Sunday, January 31, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
doomed (we'd better be)/21
Make anything into a sandwich! Ideal with gardening tools, paint, flies, WC duck, and electric motor parts. Also available in classic white, whole wheat, unleavened, and raisin (yummmm). Here. (grazie infinite MiKo).
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
doomed (we'd better be)/20
Ahhhh, augmented reality. Two cameras to look into the world, two displays to show it in a 1504x480 3D stereoscopic video. You get all the information about your surroundings, literally UPON your surroundings. They're ugly and they'll make you look like a jerk. But for sure they're useful if you don't know where the closest exotic flower shop is. Here.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
doomed (we'd better be)/18
How exhausting can seasoning be? Just pull the cord, invert and hold. The self shakers will do all the work. And they're on sale now! Here.
Friday, January 22, 2010
doomed (we'd better be)/17
Thursday, January 21, 2010
doomed (we'd better be)/16
This is already an evergreen. Wear it at a party, everybody will be staring at you. You'll just never be sure what they are really thinking. Here.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
one good thing about commuting
doomed (we'd better be)/14
Monday, January 18, 2010
bastard quiver tree
Less than 200 specimens left, all in South Africa and Namibia. One of the few perennial plants able to tolerate extremely hot and arid conditions. Porcupines, goats, donkeys, birds use it for shelter, water, and food. It may be ugly, for sure is not that bastard.
doomed (we'd better be)/13
Sunday, January 17, 2010
mmm
The ad (on youtube, here) states that the company devolves 80% of the revenues from its sponsored links to a WWF rainforest conservation project in the Amazons. Its servers are only powered by renewable energy (that's an option you have in Germany, where I believe the servers are based). Both obviously good things.
There are a few things I don't understand, though:
- If you go to the home page, it says "each free web search saves about 2m2 of rainforest". Misleading, otherwise after about 2,000,000,000,000 (if the number's wrong on my humanistic high school) clicks on the "search" button the Amazon rainforest would be saved. In fact, it's 2,000,000,000,000 clicks on sponsored links that would eventually save it. By the way, if you perform automatic searches to help them, they block your IP.
- Search results and sponsored links are provided by Yahoo and Bing. They are absolutely normal results (you want a chainsaw? we got it!). Ecosia is not allowed to reveal any information about the revenue shares Yahoo and Bing get - just believe them when they tell they manage to give WWF at least 80% of the total.
- One of the FAQ states that Google does not partner with altruistic search engines like Ecosia, because they would lose users and generate less income. Why shouldn't that apply to Bing and Yahoo, too?
I don't know about you, but I'm quite sure I've never clicked on a sponsored link in my life. They look filthy. Could it be possible that Yahoo and Bing use Ecosia to make people more willing to pick a "special" links over "regular" ones? Wouldn't that contribute to make the two companies much more effective - THE people you want your activity to be advertised by? Ads are not Ecosia-specific, Yahoo and Bing would still get profits from getting more ads. If that's true, I then would also like to know what benefits a search on Ecosia provides to Bing (therefore to Microsoft), that is just another corporation, with its social responsibility, its greenwashing campaigns, and its environmental impacts.
Any idea anyone?
doomed (we'd better be)/12
Five blades. One precision trimmer. Blade coating and lubricating strip. A battery to power micropulsations. On-board microchip to manage the power. Low battery light indicator. Automatic shut-off. Hint: you shave with it. Here.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
doomed (we'd better be)/11
the uses of Haiti/2
Friday, January 15, 2010
More snow (in Gland)
doomed (we'd better be)/10
Everybody knows how exhausting it can be to lick an ice cream with 40°C in shadow, not to mention the fact that most of us do not master the technique to keep it in an aesthetically pleasant shape. No more sweating, no more hassle, no more irregular, awfully looking ice creams with the motorized ice cream cone holder. Here.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
the uses of Haiti
Ok, Haiti hadn't experienced major earthquakes in the last 200 years.
Ok, since 1692 in the whole region there have been only 3 recorded quakes which have caused more than 1000 victims, the deadliest being the 1843 Leeward Islands one, with 5000 deaths.
