De(s)ign

fruit flies prefer organic, according to 16-year-old Ria...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 11:35:00 -0400

fruit flies prefer organic, according to 16-year-old Ria Chhabra’s study.

her parents were arguing about the value of organic foods. so she created a science fair project.

read about her study in the nytimes

“The research, titled “Organically Grown Food Provides Health Benefits to Drosophila melanogaster,” tracked the effects of organic and conventional diets on the health of fruit flies. By nearly every measure, including fertility, stress resistance and longevity, flies that fed on organic bananas and potatoes fared better than those who dined on conventionally raised produce.”

times blog post by Tara Parker-Pope

trailer for the movie School’s Out: Lessons from a Forest...

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 13:35:14 -0400

trailer for the movie School’s Out: Lessons from a Forest Kindergarten

i would send my kid to that school

Colin Selig at Think:Tank makes benches from old propane tanks,...

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 12:39:00 -0500

Colin Selig at Think:Tank makes benches from old propane tanks, among other things. That means he upcycles, he plays with plasma cutters and welding rigs, and he has a close relationship with his local powder coater. Well done Colin.

link

"We drink from wells we did not dig; we are warmed by fires we did not kindle."

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 09:46:53 -0500

“We drink from wells we did not dig; we are warmed by fires we did not kindle.”

- Deut. 6.11

happy holidays. try to be a good kid.

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 11:07:27 -0500

happy holidays. try to be a good kid.

great concept from the designers at gravity. i would totally...

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 11:05:15 -0500

great concept from the designers at gravity.

i would totally adopt a cow and then eat it.

more of their ‘food thinking’ concepts here.

"Ninety-nine percent of Hamburg residents live within 300 meters of a rail or bus stop."

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 15:39:02 -0500

“Ninety-nine percent of Hamburg residents live within 300 meters of a rail or bus stop.”

-

from Clean Break: The Story of Germany’s Energy Transformation and What Americans Can Learn From It, by Osha Gray Davidson, Susan White, Catherine Mann and Christopher Flavin

trailer for Solar Mamas ” [solar] is only a woman’s...

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 15:33:03 -0500

trailer for Solar Mamas

” [solar] is only a woman’s job, a man cannot do it, a woman has patience and time, and she will listen and learn, if you train a man, he wants to leave the village and go somewhere else looking for a job.”

steel for a solar support structure goes up in...

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 14:08:02 -0500

steel for a solar support structure goes up in cali

#thingsidesign

Talmon Biran Architecture Studio, Woodpile project. it is...

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 10:10:52 -0500

Talmon Biran Architecture Studio, Woodpile project.

it is shelter, it is storage, it is a fuel gauge, it is pretty.

this structure was constructed along the Assiniboine River in Winnipeg, Canada.

there are people who are literally taking detroit apart and...

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 00:29:00 -0500

there are people who are literally taking detroit apart and shipping the pieces to china.

scene from the feature documentary, DETROPIA, a film by Loki Films, a non-fiction film production company founded in 2001 by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady.

i’m taking this day at home, thanks to climate change, to...

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 16:01:00 -0400

i’m taking this day at home, thanks to climate change, to read Bill McKibben’s latest article on global warming. on pg 2, he repeats a quote from one senior climate scientist, “You know those cigarette packs, where governments make them put a picture of someone with a hole in their throats? Gas pumps should have something like that.”

so i mocked it up. anyone know of a sticker company looking to do some pro bono work?

from the article:

“… Think of two degrees Celsius [temperature rise] as the legal drinking limit – equivalent to the 0.08 blood-alcohol level below which you might get away with driving home. The 565 gigatons is how many drinks you could have and still stay below that limit – the six beers, say, you might consume in an evening. And the 2,795 gigatons? [2,795 gigatons is the proven fossil fuel reserves currently in the Earth and scheduled for extraction.] That’s the three 12-packs the fossil-fuel industry has on the table, already opened and ready to pour.”

title: CLIMATE CHANGE IS SIMPLE David Roberts of Grist spoke at...

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 16:31:37 -0400

title: CLIMATE CHANGE IS SIMPLE

David Roberts of Grist spoke at TEDx. Then Ryan L. Cooper upgraded the video portion.

just a couple data points:

the 12 deg C average temp rise that David mentions we will hit in the year 2300 is actually modeled to arrive in 2100 according to NCAR

and 12 deg C is 53.6 deg Fahrenheit

think about all the things you like to do on the weekend, all the things that make you happy in your life. then imagine the lives of your grandkids in the world we are making for them.

maybe this is a good time to mention that Bill McKibben has begun a movement, called Do The Math, to delegitimize the presence on the globe of multinational corporations that pull carbon from the ground and pump it into the air for profit.

@ryanlcooper

http://www.ryanlouiscooper.com/

@drgrist

http://grist.org/author/david-roberts/

here is the grist post that documents the content of the talk

source: christopherstreet

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 17:59:22 -0400

source: christopherstreet

google has a great site on data centers. they are...

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 11:46:36 -0400

google has a great site on data centers.

they are infrastructure, resource consumers, jobs, landscapes, opportunities for progress, technological fractals. they are us.

Harry Podolsky spent the summer of 2012 as an intern at the...

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 20:59:36 -0400

Harry Podolsky spent the summer of 2012 as an intern at the Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Israel. He worked on a few exciting projects during his time there, including using passive air cooling to boost the efficiency of photovoltaic solar panels and measuring dust collection on the solar panels, which reduces the efficiency of panels. As part of the second project, Harry constructed an environmental chamber to test an experimental device called an electro-dynamic screen, which uses static electricity to clear off dust particles.

ORPC installs a giant underwater fish blender. just kidding the...

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 11:42:00 -0400

ORPC installs a giant underwater fish blender. just kidding

the first installed underwater turbine in North America, developed by Ocean Renewable Power Company, began supplying electricity to the grid yesterday, according to the Bangor Hydro Electric Co.

the Cobscook Bay Tidal Energy Project cost approx. $21 million to research, develop, design, fabricate, and permit. the first turbine, installed as part of the project, is rated up to 180 KW. two more turbines will come online next year. the utilities have signed a 20 yr Power Purchase Agreement with ORPC. they will pay 21.5 cents per kWh. (Maine’s average price is 11.21 cents per kWh.

John Ferland, ORPC’s VP of project development, said, “Now that we are beyond the prototype phase, what we are doing is focusing on improving efficiency to maximize output and drastically reduce costs.” Adding, “The end game here is not 5 megawatts, but output as high as 80-100.”

for more on the story, click

hear the data, hear the Higgs Boson-like particle this is the...

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 10:02:34 -0400

hear the data, hear the Higgs Boson-like particle

this is the sonification of the data from the Atlas experiment run at the Large Hadron Collider.

Danny Kennedy wrote a book. Mark Ruffalo likes it.

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 15:18:29 -0400

Danny Kennedy wrote a book. Mark Ruffalo likes it.

watch this vid on The Waggle Dance of the Honeybee. bees are...

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 11:00:52 -0400

watch this vid on The Waggle Dance of the Honeybee.

bees are awesome.

——————————————————

vid is jacked from this wikipedia link