Open Air Library – Magdeburg Germany

KARO Architekten just recently won the 2010 European Prize for public space with it’s open air library project in Magdeburg, Germany. The space was established in 2005 as an open air library located in the abandoned district centre. The community began the project in that year by constructing a 1:1 scale model of the possible library out of old beer crates and filling it with donated books. Google Maps still shows the site as a vacant patch of grass with a worn path through the centre.

The area of Magdeburg where the project is located is characterized by old industrial warehouses and factories, now bereft of any industry, and vacancy of up to 80%. The city centre of this area is full of closed shops and empty storefronts. From this, the urban experiment that is now the open air library was created.

With a little bit of financial assistance from the federal government, the official library opened in June of this year along with an accopmpanying cafe all run by the local residents. Toted as a pilot project for revitalizing East Germany’s derelict post-industrial cities, the new community centre is now complete and open for use. No registration is required to take out books. you simply take one and bring back within a reasonable amount of time, or bring back another old book.

This project has not only succeeded in adding a patch of green space to the industrial city, it has also established a very community oriented institution based on the trust of one’s neighbours. Sounds good to me. Looks good too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.archdaily.com/39417/open-air-library-karo-architekten/ 

About Ann Coulter and the University of Ottawa

The media is blowing this up right now and everyone is leaving out bit of information as per usual.

Let’s get some things straight:

Ann Coulter, Right-wing American Pundint, was invited by the Conservative students group at the University of Ottawa to speak publicly.

The Provost of the university sent Ann an email warning her about free speech laws in Canada, which differ from those in the U.S.

On the day of the speech, large crowds filled the lobby outside of the small room in which Ann was supposed to speak. The police said that they would not be able to ensure her safety because of the size of the crowds. The decision was left to Ann and her body guards whether or not to follow through with the talk.

The University of Ottawa did not cancel Ann’s speech.

Ann’s body guard cancelled the speech.

Was it right to shout down Ann and prevent her speech from happening? Not really, though, protesters have the same rights to yell what they want as Ann has to say what she wants.

Ann Coulter seems to me to be a highly paid actor. She says things that she knows will seriously upset people because it gets her attention and therefore, it gets her money. This aside though, she should still be allowed to speak. By disallowing this, protesters at the University of Ottawa have given themselves a bad name. We saw the same things happen to a number of protesters in Copenhagen in December. Lets not paint them all with the same brush though. Ann Coulter does not represent the majority of the right. Loud and rambuncious protestors do not represent the majority of the left.

Thanks to the Ottawa Citizen for writing an in depth article explaining this issue. http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Organizers+university+cancelled+Coulter/2721580/story.html

No thanks to the Toronto Star for skimming and skewing. http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/785037–coulter-s-right-to-free-speech-defended

Bisphenol A; It’s Everywhere

Now here is something I find quite troubling. The Washington Post has run a 2 page article not on the hazards of Bisphenol A, but the incredible difficulty in removing it from our goods. This chemical is proving more and more dangerous as it is tested year after year. It has been officially banned from use in baby bottles in Canada due to its high risk nature for babies.

One very prominent area of use for this product is in the plastic coating that lines the interior of tin food cans. The scary problem though, is that this chemical has been incredibly ingrained into our manufacturing processeses over the past 60 years. As companies try to reduce and/or eliminate BPA from their food  they are having trouble even locating the source of BPA. Additionally, they are having trouble finding a suitable replacement.

How do we get to a point that we use a dangerous chemical to such large extents that we can’t even find out where it is coming from anymore? It certainly doesn’t help that manufacturers have the right to NOT disclose to their clients whether they use BPA in their products.

Just one more reason for purchasing fresh foods rather than processed food in a can.

Original article here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/22/AR2010022204830.html?nav=rss_email/components 

Your “Diet” Food is Making You Fat

This article from the Huffington Post today puts very cleary the risks associated with the average North American diet of processed foods. The article isn’t brief, but I found that I felt a need to read the entire thing. We are made to believe that foods with sugar are bad for us and will make us fat. What we are never told, is that High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), the sweetener used in almost every processed food to replace natural sugar, is even worse for us. Not only does it have a increased negative impact on our weight, but it comes with a host of other issues from lack of nutrients and energy in our bodies to the monopolization of the agriculture industry and hazardous Genetically Modified Foods.  Coincidently, along with the Post article, I also came across an article from the CBC about the high percentage of Canadians with high blood pressure, another symptom of HFCS.

