German musem show hopes to include "polar cities" exhibit in next exhibition in 2011

When Hamburg-based Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Museum for Arts and Crafts) in Germany decided to curate a show about "Climate Capsules" they inadvertently forgot to include polar cities as part of the show. Too bad, because they missed a good chance to show the work of Taiwanese artist Deng Cheng-hong to the world. He is the first person on Earth to come up with designs for polar cities for future survivors of global warming, and Dr James Lovelock of the UK has seen Deng's image and said "Bravo!"

Lovelock gets it. In fact, Lovelock is the father of polar cities.


"What to Do When the Earth Warms Up?" is a good question, and the German media asks that question in writing a story about the new show this summer of 2010.

"Given humankind's lackadaisical response to climate change, a museum in Hamburg is presenting fanciful visions of how humans might adapt to disaster. "Climate Capsules," an exhibition starting Friday, imagines people of the future in oceangoing cities and other artificial, self-contained environmentsm" the report notes. Sadly, the curator neglected to include any images of polar cities in the show. Maybe next time?

"Headlines about the changing climate are more plentiful than political moves to slow it. Among those assuming that bleak predictions will become real is the Hamburg-based Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Museum for Arts and Crafts). Its Climate Capsules exhibition, which opened today, asks how people can survive in a heating globe," the German media opined.


"Organizers collected a range of bold, sometimes zany, approaches to the threat of an increasingly inhospitable world. Curator Friedrich von Borries points out that, amid all the debate about climate change, there has been little talk of solutions. The focus instead is firmly on slowing or stopping the temperature trend, even though much damage has already been done."

"In the search for alternative solutions, there is a category discussed substantially less often in public: adaptation," the musuem wrote in a press release. Aha! The dreaded A-word! Yes, adaptation. Which is exactly what polar cities are all about, and why the museum will hopefully do a show in the future on polar cities, too.

In ''Climate Capsules'', artists, designers and architects have dreamt up science-fiction-style solutions. Sadly, the show does not include the pioneering work and images of Deng Cheng-hong and his project collaborator Daniel Halevi Bloom.

Climate Capsules - What to Do When the Earth Warms Up?

Given humankind's lackadaisical response to climate change, a museum in Hamburg is presenting fanciful visions of how humans might adapt to disaster.

"Climate Capsules" imagines people of the future in oceangoing cities and other artificial, self-contained environments, including POLAR CITIES (http://pcillu101.blogspot.com/
). And don't forget Underground Desert Living Units - UDLU, created by Reynard Loki http://www.udlu.org/


Headlines about the changing climate are more plentiful than political moves to slow it. Among those assuming that bleak predictions will become real is the Hamburg-based Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Museum for Arts and Crafts). Its Climate Capsules exhibition asks how people can survive in a warming globe.

http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-55322-7.html



Organizers collected a range of bold, sometimes zany, approaches to the threat of an increasingly inhospitable world. Curator Friedrich von Borries points out that, amid all the debate about climate change, there has been little talk of solutions. The focus instead is firmly on slowing or stopping the temperature trend, even though much damage has already been done.

"In the search for alternative solutions, there is a category discussed substantially less often in public: adaptation," the musuem writes in a press release.

In Climate Capsules, artists, designers and architects have dreamt up science-fiction-style solutions. Architect Vincent Callebaut, for example, takes escapism to an extreme with his plan for a floating city called Lilypad, which would take to the ocean as a haven for climate refugees.

Other ideas on show are not as modern as they look: In 1960 Buckminster Fuller and Shoji Sadao drew up their utopian "Dome over Manhattan," an idea for a two-mile-diameter glass dome over Midtown that would control living temperatures for New Yorkers in both summer and winter.

Fake Clouds


The Hamburg show also explores the idea of chemical and physical interventions to moderate weather. Among the dramatic plans featured is the US Army's Project Cirrus, an experiment in 1947 to weaken a Caribbean hurricane by "seeding" its clouds. There are also low-key proposals, like painting roofs and streets with reflective white paint to reduce global warming.

