Cooper Griggs

Arbitrary enforcement killed 2012-drafted rules in January

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We’re all trying to switch to local produce these days and for Londoners, it doesn’t get much more local than the 2½ acre farm growing fresh veggies right under their feet.

Growing leafy greens and herbs without any natural light 100 feet below the streets of central London in an abandoned air raid shelter is not your typical urban farming project, as you might have already concluded. The crazy idea came from two childhood friends who moved to the big city from the rural West Country of England and spent a lot of time arguing in the pub about the future of oil, energy, food and London. Richard Ballard and Steven Dring couldn’t get their minds off the fact that the population of their new city was going to increase by three million people within a decade, and it was this worrying little fact that got these two entrepreneurs out of the pub and into action.

All too aware that the only way to feed London’s growing population was to do it without using any carbon and eliminating dependence on fossil fuels, the pair came up with a creative prototype for feeding London in the future. And so the story of Zero Carbon Food (ZCF) was born.

“We ain’t flying salad from Kenya,” says the pair who plan to grow locally on a commercial scale, reducing CO2 by cutting out food miles.

But why underground…?

Above was the estate agent’s photograph of the South Clapham tunnels, which Steven assures were “a lot darker and dingier” when he first visited the site with a head torch stuck to his forehead two years ago.

Originally built as a WWII bomb shelter to protect Londoners from the worst excesses of the Blitz, there were plans in place to later convert the tunnel into an express Northern line tube service from Clapham to Camden town. While it appears to have made a very effective bomb shelter, the cash for the tunnel’s future in transport was never raised and the plans never materialised.

At the end of the war, London had a severe labor shortage and the tunnel found another use as temporary housing for the first large group of West Indian migrants promised work in the United Kingdom. In June 1948, 492 passengers from Jamaica arrived in England on the MV Empire Windrush.

Interestingly (especially for you Londoners reading), the decision to house the migrants in the tunnel would later shape the demographics of South London. The newcomers found work at the nearest labour exchange to their subterranean shelter and began settling in the districts of South London, which is how nearby Brixton and the surrounding areas came to be the heart of London’s Caribbean community. 

So remember that estate agent’s photograph we saw? Well this is how Steven and Rich actually found it more than 50 years after contributing to the cultural diversity of London.

And so again, it begs the question, why underground?!

Well for one, there isn’t exactly an abundance of space for urban farming floating around the London real estate market. Looking into redundant spaces 100 feet underground certainly saves on rent. In a tunnel that stays at a stable 60 degrees all year, heating and cooling costs are reduced too. But more importantly, the lack of natural light means you get to use LED lights powered by renewable energy. Even better, broccoli, pea shoots, rocket, basil and mustard leaf among other greens, can grow without pesticides thanks to the tunnel’s lack of airborne pests.

After a year of seemingly endless test phases with a veteran expert horticulturalist on board for the ride, Zero Carbon Food’s first brand Growing Underground is set to launch officially in March, selling produce to London’s supermarkets and restaurants.

The entrepreneurs also enlisted the help of Michelin-starred chef Michel Roux Jr (of London’s Le Gavroche restaurant), who has joined the company as a director.

The innovative entrepreneurs have now begun a crowd-funding campaign to complete the last leg of their journey and accelerate the development of the project. For these guys, Zero Carbon Food isn’t just a fun urban farming experiment– they want to reduce London’s carbon footprint in a big way. Imagine a hidden city-wide subterranean network of eco-farming. Now that’s what I call thinking for the future  …

Click here to view the embedded video.

Discover Zero Carbon Food and follow their progress on Facebook / Twitter

via FastcoExist

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The commander of the Iraqi militant group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) reportedly blew up 21 suicide bombers in training when he made an error during a live explosives exercise. 15 other trainees were injured. The popular imagination paints terrorists as hundred-foot-tall supermen with the power to destroy entire states simply by staring crosseyed at them, but the reality is that people who are willing to be suicide bombers -- and those who exploit them -- may not be very bright at all.

(via http://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=gaKfKw26Mqc&u=/watch?v=_wlpFqcQu8g&feature=share)
In case you missed it the first time! Check out this hilarious video I worked on!

kissedthystones:

I’m just trying to get lunch, not have an existential crisis.

