I stumbled upon this highly iconic and symbolic image while I was checking the daily news stream. Those target crosses and the numeric temperature values just take a whole new meaning in this context. A cross is a universal symbol for disposal or erasure. And how about those numbers.. if they are too high, you are immediately and automatically moved to a lower caste as a human being. You become a potential risk to the society and the environment.

If pandemic threats become more serious and outbreaks threaten bigger populations, it doesn’t take much imagination to see this kind of routine monitoring happening on the streets as well. The surveillance cameras are already there and it doesn’t take much to retro-fit them with additional sensors. And while you are at it, why not add breathing gas analyzers to elevators or rotating doorways, heart rate monitors on door handles and automatic chemical analysis at bar restrooms for example.

Just throwing ideas around here, folks

Posted by api at 10:54 - No Comments »

The Year of the Rat, 2008, in the Hsia calendar, is symbolized by two elements – with earth sitting on top of water. According to the cycle of birth and destruction, which governs the inter-relationship between the elements, earth is the conqueror of water. Therefore, earth sitting on water is a symbol of control.

• Zodiac Location 1st
• Ruling hours 11pm-1am
• Direction North
• Season and month Winter, December
• Lunar Month Dates December 7-January 5
• Gemstone Garnet
• Colours Black, red, white
• Positive Traits
  Meticulous, intelligent, shrewd, charismatic, charming, ambitious, practical, industrious, eloquent, artistic
• Negative Traits
  Controlling, obstinate, venal, resentful, manipulative, mendacious, vindictive, power-driven, critical

Posted by api at 10:41 - No Comments »

The summer is nearing it’s end and I have crawled back to my keyboard, so I guess it’s time to restart this blog.

In the latest edition of my “Where are they now?” series, please let me introduce… The American Bison!

Pleistocene Park

Pleistocene Park in the Sakha Republic in northern Siberia is an attempt by Russian researcher Sergey Zimov to reproduce the ecosystem that flourished during the last ice age, with hopes to back his theory that hunting, and not climate change, destroyed the wildlife.

Russian scientists are restoring the old ecosystem with plants and animals that thrived in the region 10,000 years ago. Japanese and Russian scientists hope to clone woolly mammoths, and to re-introduce them to the park. However, they have yet to find intact mammoth DNA to use for cloning.

So far, the scientific crew has successfully introduced reindeer, moose, musk oxen and yakut horses to the region, and the introduction of American bisons (instead of the extinct steppe bisons) is ongoing. Future introductions include saiga antelopes, yaks and siberian tigers.

Pleistocene Park is a 160 km2 scientific nature reserve (zakaznik), owned and administered by a non-profit corporation, Pleistocene Park Association, consisting of the ecologists from the Northeast Science Station in Chersky and the Grassland Institute in Yakutsk. The reserve is surrounded by a 600 km2 buffer zone that will be added to the park by the regional government, once animals have successfully established.

Posted by api at 08:31 - 3 Comments »

Palast der Republik

Construction

The Palast was constructed from 1973 to 1976 in the prevailing architectural style for East German buildings, with bronze mirrored windows. The grand opening ceremony was held on 23 April 1976, and the building was opened to the public on 25 April 1976. It was built on the site of the old Berliner Stadtschloss (Berlin City Palace), which was damaged during World War II but finally demolished by the GDR authorities in 1950, as they regarded it a symbol of Prussian imperialism. It was sometimes nicknamed “Ballast der Republik” (“Ballast of the Republic”), “Erichs Lampenladen” (“Erich’s Lamp Shop”, referring to Erich Honecker and the 1001 lamps hanging in the foyer), or “Palazzo Prozzo.”

Demolition

In November 2003, the German parliament decided to demolish the building and leave the area as parkland until funding for the reconstruction of the Berliner Stadtschloss (Berlin City Palace) could be found. Demolition started on February 6, 2006 and was scheduled to last about 15 months. The demolition was to be carried out as a careful and slow process in order not to endanger neighbouring historical buildings such as the Berliner Dom. The cost of the demolition was estimated at 12 million euro. Dismantling of the structure was seriously delayed after more asbestos was found in various locations, and the estimated completion date was pushed back to the end of 2008.

New Music House in Helsinki

In addition to the appointment of a new DG for the public broadcaster, the Administrative Council of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) also voted 15-5 in favour of the company’s participation in the Music Centre planned for downtown Helsinki. The project has an estimated price-tag of around EUR 112 million, of which YLE is expected to find 26%. The remainder of the money will come from the state and from the City of Helsinki, but it was widely acknowledged that had the broadcaster opted out of the venture it would not have got off the ground.

