Journal makeover!

[openspace4life]

I finally decided I couldn't wait any longer--I had to get rid of that boring "Thoughts on the Environmental Crisis" title, which virtually guarantees me a permanently small readership.  I needed something short and catchy, like Technozoic.  But since I couldn't think of anything clever and original offhand, and had reluctantly decided that trying to become "The SolSeed Eco-Blog" put too many constraints on what I could say, I decided to use Brian "Space4Commerce" Dunbar and his sometime nemesis, Bruce "Space4Peace" Gagnon, as a model.  (There must be an alternate timeline where they're allies; after all, as far as we're presently aware, the commercialization of space is the alternative to its dominance by the military.)

But wait, I thought--while I'm very interested in space colonization and growing new biospheres, that's a pretty small fraction of what I write about on this blog.  So Space4Life isn't really a good enough title.  Making it OpenSpace opens up at least four possible interpretations:

• The outer-space aspect, of course: if Open is a verb, the title clearly refers to the opening of the Final Frontier for colonization by the seeds of Gaia.  Which is fine, as long as we don't repeat the evils of the first colonial era by landing on already-living worlds and overexploiting/exterminating their inhabitants.
   
• The classic environmentalist stand for Open Spaces: the preservation of natural landscapes, both as habitat and for the enjoyment of hikers, campers, and sometimes even hunters.  It's a good time to be promoting this ideal, with the release of acclaimed documentarian Ken Burns's new film, "The National Parks: America's Best Idea," coming out next month on PBS.
   
• As an abstract metaphor, with "Life" referring to the process of living, usually in an exclusively human sense.  This would cover, albeit obscurely, the political and economic issues I discuss: for example, America needs to maintain public space for free and open dialog, rather than surveilling the heck out of us and pouncing on whoever trips a computer search algorithm looking for words that might be related to terrorist activity.
   
• On a similar note, there's the reference to Open Space Technology, which was used to organize the first two SolSeed events and is very Web 2.0: the conveners just provide a space and an open wall where any participant can tape up agenda items.

As long as I was changing the title, I decided a facelift for the site's appearance was also a good idea, allowing for a subtitle and more horizontal space for my entries.  Let me know what you think!