Uh, thanks, Grandma.

Freeweibo, an anti-censorship organization that works on free speech issues in China, has discovered that the Chinese version of Microsoft's Bing search-engine censors its US version to match the censored results that would be shown within China. Search terms such as "Dalai Lama, June 4 incident (how the Chinese refer to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989), Falun Gong and FreeGate" return results dominated by censored Chinese news outlets like Baidu Baike and Chinese state broadcaster CCTV. The same searches run on the English version of Bing return pages from Wikipedia, BBC, the New York Times, etc.

Google's Chinese-language competitor displays much more parity between the Chinese and English editions -- the Chinese Google results for controversial subjects include Chinese articles from the BBC and Wikipedia.

Microsoft will not comment on the matter.

Update: Microsoft has commented:

"Bing does not apply China's legal requirements to searches conducted outside of China," Bing Senior Director Stefan Weitz notes in a prepared statement. "Due to an error in our system, we triggered an incorrect results-removal notification for some searches noted in the report, but the results themselves are and were unaltered outside of China.

As of 10PM Pacific on 12 Feb, many of the "controversial" search terms still generate results pages dominated by Chinese state media.

The information was first collected by censorship blog Greatfire.org. Author Charlie Smith said he had originally discovered the discrepancies while checking for information on his own website, FreeWeibo.com, a site for anonymously searching Chinese social media.

“The first thing we noticed was our index page was not showing up. It specifically did not show the homepage. But it was in Google,” he said.

“It’s a bit crazy. Any Chinese person who is searching in Chinese from overseas is being treated as if they have the same rights as a resident of mainland China. So we won’t show them the accurate search results if they search for Dalai Lama. What you get is state controlled propaganda,” he said. “Except they don’t tell you the results have been censored. If you were in China they would at least tell you that.”

“We thought there had been a mistake so we wrote to Microsoft and they said ‘no comment,’” he said.

Microsoft did not return calls for comment from the Guardian.

Bing censoring Chinese language search results for users in the US [Dominic Rushe/The Guardian]

(via /.)

Blue Doors
#blue #doors #chair #white #wood #porch #front #barn #carmelvalley #california

Chris Burden’s #Urban #Lights
#lacma #losangeles #california #museum #art #chrisburden (at Chris Burden: Urban Light @ LACMA)

via http://ariellerose.tumblr.com/post/1289250539

 

kelseydoodle: We forgot our corkscrew so we decided to be classy and pop the cork in. That’s wine on the carpet too, but we’re ripping it out do it doesn’t matter! :P

my friend bought a house - they move tomorrow but are camping there tonight on blankets for fun.

fuck the carpet, pass the wine.

If you think cancer removal surgery is but a one-time procedure, you'd be wrong. Doctors don't always cut out all affected tissues in one go, but a new pair of high-tech eyewear could help make that happen. The device, developed by a Washington...

Japanese automotive giant Toyota is due to recall 1.9 million Prius vehicles globally due to potential problems with the hybrid system's boost converter software that could lead to a lack of power or cause the car to stop completely.

A 29-year-old Michigan woman was arrested on Monday after police officials say she fired a live round through a McDonald's drive-thru window after a member of staff failed to put bacon in her burger.

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earth-song:

“nibbles..” by Mark Bridger

The sinkhole inside the National Corvette Museum. Photo courtesy National Corvette Museum.

While nobody was hurt in yesterday’s sinkhole collapse beneath the Skydome at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky, it appears from photos and videos that at least six of the eight Corvettes that fell into the sinkhole suffered significant damages.

The sinkhole, which opened up at 5:40 a.m., is reported to be 40 feet in diameter and up to 30 feet deep, and the structural engineer that the museum called in determined that the perimeter of the Skydome is stable. Nobody was in the museum at the time the sinkhole formed, and the museum has yet to announce whether the cars can even be retrieved.

Of the 80 or so cars on display in the museum, about 30 were in the 140-foot diameter Skydome. Corvette Museum staff were able to remove the rest of the cars in the Skydome not swallowed by the sinkhole later in the day.

Photo courtesy National Corvette Museum.

Photo courtesy National Corvette Museum.

