Gorgeous feather sculptures from London-based artist Kate MccGwire.

Check these beautiful sculptures, melding naturakl materials with everyday hardware....

You can see more of them at  http://www.fastcodesign.com/1664614/kate-mccgwire-creates-flowing-sculptures-with-thousands-of-feathers

Tweet

Check these beautiful rope sculptures from artist Sean McGinnis

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1664580/sean-mcginnis-the-psychedelic-spidey-spins-giant-webs-of-wonder#2

Tweet

YES! YES! YES! please - read this, it's a perfect summary of where we are with a much-needed ray of hope.

Take the time to read this great article from Andrew Simms at the Guardian, which neatly sums up the current state of affairs - namely, politicians persistently trying to fix the wrong problems, much in the manner of so many kittens hopelessly chasing butterflies.

Happily, he proposes some lovely solutions - some parented by those lovely boys at the New Economics Foundation, and some little practical beacons of positive activity (viz B&Q facilitatuing the sort of collaborative ownership I've touched on before).

Well played, sir!
http://www.greenwisebusiness.co.uk/news/business-sustainability-goodbye-habitat-hello-knowledge-hub-2450.aspx
Tweet

App provides beautiful and somehow apt visual referencing for your music (and other data)

Something lovely for synaesthesics everywhere....this might actually tip me in favour of iPads over the competition.
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663769/stunning-itunes-visualizer-powered-by-bold-experiment-in-ui-design
Tweet

Entertaining ideas for next-generation wind..er...generation.

Full article from the LA Times is here…. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/24/business/la-fi-wind-power-sidebar-20110724 - but the skinny is:

- They'll be big. Really big. The blades could be as much as 100 yards long within a decade, we're told. Or better yet, they'll be "fat enough to fit a double-decker bus inside".

- They'll also be small. Home-scale wind turbines might be shorter than a basketball player. And apparently a recent CalTech study showed that vertical wind turbines, set close together at lower heights, can generate just as much energy as taller, more traditional pinwheels.

- They'll move in strange patterns. One prototype has blades that move in a figure eight.

- They'll be strangely shaped. They'll look like "a giant inflatable hamster wheel" or "a spiral staircase wrapped in a white sheet" or "upright eggbeaters."

- And the best bit. Possibly, just possibly, they will fly. One inflatable prototype is described as “a giant spinning blimp”.

I'm picturing a Studio Ghibli-envisaged world with hovering turbines on every horizon, hunting down the best breezes and roosting overnight on LaPuta.

Want one. Now.

Tweet

The secret to a long and happy relationship?

Well, according to this article in the LA Times (that veritable library of sound scientific research), it's...wait for it, waaaait for it.....being deluded about your partner.

And staying that way.

There are, apparently, limits to which your delusion should stretch - regarding your mate as a 9 in the looks department when they're actually a 2 isn't necessary, for example.

But fostering a positive view of them - not just at outset but on an ongoing basis - is good for them, it's good for you (but both of those are by the by, for the purposes of this particular bit of research), and it's good for the health and longevity of relationship. And that's the crux of the thing.

Rose-tinted spectacles all round, then, please!

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-mating-ideal-partner-20110725,0,1249843.story

Tweet

Bear OK after 3 weeks with its head in a jug (no, really!....)

...the heading says it all. Hurrah for the bear.
http://gawker.com/5823719/bear-okay-after-three-weeks-with-its-head-in-a-jug

Tweet

Zipcar - US-based carshare idea having a real impact on car usage

I know I've highlighted this before, but it's a good'un!

This link, via the ever-informative FastCo site, shows how Zipcar's innovative 'car share' model is reducing car usage, enabling drivers to sell their vehicles and use the Zipcar share instead - and, of course, make better use of public transport, bikes and that much-forgotten alternative, shanks' pony!

I love this not just for the environmental and cost benefits - but because it relies on another promising trend - collaborative ownership/usage of large and small assets/utilities. Plenty of food for thought.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1768007/zipcars-effects-on-how-people-use-cars-is-enormous
Tweet

The realities of climate change - not a pretty picture.

I thought I'd include  a link to this terrific speech by Chris Huhne, which he made on 7 July 2011 at the Future Maritime Operations Conference, hosted at the Royal United Services Institute in London. (It's part 2 of a 3-parter, and you can find the rest by following the appropriate links on the site).

