Energy
Andrew Zolli (again) points out a fantastic project known as the Eastgate building in Harare, Zimbabwe that was modelled on the termite mound (see biomimicry) and that resulted in 10% lower up front capital costs, lower ongoing running costs, and 20% lower rents for its inhabitants compared with the building next door built with a [...]
This is an extremely long post on Massive Change, the multi-media exhibition that is intended to be the starting point for a global discussion on the role of design in creating our world. Here is a bit from their website that gives you a sense of the goals of the project.
Portland Indymedia (pdximc) has a long and interesting post on the ecological costs of shifting from fossil fuels to biodiesel in particular that is very interesting. In short, it states that we use 1 billion gallons of fossil fuel per day and that we only generate 1.5 billion gallons of vegetable oil per year. He [...]
Wired talks about the demand outstripping supply for both diesel vehicles and hybrid vehicles in the U.S. and how that will likely lead to diesel/hybrid vehicles. The problem is that diesel is still fossil-fuel based, stinky, sooty, and toxic. VW has also publicly declared that they are reversing their stand on hybrid cars and will [...]
Okay, so it has to use human poop to attract the flies and it still can’t actually catch the flies – it has to have them fed to it’s little mouth – but all the same, the interesting parts of this equation are: • it is self-powered • it uses microbial fuel cells to generate [...]
This looks like a blast! Check out the video of somebody goofing around on the prototype Centaur. It uses the Segway balancing technology to allow the user to do perfectly balanced wheelies. What a blast this would be to have around town! (I’m thinking that the posties will like this one WAY more than the [...]
I am extremely interested in this field of bio-energy and am excited by all the possibilities of using microbes to convert solar power into useable hydrogen as well as to store energy similar to traditional batteries. Here is a great Wired Magazine article on some of the upcoming possibilities.
If you have a love of architecture, green homes, virtual reality, and Dilbert, and you have a good half hour to waste spend, I recommend that you visit Scott Adam’s new Virtual home tour at http://www.dilbert.com/duh and be prepared to be blown away. The house design was the result of thousands of Dilbert readers collaborating [...]
I saw one of these Smart cars down at the Concord Festival on the weekend and had the chance to sit in it. It was incredibly roomy up front for the two passengers. I totally fell in love with this car. There is not much room in the back. Less in fact than I had [...]
Martin Tobias over at Deep Green Crystals mentions this morning his geek fetish for a new device called the Firepod. He then goes on to say that this is cool because it is a cigarette plug in that breaks off to a USB and a Firewire cable, each of which can be used to charge [...]
This looks like an interesting energy project being opened in Toronto. Enwave Systems has built a three pipe system that pulls low-temperature water from the bottom of the lake Ontario, extracts the coldness from the water (the process is not mentioned), and then puts the water into the drinking supply. I would be interested to [...]
The Universe is 14 billion years old and will either either re-collapse into itself, expand into a completely diluted state, or rip apart in its 36th billion year in a runaway expansion so violent that galaxies and planets will be torn asunder in a fraction of a second. How do we manage the polarity inherent [...]
