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De(s)ign

deign

-verb

1. to think fit or in accordance with one's dignity.

2. to condescend to give or grant.

design

-verb

1. to plan and fashion artistically or skillfully.

2. to intend for a definite purpose.

3. to form or conceive in the mind; contrive.

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my tweets

my photos

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Jan 20

“ You see, I’d rather be Che Guevara than Fidel Castro.

— Adam Adli, a Malaysian student activist working to end a decades old law banning college students from joining or speaking in support of political parties, on his preference to avoid a career in the stuffy, stodgy arena of elite politics.)

(Source: forgottenfortunes)

Dec 21

methane, previously trapped in permafrost, bubbles to the surface of a lake in alaska.

turns out that as we cook the planet, all this ancient methane (a very potent greenhouse gas) is leaving storage and entering the atmosphere. how much carbon is locked in northern soils? “They calculated that there was about 1.7 trillion tons of carbon in soils of the northern regions, about 88 percent of it locked in permafrost. That is about two and a half times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.”

article

get to page 4 where the author writes about tundra on fire. “the fire and its aftermath sent a huge pulse of carbon into the air — as much as would be emitted in two years by a city the size of Miami.”

and in case you think this is just an isolated incident, check out the recent dramatic methane release from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf being researched by Igor Semiletov

article, article

“In a very small area, less than 10,000 square miles, we have counted more than 100 fountains, or torch-like structures, bubbling through the water column and injected directly into the atmosphere from the seabed,” Dr Semiletov said. “We carried out checks at about 115 stationary points and discovered methane fields of a fantastic scale – I think on a scale not seen before. Some plumes were a kilometre or more wide and the emissions went directly into the atmosphere – the concentration was a hundred times higher than normal.”

“Some estimates put the amount of carbon trapped in shelf permafrost at 1,600 billion tonnes - roughly twice as much carbon as in the atmosphere now. The release of this once captive carbon from destabilised ocean sediments and permafrost would have catastrophic effect on our climate and life on Earth, warn the scientists.”

global warming game on.

more lovely pics

photo credit - Josh Haner, nytimes

Dec 12

Ice Cube Celebrates the Eames

“The Eames made structure and nature one. This is going green 1949 style, bitch. Belee dat.”

Dec 05

another weekend, another project. i made a porch swing from pallets.

flickr set

NREL has a new web app that allows you to roughly layout a solar PV system on the roof of your house. just enter your address.

the dude who lives in the house in the pic could fit a 14 KW system on his roof in the little blue square i have drawn just north of the rose garden. the system would pay for itself in 5.8 yrs if his current cost of electricity were 9 cents/kWh.

note the name of the app - InMyBackYard -that’s how i feel about solar.

Dec 04

this hideousness is a toaster, built by Thomas Thwaites.

Thomas, who has a master’s in design from the Royal College of Art, set out to build an electric appliance from scratch. It took nine months of work, and almost $2,000. In the end, he made a “bread heater” and also ended up making a safety hazard, a point, and a funny and thoughtful book.

The intention was to reverse-engineer a cheap toaster. Obtaining and refining all of the raw materials needed. The plan was to avoid using modern technology. ”It’s that fantasy 14-year-old boys have,” he says. “What if I found myself marooned on a strange planet? What if the world came to an end? Would I be able to survive?” Thomas did not set out to fail. “I honestly thought that making a toaster wouldn’t be that tough,” he states. “I was aiming to make capacitors, or perhaps as a minimum a spring. You’d think I’d be capable to make a bloody spring.”

the book: “The Toaster Project: Or a Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch.”

Nov 29

jimmy mcbride made a quilt that looks like M1, aka the crab nebula

more pics of M1 here

check out phobos

Nov 13

Maxwell von Stein, a 22-year-old graduate of The Cooper Union, built a bicycle that uses a flywheel to store energy. The third wheel weighs 15 pounds. Instead of braking, which turns your kinetic energy into heat, Max can transfer energy from his velocipede to the flywheel, which spins between the crossbars of the bike. The flywheel stores the kinetic energy until Max wants a boost, then he can transfer the energy back to the wheel using a shifter on the handlebars connected to a CVT at the rear wheel.

The simple flywheel is making a comeback in all sorts of applications. Automakers are beginning to install flywheels in new test vehicles. Flywheels have already done thousands of laps in Formula 1 racing cars to enhance acceleration times. This fall, Volvo will be road-testing a car with the technology in an effort to save energy and cut down on polluting emissions.

I dig flywheels - high density stored energy without complex chemistry or rare earth metals. And they are cheap, small, last way longer than batteries, charge up quickly, and are easy to maintain. I’m happy to see Stein put the technology into a bicycle.

Tony Fadell brings us the Nest Thermostat. (He worked on the iPod when he was at Apple.) Nest learns what you want as you interact with it. No more programming (only 6% of programmable thermostats are actually programmed, even though this one household appliance can save 30-40% in energy costs related to heating and cooling). ”That’s a massive design problem,” says FastCo.

This one device has the power to significantly reduce the rate of acceleration of US carbon emissions. My only gripe - it costs $250.

There should be government and utility subsidies to install these. Or some unemployed HVAC technician should start a business - he installs them at no cost to the homeowner and he gets paid in 50% of the energy savings. He (or she) could be a millionaire in 5 years. Just need a line of credit from a bank (Ha!) for start-up capital. Or you could head over to kickstarter.

Sep 30

“ I have heard people suggest that because humans are natural that everything humans do or create is natural. Chainsaws are natural. Nuclear bombs are natural. Our economics is natural. Sex slavery is natural. Asphalt is natural. Cars are natural. Polluted water is natural. A devastated world is natural. A devastated psyche is natural. Unbridled exploitation is natural. Pure objectification is natural. This is, of course, nonsense. We are embedded in the natural world. We evolved as social creatures in this natural world. We require clean water to drink, or we die. We require clean air to breathe, or we die. We require food, or we die. We require love, affection, social contact in order to become our full selves. It is part of our evolutionary legacy as social creatures. Anything that helps us to understand all of this is natural: Any ritual, artifact, process, action is natural, to the degree that it reinforces our understanding of our embeddedness in the natural world, and any ritual, artifact, process, action is unnatural, to the degree that it does not.

— Derrick Jensen