The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra will make its home in the building, hopefully relieving the musicians from the acoustic doldrums of Alvar Aalto’s lovely but musically-unsuitable Finlandia Hall. The new music complex will also become home to the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. Both ensembles will undoubtedly welcome the change.

The building will be completed by 2008 or 2009 at the earliest and will occupy a prime location in the centre of Helsinki, opposite Parliament and on the site of the former railway freight warehouses dating back to the Tsarist period.

In an ironic twist, Eastern european workers also laid the foundation for the new Music House at a less than 2 euro hourly wage. In an epic battle between “high” and “low” culture, the Music House is being erected in midst of great controversy regarding it’s appearance, purpose, financing and location.

I agree that Helsinki needs a acoustically worthy venue for classical music, but trying to wrap this whole thing under the generic term “Music House” is almost an insult to the wealth of other music styles that do not necessarily resonate well within this 1970’s style structure.

Now that the budget is being cut even further down from the estimate mentioned above, I find it almost impossible to believe that the acoustical design of the building will overcome the difficulties that the nearby heavy tram and car traffic present.

In my opinion, this spitting image of Palast der Republik is overpriced, overhyped and an overkill. If the gargantuan “Central Library” will be built next to it, the whole Töölönlahti area will become a sad monument to the idea that culture can be created and maintained by building huge cubes with the proper titles to accompany them.

Posted by api at 08:30 - No Comments »

A designer friend of mine, Tuija Järvenpää, has come up with the idea of selling pictures of Christmas trees.

She’s been working with the concept of disposable objects of art for quite some time now. One of her earlier projects was a paper wedding dress. The works are dancing around in the gray area of ecological statements, conceptual art, household items and commercial products.

The paper Christmas trees are actually very large scale ink jet prints. They are 134 cm * 280 cm in size and can be stored in the shipping tube for the next year.

I helped her put together a little online store to make it easier for clients to place an order for the tree. Go ahead and mail her if you want one shipped outside of Finland.

Posted by api at 13:09 - 2 Comments »

Sunshine

The director also considered the story of Sunshine as an appropriate counterintuitive approach for the contemporary issue of global warming, with the death of the sun being a threat. Originally, Sunshine was scripted to begin with a voiceover talking about how parents tell their children not to look into the sun, but once told, the children would be compelled to look. Boyle described the sun as a godly personality in the film, creating a psychological dimension for the astronauts due to its scale and power. The director also described the film’s villain as based on light, explaining, “That’s quite a challenge because the way you generate fear in cinema is darkness.” The director also sought to have the characters experience a psychological journey in which each person is worn mentally, physically, and existentially and is experiencing doubt in their faiths.

I like to get a little dose of science fiction every now and then to keep the subconsciousness nourished with far-out ideas. Sunshine was just what the doctor ordered as far as the science part of the movie is concerned. In the movie a “Q-Ball” , the nucleus of a supersymmetric particle, gets itself lodged in the Sun. The hypothetical Q ball eats through normal matter, ripping apart the Sun’s neutrons and protons and converting them into supersymmetric particles. The Earth’s last and only hope? Why, to launch and detonate a gigantic nuclear bomb to fix the problem, of course!

Here’s an interesting review with the scientific advisor of the film.

Well, science aside, I think the film makers did a pretty good job with many other aspects of the film. The art direction and visual effects in general were well made. More importantly, they were also original and refreshing, which is not an easy task to accomplish in this day and age.

I found it particularly inspiring that the sun was treated as a god-like entity much like the ancient egyptian Sun God Ra and the aztec god Huitzilopochtli. As a matter of fact, sun has been worshipped for all of recorded history.

My personal prediction is that the Sun God is about to get quite angry while us mere mortals are thinning the ozone layer which is protecting us from his angry UVB eye.

Posted by api at 11:43 - 1 Comment »

Micro-Compact Low E-Home

The micro-compact low e-home is all-electric and powered by photovoltaic solar panels of 8 sqm with a small diameter vertical axis wind generator.

Day-time excess power is diverted into the grid. Night-time power is provided by the wind turbine and reserve batteries. Heating and air conditioning is ducted to each of the four function spaces. Long duration LED lighting is used internally and for the external walkways.

