They’re made by an Austin company called Zebra Imaging.  I really want to drop by their office and look at some of them in person…

via Landscape and Urbanism

Another nice video from BIG as well.

Bathsheba Grossman is a sculptor who uses cutting-edge technology to render math- and science-inspired shapes in three dimensions. You can buy 3D-printed laser-cut metal ones, or order them in plastic at lower costs from ShapeWays. That sound you hear is my jaw scraping my keyboard.

Borromean Rings

120 Cell

Along these same lines – check out the renderings on the Minimal Surface Archive, and for some background on what it means to project a 4-d dodecahedron into 3 dimensions, this video explains how to think in 10 dimensions.  If you really want to blow your mind, try parsing this article on the Lie Group E8, which has been proposed as a fundamental model of physical existence.

This little project really gives me a new appreciation for MAD. It’s too easy to misconstrue most of the office’s larger work as more Hadid inspired shape-making. But reading MAD’s description of this small intervention communicates the issues that they are struggling with working in China. There is clearly a tension between doing the flash-and-glam work that China seems to hunger for and yet to engage the history and context of this profoundly ancient place.

Designboom, which regularly has short interviews with leading designers, recently interviewed Ma.

CleanTechnica has a post about PV panels made from a holographic film which is able to capture light from any direction:

Prism Solar Technologies in Highland, NY has innovated a breakthrough holographic thin-film (Holographic Planar Concentrator™) that makes possible a very parsimonious use of crystalline PV cells to counteract that problem for Northern regions.

This brings the cost down to $1 a watt.

Each of their solar modules is actually made up of both crystalline PV and their unique holographic thin-film. The thin-film strips diffract both direct and reflected energy to the PV cell strips integrated between strips of thin-film. Solar modules made in this way are cheaper because they use 50-72% less silicon to make the same energy. Read more…

Named for the Norse god of thunder, thorium is a lustrous silvery-white metal. It’s only slightly radioactive; you could carry a lump of it in your pocket without harm. On the periodic table of elements, it’s found in the bottom row, along with other dense, radioactive substances — including uranium and plutonium — known as actinides.

…

When he took over as head of Oak Ridge in 1955, Alvin Weinberg realized that thorium by itself could start to solve these problems. It’s abundant — the US has at least 175,000 tons of the stuff — and doesn’t require costly processing. It is also extraordinarily efficient as a nuclear fuel. As it decays in a reactor core, its byproducts produce more neutrons per collision than conventional fuel. The more neutrons per collision, the more energy generated, the less total fuel consumed, and the less radioactive nastiness left behind.

Even better, Weinberg realized that you could use thorium in an entirely new kind of reactor, one that would have zero risk of meltdown. The design is based on the lab’s finding that thorium dissolves in hot liquid fluoride salts. This fission soup is poured into tubes in the core of the reactor, where the nuclear chain reaction — the billiard balls colliding — happens. The system makes the reactor self-regulating: When the soup gets too hot it expands and flows out of the tubes — slowing fission and eliminating the possibility of another Chernobyl. Any actinide can work in this method, but thorium is particularly well suited because it is so efficient at the high temperatures at which fission occurs in the soup.

In 1965, Weinberg and his team built a working reactor, one that suspended the byproducts of thorium in a molten salt bath, and he spent the rest of his 18-year tenure trying to make thorium the heart of the nation’s atomic power effort. He failed. Uranium reactors had already been established, and Hyman Rickover, de facto head of the US nuclear program, wanted the plutonium from uranium-powered nuclear plants to make bombs. Increasingly shunted aside, Weinberg was finally forced out in 1973.

Here’s what actually went on late last Friday night, as heads of state from two dozen countries met behind closed doors. Obama was at the table for several hours, sitting between Gordon Brown and the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi. The Danish prime minister chaired, and on his right sat Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general of the UN. Probably only about 50 or 60 people, including the heads of state, were in the room. I was attached to one of the delegations, whose head of state was also present for most of the time.