From the Huffington Post:

Study after study are taking their place in a growing lineup of scientific research demonstrating that consuming high-fructose corn syrup is the fastest way to trash your health. It is now known without a doubt that sugar in your food, in all it’s myriad of forms, is taking a devastating toll.

And fructose in any form — including high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and crystalline fructose — is the worst of the worst!

Fructose is a major contributor to:

• Insulin resistance and obesity
• Elevated blood pressure
• Elevated triglycerides and elevated LDL
• Depletion of vitamins and minerals
• Cardiovascular disease, liver disease, cancer, arthritis and even gout

A Calorie is Not a Calorie
Glucose is the form of energy you were designed to run on. Every cell in your body, every bacterium — and in fact, every living thing on the Earth–uses glucose for energy.

If you received your fructose only from vegetables and fruits (where it originates) as most people did a century ago, you’d consume about 15 grams per day — a far cry from the 73 grams per day the typical adolescent gets from sweetened drinks. In vegetables and fruits, it’s mixed in with fiber, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and beneficial phytonutrients, all which moderate any negative metabolic effects.
It isn’t that fructose itself is bad — it is the MASSIVE DOSES you’re exposed to that make it dangerous.

There are two reasons fructose is so damaging:

1. Your body metabolizes fructose in a much different way than glucose. The entire burden of metabolizing fructose falls on your liver.

2. People are consuming fructose in enormous quantities, which has made the negative effects much more profound.

Today, 55 percent of sweeteners used in food and beverage manufacturing are made from corn, and the number one source of calories in America is soda, in the form of HFCS.

Food and beverage manufacturers began switching their sweeteners from sucrose (table sugar) to corn syrup in the 1970s when they discovered that HFCS was not only far cheaper to make, it’s about 20 percent sweeter than table sugar.

HFCS is either 42 percent or 55 percent fructose, and sucrose is 50 percent fructose, so it’s really a wash in terms of sweetness.

Still, this switch drastically altered the average American diet.

By USDA estimates, about one-quarter of the calories consumed by the average American is in the form of added sugars, and most of that is HFCS. The average Westerner consumes a staggering 142 pounds a year of sugar! And the very products most people rely on to lose weight — the low-fat diet foods — are often the ones highest in fructose.

Making matters worse, all of the fiber has been removed from these processed foods, so there is essentially no nutritive value at all.

Fructose Metabolism Basics
Without getting into the very complex biochemistry of carbohydrate metabolism, it is important to understand some differences about how your body handles glucose versus fructose. I will be publishing a major article about this in the next couple of months, which will get much more into the details, but for our purpose here, I will just summarize the main points.

Dr. Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco, has been a pioneer in decoding sugar metabolism. His work has highlighted some major differences in how different sugars are broken down and used:

• After eating fructose, 100 percent of the metabolic burden rests on your liver. But with glucose, your liver has to break down only 20 percent.

• Every cell in your body, including your brain, utilizes glucose. Therefore, much of it is “burned up” immediately after you consume it. By contrast, fructose is turned into free fatty acids (FFAs), VLDL (the damaging form of cholesterol), and triglycerides, which get stored as fat.

• The fatty acids created during fructose metabolism accumulate as fat droplets in your liver and skeletal muscle tissues, causing insulin resistance and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Insulin resistance progresses to metabolic syndrome and type II diabetes.

• Fructose is the most lipophilic carbohydrate. In other words, fructose converts to activated glycerol (g-3-p), which is directly used to turn FFAs into triglycerides. The more g-3-p you have, the more fat you store. Glucose does not do this.

• When you eat 120 calories of glucose, less than one calorie is stored as fat. 120 calories of fructose results in 40 calories being stored as fat. Consuming fructose is essentially consuming fat!

• The metabolism of fructose by your liver creates a long list of waste products and toxins, including a large amount of uric acid, which drives up blood pressure and causes gout.

• Glucose suppresses the hunger hormone ghrelin and stimulates leptin, which suppresses your appetite. Fructose has no effect on ghrelin and interferes with your brain’s communication with leptin, resulting in overeating.

