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January 29 2012
January 28 2012
Goats Replace Lawnmowers in San Francisco

They might not be as fast, but goats offer several advantages over diesel-powered lawnmowers. They’re quieter, they emit fewer greenhouse gases, and they fertilize soil as they go for no extra charge. They can easily climb slopes where mowers can’t reach, and can clear thick brush without the help of herbicides. City Grazing of San Francisco has capitalized on the benefits of goats, and leases out their 50-member herd for landscaping needs around the city.
These back-to-the basics of landscapers who replace mowers with goats, or farmers who replace tractors with horses, represent an unusual trajectory for the Hierarchy of Technology.* Technologies normally become accepted and widely-used before they are superseded by new technologies and sink out of sight. Except for meat production, livestock has largely lost out to machinery in industrialized settings. In a time where oil was cheap and global warming unknown, goats and horses were clearly obsolete. But in other contexts – greenhouse gas emissions, soil erosion, cuteness – it becomes clear that old-fashioned, four-legged technologies can become cutting-edge a second time.
*For more about the Maslow-style Hierarchy of Technology, get your hooves on a copy of the Next Nature book.
January 27 2012
Mark Post – Meet the New Meat
Click here to view the embedded video.
As we are moving towards 9 billion people living on our planet, it seems impossible to continue producing & consuming meat like we do today. Will we soon all be eating rice and beans? Perhaps. Yet professor Mark Post thinks otherwise.
At the Next Nature Power Show, Mark Post presented his plan to create the first lab-grown hamburger. He argues lab-grown meat could become the environmentally friendly alternative for breeding cows and pigs for meat consumption. It is relatively simple to take stem cells from an animal and grow them to produce new muscle tissue. Simply add sugar, proteins and fat and get it into shape with a bit of exercise to created edible meat. The only problem then is to find a new role for our livestock.
January 26 2012
designed to exude information slowly
there are people who can’t afford to hate.
the damned.

lynching, piracy, decapitation, abject media = subjection … and excerpts from Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84
while nearby: piracy -

while art means action now
and action means decapitation
- the ritual slaying of Ronald McDonald
which could be the following:
is at least what the following wants needs likes follows shares and
adverts to in a culture of “distracted tactility” [Rachel Lee after Michael Taussig, 1991]

“This reminded Tengo of a certain event, something from the distant past that he would recall now and then. Something he could never forget. But he decided not to mention it. It would have been a long story. And it was the kind of thing that loses the most important nuances when reduced to words.”
- Haruki Murakami, 1Q84, trans. Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2011, p. 72
“The concepts of time, space, and possibility.
“Tengo knew that time could become deformed as it moved forward. Time itself was uniform in composition, but once consumed, it took on a deformed shape. One period of fime might be terribly heavy and long, while another could be light and short. Occasionally, the order of things could be reversed, and in the worst cases order itself could vanish entirely. Sometimes things that should not be there at all might be added onto time. By adjusting time this way to suit their own purposes, people probably adjusted the meaning of their existences. In other words, by adding such operations to time, they were able – but just barely – to preserve their own sanity. Surely, if a person had to accept the time through which he had just passed uniformly in the given order, his nerves could not bear the strain. Such a life, Tengo felt, would be sheer torture.
“Through the expansion of the brain, people had acquired the concept of temporality, but they simultaneously learned ways in which to change and adjust time. In parallel with their ceaseless consumption of time, people would ceaselessly reproduce time that they had mentally adjusted. This was no ordinary feat. No wonder the brain was said to consume forty percent of the body’s total energy!”
- Ibid., p. 275
my bookmark reads: strike!
TRIPLE DIP – STRIKE
“They’re both policemen now. Not too long ago, my uncle even received official commendation as an outstanding officer – thirty years of continuous service, major contributions to public safety in the district and to improvement of the environment. He was featured in the paper once for saving a stupid dog and her pup that wandered into a rail crossing.”
…
“The ones who did it can always rationalise their actions and even forget what they did. They can turn away from things they don’t want to see. But the surviving victims can never forget. They can’t turn away. Their memories are passed on from parent to child. That’s what the world is, after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.”
- Ibid., pp. 292-293
“I am a part of this world, and this world is a part of me.”
- Ibid., p. 855
Rule #8: Use Human Ethics

