Kazys's blog at the Evil Studio 2009

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Lecture @ Columbia Planning 11/24

Would this work for future studios?

“a medium-sized dog would consume 90 grams of meat and 156 grams of cereals daily in its recommended 300-gram portion of dried dog food. At its pre-dried weight, that equates to 450 grams of fresh meat and 260 grams of cereal. That means that over the course of a year, Fido wolfs down about 164 kilograms of meat and 95 kilograms of cereals. It takes 43.3 square metres of land to generate 1 kilogram of chicken per year - far more for beef and lamb - and 13.4 square metres to generate a kilogram of cereals. So that gives him a footprint of 0.84 hectares. For a big dog such as a German shepherd, the figure is 1.1 hectares. Meanwhile, an SUV - the Vales used a 4.6-litre Toyota Land Cruiser in their comparison - driven a modest 10,000 kilometres a year, uses 55.1 gigajoules, which includes the energy required both to fuel and to build it. One hectare of land can produce approximately 135 gigajoules of energy per year, so the Land Cruiser’s eco-footprint is about 0.41 hectares - less than half that of a medium-sized dog.”

“This pair of pigs tattooed with Louis Vuitton logos will be on exhibition Monday at the Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair together with eight other tattooed pigs. They’re the unconventional works of Belgian conceptual artist Wim Delvoye who just sold a tattoo on the back of a Swiss man which depicts the Virgin Mary with a lifeless skull (click for image) for a record €150,000.”

“In economics, the Jevons Paradox (sometimes called the Jevons effect) is the proposition that technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used, tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource. It is historically called the Jevons Paradox as it ran counter to popular intuition. However, the situation is well understood in modern economics. In addition to reducing the amount needed for a given use, improved efficiency lowers the relative cost of using a resource – which increases demand and speeds economic growth, further increasing demand. Overall resource use increases or decreases depending on which effect predominates. The Jevons Paradox has been used to argue that energy conservation is futile, as increased efficiency may actually increase fuel use. However, this ignores other benefits from increased efficiency, such as increased quality of life. Furthermore, fuel use will decline if increased efficiency is paired with a green tax that keeps cost of use the same. Also, the Jevons Paradox only applies to technological improvements that increase fuel efficiency; corporate or government policies that impose efficiency standards normally increase costs, and so do not display the Jevons Paradox.”

“Stockholm syndrome is a psychological response sometimes seen in abducted hostages, in which the hostage shows signs of loyalty to the hostage-taker, regardless of the danger or risk in which they have been placed. The syndrome is named after the Norrmalmstorg robbery of Kreditbanken at Norrmalmstorg in Stockholm, in which the bank robbers held bank employees hostage from August 23 to August 28, 1973. In this case, the victims became emotionally attached to their captors, and even defended them after they were freed from their six-day ordeal. The term “Stockholm Syndrome” was coined by the criminologist and psychiatrist Nils Bejerot, who assisted the police during the robbery, and referred to the syndrome in a news broadcast.[1]”

War Against the Center

The Gift of the Open Hand