Of course, I went on a rampage, searching for a drippy faucet, putting food coloring in the toilet tanks to check for slow leaks, replacing one of the valve assemblies, and checking the water meter outside every night as if my life depended on it.  Oddly, there were no big leaks, and no obvious changes in our consumption rate.

At that moment, I could’ve used the HydroSense monitor developed by the University of Washington Ubiquitous Computing Lab.  It’s a device that can measure water consumption throughout the house from a single installation point, and it wirelessly communicates your water data back to the web.

How’s it work? Basically, every time you turn on a faucet or flush a toilet, a pressure wave propagates through your home plumbing system.  The HydroSense, attached to an outdoor spigot or utility sink, can measure these waves and uses software to distinguish between a shower and a sprinkler.  Cool!

In the end, my massive water “leak” was probably caused when the company my neighborhood hired to repaint our townhomes used MY outdoor spigot to feed their greedy pressure washers.  Grrrrr.  If I had a HydroSense, I could’ve caught them wet-handed!

via Sustain

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T-Rex by Scott Kinmartin

I’m no economist, but from what I understand, incentives tend to encourage certain behaviors. For example, if I gave Billy $10 to punch his little sister, he’d probably do it.  Now, if I came along and offered him $10 to punch her or $5 not to punch her, I suspect he’d be compelled to punch her again.

With what Billy has learned from our little social experiment, he could someday serve as chair of the committee that sets our national energy policy.  His sister will likely found a renewable energy company.

A recent study from the Environmental Law Institute attempts to quantify the incentives that Uncle Sam provides to stimulate various energy sources, from dinosaur-based fossil fuel technologies that have been around since the dawn of man (literally) to newer, cleaner, greener renewable sources.  Guess what: we’re still heaping money on mature technologies, feeding the proverbial dinosaur, and starving the fledgling renewables.

According to the study:

• The federal government provided substantially larger subsidies to fossil fuels than to renewables. Subsidies to fossil fuels—a mature, developed industry that has enjoyed government support for many years—totaled approximately $72 billion over the study period, representing a direct cost to taxpayers.
• Subsidies for renewable fuels, a relatively young and developing industry, totaled $29 billion over the same period.
• Subsidies to fossil fuels generally increased over the study period (though they decreased in 2008), while funding for renewables increased but saw a precipitous drop in 2006-07 (though they increased in 2008). The largest subsidies to fossil fuels were written into the U.S. Tax Code as permanent provisions. By comparison, many subsidies for renewables are time-limited initiatives implemented through energy bills, with expiration dates that limit their usefulness to the renewables industry.

So, we give two and a half times more money permanently to technologies we’re trying to get rid of, and then wonder why these “renewables just aren’t cost effective.”  Maybe the policies are set by dinosaurs themselves: they are not noted for their large, complex brains.

The other eye-0pener in this graph is just how much money we’ve funneled to the lackluster ethanol industry.

• Almost half of the subsidies for renewables are attributable to corn-based ethanol, the use of which, while decreasing American reliance on foreign oil, raises considerable questions about effects on climate.

Is anyone else interested in stopping ALL the subsidies and seeing which technologies win out in a massive evolution-inspired free-for-all?

Spoiler alert: the dinosaurs don’t make it out alive.

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A self-professed “creative technologist”, Evan Grant explores the science and art of cymatics, or the visualization of sound.  I’ve never heard of the field, but it’s absolutely stunning:

In the end, he suggests that perhaps sound played a role in the formation and shape of the universe after the big bang.

“Let there be light,” indeed.

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I’ve often considered taking an Amtrak train for business and personal trips, but I always run into the same problems:

1. It doesn’t go where I want to go.

2. It’s not any less expensive than flying.

3. It’s not any faster than driving.

As a minor consolation, an enterprising graphic designer has recast the Amtrak route map in the style of subway diagrams, showing stops by route rather than strict geography.  At least it helps me to address my first concern: now I can see more quickly that the trains don’t go where I want to go.

