Ramblings & ephemera

Why we get disoriented in malls

From Wikipedia’s “Gruen transfer” (28 September 2009):
In shopping mall design, the Gruen transfer refers to the moment when consumers respond to “scripted disorientation” cues in the environment. It is named for Austrian architect Victor Gruen (who disavowed such manipulative techniques) …
The Gruen transfer refers to the moment when a consumer enters a shopping mall, and, [...]

David Foster Wallace on the problems with postmodern irony

From Larry McCaffery’s “Conversation with David Foster Wallace” (Dalkey Archive Press at the University of Illinois: Summer 1993):
Irony and cynicism were just what the U.S. hypocrisy of the fifties and sixties called for. That’s what made the early postmodernists great artists. The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above [...]

Mine fires that burn for 400 years

photo credit: C. Young Photography
From Joshua Foer’s “Giant Burning Holes of the World” (Boing Boing: 16 June 2009):
… these sorts of mine fires can stay lit for a very long time. One burned in the city of Zwickau, Germany from 1476 to 1860. Another coal fire in Germany, at a place called Brennender Berg [...]

Protected: Taboo acts and language and how they work together

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Energy-efficient washing machines

From Brendan I. Koerner’s “Is a Dishwasher a Green Machine?” (Slate: 22 April 2008):
To really green up your automatic dishwashing, you should always use the air-drying function, avoid the profligate “rinse hold” setting, wash only full loads, and install the machine far away from your refrigerator.

Just promise that you’ll scrape your dishes instead of pre-rinsing, [...]

The birth of Geology & gradualism as a paradigm shift from catastrophism

From Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Imagining Abrupt Climate Change : Terraforming Earth” (Amazon Shorts: 31 July 2005):
This view, by the way, was in keeping with a larger and older paradigm called gradualism, the result of a dramatic and controversial paradigm shift of its own from the nineteenth century, one that is still a contested part of [...]

What can we use instead of gasoline in cars?

From Popular Mechanics‘ “How far can you drive on a bushel of corn?“:
It is East Kansas Agri-Energy’s ethanol facility, one of 100 or so such heartland garrisons in America’s slowly gathering battle to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels. The plant processes about 13 million bushels of corn to produce approximately 36 million gal. of [...]

Zombie ships adrift off the shore of Africa

From “Happiness: The Chinese zombie ships of West Africa“:
We’re in the big African Queen inflatable, cruising alongside an anchored trawler. It’s more rust than metal – the ship is rotting away. The foredeck is covered in broken machinery. The fish deck is littered with frayed cables, and the mast lies horizontally, hanging over the starboard [...]

Feral cities of the future

From Richard J. Norton’s “Feral cities – The New Strategic Environment” (Naval War College Review: Autumn, 2003):
Imagine a great metropolis covering hundreds of square miles. Once a vital component in a national economy, this sprawling urban environment is now a vast collection of blighted buildings, an immense petri dish of both ancient and new diseases, [...]