Urban Farming

Industrial Rooftop Greenhouses

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 ~ Whole Foods Markets has announced plans to erect a commercial greenhouse atop its Brooklyn store:

Today Whole Foods Market has announced Gotham Greens as its operating partner of the nation’s first commercial scale greenhouse farm integrated within a retail grocery space. The 20,000-square-foot greenhouse, currently being constructed on the roof of the forthcoming Whole Foods Market store in Gowanus, Brooklyn, is scheduled to open later this fall. Gotham Greens will grow premium quality, pesticide-free produce year round in the greenhouse for Whole Foods Market Gowanus, as well as other Whole Foods Market locations throughout New York City.

Apart from all the benefits of having a green roof, the initiative will also grow produce that requires fewer water, energy and other inputs. Transportation costs and environmental impacts will also be minimized.

It will be interesting to see how well a retailer can vertically integrate their operations in this way. Locally, a couple of startups,including Suncrest Farms and Urban Harvest, are working on similar concepts.

If this is the start of a trend, and it sure looks like one, where are all the plants going to come from? Especially for hydroponics, tissue culture provides the best answer.

The Overview Effect

"An Incredible Aesthetic Impact"

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 ~ Reflections of astronauts on how space travel changed their perspective:



Why do we explore? Push boundaries? Innovate?

To learn about ourselves.

Growing Success

From Idea to Revenue

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 ~ We're making steady (and growing!) progress at Phytelligence, the WSU spin-out providing better fruit, trees, and services to commercial growers and nurseries. We closed our initial funding round with more than 70% of the funding coming from our customers and partners. We've added a top industry leader to our Board of Directors. And this week we received our first revenue.

Where's It Wednesday—CXIX

Where in Seattle is this?

Answer next week.

Details on the weekly Where's It Wednesday puzzle here.
Other weeks' puzzles here.
Answer to last week's puzzle, after the jump.

I'm Back

More Surprises

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 ~ That was a long hiatus.

Since I last posted we've entered the Year of the Snake. Some years are named after animals whose qualities are easier to admire, like the Dog, the Dragon, the Horse, and so on. It's more of a challenge for others, like the Rat and the Snake. I suppose I should give the Snake his due, but it's harder when his year starts with the most disreputable and snaky behavior on the part of our landlady. (The term landlady is far too respectable, so hereafter I will use a more suitable term.)

Here's the whole story:

Flooded Out

Posting Hiatus

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 ~ Dishwasher surprise!

First a trickle into the subfloor we couldn't see, then a gush, heaving up the floor. The hardwood is continuous throughout the entire level, in every room and every closet except the powder room, and now it needs to be completely refinished in order to have it all match. (Don't get me started on the waste that entails.)

So, we have to move out, all of a sudden, for as much as 2 weeks. Like either my wife or I have time for that with our jammed schedules of work, clients and kids. It would be wonderful to go to the tropics for the whole time, but alas, too many commitments for such an escapist fantasy.

While I hope to post at least occasionally over that time, it's a good bet that posting will be intermittent for the next little while.

Tough Oversight

But the Focus is Misplaced

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 ~ Even as oil drilling continues to set new records, Congress will be closely monitoring... the regulators!

Tough scrutiny “is more important than ever,” said Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., at the opening meeting of his Natural Resources Committee... Hastings said his panel’s role will be to keep pace and ensure any new “regulations and actions are thoroughly scrutinized and challenged if necessary.”

Doc Hastings is a continuing embarrassment to the US House. Would that he expended the same energy to thoroughly scrutinizing the cavalier and environmentally short-cutting drilling industry that he squanders instead on those trying to honestly regulate it on the public's behalf.

When it comes to scrutinizing the industry, Hastings and his panel do too much overlooking and too little overseeing.

Sustainable Investment

Growing Worldwide

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 ~ Environmental, social or governance concerns are incorporated in the selection or management of more than $13T of professionally managed investments according to a new report issued under the auspices of new group Global Sustainable Investment Alliance.