If anyone tries to tell you “sugar is sugar,” they are way behind the times. As you can see, there are major differences in how your body processes each one.

The bottom line is: fructose leads to increased belly fat, insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome — not to mention the long list of chronic diseases that directly result.

Panic in the Corn Fields
As the truth comes out about HFCS, the Corn Refiners Association is scrambling to convince you that their product is equal to table sugar, that it is “natural” and safe.

Of course, many things are “natural” — cocaine is natural, but you wouldn’t want to use 142 pounds of it each year.

The food and beverage industry doesn’t want you to realize how truly pervasive HFCS is in your diet — not just from soft drinks and juices, but also in salad dressings and condiments and virtually every processed food. The introduction of HFCS into the Western diet in 1975 has been a multi-billion dollar boon for the corn industry.

The FDA classifies fructose as GRAS: Generally Regarded As Safe. Which pretty much means nothing and is based on nothing.

There is plenty of data showing that fructose is not safe — but the effects on the nation’s health have not been immediate. That is why we are just now realizing the effects of the last three decades of nutritional misinformation.

As if the negative metabolic effects are not enough, there are other issues with fructose that disprove its safety:

• More than one study has detected unsafe mercury levels in HFCS.

• Crystalline fructose (a super-potent form of fructose the food and beverage industry is now using) may contain arsenic, lead, chloride and heavy metals.

• Nearly all corn syrup is made from genetically modified corn, which comes with its own set of risks.

The FDA isn’t going to touch sugar, so it’s up to you to be proactive about your own dietary choices.

What’s a Sugarholic to Do?
Ideally, I recommend that you avoid as much sugar as possible. This is especially important if you are overweight or have diabetes, high cholesterol, or high blood pressure.

I also realize we don’t live in a perfect world, and following rigid dietary guidelines is not always practical or even possible.

If you want to use a sweetener occasionally, this is what I recommend:

1. Use the herb stevia.

2. Use organic cane sugar in moderation.

3. Use organic raw honey in moderation.

4. Avoid ALL artificial sweeteners, which can damage your health even more quickly than fructose.

5. Avoid agave syrup since it is a highly processed sap that is almost all fructose. Your blood sugar will spike just as it would if you were consuming regular sugar or HFCS. Agave’s meteoric rise in popularity is due to a great marketing campaign, but any health benefits present in the original agave plant are processed out.

6. Avoid so-called energy drinks and sports drinks because they are loaded with sugar, sodium and chemical additives. Rehydrating with pure, fresh water is a better choice.

If you or your child is involved in athletics, I recommend you read my article Energy Rules for some great tips on how to optimize your child’s energy levels and physical performance through good nutrition.

 Here is the link to the CBC article: http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/02/17/blood-pressure-canadians.html?ref=rss

And The Huffington Post original article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mercola/sugar-may-be-bad-but-this_b_463655.html 

So, to conclude, next time you’re at the grocery store, pick up a few apples and some veggies. It is much better if you make grocery shopping a more regualr habit going once or twice a week to get fresh food rather than once every two or three weeks stocking up on processed freezer foods. If you have the opportunity to go to a tru farmer’s market where you can actually speak to the people who grow the food, do it. It sure won’t cost you any more than the grocery store, and you can learn a whole lot about your food as well as the people who get it to you. Lastly, watch the documentaries “Food Inc.” and “Monsanto”. That should be enough to change your eating habits.

The New and Improved Times Square, New York

Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced that the small sections of Broadway that were closed to traffic last spring will become permanent pedestrian-only plazas.

The experiment was conducted last spring to test whether or not closing the section of roadway would improve traffic flow. Despite its inability to truly acheive this goal, Bloomberg states that a large reduction in pedestrian injuries coupled with a favourable response from business owners convinced him to shut the street down for good. And though traffic slowed on some cross-town routes, it actually did improve quite significantly on others. But safety was the defining factor.

From the New York times:

Advocates for the project said it had vastly improved safety in the area, pointing to a 35 percent decline in pedestrian injuries and a 63 percent reduction in injuries to drivers and passengers, according to city data. Foot traffic grew by 11 percent in Times Square and by 6 percent in Herald Square, and a survey of local businesses found that more than two-thirds of the area’s retailers wanted the project to become permanent.