Has anyone had any success taking the train?  How did it compare to flying or driving?

via Chart Porn

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Brainstorm

I like to think of myself as a creative person – we all do.   There’s something satisfying about making something new:  playing music, drawing a diagram, or coming up with a killer shortcut in the way you fold laundry.  It doesn’t really matter the subject, we humans were born to imagine, alter, and experiment on the world around us.

Of course, we’re not creative all the time.  In fact, we like to come up with systems, structures, and repeatable processes to ensure consistent results over time, and we’ve applied that thinking to the how of creativity. Don’t believe me?  When’s the last time your friend, spouse, or boss asked you to “just brainstorm” with them for a minute?

A brainstorm is a structure: get a group of people to toss out whatever pops into their heads without comment or judgment.  We repeat the mantra “THERE ARE NO BAD IDEAS” over and over, hoping someone will actually believe it.  Question is, do brainstorms actually produce better ideas than our other structures for creative thinking?

Apparently not.  A recent Newsweek article cites a study from Yale in 1958 where researchers showed that a team produces more and better ideas when they work on the problem alone rather than as a group.  Why am I just learning this now!?!

The article offers some alternatives to brainstorming that should actually improve your creative output.  I’ve picked out a couple to share, but they’re all worthwhile.

Follow a passion.

Rena Subotnik, a researcher with the American Psychological Association, has studied children’s progression into adult creative careers. Kids do best when they are allowed to develop deep passions and pursue them wholeheartedly—at the expense of well-roundedness. “Kids who have deep identification with a field have better discipline and handle setbacks better,” she noted. By contrast, kids given superficial exposure to many activities don’t have the same centeredness to overcome periods of difficulty.

I believe this one wholeheartedly.  When I was in a career that was not suited to my natural talents and interests, I took a serious hit to not only my happiness, but also my creativity.  I couldn’t even imagine what I might like to do as a career during that time.  It was only through pursuing my interests and passions over a number of months that my creativity and sense of purpose returned, and I found some work that fit me like a glove.

Being well-rounded is SO overrated, anyway.

Ditch the suggestion box.

If you want to increase innovation within an organization, one of the first things to do is tear out the suggestion box, advises Isaac Getz, professor at ESCP Europe Business School in Paris. Formalized suggestion protocols, whether a box on the wall, an e-mailed form, or an internal Web site, actually stifle innovation because employees feel that their ideas go into a black hole of bureaucracy. Instead, employees need to be able to put their own ideas into practice. One of the reasons that Toyota’s manufacturing plant in Georgetown, Ky., is so successful is that it implements up to 99 percent of employees’ ideas.

The heading on this one jumped out at me precisely because I know how effective “suggestion boxes” can be at companies that actually implement the suggestions! I’m glad they acknowledged Toyota at the end of the paragraph.  It’s not the shape of the box or the form of the input that matters, it’s the fact that some companies respect their employees’ ideas and creativity, and that makes employees want to be creative.  If you throw away all the gifts your kid makes for you in school, you can bet they’re not going to try very hard to make you more gifts.

What do you do to unlock your creative potential?  What works?

via Lifehacker

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via Chart Porn

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Let me level with you a second: I’ve been in my house for over 2 years now, and I never once cleaned the coils on the refrigerator. I just didn’t.   I never thought of it, I really didn’t know if the coils were underneath or in the back, and since the fridge is a relatively small energy consumer in my house, I just didn’t worry about it.

Then, one day, I found a device that looks like a giant pipe-cleaner or bottle brush wedged in beside the fridge.  I figured that it must be meant for cleaning dust from the coils, so I got down on the floor, removed the grill, and peered into the warmly humming void.  I poked the pipe cleaner around a bit, and a cloud of dust and debris gently wafted from the hole.  This was not a good sign…

A refrigerator works on the basic principle of compression and expansion.  When liquids evaporate and expand, they cool down and absorb heat.  If you compress a gas into a liquid, it gives off that heat.  Your refrigerator (or the air conditioner you are really beginning to appreciate this week) works on the same principle, except that it expands and compresses the refrigerant in two different places so that it cools the inside of the fridge, and sends the heat to the outside. That’s why the air at the bottom of the fridge always feels nice and warm – it’s pumping heat from inside, via the refrigerant in the coils, to the outside.