Nearly 22 percent of professionally managed assets around the world can be considered sustainable or responsible, according to a finance industry assessment, the first comprehensive look at the subject.

Critics question the rigor of such terms as "sustainable"; a more accurate total might be less than 22% considering the temptation towards greenwashing that still persists in many a hidebound industry.

“It is a huge problem that there are no set criteria used by industry today to define ‘sustainable’ practices or investments – on what basis are these claims being made and who has vetted any such criteria?” [said] Anuradha Mittal, the executive director of the Oakland Institute... “Investment is necessary, but only if investment criteria are first vetted by local communities, to incorporate labour, environmental and social concerns. Given that no such standards exist, and given that corporate accountability remains a major difficulty, this is extremely problematic. We need to see that investment is actually elevating communities and natural systems, because that’s what the world needs.”

Whether 22% or a smaller figure, there is a better question than one of methodology or definition.

Why are 78% (or more) of all investments unsustainable, irresponsible, or both?

Why Renewable Energy?

Lower Cost, Lowered Volatility

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 ~ Furniture and home furnishings retailer Ikea plans to double spending on renewable energy to $4B by 2020. The PR value is probably great, but saving money is the driver:

The additional spending on projects such as wind farms and solar parks will be needed to keep expenses down as the company maintains its pace of expansion, Chief Executive Officer and President Mikael Ohlsson said in an interview in Malmo, Sweden.

“I foresee we’ll continue to increase our investments in renewable energy,” said Ohlsson.

Ikea plans to get 70% of its energy consumption from renewables by 2015, and 100% by 2020. Not only are wind and solar approaching or reaching grid parity in many places, they provide pricing stability and predictability for businesses, something not provided by volatile oil prices.

Anti-Debt Clock

"Pay Your Damn Taxes"

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 ~ The US Debt Clock, which tracks total US national debt, is the passive voice of fiscal alarm—it doesn't name the subject who inflates that debt. Debt happens! The Anti-Debt Clock is the active voice—it names the wealthy and corporations as major contributors, and quantifies their influence in real-time.

Washington State leads the nation in regressive taxes—the gulf between the heavy tax rates on the less well-off and the wispy rates on the wealthy. Yet we are told by the austerity caucus that we must redress our fiscal problems on the backs of those least able to afford it. That's not fixing the debt; it's fixing the system.

Where's It Wednesday—CXVIII

Where in Seattle is this?

Answer next week.

Details on the weekly Where's It Wednesday puzzle here.
Other weeks' puzzles here.
Answer to last week's puzzle, after the jump.

Fracking Radiation

Where Does It Go?

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 ~ Hazardous waste requires proper disposal so the hazard doesn't do damage, but what happens when no one is paying attention to the waste?

The Marcellus shale has a lot of radioactive uranium and radium-226 in it. As a result, the large volume of wastewater created by fracking is highly radioactive.

[U.S. Geological Survey research geologist Mark] Engle co-authored a USGS report that found that millions of barrels of wastewater from unconventional (fracked) wells in Pennsylvania and vertical wells in New York were 3,609 times more radioactive than the federal limit for drinking water and 300 times more radioactive than a Nuclear Regulatory Commission limit for industrial discharges to water.

Internet Safety

8 Steps to Keeping Your Computer Safe on the Internet

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 ~ Great summary and solid advice from my one-time Microsoft colleague Leo A. Notenboom, (© 2013) Reprinted with permission. Any typos or formatting screw-ups are mine.

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Internet Safety is difficult. yet critical. Here are the eight key steps to internet safety - steps to keep your computer safe on the internet.

Viruses & Spyware & Worms ... oh my!

The very concept of "Internet Safety" is almost an oxymoron these days.

It seems like not a day goes by where we don't hear about some new kind of threat aimed at wreaking havoc across machines connected to the internet.