Artists in this exhibition suggest that humans may have to grow more cut off from their environment than they are today. The show starts with an unusual installation by Paris-based artist Pablo Reinoso. Two visitors at a time can poke their heads into his inflatable textile construction, sharing the air they breathe in the enclosed pod-like space.

Ilkka Halso's photo series, "Museum of Nature," is similarly striking. Her digital montages relocate forests, lakes and rivers into imaginary museum buildings, transforming everyday wildlife into exotic museum exhibits.

Deng Cheng-hong of Taiwan, whose images of Polar Cities and part of Dan Bloom's Polar Cities Project, were not on display, but might be in the future.



http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,697394,00.html

James Lovelock's PLEA FOR A BIGGER UK NAVY in Britain TO KEEP OUT CLIMATE Refugees when the shit hits the fan and millions line up to get into Polar Cities in northern Europe and Canada

Starvation could follow if Britain's shores are not protected. Read Hamish MacDonald's FINITUDE for a fictional treatment of all this.

May 31,2010
By John Ingham

BRITAIN needs a bigger Navy to stave off mass immigration caused by climate change, James Lovelock claimed yesterday.


Starvation could ­follow if Britain’s shores are not protected, he said.

Dr Lovelock, 90, said that as the world population rises, ­climate change would trigger mass immigration north AS PEOPLE LINE UP TO GET INTO POLAR CITIES IN THE NORTH. - See: - http://pcillu101.blogspot.com

And Britain would be seen as a “liferaft” or Lifeboat Britain on to which the dispossessed would scramble.

The moderating effect of the surrounding seas may help us escape the worst effects of ­climate change, he said.

Dr Lovelock, who in the 1960s invented the Gaia theory that the Earth is a self-regulating entity, said mass migration was already under way.

At the Hay Festival of Literature in Herefordshire he said: “Do you know that Italy now has a larger navy than we do and it is to keep immigrants from Africa out?

“We are a bit of a liferaft but there is only a ­limited number of people that this island can support.” Dr Lovelock, a pat­ron of the Optimum Population Trust which campaigns for a gradual global population decrease, said that with 60 million people Britain may already be at its optimum size.

“So what are we going to do?” he said. “The people who are going to come here are going to starve and so are we – a larger Navy may be the answer.”

The Royal Navy is facing cuts in the Strategic Defence Review. One senior officer told the Daily Express that meeting its current commitments was already an “awesome challenge”. The scale of migration was revealed last week by official figures showing that 203,000 foreigners were given a UK passport last year – one every three minutes.

Campaign group MigrationWatch estimates annual migration to the UK quadrupled to 230,000 between 1997 and 2007. It says there may be 1.1 million illegal immigrants here. And it predicts that at current rates immigration will add seven million to the UK population by 2034.


Dr Lovelock urged the audience to grow their own food and conserve more. He said: “Good gardening produces four times as much food per acre as farming does. That was something they found out in the Second World War.”

New Zealand faces the sames issues as the UK on this, so watch out Lifeboat New Zealand and Lifeboat Tasmania and Lifeboat Alaska!

Thoughts of a Novice E-Reader ......By VERLYN KLINKENBORG, New York Times: OR WHY READING ON SCREENS IS NOT READIND BUT A NEW MODE OF HUMAN READING, WAY INFERIOR TO PAPER READING, CALLED SCREENING

I have been
reading a lot on my iPad recently, and I have some complaints — not
about the iPad but about the state of digital reading generally.
Reading is a subtle thing, and its subtleties are artifacts of a
venerable medium: words printed in ink on paper. Glass and pixels
aren’t the same.

When I read a physical book, I don’t have to look anywhere else to
find out how far I’ve gotten. The iPad e-reader, iBooks, tries to
create the illusion of a physical book. The pages seem to turn, and I
can see the edges of those that remain. But it’s fake. There are
always exactly six unturned pages, no matter where I am in the book.

