I said it last year and I'll say the same thing now, screw "greening" your Christmas and make it sustainable instead

This post ran for the first time exactly one year and one day ago. It's even more true today than it was a year ago.

Someone sent me what has to be the fourth or fifth list of the ways I can "green" my Christmas yesterday and I've about had it. To a one, each of those lists concerned ways I could either spend more money than I would otherwise on unattractive crap or new and inventive ways for me to wear a hair shirt in public and thereby prove my "green" bona fides to passersby. Please.

Human civilization faces some very real and very pressing environmental problems. Left unchecked, a number of these have the potential to grow into outright crises and they need to be dealt with decisively and immediately. All of them can be traced to an American (and increasingly global) pattern of consumption. It's not just a matter of quantity of that consumption either, it's more a problem of that consumption's inefficiency.

The contemporary "green" movement was no doubt founded with the best intentions, but the more of its popular expression I see the less enthused about it I become. These Christmas lists I've been seeing are a terrific case in point. The problem is excess and inefficient consumption. So the solution cannot be more consumption. Buying a $75 Christmas tree ornament made from an old sock is still buying more unnecessary stuff. It's a more sustainable idea to just keep using the Christmas tree ornaments you already have.

The overpriced "green" trinkets and gewgaws being pitched around the internet are just another manifestation of this consumption problem. What needs to change is the impulse to buy stuff for the sake of buying stuff. "Green" consumerism is still consumerism.

A better way to think about your role in the face of these looming problems is to commit to using scarce resources wisely and efficiently. That goes for all scarce resources: energy, land, water, time and your money. Make a commitment to yourself and at the same time a co-commitment to the people with whom you share the earth.

So rather than a bunch of simple minded lists of how to have a "green" Christmas, why not just stop buying crap? Stop substituting things for your time for and emotional availability to the people you love. Gift giving is a great custom, one of my favorites in fact. But how smart is it to go broke every December?

"Green" ideas for this or any time of year start with the best intentions, but all too quickly become the social equivalent of methadone. Buying crap is still buying crap, regardless of its recycled content. So don't buy crap. See? No hair shirt.

Smart carbon and stupid people; a rerun

This post ran originally on 10 January 2010. About the only thing that's changed is the rate of exchange between the US Dollar and the Euro.

I love my Brita pitcher. I've sung its praises in this space repeatedly and I'll say it again: I love my Brita pitcher.

Britas, like most gravity-fed water filtration systems, use gravity to pull water through a disc of activated carbon. Activated carbon is pretty much charcoal, it's just a pure form of it that's been treated in order to increase the amount of space between the carbon atoms it's made from.

Traditionally, charcoal is made through a process called pyrolization. In pyrolization, organic (carbon-based) material like wood or agricultural waste is superheated in an environment devoid of oxygen. In the absence of oxygen, the material can't catch fire and instead its volatile compounds evaporate and leave behind the carbon they were once bonded to. There are a variety of chemical and physical processes available in order to bring about this pyrolytic reaction but all of them yield the same result, a highly porous form of carbon.  Its value as a filter comes from two things: the purity of the carbon and the surface area made possible by all of its pores. Get this, a gram of activated carbon can have a surface area that ranges between 300 and 2,000 square meters according to my pals at How Stuff Works.

Carbon filters work through a process called adsorption. That's adsorption with a D and not a B. As water passes through the microscopic pores in the activated carbon filter, specific organic and inorganic chemicals and elements stick to the surface of the carbon. Think of the difference between adsorption and absorption this way. In absorption, material A gets sucked into the volume of material B. In adsorption, material A sticks to the surface of material B. An even simpler way to think of this that's more or less still accurate is when you wipe up a spill with a paper towel, the paper towel absorbs the spill. When you have a dusty floor and you wipe up the dust with a Swiffer, the Swiffer adsorbs the dust. Make sense?

Carbon filters work terrifically and they remove all manner of organic and inorganic stuff from tap water. Over time though, all of the surface area in the filter available for adsorption gets covered over and they stop being effective. You can't really clean a spent carbon filter, so you just replace them every couple of months. Simple and effective, and once again chemistry is your friend.

