- Glacier Emergency Blankets
Switzerland is covering its glaciers with mega-blankets; protecting it’s only natural resource, snow. This has been going on for 5 years now and appears to be successful, at a cots of $12 million per square mile.
(from Times Online)
- Potty training pig farms
In the U.S., one pork factory farm can house more the 500,000 pigs. They produce more waste per year then the residence of Manhattan. The unregulated wastes causes massive damage to ground water.
What better way to control the waste then to potty train them pigs.
“Taiwan’s 6.5 million pigs are a source of river pollution. But one Taiwanese farmer has found that potty training is porkers goes a long way in both conserving water and keeping it clean. He’s trained his hogs to use a litter box, and has had such great results that he’s starting to advocate the practice to other farmers.” – from treehugger.com
Will it does cut down on waste? Yes, but it still needs to be deposed of somewhere. Shit in = shit out.
- POst Global warming Survival Kit
In the running up to the climate summit in Copenhagen, we’re featuring two approaches to the subject.
1. One approach to the subject is an installation by Petko Dourmana which “portrays a dystopian scenario: a “nuclear winter” initiated by political groups or governments in order to solve the problem of global warming and the melting of the polar icecaps.” Using night vision goggles and infrared projections one can navigate the dark post-apocalyptic north pole. It suggested a future where we may be blind without technology and thus highlighting the contradiction this dependance has been created by unchecked technology and its subsequent damage to the environment. Part of Transmediale ‘09.
2. Another approach suggested by Amazon is “The Global Warming Survival Kit: The Must-have Guide to Overcoming Extreme Weather, Power Cuts, Food Shortages and Other Climate Change Disasters” by Brian Clegg capitalises on the fear of ..” Don’t wait until it’s too late: your survival could be at stake.” While we may face these issues, I doubt that the “how to survive a shark attack” type literature will do much prepare you. But the fact that bandwagon authors are seizing the day causes pause.
- Grow Pork, without the hassle of turds.
“Researchers in the Netherlands have created what was described as soggy pork and are now investigating ways to improve the muscle tissue in the hope that people will one day want to eat it.
No one has yet tasted the product, but it is believed the artificial meat could be on sale within five years.
Vegetarian groups welcomed the news, saying there was “no ethical objection” if meat was not a piece of a dead animal. ” from the Telegraph via next nature.
Maybe they mean animal right activists welcome the news. Somehow, I don’t think many vegetarians would jump at the chance to eat test-tube pork, nor pork lovers. But as the companies website markets mickey-mouse shaped pork, this could become the perfect new lunch-able.
- Serial Killer Otters
by mikebaird
from SF Gate
“Their motive is a mystery. All I know is we suddenly have a couple of otters killing seals at a fairly fast pace,” said Jim Harvey, associate professor at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, which trains students from the California State University system.
“And if we get five or six of these otters in the slough, we won’t have a seal pup left.”
- Hunting Minefields in the Dark.
“The bugs can be mixed into a colourless solution, which forms green patches when sprayed onto ground where mines are buried.Edinburgh University said the microbes could be dropped by air onto danger areas.
Within a few hours, they would indicate where the explosives can be found. ” then wait until it’s dark and walk quietly across the Korean border.
Glowing bugs could find landmines (via cory @ BoingBoing)
- Top Sirloin and Roasted Potatoes – Taking over the World
Beautiful landscapes of meat and towering slices of juicy hide. Carnivores delight. Vegetarians look elsewhere.
Thanks to www.morganclevy.com.
- more insects under our control
“By connecting electrodes and radio antennas to the nervous systems of beetles, the researchers were able to make them take off, dive and turn on command. The cyborg insects were created at the University of California, Berkeley, by engineers led by Hirotaka Sato and Michel Maharbiz as part of a programme funded by the Pentagon’s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).” - new scientistIt’s stunningly similar to pulse based microcomputing.
- Spiders harnessed for weaving; forced labor
“The spiders are harnessed … held down in a delicate way,” Godley says, “so you need people to do this who are very tactile so the spiders are not harmed. So there’s a chain of about 80 people who go out every morning at four o’clock, collect spiders, we get them in by 10 o’clock. They’re in boxes, they’re numbered, and then as they get silked, about 20 minutes later, they get released back into nature.” -npr
- blood-powered lamp
This lamp makes you bleed for your light. We often just assume that energy to power our TVs, computers, cell phones, and other electronics will always be readily available. But the earth’s resources are scarce – a reality that designer Mike Thompson wants to illustrate (somewhat painfully) with his blood-powered lamp. The single-use lamp forces users to think about where every drop of their energy is coming from–literally.
Article taken from inhabitat.
