Eideard

An engineering firm has unveiled plans to turn the Eiffel Tower into a vast, tree-like monument by cladding its mesh iron body in over 600,000 plants.

The controversial proposal from Ginger — a French company that specializes in ecological design projects — would cost $97 million and remove 87.8 tons of carbon dioxide from the Paris skies, according to the company’s calculations.

Ginger CEO Jean-Luc Schonebelen concedes that it is probably not the most efficient form of carbon sequestration, but says the idea — which has so far received no official endorsement from Paris City Council — could have profound symbolic value…

And symbolic value is all this project would achieve. It is not suggested as a permanent installation; but, a 2-year demonstration of a commitment to carbon sequestration by the Paris council.

Parisians are quick to defend their city’s architectural heritage but says Schonebelen, “they are also very concerned about the environment and I’m sure will come around to the idea…”

However, the company is yet to formally present its ideas to…the Paris City Council.

My recollections of Paris are of a commune accepting of whimsy and practicality. The arts and humanities, science and scholarly pursuits alike are part of the social landscape of this venerable city.

Which still leads me to reject what is nothing more than a fanciful, creative political statement. The city and its denizens would be better served by spending an equivalent amount on greening each of the arrondissements joined as that political and social entity called Paris. Certainly more of their traditional chestnut trees.

What happens if you can’t find an actual scandal? Make one up. The Fisker “scandal” that started at ABC News has jumped to Fox and right wing blogs, where the idea that the U.S. bumbled into paying for cars built overseas is gaining steam.

ABC’s report incorrectly stated that Fisker had made off with U.S. taxpayer funds in a kind of bait and switch, promising jobs in America then outsourcing to Finland. Since that report rolled out last week, Fox has jumped on the issue with a story headlined “Federal Loan… for Finland?” Fox’s Neil Cavuto jumped in to add that, two years after the payments to Fisker, “those jobs still are not here, they’re in Finland.” Attempts to turn the Fisker loan (not a grant) into a scandal have become entangled in Republican primary politics, with candidate Mitt Romney calling for an investigation and claiming that loans to both Fisker and Tesla were payback for political donations.

All of which conveniently ignores some important facts. Yes, Fisker’s first model, the Karma plug-in hybrid sports car, is currently being assembled in Finland. However, the first $169 million in loans provided to Fisker were not for the assembly of the Karma. The loans went toward the design and engineering of the car, activities that took place at Fisker’s Pontiac, MI headquarters.

The bulk of the loan for Fisker was provided not for the Karma, but to support the upcoming Nina model, which will be built at the company’s new factory in Delaware starting in 2013. There are already 100 plant workers in Delaware employed by Fisker in preparation for the Nina and millions have been invested in preparing the Delaware assembly lines.

…Fisker has stated that “not a single dollar” of the money it received from the government has been spent overseas…[The federal funds were] used soley in the U.S. to fund design, engineering and integration work.”

Even real journalists hate to admit they screwed up. Retractions and corrections would appear in a follow-on edition – usually a tiny paragraph buried next to city council notes or something equally boring. Not anymore.

Poisonally, I think it’s time for ABC News to act like grown-ups and own up to their lousy reporting – and quit worrying about where that leaves Rupert’s army of toy noisemakers.

High on a rocky ridge in the desert, nestled among the brush, is the topmost part of a clock that has been ticking for thousands of years.

‘In the year 4000, you’ll go see this clock and you’ll wonder, “Why on Earth did they build this?”‘ — Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos No one knows who built it, or why. They built it well, and even now it keeps perfect time. All we know of these strange people is that they were obsessed with the future.
Why else would they build something that had no purpose except to mark time for thousands of years?

The rich man is Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, and he has indeed started construction on a clock that he hopes will run for 10,000 years.

For Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, the clock is not just the ultimate prestige timepiece. It’s a symbol of the power of long-term thinking. His hope is that building it will change the way humanity thinks about time, encouraging our distant descendants to take a longer view than we have…

It’s a monumental undertaking that Bezos and the crew of people designing and building the clock repeatedly compare to the Egyptian pyramids. And as with the pharaohs, it takes a certain amount of ego — even hubris — to consider building such a monument. But it’s also an unparalleled engineering problem, challenging its makers to think about how to keep a machine intact, operational and accurate over a time span longer than most human-made objects have even existed.

I’ve been following discussions about building this clock for over a decade. Starting with articles by Danny Hillis and Stewart Brand at the Edge and Wired.

Check out the website. Reflect upon the task. It ain’t Ozymandias – I hope.

Massachusetts’ technology sector is fueling strong growth, helping the state’s economy expand more than twice as fast as the nation’s in the first three months of this year, the University of Massachusetts reported yesterday.

Global demand for technology products and increased business spending on software and equipment have provided a strong boost in Massachusetts, which has a high concentration of companies that sell high-tech equipment, components, and services, particularly to other businesses…

“It’s the reason we have a stronger economy than the country as a whole,’’ lan Clayton-Matthews said. “We export a lot of science and technology-based goods and services to other countries around the world, especially developing countries like China and India.’’

The global tech boom helped the Massachusetts economy grow at a 4.2 percent annual rate, accelerating from 3.3 percent in the last quarter of 2010, UMass said. The US economy expanded at a 1.8 percent rate in the first quarter, after growing at a 3.1 percent rate the previous period, the Commerce Department reported yesterday.

In March, the state’s 8 percent unemployment rate, though historically high, remained well below the national rate of 8.8 percent.

Reflecting technology’s strength, some Massachusetts companies are fiercely competing for skilled workers, offering cash bounties to find them…

The same is happening on an even larger scale in Silicon Valley. Growth and expansion there requires another 150,000 staff and local sources can’t provide for the situation.

I note this – as I have been for years – that college-level education in one or another arena of technical prowess is what should be recommended to those with any apparent talent, a bent for geek adventure and economics. Ain’t nothing wrong with being overqualified until the right job happens along.

VW Jetta TDI, 2.0L 140-hp turbodiesel, 3rd consecutive award winner

The auto industry is embracing the age of electrification, and so too is the Ward’s 10 Best Engines list.

Both the Nissan Leaf electric vehicle and Chevrolet Volt extended-range EV earn their way onto the 2011 list, as selected by Ward’s editors after evaluating 38 vehicles with new or significantly improved engines for the ’11 model year.

But fuel efficiency and environmental friendliness are not the most important criteria for eligibility this year, as seen by recognition of the new 5.0L V-8 in the Ford Mustang GT, 5.0L V-8 in the Hyundai Genesis and the 3.0L supercharged V-6 in the Audi S4.

“We have something for everybody on this year’s Ward’s 10 Best Engines list,” says Drew Winter, editor-in-chief of Ward’s AutoWorld magazine. “It’s the most diverse mix we’ve ever had, as well as the most technologically advanced.”

This year’s winners and the applications tested:

3.0L TFSI Supercharged DOHC V-6 (Audi S4)
3.0L N55 Turbocharged DOHC I-6 (BMW 335i)
1.6L Turbocharged DOHC I-4 (Mini Cooper S)
3.6L Pentastar DOHC V-6 (Dodge Avenger)
5.0L DOHC V-8 (Ford Mustang GT)
1.4L DOHC I-4/111kW Drive Motor (Chevrolet Volt)
5.0L Tau DOHC V-8 (Hyundai Genesis)
80kW AC Synchronous Electric Motor (Nissan Leaf)
2.0L DOHC I-4 Turbodiesel (Volkswagen Jetta TDI)
3.0L Turbocharged DOHC I-6 (Volvo S60)

Now in its 17th year, the Ward’s 10 Best Engines competition is designed to recognize powertrains that set new benchmarks in their respective vehicle segments.

“The one thing they have in common is they all are stand-out performers in their own way and sell the value proposition of the vehicles they power,” Winter says.