I wouldn’t call it exactly portable at 2 metric tonnes of weight, but it is an interesting and quite well though out concept. The Micro Compact home web site has several other variations of this shelter. The price is around 34000 euros per unit.

On my recent trip to Lappland, I met a guy who had built a small transportable fibre glass home mounted on a sledge. It could be moved around with a snow mobile and could house him and his dog. I think that architects who design miniature houses like the Micro Compact home could really learn a lot by interviewing people who have actually built and used homes like this in the real life. Sometimes there is a bit of an ivory tower situation between the architects and the real world users of portable homes.

And don’t let me get started on the huge RV truck conversions that they are building in USA. Sometimes they have a small garage built in the truck for another vehicle. Check out this example of these gas guzzling monsters.

Posted by api at 10:35 - 1 Comment »

Great Worldwide Star Count

Bright outdoor lighting at night is a growing problem for astronomical observing programs around the world. By searching for the same constellations, participants in the Great World Wide Star Count will be able to compare their observations with what others see, giving them a sense of how star visibility varies from place to place. The observers will also learn more about the economic and geographic factors that control the light pollution in their communities and around the world.

“Without even being aware of it, many of us have lost the ability to see many stars at night,” Ward says. “The Great World Wide Star Count will help raise awareness of the importance and the beauty of the night skies.”

My father’s father was a bit of an eccentric. Among his other achievements (of being the director of an aeroplane factory and a fire station) he painted stars on the ceiling of his sauna. The exact reasons for this remain a bit unclear to me.

Light and sound pollution are an increasingly serious problem, especially in densely populated areas. In this year’s Banff Mountain Film festival I saw a collage-style animated film called Conversing with Aotearoa. In an interview segment, various outdoor enthusiasts were asked “When do you feel that you are out in the wilderness?”. I couldn’t agree more with the person who said “When I can no longer hear the sounds of the civilization.”

On Monday, I’m off to the most remote village in Finland. The village of Lisma is located deep within Lemmenjoki national park in the parish of Inari. It is my departure point for a 10 day solo expedition to the Øvre Anarjóhka area in Norway.

Posted by api at 09:53 - No Comments »

“Polar madness” grips many people working at poles

“Say there’s somebody you go to lunch with and you don’t notice the way that they eat. But if you ate with that same person day in and day out for six months, suddenly the way they chew their food is enough to drive you crazy,” added Palinkas, who has ventured to the Antarctic seven times.

The Lancet paper detailed past cases of polar expeditions gone wrong, including an Arctic scientific expedition in the 1880s that descended into mutiny, lunacy, suicide and cannibalism, leaving only six survivors from a crew of 25 men.

Palinkas cited more recent examples of “polar madness” at research stations, including one staffer clubbing another with a claw hammer and another beating a co-worker with a pipe.

“There was a saying at the station for the remainder of the winter that ‘If you’ve got a gripe, use a pipe,”‘ he said.

The researchers mentioned several other symptoms among people on polar expeditions such as memory impairment, anxiety, reduced alertness, headaches, boredom, fatigue, inattention to personal hygiene, intellectual inertia and over-eating.

Intellectual inertia? I wonder what that means.

I have tremendous respect for people who can live in confined spaces with anyone for half a year or more. Some people can’t even manage to stay married for that long.

One can only imagine what the atmosphere is like at a place like the Halley research station, when one looks at Snow Girl’s collection of photographs from over there. It seems like most of the staff has lost their mind in one way or another, but for some it is a positive experience. Most seem to pursue all kinds of crazy activities just to keep sane. They even have a bar in a mysterious “building number 5″.

Recently polar and arctic regions have started to increasingly interest me. While researching the Kola peninsula as a potential hiking destination, I found out about Varanger in the most Northern part of Norway. It seems like a beautiful, yet easily accessible place. Kola might be a bit too demanding for a solo expedition for someone with my level of experience of arctic regions.

Posted by api at 12:21 - 4 Comments »

A Greener Apple

It is generally not Apple’s policy to trumpet our plans for the future; we tend to talk about the things we have just accomplished. Unfortunately this policy has left our customers, shareholders, employees and the industry in the dark about Apple’s desires and plans to become greener. Our stakeholders deserve and expect more from us, and they’re right to do so. They want us to be a leader in this area, just as we are in the other areas of our business. So today we’re changing our policy.