According to the museum, the cars damaged in the event include a 1993 ZR-1 Spyder and a 2009 ZR1 “Blue Devil,” both on loan from General Motors, along with a 1962 Corvette; a 1984 PPG Pace Car; a 1992 “1 Millionth” Corvette; a 1993 40th Anniversary Corvette; a 2001 Mallett Hammer Z06 Corvette; and a 2009 “1.5 Millionth” Corvette, all owned by the museum itself. No cars on loan from individuals were damaged in the incident. From videos and photos supplied by the museum, the 1984 Pace Car and the 2001 Mallett Hammer were swallowed up entirely, while only a wedge of the rear fender of the 1993 ZR-1 Spyder remained above the debris. The 2009 1.5 Millionth car appears crushed under a slab of concrete, while the Millionth and the 40th Anniversary cars appear to have suffered at least blown-out glass and other body damages. The 1962 Corvette has a cracked windshield and torn front fender, while the Blue Devil appears to have ridden out the collapse without any damages.

The eight Corvettes, pre-sinkhole. Photos courtesy National Corvette Museum.

According to information supplied by the museum, the Tuxedo Black 1962 Corvette was donated by David Donoho of Zionsville, Indiana, the car’s only owner; the bright orange 1984 Corvette was on permanent loan from PPG Industries and was on display when the museum opened in September 1994 (and features a 450-hp, 401-cu.in. Katech-modified V-8 engine backed by a T-5 five-speed transmission); the white millionth Corvette (VIN 1G1YY33PXN5119134) features a 5.7-liter LT1 and four-speed automatic; the maroon 40th anniversary Corvette (#14768) was donated by Hill and Karen Clark of Bay Village, Ohio; the red Mallett Z06 (#009) features a 700-hp LSX V-8, was clocked at 178 MPH in a top-speed event, and was donated by Kevin and Linda Helmintoller of Land O’Lakes, Florida; and the white 1.5 millionth Corvette (VIN 1G1YY36W295114471) features the Z51 Performance Package, 430hp 6.2-liter V-8, and six-speed automatic transmission.

The black ZR-1 Spyder was built as a show car with unique bodywork and chopped windshield and made its debut at the 1991 North American International Auto Show. The Blue Devil, meanwhile (experimental VIN 1G1YY26EX850022EX), was originally built as a 2008 Z06, then converted a year later into a pre-production ZR1 that was used for Chevrolet’s press photos and served as a sister car to 23EX, which famously lapped the Nürburgring in a record 7 minutes, 26.4 seconds. A GM spokesman told the Los Angeles Times that the two cars on loan to the museum were worth about $1 million each, while Greg Wallace, manager of GM’s Heritage Center, told the New York Times that GM will repair its two Corvettes so that “you’ll never know they were damaged.”

The exterior of the National Corvette Museum’s Skydome. Photo by Paul (W9NED).

Inside the National Corvette Museum’s Skydome. Photo by Paul (W9NED).

The Skydome, completed in 1994, was to celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2014. The sinkhole reported this morning is the first such event on the museum property, which is located in a region of the state full of underground caves and notorious for its sinkholes.

One car in the Skydome that was not damaged was the only remaining 1983 Corvette, which has reportedly been removed from the Skydome.

The museum, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is accepting donations on its website.

A tip of the hat to Nancy Gates of the AACA Museum for the heads up on this story.

UPDATE (12.February, 1:07 p.m.): After initially announcing that the rest of the museum would remain open, museum staff closed the entire museum until the situation can be evaluated further.

UPDATE (13.February, 4:33 p.m.): General Motors has announced that it will oversee restoration efforts of the eight Corvettes damaged by the sinkhole. The museum will be working with a structural engineering firm to recover the cars, once the building’s foundation has been shored up and it is safe to do so. The extracted cars will be shipped to GM Design’s Mechanical Assembly building, where the potentially lengthy process of returning the cars to their original condition will be overseen by Ed Welburn, vice president of GM Global Design.

i read ALL your tumblrs and you should be embarrassed. yes i’m talking about YOU SPECIFICALLY RIGHT THERE

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Ducted
#airduct #red #lacma #losangeles #california #museum #art #architecture (at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA))

gothiccharmschool:

Gary Oldman, modeling for Prada menswear. You’re welcome. And yes, StuntHusband, I know. You want ALL the clothes. Via americangothgirl and franzivy.