APRIL 29th, 2010
London wind has been idly blowing about not pulling it’s weight since Londinium was founded back in Roman times. Not any more. In a some-would-say ironic turn of events, wind is being used to manufacture wind repelling neck material, or scarves to the layman. Designer Merel Karhof has created a wind powered machine that constantly knits a scarf giving a handy visualisation of the powers and applications of urban wind power. Every now and then, the wool is ‘harvested’ and turned into individual scarves.
Source: PSFK
APRIL 29th, 2010
Tobacco companies are all of a fluster over new legislation passed in Australia today. The no nonsense Ozzies have banned logos on cigarette packets, meaning firms will be forced to sell their wares in plain logo free packets. Coupled with a 25% tax rise for cigarettes it has not been a good day for Australian tobacconists. It’s not due to be enforced until July 2012, and Tobacco companies are unleashing armies of darkness as I type. If the Australian government does manages to stand firm though it will offer a fascinating insight into just how much brands and logo’s affect the paying public.
Source: Guardian
APRIL 23rd, 2010
Burned your last piece of toast recently? Locked your car keys in your car again? Chances are it’s Nick Clegg’s fault. The world of Twitter reacted to the right wing media’s coordinated assault on Nick Clegg by deciding that if Murdoch’s press could cook up four separate front stories defaming Nick Clegg, then the twitterati could do the same.
#NickCleggsFault was the second most popular topic on twitter yesterday, with the Lib Dem leader being blamed for world woes as disparate as Walker’s choice of blue coloured crisp packets for cheese and onion crisps and the recent eruption of Eyjafjallajokull. Comedian Armando Iannucci got in on the act with the brilliant #nickcleggsfault Nick Clegg lived in the same town as a seriously ill man and never visited him, even though he knows he has a spare kidney. This episode proved a timely reminder of the devolution of power from the press to the people that social media is providing.
Source: Guardian
APRIL 20th, 2010
There is plenty of waste plastic floating about in the ocean. In fact, according to the proponents of a new recycled island, the largest concentration of plastic in the ocean has a footprint the size of Spain and France combined. The crazy dreamers over at Rotterdam WHIM Architecture are currently researching a project that would take some of this waste plastic and use it to create a habitable floating island.
The planned island would be 10,000 km2, roughly the size of Hawaii. The three main aims of the project are: The cleaning of a gigantic amount of plastic waste from the ocean, the creation of new land and the creation of a sustainable habitat. Whilst it remains to be seen if this project can be realised, the idea is a fantastic one, and if nothing else helps to draw our attention to the significant amount of plastic pollution in the ocean.
Source: fastcompany.com
APRIL 20th, 2010
According to British Law you have to wait 7 years before you can declare a missing person officially dead. It is not surprising then that when no trace of the coelacanth was found for 65 million years, scientists believed it was safe to declare it extinct. It appeared that they had been overly hasty however when in 1938 a South African museum curator stumbled across a coelacanth at a fisherman’s port. Whilst almost all species of the coelacanth went extinct 65 million years ago, somehow a few managed to survive.
Some interesting features include a brain cavity that is 99% fat, a heart that is a straight tube, and kidneys that are combined into a single organ. It is possible that these traits were common to many extinct species from the period. For more information about this fascinating throwback head over to environmentalgraffitti.com.
Source: EnvironmentalGraffitti
APRIL 20th, 2010
Incredibly 80 to 90% of water from the average household tap goes straight down the plughole unused. Surely one of the most wasteful systems since the government banned the feeding of pigswill to pigs. The new “Smart Faucet” has been built specifically to combat this waste; it is a chrome-plated brass fixture that can be fitted to most existing taps; instead of running water continuously it provides water only when you apply pressure. The makers reckon that this simple addition could save up to 15,000 + gallons per unit per year. Water you waiting for!
Source: TheDesignBlog
APRIL 8th, 2010
Changing our lifestyles to combat global warming is hard. Inbuilt obsolescence and cheap disposable items have become such a core part of our lifestyles that it takes time and persistence to change our mindset. Unless that is, we can come up with an easy fix.
With a depressing inevitability scientists all over the world have been working on just that. Harebrained schemes include: inducing volcano explosions, harnessing the power of tornadoes, radioactive light bulbs, and infecting cows with kangaroo bacteria in order to reduce methane emissions. It seems that simply changing our lifestyles doesn’t do it for these scientists. For a round up of these and more dubious green schemes check out webecoist.
source: webecoist
APRIL 7th, 2010
Deep in semi-rural Wisconsin, a mysterious figure known as Dr Evermor has created what must be the finest “steampunk scupture” ever made. Dr Evermor’s Forevertron is an absolutely monstrous sculpture made entirely from scrap metal. Some of the objects lucky enough to have found their way into the sculpture include an original 1880’s Edison dynamo and a decontamination chamber used in the Apollo project. The sculpture is too vast to be contained in one solitary photo, fortunately a selection of photo’s and more information can be found here.
Source: Worldchanging