Well, a well-meaning but highly suggestible internet pal sent me a link to a solution to a problem that I didn't know I had. Apparently, my disposal of spent carbon filters every couple of months is an environmental crime on par with driving a Hummer or burning coal. Please. Anyhow, she sent me to a link to something called Sort of Coal. I don't really want to provide a link back to them but I suppose I owe them that much since I'm about to use a bunch of their images.

Sort of Coal sells pseudo scientific crap and snake oil and they do it in the form of something they call "white charcoal." The charcoal's still black of course, but in a world where reality doesn't matter, a consistent vocabulary must not be too important either.

My well-meaning internet pal sent me a link to this product:

It's what Sort of Coal calls Bottle and Kinshu Binchotan. It costs €68 plus Denmark's 25% VAT. That's €85 ($122.45 US) plus shipping. Oh yeah, carbon filtration doesn't happen by osmosis so it's pretty much ineffective as a filter. Sort of Coal doesn't mention how big the bottle is so I can't figure out the cost per serving. So despite the omission of the bottle size it does tell me this:

Serving and drinking local tap water becomes a pure and beautiful daily experience – with Bottle and Kishu Binchotan, each product is given its perfect complement.

Kishu Binchotan soaks up chlorine from tap water while releasing natural minerals into it. Kishu Binchotan softens the water and improves the overall taste.

What a load of BS. Tap water as a "pure and beautiful" daily experience? It's a frickin' glass of water, not an orgasm. It's not even a filtered glass of water at that.

Sort of Coal goes on to ascribe all manner of nonsense to its pyrolized wood. Here's what's called a Hakutan Tray and it's made from charcoal and plastic.

I have no idea how big it is, but Sort of Coal tells me this:

A decorative, purifying tray, made from cross-sections of White Charcoal set with compressed charcoal powder and resin. White Charcoal is produced by hand and is naturally activated during a controlled burning process. Use a Hakutan tray in the kitchen or living room. Fruit will remain fresh longer when placed on the Hakutan tray. Wipe it clean with a damp cloth. Do not use soap. It remains active for years if exposed to direct sunlight occasionally.

This product is organic and C02 friendly.

CO2 friendly? How can something made from partially burned wood and plastic be CO2 friendly? What does CO2 friendly mean anyway? How can a company make a claim like "Fruit will remain fresh longer when placed on the Hakutan Tray" and get away with it? Can they be held responsible for bananas that rot at the same rate that they would on a tray not made from "white charcoal?" If anybody wants to part with €160 ($230.50 US) to find out, let me know how it goes.

The unproven assertions just keep on coming with these people. Check out this:

Welcome to the Hakutan Large. The Hakutan Large is described thus:

Korean White Charcoal stems. White charcoal is made by hand and is naturally activated through a controlled burning process. Hakutan absorbs gases, pollution and odors from the air. It can be placed in your bathroom to regulate humidity, in the living room and kitchen to absorb cooking steam and odours. For generations people in Asia have used it to freshen air and create a better indoor environment. Charcoal is also used in spaces where there is intensive computer use, because it creates natural anions and thus has a positive effect on mental well-being. Keep free from dust. If you refresh it once in a while by placing it in direct sunlight, you can keep the Hakutan active for years. Charcoal should be recycled. White charcoal has a positive effect on the environment even when you dispose of it.

When the time comes to get a new Hakutan, crush it and mix it with soil so plants can benefit from it. This makes Hakutan CO2 friendly

So using this €120 ($172.87) stick of charcoal will have a positive effect on my mental well-being because it releases natural anions. I love how they pair their absurd claims with they mystery of the Orient. I'm not Asian but I think I'd be insulted if I were. But at least they explain how they get CO2 friendly from this.

Some day soon, I promise, we'll have a chat about ions and anions but I think I may have exhausted you guys by now.

Part of me admires the gall of these people to make the claims they do and charge what they do for this useless garbage. A bigger part of me is appalled at how this sort of new-agey clap trap can be lapped up so readily by an uncritical public.

The world faces a host of serious environmental problems that need to be addressed if it's to remain a planet fit for human life. The solutions to those problems will come from the fields of chemistry, biology, physics and their allied scientific disciplines. The mechanisms that underlie the physical world can be understood and that understanding only increases their wonder. Really.

