Check out this amazing precinct view of Obama’s victory and accompanying 2008 DC Democratic Primary Results Google map by Adam Bailey.

What Big Media Matt Said: …the Republican Party exists to serve the interests of large business enterprises and very wealthy individuals, and tends to use national security and cultural anxieties as a kind of political theater aimed at securing votes so that they can better pursue their real agenda of enriching the wealthy and powerful.

Zaha Hadid Chanel Pavillion 2, originally uploaded by markahlman7

We wrote before about the Chanel Mobile Art Pavillion by Zaha Hadid, and from the looks of Mark Ahlman’s photos, mobile can be scratched off the title. There is a new website up and a list of dates:

• Hong Kong – February-April 2008
• Tokyo – May-July 2008
• New York City – September 2008
• London – June 2009
• Moscow – September 2009
• Paris – January-February 2010

Zaha Hadid’s Chanel Mobile Art container photo by Wallpaper
What we learned from the (horrible flash) website is that the curator is Fabrice Bousteau of the French magazine, Beaux Arts Magazine and the pavilion will feature 15 artists including Sophie Calle, Loris Cecchini, Sylvie Fleury, Subodh Gupta and Yoko Ono with work focusing on Chanel’s “legendary” quilted bag. Nothing like combining “high” art with lowbrow commercialism.
At least the Florentines’ did not delude themselves of the fact that they were glorifying themselves, while it is a guess if their kept artists felt the same way. Terms like “sellout” are overused and silly, but could you see other global brands such as Coke or Toyota commencing on a similar worldwide marketing pitch disguised as art and not be ridiculed? This is merely the updated and expanded upon To New Horizons, where instead of GM’s moving walkways and highways we are presented with commercialism of a smaller and more intimate variety.
Off topic: How many cranes does a mobile art pavilion need, anyway? I guess if we agree that Shigeru Ban’s Nomadic Museum for the boring ashes and snow exhibition is mobile, then Zaha’s is mobile, too.

If you are ever in your local big-box retailer and want to have a little “fun,” ask to see their floor tile section and ask where you can buy 9 inch by 9 inch floor tiles. You’ll be there awhile, because no one in the USA sells 9 x 9 tiles since the 1980’s. That is when all major floor tile makers, such as Armstrong Tile, ceased manufacturing resilient 9 x 9 floor tile.
Why? One word: Asbestos.

Asbestos is a naturally occurring fibrous minerals which was used, up until the 1980’s, for a whole host of insulating and fire protection products. Asbestos was a popular material because it has a great strength-to-weight ratio and is naturally fire resistant. It was used in everything from bricks, to rubber tiles, to pipe and wire wrapping/insulation, to steel column wraps for fire protection. It was everywhere and continues to be everywhere.

Armstrong made a series of floor tiles called Excelon Vinyl, which came in 9 x 9, and for large orders 12 x 12, but the bulk of Excelon tile was made in 9 x 9 tile sizes. Once people began to get sick, with Mesothelioma and Asbestosis and the lawsuits began piling up – more than 8,400 defendants and 730,000 claimants as of 2002 according to the RAND Corporation – Armstrong along with any company which used Asbestos was in deep legal trouble and ceased production of asbestos-containing products. Check out Asbestos and the law for a pretty even-keel explanation of the current state of play.

This is where it gets interesting: in the USA Asbestos is not explicitly Federally banned for use by the EPA. It is however regulated as an air pollution under Section 112 of the Clean Air Act of 1970 (amended 1990) and many applications have been forbidden by the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976. In New York City, you cannot get a building permit from the DoB without a certified and current ACP-5 which is an Asbestos Exemption Certification Letter mandated by the NYC Department of Environmental Protection. So if you are buying a building 20 years or older, and you find 9 x 9 tiles, good luck. You have to remediate the materials in New York City. I’ve managed projects where workers have found what they suspect to be asbestos pipe wraps or tile and they immediately leave and don’t return until remediation is complete. And I don’t blame them. Their job is hard enough without potentially inhaling known carcinogens, never mind all the the unknown carcinogens they are breathing in which we don’t know about yet.

To bring us full circle, asbestos and the following litigation, changed the very basic building blocks of the construction industry forever. No one makes 9 x 9 tile anymore so as to not be confused with asbestos tiles. Asbestos continues to affect every facet of construction to this day, and potentially forever in New York City as asbestos is literally everywhere in old buildings. When you look at floor tile, remember that the size of the tile is as important as the color and finish.

You know who you are.

, originally uploaded by code poet

biofuels guru Mike O’Hare says no:

There is now more than good reason to expect that no biofuel from seeds, possibly none (even cellulosic) grown on land that could grow food, will reduce global warming if substituted for petroleum products. The insight of the papers discussed in the article, and work by some others who have been worrying at this bone for years without anyone paying enough attention, is a remarkable synthesis of economics and plant/earth science.
The first piece of the puzzle is the recognition that if a piece of forest is cut down, or natural grassland plowed up, to grow biofuel, decay and/or burning of what was there before releases an enormous puff of carbon into the atmosphere that needs to be counted along with the carbon releases of the biofuel crop. Even spreading the initial release over decades of biofuel growing, it is large enough to push almost any biofuel’s global warming intensity way above that of gasoline, especially because it all occurs right at the beginning of the future rather than a few years or decades down the line.
[technical discussion…..]
Small amounts of diesel and ethanol will probably be available from trash and agricultural waste like the tree branches and bark scraps the logging industry leaves around to decay, or cornstalks, or McDonald’s used frying oil, and these are environmentally OK because they don’t induce land use conversion….And many smart folks in this business expect that algae growing in tanks in the desert (for example) can eventually be taught to make a lot of diesel cheap, with no land use implications. But for now, and for a while, biofuels generally are going over a very rough patch of road, a patch that may go on for years before new technologies smooth it out again.

But hey, let’s have another Congressional hearing with Roger Clemens, won’t we?

Cina-1-Beijing-1-24, originally uploaded by Save The Silver

Ohio and Kentucky are fighting over a rock

Southern Hospitality of NASCAR fans