At the recent US Social Forum in Detroit, we got our first look at the Beehive Collective‘s amazing new campaign graphic: The True Cost of Coal, a project Provisions commissioned as part of its Brushfire initiative.  It was a sensation, as throngs of social change activists not only got an amazing education on coal, they witnessed how a great arts and social change project functions.

In case you missed the Maker Faire in San Francisco, see it here in 3 minutes and 18 seconds.  The fabulously successful DIY adventure is coming for the first time to Detroit: July 31 – August 1, 2010, and on to New York City September 25 – 26, 2010.

Aperture’s new issue (subscribe here) features a new project by Los Angeles photographer Kelly Poe. Poe started corresponding with individuals imprisoned for their environmental activism, many convicted in the post-9-11 terror hysteria that equated acts of property destruction with the taking of human life.  Poe asked these individuals to pinpoint places in the real world that inspire them. After painstaking research and travel to remote locations and repeated consultation with the prisoners, she used her 8×10 camera to document those locations and share the results.

While they appear similar to great landscape photography from the 20th century, the addition of facsimile letters from the prisoners recasts these images in a decidedly 21st century light.

Here’s a way to get perspective on the current size of the BP oil spill.  You may need to download Google Earth to make it work.

In Los Angeles on any given Friday, you could venture over to Farmlab’s Salon, tuck in a full-on organic lunch and listen to an amazing line-up of art/ecology innovators and activists. Last week I heard Wes Jackson of the Land Institute describe his 50-year plan to restore the depleated soils of America’s heartland.  Next Friday historian Robert Bichard presents over 100 images exploring the first movie studios in L.A. starting 100 years ago.

Farmlab, formerly Not a Corn Field, is the invention of artist/urbanist/philanthropist Lauren Bon.  It began as a multi-year project to restore a 35-acre industrial brownfield near downtown through the cultivation of corn- not only corn, but a social sculpture and nexus for community action and education.

Recently Bon has been working with a veteran’s hospital to create the Strawberry Flag project.

More images: (more…)

Farmlab
1745 North Spring Street, Unit 4
Los Angeles, CA 90012
1.323.226-1158

Friday, February 5, 2010, Noon

Metabolic Studio Public Salon
Simon Balm

A Year at the South Pole

Simon Balm will describe his experiences during a year spent at the South Pole conducting astronomical research in one of the coldest and extreme environments on Earth.

A native of London, England, Simon Balm received his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from the University of Durham in 1988 and his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from the University of Sussex in 1992, working with Nobel Prize winning chemist Sir Harold Kroto. After graduate school he spent two years as a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow in the UCLA Astronomy Department followed by four years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA where he helped to design, build and install a radio telescope at the geographical South Pole. After several Summer visits to the Antarctic he wintered-over with the telescope at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station during the 1995-1996 season as a scientist with United States Antarctic Program.

[text and graphic from Farmlab website. Cross-posted to The Data Stream.]

A new documentary, Coal Country, directed by Phyllis Geller and shot by Jordan Freeman, tells the story of how coal mining has permanently deformed the Appalachian landscape and society. Here’s the trailer.

The film focuses on the modern mining practice of Mountain Top Removal (MTR), which involves coal companies blasting off the tops mountains to reach the coal underneath. MTR is a cheap and convenient way of getting at the resource, but causes pollutants to spew into the air and spill into the water, poisoning miners and the general population. The film shows the civil strife between miners wary of losing their jobs and anti-mining activists, some of them former miners themselves, who want to preserve the environment and protect human health. The battle continues.

In debates about the developed world mitigating the effects of climate change, sometimes it is forgotten that the necessary dismantling of our carbon-intensive economy can’t happen simply with confident utterances, but rather in the excruciating uprooting of thousands lives and livelihoods. Science says that curbing the most disastrous consequences of climate change means the immediate cessation of carbon emissions. After seeing what’s happening in West Virginia, however, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

By the end of 2010, Google’s operations in China (www.google.cn) may be over and done. A presence in China’s carefully state controlled fiefdom in cyberspace since 2006, Google has reacted to a mid-December breach of its security, which, according to Google,  the Chinese government orchestrated.  Google and 20 other companies (including Yahoo) suffered the indignation of similar hacking incursions.

The attack targeted the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, though Google assures the hacking attempt was unsuccessful. As a result of this ungracious behavior on the part of their host, Google will stop its self-imposed policy of censoring searches as per Chinese law. In a letter from Google’s legal office, the internet firm stated that it is “no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.” As of press time, Google has granted its employees in China an extended holiday furlough.

The internet has always been cumbersome set of golden chains for China, essential for its economic expansion but also a powerful forum for political dissent and expression. While has been disappointing to see Google entertain Beijing’s requirements for censorship since 2006, it will be pleasing to see Google follow through on its indignant exit. By demonstrating that China can’t bully forms of foreign direct investment that require a degree of privacy and intellectual freedom to operate, Google’s departure from Chinese cyberspace may make other American and European firms less reluctant to show the same boldness in negotiations with the government. Unfortunately, China will probably respond by creating its own tamed search engines like www.baidu.com, which beats Google’s share of the Chinese market by a wide margin. So there’s a long road ahead for any truly unrestricted internet in China, and the cat and mouse game between government and dissident will continue. To distort Deng Xiaoping’s quote concerning free market reforms and economic development (“it doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice”), no matter how determined the cat, it can’t catch all the world’s mice.

“Worried about Climate Change? Don’t sweat it.” That’s the motto of Survivaball, the world’s first personal survival orb, designed specifically for safeguarding whoever can afford it from the calamities of climate change. Its creators promise it will “ensure human continuity for generations to come.” Here’s a promotional video.

The Survivaball cools, heats and hydrates its occupant with a fluid recycling mechanism. The inflated ball is suited for all weather extremes, from floods to droughts, the kinds of catastrophes a warming world will bring. The Survivaball is an ingenious device indeed, sure to bounce off shelves as soon as it’s ready. Here’s a cross section of the remarkable invention:

Here’s  a safety card describing the Survivaball’s capabilities.

In case it isn’t clear yet, this Survivaball thing is a joke. It’s the work of The Yes Men, a troupe of artists dedicated to “impersonating big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else.” A recent spoof website of theirs skewered the Canadian government’s sluggish response to climate change and they punked an entire conference full of Halliburton big-wigs by bringing out Survivaball’s as a real option for confronting climate change. Here’s the result an article on their website details. A picture of one of Halliburton’s suckers actually wearing a Survivaball is below:

It’s both unbelievable and unsurprising that these corporate types didn’t realize that something was up. Nevertheless, Halliburton rarely misses an opportunity to display greed and cowardice. So I guess this prank was a success for everybody.

Gallery Poulsen in Copenhagen hosted an exhibit of Survivaballs during the CoP15. I was lucky enough to wear one, a prototype. It’s basically an air-tight bag with a fan inside that keeps the ball inflated. Here’s what I looked like.

So there you have it, the Survivaball. Were it cheaper and, well, a real thing, its invention might be good news. Unfortunately, this is not the case and the take-home message remains a humorous but bittersweet one. Sadly, the Survivaball only serves to reveal how venal corporate lunkheads can be.