What I saw was profoundly shocking. The Chinese premier, Wen Jinbao, did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a second-tier official in the country’s foreign ministry to sit opposite Obama himself. The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication: several times during the session, the world’s most powerful heads of state were forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls to his “superiors”.

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To those who would blame Obama and rich countries in general, know this: it was China’s representative who insisted that industrialised country targets, previously agreed as an 80% cut by 2050, be taken out of the deal. “Why can’t we even mention our own targets?” demanded a furious Angela Merkel. Australia’s prime minister, Kevin Rudd, was annoyed enough to bang his microphone. Brazil’s representative too pointed out the illogicality of China’s position. Why should rich countries not announce even this unilateral cut? The Chinese delegate said no, and I watched, aghast, as Merkel threw up her hands in despair and conceded the point. Now we know why – because China bet, correctly, that Obama would get the blame for the Copenhagen accord’s lack of ambition.

China, backed at times by India, then proceeded to take out all the numbers that mattered. A 2020 peaking year in global emissions, essential to restrain temperatures to 2C, was removed and replaced by woolly language suggesting that emissions should peak “as soon as possible”. The long-term target, of global 50% cuts by 2050, was also excised. No one else, perhaps with the exceptions of India and Saudi Arabia, wanted this to happen. I am certain that had the Chinese not been in the room, we would have left Copenhagen with a deal that had environmentalists popping champagne corks popping in every corner of the world.

I’m sure this isn’t the last word on what happend, but it’s an interesting bit of data.  Mark’s conclusion is that China doesn’t want to bother with dealing with climate change because its economy is primarily coal-fired, and any cuts in emissions will necessarily lead to a diminishment in its ability to expand.

In an interesting example of desperate times calling for desperate measures, the local trade union is looking to become the key investor in The Chicago spire:

North America’s tallest tower was stopped dead in its foundations last year as the recession bells clanged and key players argued over alleged non-payment of millions of dollars in fees. But now the fate of Calatrava’s Chicago Spire looks much brighter as union boss Tom Villanova, president of the Chicago and Cook County Building and Construction Trades Council (CBTC), has entered talks to loan $170million to the project’s Irish developer, Shelbourne Development Group in a bid to create work for 1000 workers. More…

But Mr Linklater is literally ploughing ahead, injecting his tractor’s fossil fuel exhaust fumes directly into the ground, where they enhance the biochemical interaction between plants and soil microbes. And it seems his home-grown version of carbon sequestration, introduced in 2007, is getting results, with this year’s crop, aided by better rainfall, his best since 2001.

“It might not seem that emissions from one tractor could do a lot, but per hectare it emits 1100 kilos of carbon,” Mr Linklater says.

Adapting methods developed by Canadian farmer Gary Lewis, of BioAgtive Technologies, Mr Linklater spent $20,000 customising equipment that cools the tractor’s fumes to 30 degrees then expels them into the soil as gas fertiliser when he sows his crop.

His trials, which are being replicated in Canada, Britain and South Africa, are gaining global attention and are now the focus of scientific research. ”When I heard about it, I listened and the science of it seemed to make sense, but with fertiliser costs at about $1200 to $1500 a tonne, the economics of it got me into gear,” Mr Linklater says.

At today’s prices it would have cost him $500,000 in phosphorous and nitrogen fertilisers to prepare 3900 hectares for planting. But in the two years since he and his sons began trialling the new technique, no fertiliser has been applied. The saving is enough to wipe a healthy chunk off the debt that he, like many drought-stricken farmers, has racked up through years of meagre rain and below-break-even wheat prices.

This just drives home the extent to which most of our food is made out of oil.  At least this guys is using the direct route.

No, in fact it is recovered fissile material from nuclear bombs, largely Soviet bombs.  From the Times:

“It’s a great, easy source” of fuel, said Marina V. Alekseyenkova, an analyst at Renaissance Capital and an expert in the Russian nuclear industry that has profited from the arrangement since the end of the cold war.