A quiet counterpoint to the TSA

I found these while I was taking a Thanksgiving break and I thought they were clever.

The text of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution is printed in metallic ink and will show up on the TSA's body scan images. You can find them here.

Thinking about the TSA's latest power grab and that Palin woman's assertions that those of us with a D in our political affiliations somehow hate the Constitution reminded me just how much I admire the Constitution of the United States. Here's the text of the Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Sarah, if you're reading this you probably ought to read the whole thing some time. Here's the Constitution and here's The Bill of Rights.

As irritating as the TSA's security theater can be, the idea of someone seeing my bits in a scanner doesn't bother me very much. I'm far more concerned about the general climate of paranoia that allows all manner of Constitutional abuse to go unchallenged. That same climate of paranoia is what allows failed politicians who libel their fellow citizens to write best selling books and it allows a minority political party to use metaphors of war to describe their disagreements with The President.

The United States is in serious trouble and that trouble can't be chased away by bureaucratic muscle-flexing or by pitting citizens against one another in the search for a scapegoat.

Now, who'll be the first one to volunteer to wear these undies through an airport?

Autumn re-runs; Break a CFL? Don't panic.

This post ran originally on 23 April 2009. Few things irritate me more than panic spawned by ignorance and scientific illiteracy. A shocking amount of pseudo-scientific nonsense gets run as gospel by the Huffington Post, almost as much as the nonsense spewed out by Fox News. Ignorance and panic peddling know no politics.


Math and science are how human beings come to understand the world. For some reason that perspective's considered to be suspect by a lot of people. I will never understand that suspicion. The world's a dangerous place and removing all danger is impossible. Furthermore, everything is a potential toxin, everything. So much so that the term toxin is meaningless. Toxicity is dose. Period. Sure, drinking a cup of mercury will kill you, but so will drinking a gallon of water in a half an hour. Should we ban water because it's a toxin? Individual CFLs aren't a problem. A landfill full of them is. So use them, be sensible and recycle them once they're burned out.


The key to all of this is to understand what level of exposure to something is unlikely to cause harm. That's not information you're going to get from the Huffington Post, Fox News or anybody else who has an interest in you being scared. Science is your friend.


Lisa Sharkey had a piece in yesterday's Huffington Post where she described her panic over a broken compact fluorescent light bulb in her home. She then listed a series of clean up procedures that could only have been written by a personal injury attorney. Sheesh. Calm down already!

All fluorescent light bulbs contain elemental mercury. That includes the long, skinny ones in offices and schools. Elemental mercury is a naturally-occurring heavy metal that's also a neurotoxin in high enough doses. Elemental mercury is a liquid at room temperature and it evaporates into a gas easily. That gas glows when electricity passes through it. Hence its use in light bulbs. Mercury has a long list of practical uses and is found in everything from Mercurochrome to mascara. High concentrations of elemental mercury are more damaging as a gas than as a solid, so there are some sensible precautions you'll want to take should you break one of these bulbs.

But let's get a little perspective first and do some math.

Let's say you break a CFL containing five milligrams of mercury in your child’s bedroom. Further, let's say that bedroom has a volume of 25 cubic meters (that's a medium-sized bedroom). For the sake of illustration, let's assume that the entire five milligrams of mercury in the bulb vaporizes immediately. This would result in an airborn concentration of 0.2 milligrams per cubic meter. This concentration will decrease with time, as air in the room leaves and is replaced by air from outside or from a different room. So even if you do nothing, the concentrations of mercury in the room will likely approach zero after about an hour or so.

Under these relatively conservative assumptions, this level and duration of mercury exposure is not dangerous, since it's lower than the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standard of 0.05 milligrams per cubic meter of metallic mercury vapor averaged over eight hours. 

To equate the level of exposure in our broken bulb scenario with OSHA's eight-hour standard Imagine the immediate level of mercury in the room immediately after the bulb broke to be 0.2 milligrams of mercury per cubic meter. If we assume the air in the room changes every hour, then the eight-hour average concentration would be .025 milligrams per cubic meter.

See? No need to panic. While I wouldn't call it harmless exactly, it's not something you need to call a Hazmat team over.