Part 8 of the 11 part series Anthropomorphism and Design.
Anthropomorphic products blur the boundaries between products and people. Ethical norms for people don’t usually apply to products and vice versa. For example, there’s no need to apologize if you accidentally run into an object. But with an anthropomorphic product, you might instinctively say sorry, because it seems like the right thing to do. People can apply their attitude towards humans to products, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But transferring attitudes from a product to a human might lead to problems, especially when the product induces abnormal social behavior. Don’t make your product do what you wouldn’t want a person to do.
Image via Lazy Bone.
Transparent Smart Window
Click here to view the embedded video.
Displays have been on our desks for too long. Samsung makes space and introduces the Transparent Smart Window. This LCD touchscreen is powered by the sunlight shining from the outside in. During the night time when there is no light to power the device, one can switch to night mode and use an edge-lit backlight instead. Though still a prototype, the possibilities and consequenses are endless — within the frame that is.
- thanks Martijn Lammerts
January 25 2012
Greetings from the Ohio Turnpike

Apparently freeways have obtained a level of nostalgia that they are now suitable objects to be depicted on postcards (speaking of nostalgic objects). Perhaps one day in the future, freeways will be remembered as the fossils of a society dominated by auto-mobility. Peculiar image of the week.
January 24 2012
Dumpster Fish the Future of Farming

Cities have seen guerilla gardens, rooftop honey production, and fire escape chicken coops. Now, urban farmers may be adding aquaculture to the mix. Headed by ex-banker Christopher Toole, the Society for Aquaponic Values and Education in the Bronx, New York, raises tilapia in tanks and trashcans. Closed recirculating systems use the waste from the fish to fertilize herbs like mint and basil. Toole and his girlfriend and partner, Anya Pozdeeva, envision a future where neighborhood fish like “Bronx Best Blue Tilapia” become a thriving local industry.
Efforts from Toole and other New York tilapia pioneers like NYU professor Martin P. Schreibman may represent the future of fish. As cities grow, and wild fish stocks dwindle to near-depletion by 2050, the urban production of hardy, freshwater species like the tilapia could be a sustainable way for city-dwellers to have their fish and eat it too. Urban aquaculture faces some steep hurdles before becoming a profitable venture. Similar small-scale city fish farms have flopped over costs and lack of demand. However, there is one bright spot: In China, which has practiced fish farming since 2,000 BC, indoor recirculating aquaculture is doing a booming business.
Photo via Blue Ridge Aquaculture.
January 23 2012
Tiny amounts of Alcohol might extend Life

A new study on the effects of cholesterol on the life span of Caenorhabditiselegans, a tiny worm often used in experimentation, resulted in some surprising finds. The life span of the critters was doubled. Now it turned out it wasn’t the cholesterol after all. The cause of the effect was set in motion by the solvent used to deliver the cholesterol. The solvent used? Alcohol.
Now we all know the detrimental effects of alcohol on the human body. So don’t start drinking just yet! The amount of alcohol administered to Caenorhabditis elegans was only a tiny amount. Equivalent to a tablespoon of ethanol in a bathtub full of water or the alcohol in one beer diluted into a hundred gallons of water. Increasing the amount is not very good for the wiggly creatures.
Although not certain on how tiny amounts of alcohol help the worms live longer. It does open some interesting speculation about the beneficial effects of alcohol on humans. If we cut our consumption of the toxic, to a dose proportional to that of what Caenorhabditiselegans helps to live longer, it might do the same for us. After all, the poison is in the dose.
And if the benefits turn out to be experimentally proven, will we ever succeed to make it our next nature to shrink our – almost ritualistic – consumption of the fire water.
via: UCLA Newsroom
January 22 2012
a season of birthdays, peppered with incident, highlights in my salt barrel include: organs and records, a hand, an absence of art, after maths, scoping out company offices, dinners of froth, jelly & Christ’s decomposition . find Alice
Scooba Airport
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Weird biomimicmarketing commercial brought to you by American Airlines.
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