Food Miles

Measuring Food in Miles…

An analysis of the materials needed to produce our food can be startling. Ten litres of orange juice needs a litre of diesel fuel for processing and transport, and 220 litres of water for irrigaton and washing the fruit. The water may be a renewable resource, but the fuel is not only irreplaceable but is a pollutant, too.

Add comment Datestamp: June 27th, 2007

CIA Papers Detail Assasination Plots, LSD Testing

The Family Jewels
Details of a CIA plot to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro and of the spy agency’s wiretapping campaign against U.S. journalists, civil rights activists and anti-Vietnam war protesters were among hundreds of pages of internal reports released Tuesday.

Add comment Datestamp: June 26th, 2007

peoplepowered

peoplepowered

People Powered designs experimental pilot programs that integrate art, environmentalism, and communities. By presenting these projects in exhibitions and public locations in the city, People Powered creates a platform for discussing how these practices may intersect.

Add comment Datestamp: June 25th, 2007

Freeplay Energy

Self-Sufficient Products give you Freedom and Independence from Traditional Power Sources

Freeplay Energy plc is the original and leading global brand of clean, dependable energy products. Freeplay Energy’s patented technology harnesses human, solar and rechargeable energy and converts it into electricity to power unique portable, consumer products replacing conventional disposable battery-powered systems that are environmentally toxic and expensive. The current product range includes radios, torches, lanterns, mobile phone chargers and standalone foot powered generators. Freeplay Energy’s Lifeline radio is distributed throughout the developing world by the Freeplay Foundation (www.freeplayfoundation.org) as well as by aid and humanitarian organizations such as Unicef and other United Nations agencies.

Add comment Datestamp: June 25th, 2007

Plastic Bag Recycling

MAKE: Blog: DIY: Plastic bag fabric

Something I’ve been doing with our plastic bags — will put some of my examples up here but for now check these out:

“Plastic shopping bags are a scourge on the environment. What to do with all those plastic bags that seem to be just hanging around everywhere. One idea that seems to be a hit amongst the DIY and creative arty crowd is to fuse various plastic bags together and make fabric out of them. The basic process is to iron the plastic bags, with a sheet of baking paper between iron and plastic, until two or more sheets fuse together. Sound easy - well in theory it is, but it takes a little practice to get the timing and heat just right…”

Add comment Datestamp: June 24th, 2007

Documentary about the Dropping of the Bomb, 1945

WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN

I saw this last night at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. Coming soon to HBO. See it if you can. Devastating reminder of the horrors of the atomic bomb and nuclear war.

“Featuring interviews with fourteen atomic bomb survivors, many of whom have never spoken publicly before, and four Americans intimately involved in the bombings, WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN provides a detailed exploration of the bombings and their aftermath. In a succession of riveting personal accounts, the film reveals both unimaginable suffering and extraordinary human resilience. Survivors (85% of victims were civilians) not vaporized during the attacks (140,000 died in Hiroshima, 70,000 in Nagasaki) continued to suffer from burns, infection, radiation sickness and cancer (another 160,000 deaths). As Sakue Shimohira, ten years old at the time, says of the moment she considered killing herself after losing the last member of her family: ‘I realized there are two kinds of courage - the courage to die and the courage to live.’”

Add comment Datestamp: June 22nd, 2007

Big Coal’s Dirty Secrets

NPR : Jeff Goodell
Jeff Goodell’s book Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future, now out in paperback, argues that the U.S. is more dependent than ever on coal. Goodell is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine; he’s also the author of Our Story: 77 Hours That Tested Our Friendship and Our Faith, based on the account of nine miners trapped underground.

Add comment Datestamp: June 21st, 2007

1944 Map of ancient courses of the Mississippi River

Source: Pruned: Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River

“Harold N. Fisk’s 1944 monumental tome on nature at its most mundane and sublime is, amazingly, available online and free. Landscape architects in every specialty have much to glean from it, not the least of which are water engineering techniques, ecological and geological processes, graphic representation, and the ideological and philosophical implications of reconstructing the Mississippi River.

The maps, scanned at high resolution and full scale, are some of the most beautiful I’ve seen.”

Add comment Datestamp: June 17th, 2007

Closeup of Blue Seat on Sign

This was one of my favorite projects from Conflux 2006. Have a Seat is still providing resting opportunities for weary urbanites or people who just want to take a break to watch the world pass by. It has acquired a nice “patina” after nearly a year. This year’s Conflux 2007 participants will soon be announced for the September festival. I am part of the curatorial team for flux07.

Add comment Datestamp: June 17th, 2007

The Handwriting on the Road

An Artist Draws the Flood Line - New York Times
In landscape drawing, lines are usually representations of the contours of the observed world: a horizon, a mountain ridge, a tendril. But a line that the artist Eve S. Mosher began drawing last month is striving for a different kind of effect. To begin with, it is not of the landscape, exactly. It is on it.

Add comment Datestamp: June 17th, 2007