Ok, the event was very close to the major urban area in the country, and very shallow, and hit Port-au-Prince with extreme violence. And strong aftershocks further damaged the area.
But a disaster such as this is really not a question of bad luck. You might not know when the earthquake is going to happen, but you can be quite sure that having a couple of million people in poorly built houses on the top of a fault which has been accumulating energy during the last two centuries is going to lead to a massacre, sooner or later.
Haiti is usually considered the perfect case study to explain the concept of vulnerability to disasters. Together with the Dominican Republic, it occupies the island of Hispaniola, which is struck almost yearly by some hurricane. The two countries are subject to winds of the same strength, rains of the same intensity, waves of the same height. But the same event that on the Dominican side would kill 1, makes 6 victims on the Haitian one.
This is not about the Dominicans being luckier. Rather, it is about the Haitians being poorer. A huge, poor population that ends up living and working in cheap, fragile buildings in cheap, dangerous areas, such as steep slopes and riverbeds. That relies on its local environment for food and energy provision, contributing to the overexploitation of the island's forests (which causes the soil to become less stable and less able to retain rain, and makes water runoff more violent, increasing frequency and intensity of floods and landslides) and of its coastal ecosystems (which protect people and their livelihoods from coastal hazards). That has never experienced a period of democratic stability and development. That can't count on any kind of welfare state, urban planning and building codes, decent health care, disaster preparedness system, or recognition and satisfaction of basic human rights.
This earthquake surely dwarfs any other event on the records, but in the last 10 years the country has already been hit by 37 major natural disasters, including the 2008 hurricanes (Fay, Gustav, Hanna, and Ike) which killed about 800 and left 800,000 homeless, and the 2004 hurricane Jeanne, with its 2750 victims. The country is so vulnerable that almost every time a strong natural event hits it people are killed, buildings are destroyed, properties are lost.
In explaining these disasters, the human components are much more relevant than the violence and unpredictability of the natural events. And are deeply rooted in the country's history. This is where the appeals for funding, the emergency interventions, and a world-wide mobilization of people and resources fall short.
Obama, who now promises full support to the country, should remember how systematically US have undermined Haitian democracy throughout the last century with the aim of exploiting the country's resources and market, first as direct occupiers, then leaving the country in Trujillo's hands, financing the 30-years long Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier's regime, and contributing to the coup that, in 1990, overthrew Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the first democratically-elected leader the nation had ever had. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, who now pledge financial and technical aid, should remember how happy they've been with the neoliberal regime US created to "restore democracy" in 1994, which worsened the life conditions of an already desperate population, or how passively they have acknowledged the embargo US imposed on the country after the 2000 local elections, which the Americans considered "irregular".
Under these conditions, is it any surprising that the population have basically experienced no development in the last two centuries? Could a country where the rights of the workers have been systematically denied, where the poor, black population has always been considered a danger for the capital, where wealth and power have been systematically concentrated in the hands of a handful families, turn out to be any different?
It's not a question of collecting more money, of rescuing the thousands buried alive, of providing food and shelter to the survivors. And it's not only question of building safe houses, schools, hospitals, infrastructures. Poverty and vulnerability won't disappear that way. Without a profound modification of the nature of the economic and political relations at the national and international levels, there's no way to avoid the progressive construction of catastrophes such as this earthquake, there's no way to avoid the fact that there will always be a former tropical paradise ready to be turned into a terrible hell circle.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
doomed (we'd better be)/8
This one is really clever. Twirls up spaghetti, tagliatellI and noodles. Use it anywhere in Italy and you will have kindergarden kids throwing watermelon peel at you. 2 AAA batteries not included. Sadly, here.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
an etymology
Sunday, January 10, 2010
down
Saturday, January 9, 2010
up
Today I've seen a frozen sea.
Friday, January 8, 2010
come una grande nave che solca le onde del mare
Did you know that every Danish church has a replica of a sailing ship hanging from the ceiling? There are around 1300 models hanging all over the country, the oldest being exactly 300 years old.