I’ve been following Greenpeace’s Green My Apple campaign with great interest. I’m the first one to admit that I’m a real Apple fan boy and that fact can make it difficult to judge the effectiveness of Apple’s environmental efforts with objectivity. However, after reading both sides of the story, I couldn’t help but to re-position Greenpeace as a somewhat hypocritical organization in my personal mind map. They chose Apple as a high profile target and a type of a scapegoat to serve as an example to other companies that refuse to co-operate and communicate with Greenpeace’s activists in a manner that is seen proper by Greenpeace.

To me it is obvious that Apple has been doing a much better job (all in all) with their environmental policy than many of their competitors. The Greenpeace campaign was targeting a very specific part of the policy: toxic substances and recycling practices. One of the goals of this campaign is to make all computer products 100% PVC free. PVC is commonly used as a shielding material for ethernet cables for example. I discussed this matter with one of Greenpeace’s charity muggers on the street and found out that even their own offices still use PVC-shielded cable. Sure the PVC free cabling is more expensive and difficult to obtain, but if 90% of your income goes to a “fund raising and expenses” one would expect that you could use at least part of the remaining 10% to clean up your own act and show a good example to others by phasing out PVC in your own organization. And yes, PVC free cabling is available today. Not speak of feeding electricity from the land lines instead of running the engines of Rainbow Warrior to generate electricity while moored at a port!

It is also obvious that today’s announcement will put Apple to the top end of Greenpeace’s score card and after this they will proudly tout their campaign as a great success. I wonder what they will do with the domain name though.. perhaps they could spend a few thousand euros to rename and repurpose it as “greenmyhp.org” or “greenmydell.org”.

Well, part of my disgust with this particular dirt throwing campaign has something to do with the charity monging practices that Greenpeace and many other non-profit organizations are so aggressively using these days. Although financially extremely lucrative, I am certain that the shameless “face to face” guilt trip marketing strategy will really hurt their reputation in the long run. Unobjective scoring and grading of companies and data for publicity stunt reasons in campaigns like “Green my Apple” will only exacerbate the process.

Ahh, there… I’m glad I got that out of my system! Peace, love and understanding to all of my treehugging brothers and sisters… and the rest of you eco-conscious gadget-freaks and code monkeys as well. And to any Greenpeace activists that might stumble upon here: no offense intended, just please clean up your own act while you are saving the world.

Posted by api at 23:00 - No Comments »

Sony Home – Hollywood Reporter

In the wake of virtual worlds like Second Life and such file-sharing stalwarts as YouTube and Flickr, Sony Computer Entertainment is using its PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable to usher in its own virtual online-connected community.

The initiative, dubbed “Home,” will allow gamers to create virtual avatars and congregate in 3-D homes and halls to socialise via text, audio or video chat; watch movie trailers or feature films; and play casual games. Gamers will be able to do all this via a free download that will be offered in the fall in the U.S. and Europe.

“We believe there are now incremental opportunities for publishers to create their own ‘homes’ for gamers to visit and play games while being served up streaming trailers and sponsored advertisements in a reasonable fashion,” he said. “Sony’s online strategy, while behind Microsoft’s Xbox Live service and its 6 million global users, appears differentiated and impressive on first pass.”

McNealy cited an example of how Electronic Arts could make money by selling virtual “Madden NFL 2008″ T-shirts for avatars in the “Home” world. In addition, streaming video content for upcoming games, movies or TV shows could be shown on walls throughout the “Home.”

This came totally out of the blue for me. Sony is a strange creature. On the other hand, they have been mimicking the successful products of other companies since the very beginning. On the other hand, they have shown over and over again that they are not following others when it comes to big, strategic moves.

Sony “Home” essentially seems like a Second Life clone without the ability to build your own objects except in a very limited way. Having total freedom to build your own structures and scripts is both the strength and weakness of Second Life. Over time, it has been riddled by a number security incidents… self replicating virus objects, stolen customer data etc.

I have high hopes for this initiative. It will finally bring secure 3D virtual communities to the masses.

EDIT: Here’s a promotional video clip of the project

Posted by api at 12:05 - No Comments »

New York Surveillance Camera Players

Debut Performance

At around 11 pm on Tuesday 10 December 1996, six members of the Surveillance Camera Players (Michael, Katie, Bill, Susan, Lisa, and Orrin) performed most of Art Toad’s special adaption of Alfred Jarry’s play Ubu Roi in front of a surveillance camera in Manhattan’s Union Square subway station. At the same time, three other SCPers (Grrrt, Michelle and John), as well as several on-lookers, watched the play on one of the station’s closed-circuit television monitors.

