19.20.21: Studying the Rise of Supercities : TreeHugger
The video-sharing site Vimeo has HD capability and excellent conversion into Flash. Better showcase than Youtube for this, and quicker playback than my own post of the video below.
And for other video shot with the same camera (Sony PMW-EX1) check this Vimeo channel.
Never thought I'd see a link to an Ernst & Young report on Worldchanging. Good as far as it goes but in the Global Overview there is no discussion of Mexico and Latin America. No infrastructure concerns there?
WorldChanging: Infrastructure for the Future We Want
On a site devoted to title sequences.
Forget the film, watch the titles
Winners of a competition poster design. And a great blog.
Winners of the What is Graphic design poster competition | Veerle's blog
The El Diquis dam in Costa Rica is set to start construction a year from now. Archaeologists have that year to find, study and conserve all sites in the flood zone.
Costa Rican Archaeology to be Lost?
Some footage from Maya Carnaval in Chenalho, with Monkeys from Chamula. Shot on Sony PMW-EX1.
The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw - Bruce Barcott - Book Review - New York Times
A firehose of information from your neighborhood. Or at least from mine.
EveryBlock: A news feed for your block.
Is cruising any greener than flying? | Travel | guardian.co.uk
"Travelling to New York and back on the QEII, in other words, uses almost 7.6 times as much carbon as making the same journey by plane.”
For the proposed 7th street bike trail.
And for more inspiration:
Value in an age of "free" content.
From the comments:
"The one thing that becomes increasingly less "free" as options for spending it increase, is our time."
Winner of the Greener Gadgets Design Competition 2008, this is a DIY energy meter to show the consumption of any appliance. May be a good project for the Girls Gone Green at the LESGC.
EnerJar | The do-it-yourself power meter
The Guatemalan military is assuming a larger role in national security in the country, due to widespread narco trafficking and destruction of natural resources. Not a welcome development, but not unexpected.
EJERCITO SE SUMA A SISTEMA DE SEGURIDAD NACIONAL
(click for larger image)
As we take baby steps into the planetarium world, the professionals out there are making advances in shooting for domed theaters. Here is a small version of a 2304X2304 image that was taken by Planetarium Hamburg.
Here is their description: "6mm f5.6 lens together with a custom
developed linear optical relay of about 1.7 which allows the entire 220°
FoV to be used on the RED sensor".
Some of the solutions are too expensive, some impractical - 130 days to back up a terabyte - but this is a good survey of alternatives.
The Economics of Online Backup - Inside Lightroom
"The best car-related innovation we have is not to improve the car, but eliminate the need to drive it everywhere we go.
And the amount of density the study's authors call for is extremely modest. They encourage building new projects at a density of 13 homes per acre, raising the average national density from 7.6 units per acre to 9 an acre."
Let's see. Lower East Side of Manhattan had record density in 1910 of 120 households per acre. 375,000 people per square mile, 640 acres per square mile, 586 people per acre. Today, that figure is 227 people per acre. 100 homes per acre?
NYC is the Greenest City in America
"The key to New York's relative environmental benignity is its extreme compactness. Manhattan's population density is more than eight hundred times that of the nation as a whole. Placing one and a half million people on a twenty-three-square-mile island sharply reduces their opportunities to be wasteful, and forces the majority to live in some of the most inherently energy efficient residential structures in the world: apartment buildings. It also frees huge tracts of land for the rest of America to sprawl into."
But the tradeoff may be in disaster preparedness.
"...even those who do own a vehicle may not be able to leave the city in a hurry. That’s because many of the crucial transportation arteries lie dangerously within the lowest regions.
Even the tamest of hurricanes would likely produce a storm surge of about 7.5 feet around New York City, according to a 2000 report organized by the federal government’s U.S. Global Change Research Program. Likewise, Category 2 or 3 storms would bring a rise in sea level of at least 17.2 to 20.5 feet respectively.
Most major bridges, tunnels and subway lines have openings well below these surge levels."
Should we keep our little inflatable boat in Manhattan, in case the subways and tunnels flood? Could we paddle across the Hudson?