Anti-Microsoft sentiment coupled with the massive installed base make Microsoft products, and particularly Microsoft Windows, an irresistible target for hackers and "script kiddies". In recent years, products like Adobe Reader, Java, Flash, Firefox and more have come under attack as their popularity has increased.

Even the Macintosh is no longer invulnerable.

Here are some things you can, and should, do to stay safe.

Never Give Up

The Entrepreneur Credo

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 ~ I like this infographic:

The dip, as in the graphic, looks, and especially when you are in it, feels, more like a yawning chasm, even an abyss. True to the optimism of entrepreneurs, however, when you are there, things are looking up!

And it's still better than working for the Man.

Breaking the Grade Barrier

Food is Food

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 ~ Food is still nutritious even if it doesn't look like the food in a carefully staged advertisement. How picky are we as consumers?

Maybe we’d be willing to buy a slightly smaller apple that only has 37 percent red coverage instead of the requisite 40 percent needed to qualify as the “fancy” grade that stores usually buy (yes, it’s actually measured). Maybe we consumers would even consider it a score to get a bag of Pink Lady apples for just 69 cents per pound.

Since I'm a home gardener and grow (some of) my own food, I'm already less focused on impossibly picture-perfect produce anyway. When you grow your own, it's often smaller (zucchini excepted) and sometimes not as beautifully colored or proportioned. It might even have pest damage! Horrors!

But it's still tasty, nutritious, maybe even organic! If you've ever worked in or patronized a food bank, you've seen food like this all the time. And if you care about sustainability, minimizing waste, and living more closely in tune with your environment, it's easy to take that first bite.

Sextuplicate

IRS Forms Only Your Grandpa Could Love

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 ~ I expect some of my readers may not even know what carbon paper is, or its somewhat more modern, but still ancient relative, carbonless copy paper. If you have received a W-2 or a 1099-MISC income statement from a small business, however, you may have received it printed on one of these papers.

It is bizarrely retro.

More Regulatory Evils

Gun Control Stands Alone

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 ~ Where else do we choose to have our civilization out of control?

Even though we regulate all of these things, we neither ban them, nor confiscate them from those owning and using them responsibly.

Control is not confiscation. Regulation is not a ban.

Where's It Wednesday—CXVII

Where in Seattle is this?

Answer next week.

Details on the weekly Where's It Wednesday puzzle here.
Other weeks' puzzles here.
Answer to last week's puzzle, after the jump.

Are College Degrees Worth It?

For Most? No

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 ~ We always hear about the importance of getting a college degree, and how it correlates with much higher lifetime earnings. But, as the financial people are always quick to say, the past is no guarantee of future performance, and the current performance of college degrees is dismal indeed.

At left is an excerpt from an infographic from Frugal Dad on college costs. (The original is quite large, but worth looking at it; click to see in its native habitat.) Increasingly, a college education only has direct financial value if one treats it specifically as vocational training. Want to be an engineer? Got get a degree in computer science or EE. Want to study art? You're better off organizing your own reading and gallery tours, perhaps with a trip to the great museums of New York and Europe. Want to go into business? Become an entrepreneur.

College has other benefits to be sure, but the ballooning costs and the crushing debt load are not worth it for most future workers. It is no longer a ticket to the top rungs of the economic ladder. There is a bubble forming in college attendance, rising costs, and rising educational debt, which is unique in that it cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.

I'm not sure when it will pop, but like any bubble, it eventually must.

When Trees Grow to the Sky

Milan's Vertical Forest

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 ~ A novel take on a green-walled building is under construction in Milan.

The Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest) places trees on custom-designed ledges all the way up the outside walls of the two apartment towers.

Each apartment balcony will have trees (900 plantings are planned for the two buildings) that will provide shade in the summer and drop their leaves in winter to allow in winter sunlight. Plant irrigation is provided via a grey-water filtration. Additionally, photovoltaic power generation will help provide sustainable power to the building.