LG --Life's Good or Lies Gratuitously?

LG Industries, the Korean company that makes everything it seems, also makes a solid-surface counter top material called Hi-Macs. Solid-surface is the proper generic term for what most people call Corian even though Corian is a brand made by DuPont. Hi-Macs is an aggressively marketed brand in a product category that is headed for extinction and good riddance. Solid Surface materials make for inferior counters. They scratch like crazy, they melt at an absurdly low temperature and they discolor over time. The industry wants you to believe that they are made from acrylic, but that's only part of the story. They are made from petroleum-derived plastics mixed with powdered bauxite. It's difficult to get the industry to own up to the bauxite content in their products and having them define what bauxite is to begin with is impossible. Well I'll tell you what it is. Bauxite is aluminum ore. Aluminum is a toxic metal. So what we have is a toxic brew of petroleum-derived plastic and aluminum ore and you're supposed to prepare your meals on it. Yeah, sure.

Yet, with all of that playing in the background, Hi-Macs just rolled out a new product line they're calling Eden. It's being marketed with a whole lot of hippy imagery and somehow they're labeling it as being made out of recycled material and therefore "green." Whatever green means these days. Again, what they want you to believe is an exaggerated form of the truth. Eden is made using up to 12 per cent pre-consumer waste. What that means in English is that they chop up their scraps and re-use those scraps to make more counters. This is a standard practice in the manufacture of solid surface materials to begin with so there's nothing new there. What is new though, is the attempt to jump on the sustainability bandwagon with the hope that no one will read the fine print. Please. Just because an inferior product has a color name like Lemon Grass doesn't make it a good idea, let alone a sustainable product. Want to be sustainable LG? Come up with a non-toxic surface that looks great, doesn't cost a lot, holds up to everyday use really well and can biodegrade.

Starck, raving madness

In the world of design, few people inspire and entertain me as much as Philippe Starck. Though he may not be a household name across the great expanse of the US, smart people on the coasts are well aware of him and at the end of the day that's all that matters, right? Hah!

Starck first appeared on my radar in 1990 when I came across his "Juicy Salif" citrus press for Alessi, the Italian "design factory" that has been systematically elevating the art value of everyday objects since the 1930s. That now-iconic piece of cast aluminum inspires me still.

Anyhow, I just read today that the BBC is casting for a reality show to be aired in the UK that's a design competition presided over by none other than Philippe Starck himself. I'm assuming that it will have a similar format to Bravo's Project Runway and the grand prize is a six month internship with Starck's offices in Paris. Man, the idea of that gives me a thrill and it's something I'd love to see when it finally airs. BBC America, are you listening?

Choo Choo Charlie envy

Here's one for the books and an interesting housing option I never considered. I came upon the story on Dwell Magazine's website this morning and it has my wheels turning to say the least. An artist in Oregon had a Pullman car renovated and in leaving it on the tracks rather than decommissioning it, it's not real estate; it's considered to be "rolling stock." Ergo no real estate taxes. The car's really well done --it's an attractive living space. It plugs into an auxiliary power source the way a boat at a marina does and it uses an incinerator toilet so it doesn't need to be hooked up to a sewer line. It costs the current owner $150 to keep it parked in a rail yard and that's it. Bravo clever artist guy in Portland for a brilliant execution of a sustainable housing idea. Check it out:

I love this furniture!

What's a man to do when he has Suessian visions of what life and furniture should look like but still has a life to lead? I mean, I have stuff to store and books to shelve and unmentionables to put away. Over the years, my love of camp and cartoon have been repeatedly slammed against the stone wall of reality and I've abandoned a lot of my ideas about wild colors for their own sake and fun furniture that was cool to have even though it didn't function very well. Along the way too, I've developed a much keener appreciation for fine things that are built well and that will last. I want the things I buy for myself to be fun and clever and at the same time I want to buy things I never need to replace. Oh what to do and where to go?

Well, enter Gallery Dust. Gallery Dust is the Valpariso, Indiana-based brainchild off furniture makers Vincent and Jessie Leman. They take traditional, American, wood furniture and twist and turn it into their beautiful and dare I say whimsical creations. I love this stuff, really. Bravo Vincent and Jessie, thanks for making beautifully clever and cleverly beautiful furniture.

And then a light went off...

Meet the Geobulb. The Geobulb is an LED light that is intended to replace a 60 watt incandescent bulb. The current wave of compact fluorescent bulbs are but a stop along the way to a world illuminated by LEDs. LED stands for light-emitting diode. An LED is a super-efficient method of light generation that features no breakable parts like the tungsten filament in a standard incandescent bulb. What's more, there's no mercury in it, unlike compact fluorescent bulbs. This lowly bulb produces the equivalent light of a 60 watt incandescent bulb (800 lumens) while using only 8 watts of electricity. Pretty cool. What's even cooler is that it's available in three color temperatures: cool daylight, warm white and soft white. Although the price on these things is just starting to drop (this Geobulb will set you back $120 and that's if you can find one), their long life puts even a CFL to shame. The expected lifetime of this Geobulb is 30,000 hours. What that means in the real world is that if your turned this thing on for 12 hours a day every day, you could continue to do so for the next seven years before you'd need to start thinking about replacing it. The Geobulb is available through C. Crane.