Archive for June, 2009

Cha Cha Cha

Saturday, June 27th, 2009

chachacha-blog

Cha Cha Cha.

Chick peas, chard and chorizo. You know you enjoy cooking when you start to make names up for dishes you put together. All thanks to Deb for creating this little number.

1. Chick pea production in India in 2008 amounted to 5,970,000 Tonnes. Pakistan was a distant global second place at 842,000 Tonnes.

2. Chard contains about 45% of your daily recommended Vitamin A and almost 20% of suggested vitamin C  in each serving.

3. Chorizo of the highest quality from Spain is made only from pork belly and pork loin, with no fillers or other funny stuff.

This posting represents the first ever Be The Rain guest photographer. Ethan Lebovics was behind the camera, and you can check out more of his great work at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/etban/

Posted in Food | Comments Off

Symbols

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

personsymbol-blog

I worked on this posting for about four weeks with no luck. I think the fact is that I just like the photograph. It reminds me of so many things. Race. Mortality. The human body. The list goes on.

I guess that’s the point of doing this anyways.

So rather than going off on some tangent, I’ll just let the image do the talking.

Posted in Society | Comments Off

Concrete

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

concrete-blog

This is not a soft wall.

What an incredible representation though of the versatility of one material to express itself texturally. All this while performing the common task of holding things back from the work of gravity.

A bit of knowledge concerning the subject at hand: the world  produces about one cubic yard of concrete for every person on globe, each and every year. 7 Billion cubic yards. All that energy. All those raw materials.

That’s enough to make a lot of walls.

Posted in Energy | 1 Comment »

Sandstone

Saturday, June 13th, 2009

sandstone-blog

I don’t usually think about how much trees and stone have in common, but this block at the base of the James J. Hill warehouse struck a cord. The warm red-brown sandstone pictured here formed in layers over time, with some strata of sand grains being more resilient, and some being soft enough to wear away more easily, creating an appearance similar to  growth rings on a tree.

Posted in Nature | Comments Off

Reel Mowers

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

mower-blog

Five reasons to celebrate the reel mower:

1. Good exercise. 50 million Americans have gym memberships, when they could just be out mowing the lawn.

2. No petroleum. A typical gas mower produces four times as much pollution as a car does.

3. No noise. A gas mower runs at about 90 decibels, which causes hearing loss in time.

4. Better lawn. Reel mowers make cleaner cuts which makes for greener grass.

5. Less lawn. It’s hard work, so you’ll want to rip out turf and replace it with perennial gardens.

Posted in Energy, Nature | 1 Comment »

Solar Powered Infrastructure

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

solarinfrastructure-blog

As much as 5 percent of the entire energy expenditure in the public sector may be directly related to street lighting. Imagine how much we could save if a big part of that lighting could be either eliminated or converted to run off of solar power.

Posted in Energy | Comments Off