So, in the event that you break a CFL, open a window to speed up the dispersal of the mercury vapor. If it makes you feel better, leave the room for a half an hour. Then come back and clean up the broken glass. 

The Queen won't friend me back

The other day I sent a friend request to Her Royal Highness, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor. It was a gesture of good faith and I looked forward to witty exchanges about Welsh Corgis and ingrate relatives. But alas and alack, I just learned that the Queen's not going to be responding to friend requests.

Madame, you wound me.

Designer's confessional: I don't get Halloween

OK, I'm taking a break from my usually scheduled reruns to make an earth-shattering confession.

 I don't get Halloween.

I liked it well enough when I was a kid but after the age of about 12 I just stopped understanding its appeal. I like who I am and I like the life I lead. So why should I dress up like somebody else for a night?

Autumnal re-runs: Dirty money, filthy lucre; a designer's confession

The following post appeared originally on 6 September 2009. Here we are more than a year later and the payola situation out there seems more chronic than ever. I still won't dirty my hands with it and that it goes on as often as it does sticks in my craw like few other things.

A long, long time ago, I worked for a fancy schmancy kitchen design studio. We worked the very high end of the market and with the help of a whole lot of smoke and mirrors, we had a reputation as the high class joint where somebody with money to burn could go to get a kitchen or a bath straight out of a magazine. In fact, a lot of our stuff ended up in magazines. We had a reputation for being an ethical, service-oriented firm peopled with designers who were completely committed to their clients' needs, wants and whims.

I worked there for two years and in those two years I worked on a couple of interesting projects, but most of it was just overpriced exercises in more is more. It was pretty soul-deadening. My big project though, was a home that was under construction for the entire two years that I was at the fancy schmancy studio. It was a grand home; a complete, period-perfect reproduction of a plantation house. We were contracted to design all of the cabinetry and casework in the entire house. It was a tremendous opportunity to learn how to design such things as coffered ceilings and wainscoted walls. It took a year-and-a-half to complete the designs.

Finally, when we priced out all of the cabinetry and casework the first time, the numbers came back at 1.3 million dollars. And no, million is not a typo. Eventually, we edited down the designs in the project and got it to a more palatable but still galling $400,000. A couple of hours before my boss and I were to present that revised proposal to the architects, he and I met to review the numbers one last time. When I was digging through the internal, itemized price sheets I came across an $85,000 charge that didn't have any kind of history or back up. The $85,000 had been folded into the total and since the client never saw the itemized back ups, no one would really know that it was in there. I asked what that charge was and he informed me that it was to pay for the builder's kitchen renovation.

I wanted to vomit. I am not a naif, I know that payola and kick backs go on all the time in my industry. But I'd never seen so naked a grab in my life. What ever respect I had for my boss or the contractor went out the window at that very moment. I swallowed my revulsion and made it through the meeting. I went along with it and said nothing. I was a junior designer on the project and I told myself that it wasn't my place to make waves about the graft I'd stumbled across. I left the firm a couple of weeks after that, and I never got to see the completed house. It didn't matter by then. In my mind the whole thing was tainted and I had a hard enough time looking at the plans, seeing the real thing would have done me in. Many years later, that situation still bothers me.

The payola, the graft, I stumbled across that afternoon wasn't an isolated case. I don't mean just at that studio either. "Paid referrals" are a common practice throughout the industry and I react to them now the way I did then. I'm repulsed. I think the practice is sleazy and unethical. I don't pay for referrals and I won't accept money for one. Take the money you would pay me and charge your customer less. What a concept!

I'm hooked into a network of tradespeople and suppliers I know and trust. When I refer my clients to my tile setter, or my electrician, or my lighting supplier, I want them to know that I am referring to the best person I know for the job at hand. I want them to know that they will be taken care of. Their job will be completed as promised and they will be charged a fair, though not necessarily a low, price. I want them to know too that the fair price they're paying doesn't include a kick back to me.

I was reminded of that whole situation this week when I got a phone call from an interior designer I'd never met. She had two clients who wanted to renovate a kitchen but that a kitchen plan was beyond her skill set. As we talked about the job she was proposing, she told me that her clients wanted something nice, but they were pretty price-sensitive. She then told me that she was willing to waive her usual 10% referral fee and "only" wanted me to tack $1000 onto the job total for her. Only. This was a sentence or two after she described them as price-sensitive.