RTFA. The editors delve into each award and why. Just a paragraph or two; but, gives you a taste of the breadth of modern prize-winning design coming from auto engineers around the world.

Detailed analysis of each is in the upcoming issue of Ward’s Autoworld magazine and will be online, next week.

Kajakai Dam Hydropower Plant, Helmand Province, Afghanistan

A New Jersey-based construction and engineering company has been hit with the largest fines ever imposed on a contractor working in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, after a whistle-blower revealed that the company had been overbilling the government.

The company, the Louis Berger Group, based in Morristown, N.J., will pay $18.7 million in criminal penalties and $50.6 million in civil penalties for overbilling the United States Agency for International Development for work in Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan. As part of the civil agreement, the company will pay $14.2 million of the civil penalty in the next 30 days and the balance over the next four years.

In addition, two former company officials, Salvatore Pepe, the former chief financial officer, and Precy Pellettieri, the former controller, pleaded guilty on Friday to defrauding the government.

Paul J. Fishman, the United States attorney in New Jersey, said that over about 10 years, the company overcharged the government by $15 million to $20 million. “This conduct is intolerable,” Mr. Fishman said at a news conference in Newark…

Harold Salomon…first raised concerns with his supervisors about what he initially believed were mistakes in the company’s billing process, but was “shut down” by management, Mr. McCormack said. “Then he realized they weren’t making mistakes, they were manipulating” how the company was charging the government, he said. Mr. Salomon went to the government, and then filed a lawsuit.

Mr. Salomon discovered that the company was manipulating the indirect costs billed to the government, so that it was padding the bills with unrelated items. The company was billing things like the cost of the music system in its Washington office to an overseas contract with A.I.D., Mr. McCormack said.

These are the people that Boehner and McConnell say deserve special tax breaks for the work they do in supporting our government at war.

I even understand the extenuating circumstances about the case. They’ve been doing serious business with the United States government – as defined by the Gingrich Contract on America. Never steal anything small. They saw everyone else stealing from taxpayers and just wanted their fair share.

Yahoo is officially opening a very energy-efficient data center in upstate New York, a building that shows how design often trumps high-technology widgets.

The facility in Lockport, N.Y., near Buffalo, will get almost all of its cooling from outdoor air, which is a significant energy saver. The Yahoo data center, which can hold 50,000 servers, will have a power usage effectiveness rating of 1.08, far less than the industry average of 1.92.

The cool climate of upstate New York helps reduce the need for the chillers usually used in large data centers. The building itself will use what the company calls the Yahoo Chicken Coop design, a long, narrow building that makes it easier to circulate in outdoor air. The building is positioned to take advantage of the prevailing winds, too.

The basic laws of thermodynamics work the same in New York state as California. Amazing!

The data center…will use 40 percent less electricity than typical data centers and only one percent of its energy bill on cooling. Scrapping chillers saves water as well, conserving enough drinking water per year for 200,000 people, according to Yahoo.

Although it may sound like an obvious way to get free cooling, using outdoor air to cool data centers is not a common practice in data centers. Yahoo is seeking a patent for its Chicken Coop design which it could use for other data centers.

Which is absurd. You may as well grant patents for chimneys or attic fans.

Lose the beancounter attitude about patents, folks!

Crews removed the cap from BP’s ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well late Thursday afternoon, an important step toward permanently sealing the well.

The operation was the first step in removing the blowout preventer — which failed spectacularly in April, triggering a deadly explosion and oil spill — said BP spokeswoman Jessie Baker.

Officials planned to replace the blowout preventer with a new one, a major step toward a final fix…

The cap removal was “an important step in the process to remove and preserve the damaged BOP (blowout preventer),” said retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government’s point man on the oil disaster. He said that work on on removing the damaged blowout preventer was expected to commence Thursday night…

The operation had been delayed last week, as engineers tried to fish out pieces of drill pipe stuck inside the blowout preventer.