It’s also why you should clean those outside coils regularly.  Mine had so much dust built up by years of neglect, that it was basically like putting a fur coat on the hot coils. All of that extra insulation meant that the coils couldn’t emit their heat, so my refrigerator had to run longer and more often than it should.

Here’s a picture of just some of the dust I cleaned from the coils that fateful day.  You can also see my handy cleaner brush. (Note: the actual volume of dust was much greater – this is just what I didn’t vacuum up or inhale during the cleaning process.  I also found a penny, so the ROI for this project was immediate!)

To really drive home the importance of this home-maintenance procedure, I present to you my new Coil Cleaning Campaign mascot.  His name is Dusty and he’s a Scottish Terrier.  I know he’s cute, but please don’t pet him.  He’s absolutely filthy.

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1960 Chevrolet Impala by Hugo90

Take a walk with me…  The year is 1960:  Elvis returns home from active duty.  Eisenhower signs the civil rights act, and Kennedy edges out Nixon for the presidency.  Ben-Hur wins best picture.  And gas costs just $2.25 a gallon (adjusted for inflation, of course.)

You hop into your new Chevy Impala and drive about 4,000 miles that year.  Over the next decade, decreasing gas prices allow for longer commutes, and you push five thousand, then six thousand miles per year.  Then WHAM! the Arab oil embargo pushes prices up $0.43 per gallon and for the first time, people drive a little less.

Over the last fifty years, the pattern has remained largely the same: low prices drive longer communtes, while sharp, punctuated spikes in what we pay at the pump cause a temporary plateau or even decrease in the miles we drive. This all becomes more fascinating in 2009 and 2010, when a stagnant economy lead to a decrease in both the price of gas, and the number of miles we drive per year.  High unemployment rates meant fewer commutes, and presumably a sense of frugality about unnecessary trips and travel.

Gas Prices vs. Miles from the NYT

There are many stories in the price vs. miles graph, and Hannah Fairfield of the NYT does a great job at describing the big events.  What will the next decade bring?  Anyone care to make a prediction?

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via Dan Ariely

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Leaf by Melisande

That title is loaded with jargon, but it’s exciting jargon so bear with me a second.

When I was in graduate school studying to be a research scientist, I got very excited by two things – process improvement and bio-inspired design or biomimicry.  I pursued the two separately, attending workshops hosted by the American Society for Quality where we talked about Lean and Six Sigma, and by training as a “Biologist at the Design Table” with the Biomimicry Institute.

While my recent work on biomimicry has been limited to a handful of seminars and guest lectures in classes at UNC, I’ve spent considerable time learning and practicing Lean. Imagine my surprise when I found my two separate worlds were not so separate after all.

See, Lean practitioners are not concerned solely with established processes – they need tools and standards for designing new products and processes.  The Production Preparation Process (3P) is focused on just that: spurring creativity to design something new, and “try-storming” your ideas with models and mock-ups so that you’re sure the process will work before you commit the capital for equipment.

During the idea generation phase, 3P asks participants to look to nature for inspiration in solving design challenges.  The idea is that nature has already solved a few design and engineering challenges in unique, elegant, and sustainable ways.  Is this starting to sound familiar?  Could that, perhaps, be the basis for biomimicry as well?

The natural world is a cauldron of research and development, trial and error, where technologies that fail are called fossils and technologies that succeed survive to fight another day. Why reinvent the wheel, when nature has figured out how to slither, walk, hover and fly in so many different ways?

GE used a 3P team to launch its new GeoSpring Hybrid Water Heater.  Check out the video below for a meaningful peek behind the scenes as a cross-functional team collaborates to create an entirely new process – presumably with a little help from Mother Nature.

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