I told her that I'd love to talk to her clients but that I wasn't going to give her a dime. There was a stoney silence on the other end of the line. "Really?" she asked in a near whisper. "Why is that?"

"Because it's sleazy," I said. "It's unethical and it makes projects cost more than they should. If you're any good at what you do, you should be able to make a living from the fees and commissions you earn. Payola is dirty money, it's a used car salesman move. I'm not a used car salesman. Are you?"

"Ummm," she nearly whispered, "maybe we're not a good match."

It was the smartest thing she said during the three minutes she was in my life.

Sometimes, product shots benefit from some styling

So my post yesterday about photo stylists gone wild was actually a wild sweep away from what I intended to write when I sat down. The point was to highlight a different vanity made by the same company, Ypsilon. Here's the vanity.

Believe it. That's the cameo vanity in pink. It's available too in black.

Here it is in cream.

That's real tufted leather upholstery on the drawer fronts and that cameo's a depiction of Elizabeth Windsor, the Queen of England,  in an earlier, gentler time.

That's an Italian product aimed squarely at the US market. Again, I understand being provocative and I understand someone creating a buzzworthy object in order to sell the rest of his wares. But if this is the buzzworthy object and the rest of the wares are all but invisible, who at the helm of this ship?

I'm confused. Is Queen Elizabeth really a popular motif with American consumers? Is tufted leather remotely practical on the front of a vanity?

Does any of this matter? After all, I've spent two days writing about Ypsilon. Am I just a marionette in their well-conceived ploy to take over the world?

Would you put a pink, leather vanity with a Queen Elizabeth motif in your bathroom? If you were a manufacturer and this were in your product mix, would this be the thing you turned the stylists loose on to better disguise it in your catalog? I could think about all of this for days. I promise not to but I could.

Fiorentino's the gift that keeps on giving

First we had lighting for a modernist bordello.

Then we had coordinating, pleather ottomans and various poufs.

So what's missing? Why coffee tables of course. Fiorentino thinks of everything.

Where's Telly Savalas when you need him?

Bad taste never seems to go out of style

Fiorentino, the people who brought us the lacy floor lamps last week, has some companion pieces in their new offerings.

Their Leonardo collection features an array of tufted tuffets, poufs and other things to trip over. They are available in white tufted leather, black tufted leather and most classy of all, gold tufted pleather. All of which come laden with Swarovski crystals and the occasional lion's foot.

Lovely. But there's more.

Now that I can see this whole thing set up with one of those lacy floor lamps I am beginning to see something.

Are we poised for an I Dream of Jeannie revival?

It's the end of the world as we know it

Hammacher Schlemmer has introduced a product that will come to be seen as a turning point in the collapse of the American Empire. I bring you exhibit A.

From the catalog:

Satisfying a mutual desire for companionship, this high chair permits your dog or cat to accompany you at the dinner table. The high chair clips securely to tables up to 2" thick and its height adjusts without tools to elevate your pet to near eye level. It has a frame of powder-coated 5/8" steel tubing and its arms are rubber-coated so they will not mar table surfaces. By providing an alternative to sitting on your lap, running disruptively underfoot, or outright banishment, the chair assuages a pet (and its owner's) frustration, and promotes more refined behavior. The chair's 600-denier tan/brown nylon fabric cleans easily. Two tethers on the chair protect your dinner guests against any lapses in etiquette. Folds for convenient storage and travel. For pets up to 10 lbs. 10" H x 12" W x 9 1/2" D. (4 lbs.)

For less than $50 you can continue to pretend that your dog is a child and stay good and distracted while the walls crumble around you.

In a world where millions go without adequate food or safe water, resources get directed to crap like this. We're doomed.

How do you light a Modernist bordello?

Now that Fiorentino's figured out how to light a Modernist bordello, the rest of us can relax and move onto more pressing issues. To wit:

What possible use could these things have other than classing up an already classy joint in Reno or Sparks? My only concern would be from having that much acetate so close to a heat source.

Too harsh? Is there any redemption to be had?

