Posts filed under 'Commentary'
From Wisconsin comes this trendy new living idea. Called the E.D.G.E (Experimental Dwelling for a Greener Environment) by its designer (Revelations Architects/Builders Corporation) it is a 2 bedroom, 320 square foot, passive solar home perfect for today’s much smaller, less ostentatious families who are very conscious of cost, maintenance and time.
As a personal note, I can assure everyone that a smaller house is much easier to clean, maintain and get around in as you grow older – in our 70s, even our 900 sqft home is sometimes too large a chore. This home, or something like it, is perfect for the young, just starting out in life, and the elderly (although stairs can be difficult). Practical, inexpensive and cozy. Nice job, Revelations.
Such dwellings might be just the thing for areas devastated by flood, storm or quake, too. Smaller houses leave more room for growing food.
July 28th, 2010
Paul Ridden’s fine article about Spain’s Solar Decathlon covers an antaean
line of entries, from the earthbound to what might be a wormhole, the FabLabHouse. All of the entries must be totally solar powered in order to qualify and most of them would not seem out of place in any neighborhood.
Ridden supplies 21 photos with his report. You are invited to see them
Solar Decathlon Europe.
Originally posted by Gizmag.com
July 17th, 2010
- Natural, created by aliens or supernatural? “Oooooowoooo” said the wind.
NASA recently published this piece of art.
Is it a tattoo artist’s odd rendering on human flesh? A faded pumpkin awaiting a carving knife? An alien civilization’s long awaited message of hope and salvation? Does someone spy a French imperial symbol amongst the graffiti? Is that proof of some Halloween religious conspiracy?
Actually, the markings are caused by dust-devils roving the ever-changing sands of Mars.
Shall we liken them to the shapes carved long ago by South American indians on the sands of the Alti-plano, or simply marvel at nature’s creative impulses?
What do you think?
October 24th, 2009
THE SOLAR FOREST
Neville Mars has shown us a wonderful concept which creates electric power, charges hybrid-electric cars and shades the hotest, some say ugliest parts of our cities. His Solar Forest, animated by Burb.tv makes it easier to cool buildings and saves both money and energy, as well as provides a carbon neutral ‘factory’. It pleases the eye and sense of order. If we simply have to have parking lots, this is the way to go.
From the air these forest-parks, along with the millions of solar rooftops, will display a shining symbol of a renewable future.
Perhaps Mr. Mars will now turn his attention to designing a drop-in, fully self-contained ‘earth-ship’ replacement for all of those eyesore swimming pools, and someone will figure out what to do with the thousands of golf courses which demand so much water and pollute the present and future. Perhaps we should simply let the tree lines take over and have a real forest.
War Stories for My Grandchildren – a memoir
by H. F. Jansen Estrup
Ask for it at your favorite bookstore or local library
August 6th, 2009
SCULPTURE OR DESIGN?
This beautifully strange object might be classified as both, for it is fully functional, and it does evoke a futuristic, otherworldly sense for the viewer.
As a hybrid-electric two-seater, three wheeled transport, the Aptera can cruise freeways at 80mph and get an estimated 300 miles per gallon. The plug-in version gets 100 miles per charge. Both have a drag co-efficiency of 0.15 which enables this ‘earthbound bird’ to flow through the air. Yet even though Aptera seems to mean ‘wingless bird’, it does sport gullwing doors and its cast ‘egg’ shape is re-enforced with steel beams. Passengers are protected by standard air bags and air-conditioning and heat. In California it is permitted to drive in the fast lane without passengers, a sight certain to grab attention of the bumper-to-bumber crowd.
Aptera’s design team is led by Steve Fambro of Southern California and his vision is currently in production. Pricing for the Aptera begins at $25,000 and it is eligible for the current rebates. Reserve your own "2e" for $500 (refundable).
I imagine this piece of art would look just as stunning in your driveway as on city streets or Jay Leno’s garage (check out his endorsement).
GO SOLAR (and wind)! It is a matter of national security! I am not impressed with the auto industry's new 'economy' standards. More than 50 years ago my family and I were driving cars which got 30 or more mpg (VW and Morris Minor) ... we've simply been dragging our feet, letting the cheap oil (and a huge military expense) dictate our foreign policy as if nothing would ever change ... but things have changed and even 50 mpg cars are behind the times!
May 30th, 2009
Worried about foreign attacks on our electric grid?
It is happening all too often, according to our Homeland Security experts. Why not become a SUNSHINE PATRIOT and provide your own power? Go Solar and wind. It is a matter of national security.
And you will save big bucks, too. Over the past 30 years I estimate savings of $58,000 dollars by installing Photo-voltaic panels, charge controllers, battery banks, inverters, refrigerator, washer, TV and entertainment center, computers, air conditioners (I do live in the desert) for a total of $12,000. It sounds like a lot of money but
compared to the $65,000 the power company wanted to charge me for the privilege of paying them $150 a month for the rest of my life, it is not much. Total estimated saving over 30 years – more than $100,000! And I did not even cash in on the many government rebates.