Thanks to Ian Costain of IOM Friends of the Earth for sending it on to me - I was really impressed with the  clarity with which it brought a range of impacts into stark focus.

http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/chsp_geopol/chsp_geopol.aspx
Tweet

Rush Limbaugh. What the....?

Rush Limbaugh explains why the US Govt's heatwave index is no more than a 'liberal conspiracy', and that actually we can all stop worrying about annually hotter summers - because of the, you know, mini-iceage we're headed back to. So that's alright, then....

http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201107200019
Tweet

Terrafugia unveils a new battery-powered car/plane - could this herald the end of rush-hour misery?

 (if only it could be so!). Still, the development's a rush....I'd snag a test drive, given half a chance....
http://www.fastcompany.com/1767784/team-behind-virgin-galactic-aircraft-unveil-a-hybrid-electric-flying-car

Tweet

Great article from Grist on how to keep the modern off-grid homesteading dream alive!

.....or, how to avoid 'Not one more winter in the tipi honey' syndrome....
http://www.grist.org/green-home/2011-07-15-not-one-more-winter-in-the-tipi-honey
Tweet

iPhone infographics create some lovely, and rather moving, effects

Michael Kreil's depiction of the movements (using knowingly donated data) of 88 iPhones are beautiful and for some reason, quite poignant.....

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1664497/infographic-of-the-day-iphone-movements-look-like-fireflies-in-the-night
Tweet

Check Nico Livsey's amazing plasticene animations-with-soundtrack.

(but check first if your sound's turned on - you might want to turn the volume down!)

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1664503/nicos-livesey-creates-insane-videos-with-plasticine
Tweet

The Charlston Gazette shares with us the news that birth defects are apparently higher in arweas where there's been 'Mountain Top Removal', or MTR, mining (and yes, if you're not familiar with MTR methods, that's a process as brutal and dramatic as it at first sounds). This link takes you to the relevant article:
http://wvgazette.com/News/201106211246

But wait - what's this? apparently it's not the MTR that's the problem, it's the INBREEDING! Heck, why didn't we think of that? Thanks to MoJo (MotherJones) for illuminating the National Mining Association's rebuttal of the findings, penned by attorneys Crowell and Moring.  This pinned the cause of the problems on 'consanquinuity' (that's inbreeding to you and me, though apparently the esteemed lawyers couldn't even spell the word properly in their missive - on account of being so ill-acquainted with it, natch). http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/07/mountaintop-removal-inbreeding-coal-mining

Grist tells us that in a mealymouthed apology - which looks more like an apology for an apology - CM stated that they didn't mean anything by the implication that the locals suffered a higher-than-average incidence of consanguinuity. And of course, the locals of West Virginia shouldn't be irked by it.

But I'll bet they are....http://www.grist.org/list
Tweet

Great to see the new all-electric CarShare concepts being introduced by folks like Car2Go.  Quite aside from helping generate the necessary critical mass for electric cars (via Smart etc), I'm all in favour of more collaborative asset owning - how many other things can you think of that your household uses, but for most of the year lie gathering dust in a drawer/the attic? I'm thinking co-ownership of cameras, lawnmowers, vacuum cleaners (boyfriends, spouses....)

Back to the carshare, tho'. This link to Grist tells all:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1766674/car2go-brings-first-all-electric-car-sharing-service-to-the-us
May it visit our shores very soon!
Tweet

Challenging stuff for FaceBook - the perils of scaleability

http://www.linkedin.com/news?actionBar&articleID=622129216&ids=0NdP4TcjgNczoIcPAOejoTcz8Sb3kPc3cUdz4OdyMUdPoUdPkOczoIdz4Oej8Ncz8S&aag=true&freq=weekly&trk=eml-tod-b-ttle-96
Tweet

Michelle Bachmann, on why the US doesn't need to worry about energy issues

"Energy is "the most easy problem for America to solve," Bachmann said during her stop at the Wells Blue Bunny Ice Cream Parlor & Museum in Le Mars.