Oh look, an adorable and homemade teddy bear

Oh it's homemade alright, I can't think how anything could be more homemade. It looks like it's made from some kind of leather right? Not so fast.

Apartment Therapy picked up a story from Inhabitots that explains what this is and how it was made. You'll never guess. Seriously. Never in a million years will you guess how this is made. Can't handle the mystery anymore? Check out Inhabitots' Five Fun Things You Can Do with Your Baby's Placenta.

Ask before you pick up somebody's teddy bear, you never know where its been.

Seriously?

Ewwww.

Why I'm glad I'm not five; one more reason to hate AT&T

It's a holiday weekend and I'm taking advantage of the lull in my web traffic to throw it wide open and write about some things other than design.

I may be alone in this opinion, but I really hate this commercial for AT&T.





I can't stand its assumption that I wish I were five again and I resent this ad's use of one of my favorite songs of all time. It not only gloms onto the Gene Wilder original recording from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, it misses the point of the whole song. Here's the song in context.





Willy Wonka is not being nostalgic for his childhood. He's very accurately describing his adulthood.

Being five means you can imagine anything you want to. The other side of it though, is that even if you can imagine something, you're also powerless to do anything with that vision. Nostalgia relies on a selective recollection of the past, and that's why it's worthless as a past time and downright destructive as a cultural force. I remember imagining I could fly when I was five and it was lovely. However, I also imagined that there were monsters under the cellar stairs and they scared the living day lights out of me. The joy of adulthood is that I know that not only can I not fly, I also know that there are no monsters under the stairs. Why is it that this ad and the ideas behind it want me to pine for the days when I believed I could fly but forget that I also believed in the monsters under the cellar stairs?

Here are the lyrics to Pure Imagination:

(Spoken)
Hold your breath
Make a wish
Count to three

(Sung)
Come with me and you'll be
In a world of pure imagination
Take a look and you'll see
Into your imagination

We'll begin with a spin
Trav'ling in the world of my creation
What we'll see will defy
Explanation

(Refrain)
If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it
Anything you want to, do it
Want to change the world, there's nothing to it

There is no life I know
To compare with pure imagination
Living there, you'll be free
If you truly wish to be

(Refrain)

There is no life I know
To compare with pure imagination
Living there, you'll be free
If you truly wish to be

That song was written by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse for the great film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The movie was based on the Roald Dahl story Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It and its sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator were two of my favorite books as a kid. I swear my dark sense of humor comes from reading Roald Dahl. My childhood was idyllic by the way.

I'm not one to collect pithy quotes but the refrain from that song hangs next to my sink in my bathroom. I have to look at it every time I brush my teeth. The refrain is the whole point of the song and the whole point of that movie. Here it is again,

If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it
Anything you want to, do it
Want to change the world, there's nothing to it

Willy's not telling the people on the tour that they are in paradise as they walk around the product of his imagination, he's telling them that they already live in paradise. So do I and so do you. It's why that lyric hangs in my bathroom. Paradise in the context of this song and in the greater context of life is not describing a place, it's describing a state of mind. I live in paradise because I say it's paradise and I treat my life as such. That Willy Wonka refrain keeps me centered and it keeps me grateful. When things start to look less than paradisaical around here, it's always because I'm making bad choices or settling for something because it's easy instead of accomplishing something because it's right. Paradise, like happiness, is an internal state. Staying happy and staying imaginative are functions of will. No amount of nostalgia can make up for a lack of will. To quote Willy Wonka again, Anything you want to, do it.

The imagination of a child is an amazing thing but like all childhood skills and aptitudes, it's under construction. Feats of great imagination recognize the limitations of a given situation and work within that framework. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is a masterpiece because Michelangelo imagined how a ceiling could look. The Claire de Lune is so sublime because Claude Debussey imagined how a piano could sound. Great works of literature and art and music and film are created by adults not because there's a dark conspiracy to discredit the imaginations of five-year-old kids. Rather it's that adults understand limitations, sensible ones at any rate.

Imagination doesn't get squashed sometime between the ages of five and 35 automatically. Either it gets refined and made useful or it gets discarded. That's how life goes. Keeping it alive takes a bit of work and quite a bit of discipline. Implying that people reach their creative peak at the age of five is ludicrous.

