I've been given an island, a Blog Off post

The following is a Blog Off post. A Blog off is an event where bloggers of all stripes write about the same topic. You can learn more on the Let's Blog Off site. As the day progresses, a table will appear at the end of this post and it will list all of the participants as well as link to their posts. This week's Blog Off topic isn't just a topic, it's a situation.

No, not that Situation. I mean it's a hypothetical situation:

You’re given an island. The only thing to consider is once you move there, you can’t leave. Who and what would you bring? What are the rules?

There's nothing in here that says I won't have contact with anybody once I'm there, so I'm not bringing anybody with me. Now that that's decided, I'm going to pack up a U-Haul and go to my island. So the answer to what will I bring is everything but my car.

Since this is my island situation, I get to pick the island and here's the island I'm picking.

It's not just any Manhattan though, it's my Manhattan. It still operates under the usual rules except for a couple of important changes. First, on my Manhattan I have an income in the mid-six-figures for being a bon vivant. I'm going to be one of those Manhattanites who lives really well but has no visible means of support.

I will have a townhouse on Perry Street in the West Village and I get the whole house, not just a floor.

The following businesses will remain in business in perpetuity so that I can hunt and gather to my heart's content.

Murray's Cheese on Bleeker Street.

Until you've been to Murray's, you can't really understand cheese.

McNulty's Tea and Coffee on Christopher Street.

Somebody's got to keep me stocked with Russian tea.

The Westside Market on 7th Avenue at 15th Street.

For everything else.

And for times when I want an injection of hip without spending too much money, I want a table standing by at the Coffee Shop in Union Square.

I know, I know, but I like how the hip factor rubs off of all those NYU kids and onto me when I'm in there.

I will need to get around, so I will have a magic MTA card.

My MTA card will always have a $25 balance no matter what I do or how many times I jump on a bus or train.

While I'm casting spells, I'll need to do something with the weather. I love New York but the weather's dreadful for almost half of the year so I'm posing the following weather schedule. On Mondays and Fridays it will be spring and tulips will bloom up and down Park Avenue on both days.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays it will be autumn, but a warm and sunny kind of autumn.

On Wednesdays it will snow but it will be gone by the time autumn arrives on Thursdays.

Every weekend it will be July, 1983 when Miss Diana Ross captivated the world with a free concert in Central Park.







And every night, Sak's Fifth Avenue will light up its facade with The Story of the Bubble and the Snowflake.




So the rule is, I make the rules.

Oh and there's one more thing. In my Manhattan, I'll be able to wander into Grand Central Terminal any time I want to and stand in the middle of the concourse. Then I'll look up at the ceiling and just spin slowly with my arms extended. I do that now but in my personal Manhattan no one will mock me when I do it.

From Cornwall to you with Merlin Glass

Last April, I wrote a post about a Cornish glassblower named Liam Carey. I'd met Liam on Twitter and I was very impressed with the glass door and cabinet knobs he makes. I'm still impressed and Liam's been working overtime on his marketing efforts. Liam's company is called Merlin Glass.

Merlin Glass just made a marketing video. As a glassblower, Liam makes far more than door knobs and in this video he's making a perfume bottle. Feast your eyes on this:




This video's as well-made as his glass. Wow.

Merlin Glass is available outside of the UK if you buy from Liam directly. If you're interested in becoming a dealer they would love to talk to you. Check out Merlin Glass' website.

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.

Silestone sold me. Wow.

This is a new 60 second TV spot Silestone rolled out in Spain. Here's the video and audio without the voice over.



Holy cow, I think that's the best video I've ever seen in the whole kitchen and bath industry. Not only is it stunning, Silestone assures me that the entire thing is done in CGI, there's not a live image to be had anywhere in that video. That's doubly impressive.

It's the product of a Spanish videographer, Alex Roman, and his The Third and The Seventh Agency. I've seen Alex Roman's work before. This piece entranced me a year ago. It's nearly 13 minutes long, but watch it if you find a spare chunk of time.



The Third and The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

I absolutely love it when art and commerce combine.