What I find most interesting about this whole thing is the response from the business owners. In all my experience I’ve found that one of the most difficult things to deal with in trying to create a more pedestrian friendly space is business owners insisting that the loss of vehicles in any way will negatively affect their business whether it be shutting down a street on a Sunday, removing a large surface parking lot, redusing on-street parking, etc. Here, in one of the busiest places on earth, we have two thirds of business owners requesting that the area become a permanent pedestrian plaza. This looks to me like a fantastic precedent, not just as a space converted to pedestrian use, but as an example of businesses actually requesting it.

There have been allegations of the city not wanting to expose their traffic data and that Mayor Bloomberg has made another decision for the city without undertaking proper consultation with the city. The decision was made to close the streets permanently before the data was released for public viewing. While this may be true, it is no mystery that Times Square belongs to the pedestrians. If you’ve been there, you know that the sidewalks just aren’t big enough to handle the demand. So lets say this were a highway, becoming increasingly congested because traffic demand is getting higher. In such a case, the road would be widened, or another would be built. Here we have exactly the same problem, except for once it is the people who overpower the cars. I can side with that.

New York times Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/nyregion/12broadway.html?hp

South China Tigers in Danger of Extinction

This is pretty wide spread news already I know, but might as well publish it here too. The Wildlife Conservation Society has recently estimated that there may be only 50 South China Tigers left in the wild. The tiger population in general is diminishing worldwide with an estimated 3500 of the large cats left (This from Treehugger). National Geographic puts that number as low as 2500. Habitat destruction and fragmentation is the main cause of this disappearance. That is, development either entirely replaces, or cuts large swaths through the habitat of the tigers thereby displacing them or disrupting their hunting environment making it difficult or impossible for them to effectively cath and eat prey. Poaching is also a major problem with much of the demand coming from the makers of traditional chinese medicines that use tiger parts as main ingredients.

I’m not often one to write about endangered species because generally, I think people know what is giong on, they just pretend to be too far removed and careless to do anything about it. But on the issue of tigers specifically, it would truly be a shame, not just ecologically, to lose one of the most beautiful creatures on earth.

A Concrete Overpass Can be Beautiful

This Vertical Garden is located in Pont Juvenal, Aix-en-Provence.

This just shows that it is possible to green our existing infrastructure in two senses of the word. Adding vegetation like this both enhances the aesthetic of the monotonous highway commute and all those little plants can make a small dent in counteracting the greenhouse gas emissions released from thousands of passing automobiles.

Let’s All Have Coal Ash for Breakfast!

You can find someone to deny just about anything, and, I’m making an assumption here, but I would not find it remotely hard to believe that people like this can make a REALLY good living pulling stunts like this.

Westbury Phone Booth Library

Phone Booth Library from: Treehugger, 2009

Treehugger posted this little gem today on their website about a town in the UK called Westbury-sub-Mendip, which was about to lose its last remaining classic red telephone booth. So what do the citizens do to save this historic (be it very small) structure? They turn it into a book exchange. The concept is a simple as it comes. You bring a book that you’ve read and exchange it for one you haven’t yet read. The honesty system applies. This fantastic idea both reuses the old booth, but also encourages the reuse of books. Nothing wasted here.

From: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/11/phone-box-becomes-library.php

China Snubs Obama Town Hall

From: The Globe and Mail, 2009

In a very typical and anticipated move, China has decided not to allow millions of Chinese citizens to hear the President of the United States speak when he visited the country today.

The national television station, the Central China Television Network, will not be broadcasting a ‘town hall’ type question and answer period with 500 chinese students in Shanghai. The event will be broadcast on local Shanghai television and on the website of the official Xinhua News station. These two sources will broadcast the event uncensored. But these two news stations aren’t exactly accessible to the country as a whole. The US State Department plans to run feeds of the talk on Twitter, which China says it will allow access to, though as it stands, internet censorship in China does not allow access to Twitter, Facebook, or even Google. 

Why the reluctance to allow citizens to hear President Obama speak? They allowed Clinton to speak uncensored – George W Bush too. Maybe it’s because of quotes that supported those who “faced down facism and communism”. Or his warnings that go something like, “those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent know that you are on the wrong side of history”.

A bit more on this in: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/china-restricts-obamas-qa/article1364342/