But if more diluted weapons-grade uranium isn’t secured soon, the pipeline could run dry, with ramifications for consumers, as well as some American utilities and their Russian suppliers.

Already nervous about a supply gap, utilities operating America’s 104 nuclear reactors are paying as much attention to President Obama’s efforts to conclude a new arms treaty as the Nobel Peace Prize committee did.

Now if we could just start another nuclear arms race, maybe we could solve the whole global warming problem (Iran, I’m looking at you).

Timelapse movie: The Alps — part II (night) from Michael Rissi on Vimeo.

via boingboing

A natural pond is usually larger than a normal pool to accommodate the plants, rocks, and natural vegetationthat comprise the filter zone (separate from the designated swimming area). Once water filters through the plant zone, it is then pumped through a UV filter to ensure maximum cleanliness and aeration. Typically, natural ponds have a waterfall to pump water back into the swimming area.

The idea is to use the plants in place of chlorine and whatever other chemicals pools need.  It would be nice if the UV filter could be eliminated and the whole system could be ‘natural’

A company called E-Fuel is producing washer/dryer-sized refineries for producing biofuel from sugars and yeast.  It’s essentially a still for making gas rather than moonshine.  They go for around $10k each and can produce 5 gallons of E100 per day.  Requires water, yeast, sugar and power.  Supposedly produces biodiesel around $1/gallon.

via Wired

We’re nearing an inflection point in our discussions about sustainability and building a bright green future.

Mainly, this is because we’re realizing that our task is larger and more pressing than we thought even a few years ago. It’s not enough to be less destructive, to be more sustainable. We need to actually start being non-destructive, being as close to sustainable as we understand how to get. And we need to do it quickly. As Dana Meadows said, in an era where we seem to be running hard up against the limits of so many natural systems, the ultimate limit turns out to be time. If we don’t make truly massive shifts in the next decade or so, we’re committing ourselves to huge troubles; if we here in the developed world don’t transform ourselves in the next two decades, we’re committing ourselves and our descendants to catastrophe.

Given how far we need to go, how quickly (I think we need — for reasons I’ll explain in another piece — about a 95% reduction in our impacts in the next two decades), we can’t waste time on what doesn’t work. We’re being forced, I think, to look at our solutions with a colder eye and clearer judgment. What works? What scales? What has the best political chances of happening? What can make money or creative infectious behavioral change or in some other way self-replicate? What solutions, in short, could work?

Everything else — all the solutions that don’t make that cut — are at best distractions, and in our current situation, where we’re fighting in the public debate for mindshare for real change (and change-stalling propaganda surrounds us), even distractions are not incidental. The idea that every small step is a good thing is simply wrong.

We have inherited a whole set of solutions by conventional wisdom, many of them surrounding lifestyle choices. Almost all of us believe that someone who buys local food, who drives a hybrid, who lives in a well-insulated house, who wears organic clothing and who religiously recycles and composts and avoids unnecessary purchases is living sustainably.

They are not. As we’ve explored a bunch of times in different ways here on Worldchanging, the parts of our lives that actually fall within our direct control are the tips of systemic icebergs, and often changing them does nothing to alter those systems: not individually, not in small groups, not even in larger lifestyle movements. If we’re going to avoid catastrophe, we need to change those larger systems, and change them for everyone, and change them quickly.

It’s quite clear that some of the “solutions” we embrace don’t actually motivate people to change at all. There’s hard evidence suggesting that most of the time, small steps do not actually motivate people to later take larger steps (most people adopt a small change or two and then feel they’ve done their part and stop).

Other times, we ask people to pay attention to the wrong things. Though the efforts some contrarians’ make to discredit local food verge on the absurd, the fact remains that food miles are not the most important measurement of food system sustainability. Perhaps more importantly, some observers’ suggest that local food often serves as a substitute for systemic engagement in movements to change agricultural systems at the largest levels, and I think there;s truth there. Certainly, many of us have a tendency to engage in iconic consumption, without really examining the entirety of our impact and whether our time and money might best be spent trying to effect change in some other way.

