Surely this can be applied here in Chicago, right?
Enwave and the City of Toronto have created an innovative cooling system that brings an alternative to conventional air conditioning to cool Toronto's downtown core — one that is clean, price competitive and energy efficient. A permanent layer of icy-cold (4°C) water 83 meters below the surface of Lake Ontario provides naturally cold water. This water is the renewable source of energy that Enwave's leading-edge technology uses to cool office towers, sports & entertainment complexes and proposed waterfront developments.
The system has been in operation since 2004.
A similar form of air condition is being used in Halifax, Nova Scotia. At Purdy's Wharf, we read here, it ‘provides all the cooling for the building for 10 1/2 of the year. During the remaining six weeks, the buildings use conventional chillers, but the seawater is used to cool the condensers. The system was paid off in two years, and saves the complex more than $100,000 annually in electricity and maintenance costs.’
In the U.S., Cornell University is implementing its own deep lake water cooling system.
Saw a gem of a film the other day Umoregi. A 2006 Japanese film directed by Kôhei Oguri who has all the grace of Yasujiro Ozu and comes recommended by the master of portraying the Japanese soul, Yoji Yamada. The film feels more like portraits of various lives in one small town but it does so with such fantastic imagery. They are nostalgic snapshots of places and lives yet it's a world that feels original in the way Hayao Miyazaki films create nostalgic worlds with a bit of magic.
Few places live up to the hopeful names of a place - Los Angeles, Eden Falls, Bloomfield...
But Paradise, New Zealand is a place that doesn't feel like an exaggeration. The rolling hills, gentle forests, spectacular views of Dart River and the surrounding mountains were stunningly beautiful. It's hard to describe the thrill and it's best experienced with all your senses but here are some pictures I took on a trip this weekend:
The horseback ride itself was a joy, despite the fact that I haven't ridden in almost 30 years, thanks to the great guide Pear and his gentle horses. Check out Dart Stable's Ride of the Rings Tour. Not being a dedicated Lord of the Rings fan, his detailed explanations of each scenes shot in Paradise didn't quite register. But the stories of Peter Jackson's challenges of shooting a massive blockbuster were fascinating non the less.
“Prada Marfa” (2005), by Elmgreen & Dragset, at the City University of New York Graduate Center.
Excerpt from article: "The team known as Elmgreen & Dragset approach the question of art value differently. They made a sculpture in the form of a fake and empty Prada outlet and installed it in the middle of a Texas desert. Looking spiffy but forlorn in photographs in the show, the piece prompts Zen-like queries: What’s a brand name’s worth if there are no shoppers? What’s art worth in the middle of nowhere, without an audience?
Actually, the Prada store wasn’t in the middle of nowhere, and it did have an audience. It was installed near Marfa, Tex., home of the Donald Judd Foundation, and a much-favored art-world mecca. Even so, it makes a shrewd point about the arbitrariness of value, which is one of the points of the Graduate Center show."
[from Spluch]When ants go marching, they count their steps: "Here’s something you might not know. Ants actually count the number of steps they take to find their way home without getting sidetracked.
Scientists trained desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis, to walk along a straight path from their nest entrance to a feeder 30 feet away. If the nest or feeder was moved, the ants would break from their straight path after reaching the anticipated spot and search for their goal.
Next, the researchers performed a little cosmetic surgery.
They glued stilt-like extensions to the legs of some ants to lengthen stride. The researchers shortened other ants' stride length by cutting off the critters' feet and lower legs, reducing their legs to stumps.
The ants on stilts took the right number of steps, but because of their increased stride length, marched past their goal. Stump-legged ants, meanwhile, fell short of the goal.
After getting used to their new legs, the ants were able to adjust their pedometer and zero in on home more precisely, suggesting that stride length serves as an ant pedometer.
While children have fun spinning on the PlayPump merry-go-round (1), clean water is pumped (2) from underground (3) into a 2,500-liter tank (4), standing seven meters above the ground.
A simple tap (5) makes it easy for women and children to draw water. Excess water is diverted from the storage tank back down into the borehole (6).
The water storage tank (7) provides a rare opportunity to advertise in outlaying communities. All four sides of the tank are leased as billboards, with two sides for consumer advertising and the other two sides for health and educational messages. The revenue generated by this unique model pays for pump maintenance.
