Green the Ungreen Byways



Some may think that designing around our naturally destructive inclinations is submissive. I prefer to think of it as optimistic pragmatism: where stop drop and reverse tactics may fail, we could use a buffer zone into better environmental practices. The very least we can do is ease, baby - ease. Herewith the idea: Design highways as green energy generators.

The proposal would involve mounting horizontal wind turbines above the roadway that would be driven by the moving air generated by the passing traffic. The electricity generated by spinning these turbines could be fed back into the grid. Joe's analysis indicates that based on vehicle speeds of 70 mph each turbine could produce 9,600 kWh per year.

Enough tomfoolery. The source!

Delerium of Options


I came across this image while I was Stumbling through the web. There's a certain irony to the fact that I found it on Good Friday, which is a time of reflection for the Judeo-Christian family of faiths - and, more specifically, on Easter, the end of the Lenten time of abstinence.

Just look at it.

It's beautiful. It's terrifying. It explains why going to the grocery store is never a 3 min affair. You have to flirt with your options, investigate the colours, the proffered toy in the box, the ingredients. The price.

This is as much a manufactured landscape as a Burtynsky photograph.

You realize that this madcap montage really only centres around the same family clusters of flavour and nature, regardless of the aisle. There are Corn Flakes, and Corn Flake knockoffs. There are yellow breakfast cereals with Captains on the box. There are yellow breakfast cereals with a bear on the box. There used to be yellow breakfast cereals with Mr T on the box, but he's no longer a viable breakfast cereal spokesman.
There are 65 different takes on the fruit cup.
There are 2134223 rice cake brands.
Would we notice if our catalogue of food options diminished? What do we do with all this choice? And, the $100,000 question - how much of this is actually bought and consumed. Where does it all go? Likely, the place where all superfluousness goes to die, an Everest of breakfast rejects, guarded by the empty calls of overfed seagulls.

My brilliant friend Jason has an image like this one on his blog, as well as a reflective response to this kind of vivid consumerism.

His image lives here

His design solution lives here