Business & Politics

"Alarm Clock 2" Image credit:Flickr, Alan Cleaver

To adapt the nation's power grid to increased use of renewable power, it is proposed that procedures for meeting AC power transmission frequency standards be altered somewhat (see below for explanation of existing practice). Associated Press reports that the North American Electric Reliability Corp. wants to see a revised scheme tested for a year, during which clocks directly running on AC power may slow or speed up a few minutes per year (extent and direction of change depends on which regional grid you live in). Nothing to head into a YTK-style panic over, mind you: devices with AC-to-DC transformers and/or running on batteries will not be affected; but some alarms, traffic lights, kitchen appliances, and so on will be.

Travel & Nature

Photo via Wikipedia Commons

Vacations are a time for people kick off their work boots for flip-flops and trade in their neck-ties for fanny packs, but it's no picnic for everybody. While marauding throngs of camera-wielding tourists are a fact of life in destination spots around the world, researchers have found that it's rubbing some locals the wrong way -- not surprising, those with the most hair. Barbary macaques, native to Morocco and Algiers, are among tourists' favorite things to gawk, gab, and snap at -- but scientists say all this human monkey business is sending their anxiety levels through the roof.

Design & Architecture

Via BoingBoing: Image credit Brock Davis, who writes:

"I couldn't build a tree house for my son, so I built him a broccoli house instead."

Now that's green, minimalist, and another TreeHugger tree house.

Design & Architecture

Image credit Wikipedia

Urban renewal and restoration is tough, even in vibrant, successful cities (or perhaps, particularly in vibrant cities). The Samaritaine Store in Paris has been boarded up for years, while people waited to learn what would happen to this gorgeous landmark. When I was first in Paris on my architectural grand tour many years ago I was staying nearby, and would go to the roof of the store every morning for a café créme and a croissant. There was a circular diorama built into the round handrail, where you could identify all the landmarks in Paris- from 1933, when the fabulous art deco portion of the complex was completed. It was my favourite spot in the city.

Now, Japanese architects SANAA are doing what looks like a stunning and sensitive renovation and restoration, blending the old and new.

Science & Technology

Image: Screen grab of Google website

Google Crunches the Numbers on Energy
Google is a company that tends to put its money where its mouth is: They invested around half a billion dollars in various clean energy projects, some at the commercial deployment level, while some are at the R&D; stage, and they've often stressed the important of clean energy in their various communications. Their latest effort to convince the general public and policymakers takes the form of a website where they show projections made about various scenarios where more or less effort is put into clean energy innovation. Check it out: Google.org's Clean Energy Innovation Website

Science & Technology

Photo: Flickr, CC

Capturing the Wind for Later Use, More or Less...
As we've said many times in the past, wind power is great, but to use it to its fullest potential, we need to figure out how to cheaply store the energy that it produces at times when we don't need it (meaning mostly at night). Various schemes have been been proposed to do this, including using batteries from hybrid and electric cars - either at the end of the car's life or with vehicle-to-grid (V2G) connections - and pumping water uphill or holding it in huge reservoirs behind hydropower dams. But we don't yet have that many EVs, and some places don't have much hydro, which is why compressed air storage seems interesting right now.

Design & Architecture

People think of the suburbs as a place full of kids, soccer games and minivans, but this is changing fast. People like to stay in the places they know, and as the kids move away the parents are staying. The density of people per acre is dropping fast, as is the need for schools and soccer pitches, while the need for senior services is going to dramatically increase. My mother in law lives on the cul-de-sac shown above; it used to be full of kids. Now, she is not the only person living on in the house she has been in for forty years.

According to the Washington Post, they either don't want to leave, or can't.

Business & Politics

Photo: Rachel Cernansky

I spent part of last month walking from home to home in Kagamega, Kenya, a mostly-rural region known for one of the last remaining tracts of the Congolese forest belt. It is not dissimilar to so much of the developing world, however, in its lack of access to clean water, which is available to about 15 percent of homes in rural areas, according to Francis Odhiambo, Provincial Public Health Officer for the region.

I was in Kakamega with the Carbon for Water campaign, run by Vestergaard Frandsen, the company behind the LifeStraw water filter and one the largest makers of mosquito nets in the world. VF was distributing nearly a million LifeStraw Family water filters, which are designed to provide a family of five with clean water for three years—but more notable is the payment plan for the filters.