Month: February 2013

Skateboarders Help Transform Urban Environments

- Adam Clare


Skateboarding culture is often (wrongly) lumped together with criminal behaviour amongst youth. To those that still think that way, you should check out a study in the most recent Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability.

By looking at what young skateboarders would do in the city of Chicago the researchers found out that skateboarding culture is a great thing for urban environments. It’s good to see a positive take on a group of people who often get brushed aside.

Young people appropriate and redefine built environments through their everyday playful practices. Among a widening spectrum of young city dwellers, skateboarders transform urban spaces by exploring terrains and performing unforeseen uses. These urban explorations ascribe new meanings and pleasures to otherwise mundane built forms. Waxing ledges is a ubiquitous practice among skateboarders that signals creative appropriation through the application of wax on rough surfaces. The smoothening of ledges enables speed and exhilaration, while the traces engraved on the urban landscape communicate to other skateboarders a pleasurable space.

Read the abstract and full article here.

Band of the Month: Hecks

- Greg

Happy Friday Readers.
Today’s Band of the Month is Hecks. This Toronto two-piece, sonic assault rhythm section storms in and out faster than you can hit the play button. Their first album, ‘When They Ruled the Earth’, suitably characterizes their prehistoric-animal sized sound of thrashing bass and drums from start to finish. Every life changing weekend embodies the energy and intention of a bowel-jolting pterodactyl scream….and so does Hecks.
Take a taste below!

Band of the Month by Greg O’Toole

Canada Can Easily Have a Low Carbon Economy

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Even though Canada has the tar sands it is still possible for the Canadian economy to lower it’s carbon output. According to some recent research into the matter by The David Suzuki Foundation, Canada can compete better with existing low-carbon economies by focusing on being more environmentally friendly and using alternative energy solutions to the tar sands.

In Low-Carbon Energy Futures: A Review of National Scenarios, the TEFP summarizes common themes in leading greenhouse gas reduction strategies for eight countries: Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. The study shows that:

  • Canada and other industrialized countries have the technology to achieve an 80 per cent reduction in their energy-related greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
  • The transition to a low-carbon energy future will be transformative, requiring a boom in clean-energy technologies and low-energy practices at least as significant as the post-Second World War boom in fossil fuel consumption.
  • Per capita fuel and electricity consumption is about twice as high in Canada, the U.S. and Australia as it is in France, Germany, Sweden and the U.K. Yet even those countries produced scenarios that targeted 80 per cent reductions in their remaining GHG emissions by 2050.

Read more at the David Suzuki Foundation.
Here’s the full PDF report.

Asphalt That Fixes Its Own Potholes

- Adam Clare

Asphalt covers a lot of world and is worth billions of dollars and the entire industries rely on this material to make roads to transport goods. The catch is, this material that we use to make our roads is bad for the environment and requires a lot of maintenance. Filling potholes and similar road damage takes time, labour, and of course, even more asphalt.

In Germany some researchers have found a way to make asphalt self-repairing meaning that the road can last a lot longer before patching is required and will require less maintenance!

The Ideal 25 Hour Work Week

- Adam Clare

The currently popular 40 hour work week is a fairly modern notion and it’s thanks to unions that we don’t have something like an 80 hour work week. Times have changed and now scientists in the field of biodemography have suggested that a 25 hour work week is optimal. It allows people to spend more time living life than working in exchange for working later than the currently popular age of retirement.

“In socio-economic terms it makes a lot of sense. The important thing is that we all put in a certain amount of work – not at what point in our lives we do it. In the 20th century we had a redistribution of wealth. I believe that in this century, the great redistribution will be in terms of working hours.”
…
”We know that elderly people are prepared to continue working if they’re capable of doing so. And I’m guessing that young people would prefer to work less while they’re young if they have the option of working more when they get older.

Read more at ScienceNordic.

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