Removal of the device needs to be done carefully, officials have said, because the blowout preventer may hold valuable forensic evidence as to why it failed April 20, triggering the explosion that killed 11 rig workers and caused the massive oil disaster…

The well has been capped since July 15, stopping the flow of oil.

Please, please, be careful. Then, we can have a thorough forensic engineering investigation.

Ask Becks!

Odd things are happening in women’s bras. In recent years, the average British bra size has jumped from 34B to 36D, which means that while women’s backs have grown one size, breasts have jumped up two. Many department stores have increased the range of cup sizes on offer to meet the ballooning demand. In 2007 Marks & Spencer introduced the J cup. Earlier this year, Selfridges began stocking a K cup range, and its sales of D to G cups have risen by 50% year-on-year since 2005. Last week, Debenhams started stocking KK bras, which were previously only available in specialist stores.

In a country where one in three women is overweight, you’d think there was a simple, fat-related reason for this, but obesity alone doesn’t explain the jump in cup size, nor the biggest growth area in bra sales: smaller back size and bigger cup size. Judging by recent underwear figures, there are more slimmer women with larger boobs than ever before. Women are happy about this. Men are happy about this. But no one seems happy to explain why this is happening.

Do you know how to work out a bra size? As roughly 50% of the British population wear them, you’d have thought most of them would have an idea. But though a 2009 survey found that the average British woman owns 16 bras at any one time and buys four every year, fitting them is a surprisingly tricky activity. The traditional method reads like an A-level algebra problem. You take a tape measure and wrap it round your chest at the lowest point where a bra sits. You record this figure in inches. You add four to this measurement if the number is even, five if it’s odd – and the resultant number is your band size. Then you wrap the tape round again and measure the fullest part of the actual breasts. Next you subtract the band size from breast size to find your cup size. If the numbers are the same, you’re an A cup. If there’s an inch difference, you’re a B; two and you need a C cup and so on. Alternatively, and many bra experts say more accurately, you can weigh your breasts by dunking them into a full bowl of water and measuring the displaced liquid, with 1 litre of water equalling 1kg. It’s accurate but useless. You can do precisely nothing with this information, as no bra manufacturer measures boobs by the pound.

Unsurprisingly, as no one enjoys maths or physics homework, the modern way to find the correct fit is to go to a shop and get someone else to do it for you. Egged on by TV stylists, such as Gok Wan and Trinny and Susannah, who’ve long been rhapsodising over the merits of a well-fitted bra and the wonders they work on your shape and posture, more and more women are doing this. Previously they could go a lifetime buying new bras by guessing or simply choosing the size they’d always worn. They made do. But trained fitters can now be found in almost every lingerie department; instead of relying on water or tape they add an element of mystique to this already complicated process. Fitters are like boob whisperers, their pronouncements made on look and feel as well as measuring…

RTFA. Longish, interesting

Face it – everyone is interested in boobs one way or another, male or female, old or young. Even a few surprises.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Chinese carmaker Zhejiang Geely Holding Group has purchased Volvo cars from U.S. auto giant Ford, the Swedish carmaker announced Sunday.

The $1.8 billion deal represents the biggest ever purchase by a Chinese car manufacturer, but it is considerably less than the $6.4 billion Ford paid for Volvo in 1999.

“We are pleased to have reached this agreement with Ford, enabling us to safeguard and strengthen Volvo’s renowned brand heritage,” said Geely chairman Li Shufu.

“Volvo will be a separate company with its own management team based in Gothenburg, Sweden.”

He added Geely will help Volvo to realize its potential in the Chinese market.

“The agreement provides a solid foundation for Volvo to continue to build its business under Geely’s ownership,” said Alan Mulally, Ford’s president and CEO, in a statement on the company’s Web site. “The sale of Volvo will allow us to further sharpen our focus on building the Ford brand around the world and continue to deliver on our One Ford plan serving our customers with the very best cars and trucks in the world.”

Nice PR lingo which – in fact – I expect to continue along in reality. Geely is in the learning stages of becoming an extra-national brand. Ford is in the learning stages of how to be a global brand in the 21st Century.