Last night I have the opportunity to help out with Materials and Application’s Fat Fringe exhibition. Designed by Layer, the paper structures were precise and evocative.
Prior to my arrival I had no expectations or clue to what forms/scale the exhibition would be. I was in a hurry to beat the traffic so I wrote the address on my hand and drove up the 405/110. The exhibition was located in the FIX Gallery, which is actually a modern furniture store with the back portion dedicated to a gallery space. I fully intended to walk through, take a quick look around and then leave to go to the art walk. That changed, as I walked up I started talking with the designer and coordinator for the event and suddenly I helping them out with little odds and ends and stringing some of the smaller fat fringe displays together. Despite not being able to stay for the actual exhibition reception, I thoroughly enjoyed helping out and networking. Check out layers work below, photographs by Henry Cheung
In light of the Winter Olympics being in the most livable city in North America, I was looking at data about the affordability of major cities in the world. This study was done by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. One of the interesting correlations I pull from this material is that the United States has some of the most affordable housing markets in the Western World. It also seems that the quality of urban life has a positive correlation with the cost of living.
In the midst of all of the discussion about restarting the economy and what the next steps are, there is a major lack of publicity on specific technologies that are revolutionizing our systems. For example: in Bakersfield, a smart grid for meter reading was invested in. As a result, data is transmitted from each house to a terminal that transmits data to the center. Now residents can monitor their usage through the web and usage data is now more readily available to optimize the usage of electricity.
This is just one example of smart grid technology, the next step is upgrade our outlets to only use energy when it is needed, eg: cell phone chargers. Chargers, if left plugged into the wall have a constant usage of electricity. The result is chargers use more electricity when the cell phone is not plugged than when it actually charging the device. Take this instance and multiply that by 4.6 million cell phones in the world and that amounts to a serious waste of electricity.
This is the Tesla Coil – Wireless Electricity invented in the 19th century (Glad we didnt go with this model?)
I am thankful that Jon Stewart has taken hard stances on real issues. While my moral values may not be the same, Jon has been a strong force in apoliticizing our system. After watching that clip, I then watched O’Reilly’s response which (true statement) made me throw up a little in my mouth.
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