It is interesting to note that An International Day of Action Against Video Surveillance was organized on September 7th, 2001… just two days before the incident that changed the public opinion about government surveillance in general.

Here in Vienna they have a surveillance camera at the top of every escalator on the U-bahn stations. In contrast, the density of cameras at the Tube stations in London was phenomenal. Each staff member monitors up to 60 cameras. The New Scientist has an interesting article about new software that can spot dubious behaviour, suicide attempts, abandonded packages etc.

Face recognition technology is slowly crossing over from security products sector to consumer electronics. Canon’s new Powershot TX1 has a rather advanced face recognition system that can even recognize multiple faces in a scene while shooting video at HD resolution!

It just occurred to me that it wouldn’t be all that difficult to implement an “identity search” on Google Images. All it would take is to automatically index every face in each image and link it to the profile picture of your Gmail account for example. It won’t probably happen in a year or two, but who knows about the future? The technology is already here.

EDIT: I just learned that Royal Caribbean has a ship-wide surveillance systems utilizing facial recognition technology. This enables security personnel to locate any passenger on the ship, except in private areas (such as staterooms and restrooms).

Posted by api at 10:43 - 1 Comment »

What is tick-borne encephalitis?

Tick-borne encephalitis, or TBE, is a human viral infectious disease involving the central nervous system. The disease is most often manifest as meningitis (inflammation of the membrane that surrounds the brain and spinal cord), encephalitis (inflammation of the brain), or meningoencephalitis (inflammation of both the brain and meninges). Although TBE is most commonly recognized as a neurologic disease, mild febrile illnesses can also occur. Long-lasting or permanent neuropsychiatric sequelae are observed in 10-20% of infected patients.

Check out the map of the endemic areas. Yup, it’s Austria right there in the center of it. I got my second shot of TBE vaccination today. It’s about 45 euros a pop and I highly recommend it to anyone who plans to spend extended periods of time in any outdoor environment in Central Europe. A friend of mine who works at a health centre that specializes in tropical diseases told me a graphic story about an aeroplane pilot who had caught the disease. He was just shaking all over. TBE can cause all kinds of neurological symptoms and it can be difficult to diagnose because it can mimic several other diseases.

Austria is the only country where the number of cases is dropping yearly. I think that they have adopted a rigorous vaccination program and practically everyone is vaccinated at 6 years of age. The vaccine also happens to be austrian.

I’m not sure if I’m a bit over-cautious here, but in my opinion it’s not a big price to pay for some extra peace of mind. Then again, pharmaceutics must be one of the most profitable industries in the world. It thrives on pathophobia – the fear of diseases.

Posted by api at 18:33 - No Comments »

RESETDESIGN

The 2Cycle: two bicycles that can be linked to form a stable four-wheeler in no time. Physically challenged people and senior citizens can ride it together without risking their necks. The spiffy four-wheeler has back supports for a comfortable ride and can be equipped with an auxiliary motor.

I finally got my trusty old Cannondale Silkpath back from Velosport where it was being serviced. They did a really good job and the bike is now as good as new. We are moving to Vienna soon and I’ve found out that you can transport foldable bikes in trams over there. Brompton seems to be the leading brand in that area of bike design.

I guess the contraception pictured above doesn’t count as a foldable bicycle although you can split it in two. It is a design study from Design Academy Eindhoven.

The weather here in Europe has been crazy this Winter and there seems to be a ton of news about ecological matters in mainstream media these days. The alpine tourism industry is being hit by the freight train of global warming really hard this year. I have a feeling that even the most die hard climate change-scepticists are starting to have second thoughts about their stance now. A 1 celsius degree increase in mean temperature would make half of the ski resorts in Germany practically snowless.

I’ve owned two cars in my life and both of them ended up being wrecked in one way or another. I switched to bikes and public transport about 20 years ago. I’m sort of happy that I don’t have to start weaning myself from the car centric way of life at this age.

Posted by api at 08:54 - No Comments »

Soviet Bus-stops by Christopher Herwig via Boing Boing

The last time I shot at an “industrial building” (a match factory) in that part of the world, I got arrested for espionage. That was during the time of the Soviet Union though when St. Petersburg was called Leningrad. The police let me go after playing around with my video camera (!) for quite some time. Our guide was held for “questioning”.

Posted by api at 11:03 - 2 Comments »