Many of you watch the Green Channel and see all of these Hollywood celebs showing off their multi-million arrays and wind machines. You have also seen the rooftop investments many forward looking businesses and government office buildings have installed. Truly impressive. You can do it, too! Start slowly, like we did if you have too, but start!
Plug-in electric cars are coming off the lines now, too. And congratulations to that new Florida city, Sunshine City, going up in Lee County!!! The largest solar array in the world to serve 45,000 people with power for their homes, businesses and cars!
Join up now in the Sunshine Uprising! Shine some light on our future! Become a SUNSHINE PATRIOT! Go solar! It is a matter of national security. Copy the logo, join the future and spread the word!
April 11th, 2009
Art Review | Jenny Holzer
Sounding the Alarm, in Words and Light
Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
Jenny Holzer: Protect Protect, including “Red Yellow Looming,” and other Holzer works from the past 15 years, is at the Whitney Museum of American Art through May 31. More Photos >
Published: March 12, 2009
Basically, Jenny Holzer has spent the last three decades pelting us with unsettling and increasingly relevant portents of things to come.
In tones alternately poetic or oracular, inflamed or numb, Big-Brotherly or tender, Ms. Holzer’s terse snippets of prose have warned of evolving threats to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. She has tracked the inner thoughts of bereft lovers or shellshocked survivors and articulated the baser instincts unleashed by social chaos.
To do this, she has turned various user-friendly, pop-culture modes of public address into early warning systems, including posters, T-shirts, billboards, broadsheets, plaques, giant projections and incised marble benches. Electronic LED signs are her best-known, most spectacular method; they also reflect the military-commercial-entertainment complex that, bit by bit, her art exposes.
Sounding the alarm at the Ides of March – more …
March 14th, 2009
Any day is just fine for promoting women and children. Their contribution, especially in the arts and music has been the hallmark of every great culture since the beginning of the agricultural revolution. Today that contribution extends to science, medicine and beyond. Let’s make today special, but also link it to Mother’s Day and Earth Day and as many others as we can. Society honors men and patriarchal religious principles almost every day of the year, ignoring the fact that without women’s creative force, none of us would exist.
Balance in our understanding of culture is sadly lacking in many parts of the world. Balance, Buddhists say, is the key to understanding life.
IWD is a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future. In some countries like China, Russia, Vietnam and Bulgaria, IWD is a national holiday. The first IWD was run in 1911.
read more …
March 8th, 2009
“Hope” 1886 by George Frederic Watts (1817-1904)
“Hope” is one of a series of visionary paintings hastening peace and justice. A pluck of her harp string sends a quavering vibration throughout the Earth, and a tremor into the Universe.
See more visionary art
January 26th, 2009
WHERE ON EARTH AM I?
The mysterious people who created this as part of a much larger ‘sculpture’ must have made such desperate pleas as their ecology changed and religion grew more brutally violent; trying no doubt, to sway or otherwise coerce their star speckled dieties.
If you know the answer, leave a comment. There is no prize, although I may leave your name (but not your answer) for others to see if you are correct. Here is a hint ...
Natural disasters doomed early civilization
WASHINGTON – Nature turned against one of America’s early civilizations 3,600 years ago, when researchers say earthquakes and floods, followed by blowing sand, drove away residents of an area that is now in Peru. “This maritime farming community had been successful for over 2,000 years, they had no incentive to change, and then all of a sudden, boom, they just got the props knocked out from under them,” anthropologist Mike Moseley of the University of Florida said in a statement.
Moseley and colleagues were studying civilization of the Supe Valley along the Peruvian coast, which was established up to 5,800 years ago.
The people thrived on land adjacent to productive bays and estuaries, the researchers report in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Supe fished with nets, irrigated fruit orchards and grew cotton and a variety of vegetables, according to evidence found by research co-author Ruth Shady, a Peruvian archaeologist. They also built stone pyramids thousands of years before the better known Mayans.
But the Supe disappeared about 3,600 years ago and, after studying the region, the researchers think they know what happened.
They found that a massive earthquake, or series of quakes, struck the seismically active region, collapsing walls and floors and launching landslides from barren mountain ranges surrounding the valley.
In addition, layers of silt indicate massive flooding followed.
Then came El Nino, a periodic change in the winds and currents in the Pacific Ocean, which brought heavy rains that damaged irrigation systems and washed debris into the streams and down to the ocean, where the sand and silt settled into a large ridge, sealing off the previously rich coastal bays.
In the end, land where the Supe had lived for centuries became uninhabitable and their society collapsed, the researchers concluded.
The study was funded by the University of Florida and the Heyerdahl Exploration Fund, University of Maine.
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On the Net:
PNAS: http://www.pnas.org
January 10th, 2009
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