That’s not to say that its wrong to garden or recycle or buy CFLs. It’s not. It’s never wrong to try to live a life that’s internally consonant with the change we want to see in the world. Most of those life choices also make us healthier, happier and better off in the long run. So no harm in doing them (disclosure: I garden, recycle and use CFLs). Some personal choices, like forgoing beef and living without a car, not only create some measurable impact, they’re also public enough to signal your beliefs. But we still shouldn’t mistake these things for creating sustainable systems. Until we have systems that reduce the numbers of cows and cars we all use, we’re not making any real progress at all.

We can no longer afford to mistake the symbolic for the effective, or put our hopes in the mystical idea that if enough of us embrace small steps, our values will ripple mysteriously out through the culture and utterly transform it. We’ve been saying that for more than 40 years, it hasn’t happened and we need to stop lying to ourselves that it will. Live the life that fits your values, but don’t mistake that for changing the world.

Far too much of the debate about sustainability still orbits around ideas of smallness, slowness, simplicity, relocalization that often obscure the reality of our lives from us. Their main virtue is that they make incredibly complex systems that we cannot change alone seem susceptible to easy understanding and quick transformation through personal choice. In other words, they let us deceive ourselves in ways that are extremely comforting.

We need to be better than that. We need to be bigger than that. We need to understand that a bright green future will look like nothing that has ever come before, and will involve us changing the fabric of our lives, not just the ornament. It will involve needing to be more connected to global networks of people working towards change, more committed to seeking understanding and transparency in complexity, more engaged with systems that make us feel small — because we are small, and the world is complex, and we can’t do this alone.

We’re redesigning our civilization. We need to be people who are tackling the most important systems around us, employing tools that can change them quickly at scale. We need to get comfortable talking policy, working in parallel collaborations, thinking in systems, understanding infrastructures and markets and flows, and using money to power comprehensive transformations.

The opposite of democracy is depoliticization. The idea that “regular” people can’t do this is insultingly elitist, psychologically isolating and inherently depoliticizing. Of course we can. Even those of us who lack formal education in these fields are entirely capable of contributing in important ways to big efforts — if we learn to think of ourselves as connected and collaborating, and start to pay more attention.

Ah, attention. Some will stop there and say, “people are lazy! they won’t pay attention to anything!” There’s some truth to that. We are primates are lazy, inclined to sit around, much sweets and groom each other. But we’re also curious, and passionate.

Many of us want to know how things work around us. Many of us feel passionate about the need for change. The simple hard reality is that the powers that be are incredibly effective at working to disillusion us, to make us too cynical to act in our own best interests, so overwhelmed by jargon and bureaucratic process that we get bored and go home. We are apathetic and disengaged in some very large part because that’s the way some people want us to be. That’s a hard truth, but still truth.

The answer to that apathy and disengagement is not to demand less from people. That hasn’t worked. Instead, I think, we need to regard not being boring as one of our cardinal design principles. We need to make change interesting, and fun, and provocative, and full of good times and relationships with others and meaningful work. We need to approach complex, vast systems in terms of art, and game design, and public festivals every bit as much as in terms of reports and committees and NGOs. We need a cultural movement, for sure — it just has to be a cultural movement aimed at making systems geekery a passionate part of the lives of regular people.

That, ultimately, is the biggest problem with the hand-made approach to sustainability: even when it works, it makes us passionate about small things in our lives, not engagement with the world. Visiting a neighbor’s great backyard garden may well encourage me to want to grow my own; it doesn’t encourage me to understand global agrobusiness, connect with food policy activists and do something to change the $2,000 in destructive agricultural subsidies the U.S. government pays with part of my taxes every year. The hand-made can be beautiful. It can be deeply personally meaningful. I’d like a world where the hand-made abounds. But the hand-made is not The Revolution.

NYTimes Article