I'm thrilled that I'm 45 and not five, thrilled. And this ad gives me yet another reason to resent AT&T beyond the usual reasons, dropped calls and spotty coverage.

OK gang, pounce.

Meritalia strikes again

The name of this chair is Origine du Monde, Maybe!

It's upholstered in memory foam and promises to provide a "near uterine sensuality." The Origine du Monde, Maybe! was designed by Italo Rota for Meritalia. I think it's safe to say that theirs is the first time such a promise was made by a piece of furniture. Maybe I'm not in the target market, but near uterine sensuality doesn't land real well over here. Whattya think?

Hanging a mosquito net over your bed for effect isn't cool, it's moronic

The yahoos at Apartment Therapy ran a feature the other day about hanging mosquito netting over a bed or reading look to lend a pretty, soft, outdoors-y touch to your home. Pah!

Here were their suggestions, though I found some different photos to better illustrate the absurdity of this idea.

1. Hang mosquito netting over a four-post bed to accentuate the space it encloses. 
2. Circle just the crown of the bed with a smaller round canopy, as in this airy bedroom. 
3. Establish gauzy "walls" for an outdoor dining room. 
4. Canopy a lounge area to stay bug-free when hanging out this summer. 
5. Create a mystical reading nook simply by enclosing a small area with mosquito netting and placing a floor cushion inside.

Mosquito nets can't be made pretty or cool no matter who's advancing them. If you live in a place where you need one, any of the set ups shown here or on the AT feature won't help you.

This kind of mindlessness drives me nuts. According to the World Health Organization, 247 million people worldwide contracted malaria in 2008 and a million of them died. The chief preventive for malaria is the humble mosquito net and those million deaths were caused by a lack of access to one.

Malaria's not such a problem in the developed world that people need to sleep under nets. In the tropical developing world, it's another story all together.

Here's an idea. If you're overcome with the need to drape a mosquito net canopy over your bed, stop. Instead of spending that money on a bad idea, why not donate it to Malaria No More? Malaria No More will take a ten dollar donation from you and get a mosquito net into the hands of someone whose life depends on it.

Seriously, can anybody look at these photographs and say to themselves, "Self, let's do that!" Save yourself the public shaming and turn that urge into something positive. Once again, that website is Malaria No More.

This is the proper use of a mosquito net, saving a life.

When did ping pong tables get hip?

I grew up with a ping pong table in the basement. I think having a ping pong table in the basement is in the Declaration of Independence or something. Right? It was good for an occasional grudge match with my brothers but other than that it didn't occupy a very big part of my life as a kid. It got replaced by a pool table some time when I was in high school and I don't think anyone mourned the loss.

Well a curious thing has happened in the last few years and of course I'm at a loss to explain it. Ping pong tables got hip at some point and I am at a loss to see the the appeal of them.

I suspect my BFF Jonathan Adler has something to do about it and despite the fact that we're on each other's Facebook Friends lists, I still have issues aplenty with the man's aesthetic.

Why Adler? Exhibit A. Here he is at home with Simon and that dog.

The eye rolling starts.

It's not just Adler. Here's one by Paul Smith.

It's a little precious, don't you think?

Here's another one pretending to be haute design and failing miserably. It's by Hunn Wei for the Mein Gallery.

And in what has to be the unholiest alliance of goofy trends in human history, here's one by Aruliden for Puma.

It carries a $4,000 price tag and has a chalkboard surface. Chalkboard paint and ping pong in one fell swoop?

I wonder if Apartment Therapy knows about this?

Is this tub setting up your kids for a life of disappointment? The sequel.

On 23 April I ruffled a whole bunch of feathers by posing the not so rhetorical question "Is this tub setting up your kids for a life of disappointment" with regard to this very expensive "kid-friendly" tub.

I say yes, of course. Well it gets even better, because the same company who came up with the fire engine now has a princess' carriage tub.

Lord knows we'd never want a little girl to bathe in a fire truck. It'll turn her into a lesbian. Quick! Let's find something that'll keep her appropriately girly.

How did I manage to survive a childhood where I took baths in an iron tub surrounded by glass bottles of shampoo?

via Christian Montone on Flickr