And there's more:  "We have 25 percent of the world's coal here. Trillions of cubic square feet of natural gas here. We just built one of the world's largest lines of natural gas here. We have got more oil in three Western states in shale oil than all of Saudi Arabia. Did you hear that on your local nightly news? Are you kidding? We've got it. I say let's go get it.

Sadly, in the US's GOP, she's far from alone in believing - and promulgating - this kind of twaddle....
Tweet

Going Once, Going Twice: A New Company Helps You Buy And Preserve Land At Auctions

 

WITH THANKS TO Michael J. CorenWed Jul 6, 2011

Taking conservation out of the hands of governments, a new plan from the Netherlands lets people bid for small parcels which are then put aside from development.

Leave it to the Dutch. Inventors of stock markets and the first speculative bubble (the tulip mania of 1637), Europe's merchant savants have devised a new commercial transaction: the landscape auction.
Devised by the advisory firm Triple E, the landscape auction puts conservation on the block. Unlike at most other auctions, no one takes home or deposits their winnings. Instead, bidders walk away having contributed to a new way of conserving natural places when public dollars and private donations fall short. The Amsterdam-based company is intent on making them a permanent feature of private land conservation around the world.
“It is a market-based instrument to conserve nature, and the market is potentially very large,” Triple E’s landscape auction director Daan Wensing wrote in an email. “The perception that tax dollars alone can save the landscape has changed.”
Triple E ran America’s first landscape auction last year for the White River watershed of Vermont. During the course of an afternoon, one small corner of the country was parceled up, auctioned off and conserved for the highest bidder: One winner claimed a prime slice of restored streamside vegetation habitat for the Chestnut-sided Warbler, another pocketed 10 new trees along the White River for a cool $100.
It's not exactly Wall Street, but then it's still early days. Since 2007, Triple E says it has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars through more than 20 landscape auctions held in the U.S., Netherlands, Germany, and Poland (see a campy video of first one here in the Netherlands).

In a way, landscape auctions make sense given supply and demand. We live in a world with an ever shrinking pool of wildlands and ecosystem services. Plenty of people are willing to pay for what's left--polls by the Land Trust Alliance claim that "solid majorities willing to pay as much as $100 more in annual taxes to support conservation"--yet only a few have the chance to do so directly. While it's nice to be Ted Turner, who has spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying up about 3,000 square miles of land across the U.S., much of it for conservation, most of us can't put Western ranches on our shopping list.
Yet the public's aggregate buying power dwarfs that of any mogul. The fact that more land is not conserved is a market failure, technically known as a negative externality. As the final price of a product or service rarely reflects the cost to the public of polluting a river or degrading an ecosystem, we often produce and sell too much of an item from the perspective of the public good. Economists point to the health damage caused by cheap leaded gasoline (net benefits from phasing out leaded gasoline were more than $5 billion annually as of 1986 according to the EPA).
But landscape auctions aren't even close to breaking out into the mainstream. Triple E's two U.S. auctions, and a small but successful series in Europe, are only a drop in the bucket. Perhaps America’s enthusiasm for free markets and record of charitable giving are tailored made for this new approach. Let the bidding begin
Tweet

Americans refusing to buy anything too 'eco-friendly' (!?)

Despite the fact that the global ecosystem's clearly teetering on the brink of collapse, Americans are - apparently - not in any "rush" to let it affect their well-honed spending habits. The latest "earth-friendly" products they're telling to fuck off and die: anything refillable. That's just, like, soooo not American.

Refills are in comparatively wide use here in Europe, where landfills and expansive pantries aren't as plentiful as they are in the Benighted States. You'd think American consumers would also like them for the potential savings and the eco-friendliness from the smaller containers. Containers and packaging generated about 72 million tons of trash in 2009, nearly one third of that year's total municipal solid waste, according to estimates by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

But no.....They just haven't caught on. "Refills have had mostly five decades of failure," says Mr. Flickinger, the consultant.

Let's continue enjoying our refills, Europe. Over in the USA they squirt a bottle of Windex once, then blow up the Windex factory. That factory is used. Americans don't do used. They do new. America, motherfuckers. They'd see to it that refills have another five decades of failure, if the planet was going to be around that long.
http://gawker.com/5794800/were-willing-to-spend-up-to-0-extra-on-green-products?tag=environmentalism