedentedly cold midwinter night. Humanity's cosmic-energy income account consists entirely of our gravity-and star (99 percent Sun)-distributed cosmic dividends of water power, tidal power, wave power, wind power, vegetation-produced alcohols, methane gas, vulcanism, and so on. Humanity's present rate of total energy consumption amounts to only one four-millionth of one percent of the rate of its energy income. ...Ninety-nine percent of humanity does not know that we have the option to make it economically on this planet and in the Universe. We do.”
-- Buckminster Fuller, from the introduction to Critical Path

[babylonsister]

8. Each one of us could make a difference:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/16/159...

Bill Moyers: As we made our last approach, the words of a Marge Piercy poem began to form in my head, and I remembered all over again why I was coming and why you were here:

What can they do
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break
your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can t walk, can’t remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can’t blame them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.

But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.

Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organisation. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fund raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.
It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.

Thank you.

[Warren DeMontague]

14. Fuller was also an irrepressible *optimist* about Humanity, technology, and our future.

Some of the ever-present doom-n-gloom "everything is fucked" fetishists might want to take note.

[northofdenali]

15. Another favorite Bucky quote of mine:

"Either war is obsolete, or men are."


His Tensegrity Dome (model, from Columbia University)

More: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/gsapp/BT/DOMES/GEORGIA/img-gal.html