product
’Til You Drop
Now on newsstands across NYC is the cover of this week’s Time Out New York, an events and listings rag. The camouflage shopping bag is intended to evoke martial metaphors: tactical tips for your bargain hunting strategy inside.
But it struck me as quite an elegant, visual link between War and The Market!
14 April 2006 | Commodify Your Dissent, 2
Saw this tonight on Bleeker Street.
Where is the outrage? It’s for sale at Marc Jacobs in the West Village.
There’s also a joke in here about white people, but I can’t seem to find it at the moment.
Otherwise, I do appreciate the sentiment and the public display.
See previous post: Commodify Your Dissent
“HauteGREEN will showcase a collection of the best in sustainable contemporary design for the home. HauteGREEN will take place in Williamsburg, Brooklyn May 20-22, 2006, during the International Contemporary Furniture Fair.”I was put off by the chicy angle (why does sustainability always seem to be a class privilege?) — but a member of o2, one of sponsoring organizations, explained that the initiative is intended to attract the interest of designers participating in and visiting the fair.
In 1995, Philippine inventor Justino Arboleda devised a method to turn coconut husks into useful fiber. In the Bicol region of the Philippines where he lived and worked, most farmers live below the poverty line and discarded coconut husks are the largest waste product. Arboleda set up a factory to mill the fibers and employed local workers to weave the fiber into netting. The nets replace plastic and steel one on slopes and riverbanks to prevent erosion. Arboleda even found a way to use the dust created by the milling process to create a fertile, soil-like “coco-peat.”Coconets is the winner of the 2005 BBC World Challenge, which lists other interesting environmentally friendly inventions and business initiatives. (Sponsored by Shell Oil!)
Update 3/26: Evan responds:
“I know in India they have been turning coconut husks in to rope and other fibers for a few thousand years... It takes a Development Bank to take traditional products, ignore the history, and create them again as an amazing new revolutionary product!”
“Here in the US, fruit often comes with stickers on it, sometimes telling you where it’s from and/or what it is. There’s also a number, but I never paid attention to that. But on p. 72 [of April’s Food & Wine] I spotted this interesting bit of information:‘[T]he sticker labels on fruit: The numbers tell you how the fruit was grown. Conventionally grown fruit has four digits; organically grown fruit has five and starts with a nine; genetically engineered has five numbers and starts with an eight.’”(via)
Geometry, 2
Reader sum1 writes in response this post touting the Q-Drum. He notes a similar product also launched in South Africa called the Hippo Water Roller. While a 1997 Time article reports the Q-Drum’s launch in 1994, the Hippo Roller Web site cites a South African Bureau of Standards 1992 Design Award.
Both are rugged, round water containers designed to be rolled on tough rural roads. But while the Q-Drum is shaped like a tubular donut with a hollow inner core, the Hipporoller is notched at both ends for the attachment of a clip-on steel tube one can use to to pull or push.
Pushing the container in front of the user has the additional advantage of acting as a buffer against landmines.