Not surprisingly trying to assess the design and application of the PlayPump system took us on an emotional roller coaster ride. One minute we were giddy with enthusiasm (‘Fucking brilliant!’), but the next minute, completely raving with skepticism (how long do the children have to twirl and twirl around to fill the tank; and is the water any safer?), only to return back to unbridled enthusiasm (well, it's not as if the goal is to provide communities with daily showers, car washes, and indoor toilet flushes; and surely groundwater is reliably safer than the surface water sources to which the PlayPump offers an alternative).
Back and forth.
Convinced how cool the whole thing is, we soon found yet more reasons to doubt the viability of this earnest endeavor: aren't there better options, such as these? Well, of course. The PlayPump isn't meant to be the singular solution for every possible situation. Aggregation is a good strategy.
Counterproductive as we sometimes are with our privileged misanthrope and ironic asides, we asked ourselves: don't you find the ads a bit troubling, even comical? (Advertising in economically depressed areas? Is this like Colors by Benetton or something?) To which we replied: Yes, we are indeed privileged.
Back and so forth.
But before we reverted back to our usual default position of enthusiastic interest, we asked one last question: wouldn't it be better to just give a sizable chunk of what we in the United States spend on public water services -- to recreate, for instance, some sort of Edenic fantasies in the desert Southwest with water diverted from severely depleted sources -- to sub-Saharan African nations where the money will be used to improve their hydrological infrastructure, and we are the ones who get to install the PlayPumps in our school grounds and playgrounds where a growing population of obese, diabetic, allergic children, the ones inured to the hardship of suburban domesticity, are forced to trim a little bit of the fat, reduce susceptibility to diabetes, and prevent future addictions to Allegra® and Claritin® while teaching them about the incredibly, wonderfully awesome subject of hydrology, imparting a life long commitment to water conservation?
Google Maps has a hidden feature that allows anyone to zoom in extremely close on some satellite pictures. This screenshot shows the closest zoom available for a location in the Sahara desert. Using this hidden feature, you can zoom in a little closer in almost any Metropolitan area, and MUCH closer in select areas.
Here’s Google Blogoscoped’s instructions on utilizing this feature:
1. Select a location and switch to satellite view
2. Zoom in as far as you can, and click ‘link to this page’ at the top right
3. Now replace the ‘z’ parameter in the URL with a higher value, e.g. 20, 22, or 23, and wait. Some locations will now show more detailed imagery
Since people are good at identifying faces at low resolutions, someone should be able to identify the guy looking skyward in the upper right. My vote is that he’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President, in hiding.
Click on the Link [Google Maps] to navigate the rest of this location. Via Google Blogoscoped
Can you imagine these products being marketed overseas? With so much concern about ‘the children’ these days we doubt that fake beer for kids would make it past the pitch stage at any beverage company. Well, almost any company. Sure, there’s the sparkling grape juice that kids sometimes get on New Years Eve in lieu of champagne, but to have it specifically marketed to kids is a different matter. While Americans would likely overreact and freak out, we haven’t seen any such reaction here in Japan and these drinks have been out for a couple of years now.
Sangaria started their line of fake alcoholic drinks for kids with Kodomo no nomimono (Children’s drink), and has been successful enough to offer it in bottles, cans, and even six-packs. They also expanded the product line to include children’s versions of wine, champagne, and cocktails. The beer, flavored like apple juice, even foams at the top when poured into a glass!
Doesn’t the kid with the onigiri look alot surlier with a beer in front of him?
The differences between the West and Japan are often highlighted the most in the little things in life, and this is definitely one of them. Japan is well known for its group drinking culture, and this is actually a great way to include the kids during family celebrations. These are even sold at restaurants, which is ideal since most parties in Japan are done outside of the home. Of course, if find your four-year-old passed out in front of the TV with a pile of empty fake beer cans around him, it might be time for a kodomo no intervention.
I was blown away with this demo by Blaise Aguera y Arcas, an architect at Microsoft Live Labs. It's a demo on how we'll read things on the web, share our pictures and how we'll do virtual tours of the world in the very near future (I hope). Check it out, it's really fascinating.