Now, a larger problem. Books in their digital format look vastly less
“finished,” less genuine. And we can vary their font and type size,
making them resemble all the more our own word-processed manuscripts.
Your poems — no matter how wretched or wonderful they are — will never
look as good as Robert Hass’s poems in the print edition of “The Apple
Trees at Olema.” But your poems can look almost exactly as ugly — as
e-book-like — as the Kindle version of that collection.

All the e-books I’ve read have been ugly — books by Chang-rae Lee,
Alvin Kernan, Stieg Larsson — though the texts have been wonderful.
But I didn’t grow up reading texts. I grew up reading books. The
difference is important.

When it comes to digital editions, the assumption seems to be that all
books are created equal. Nothing could be further from the truth. In
the mass migration from print to digital, we’re seeing a profusion of
digital books — many of them out of copyright — that look new and even
“HD,” but which may well have been supplanted by more accurate
editions and better translations. We need a digital readers’ guide — a
place readers can find out whether the book they’re about to download
is the best available edition.

And finally, two related problems. I already have a personal library.
But most of the books I’ve ever read have come from lending libraries.
Barnes & Noble has released an e-reader that allows short-term
borrowing of some books. The entire impulse behind Amazon’s Kindle and
Apple’s iBooks assumes that you cannot read a book unless you own it
first — and only you can read it unless you want to pass on your
device.

That goes against the social value of reading, the collective
knowledge and collaborative discourse that comes from access to shared
libraries. That is not a good thing for readers, authors, publishers
or our culture.

VERLYN KLINKENBORG

It is astonishing how old the morning's headlines seem by evening.

It is astonishing how old the morning's headlines seem by evening.

Praying for a Pokkuri Moment: No Muss, No Fuss

by Danny Dan Daniel Bloom

When it's time to meet your Maker, do you want to hang in there as
long as possible, even if you are bed-ridden and in pain and in an
assisted-living residence, or do you just want to ''pop off''? In
Japan, there's a temple in devoted to ''popping off,'' which in
Japanese is called ''pokkuri''.

I recently ran this concept by the celebrated and cerebral film critic
Roger Ebert -- who knows a thing or two about death and dying, and
living and life! -- and after reading my note he tweeted on Twitter:
"...'Pokkuri' -- the Japanese word for popping off suddenly. There's
even a Pokkuri goddess."

I had casually mentioned in a comment on Mr Ebert's blog that he might
want to know about the Japanese concept of pokkuri, which literally
means to ''pop off'' in one's sleep or in sudden heart attack in bed
or outside while walking around the neighborhood, a painless, quiet
and serene death. He liked the term, apparently, noting on his blog:
"I googled the term and found your own blog on Open Salon:
http://j.mp/apcFFR. Yeah, no muss, no fuss."

It's true, in Japan, every year, thousands of elderly people visit
Kichidenji Temple in Nara Prefecture where they pray for a pokkuri
death — preferably during sleep or a sudden heart attack — so they are
not a burden on their families during their final days. I lived in
Japan for five years in the 1990s, and while I never made it to this
celebrated temple, I read a news report
about it five years ago.

The Kichidenji Temple was established in 987 by a monk whose mother
had passed away peacefully wearing clothes that he had prayed over. As
time passed, a new Japanese tradition took shape, and now elderly
people visit Kichidenji to pray for a discreet and quick passing.
Although most of the visitors and supplicants are Japanese, foreigners
often visit the temple as well, mostly out of curiosity, and the
blogosphere is lit up here and there with photographs of the temple
and maps on how to get there.

The word caught my attention: ''pokkuri'', to pop off. Maybe pokkuri
is a good concept to borrow from the Japanese, I thought, as I posted
my first blog comment about the concept a few years ago, intoning this
brief prayer: "God, grant me a good life, a useful (and meaningful)
life, and when it's time, let me 'pokkuri' in a dignified, discreet
way. Amen."

Kichidenji Temple, I've since learned, is located in Ikaruga-cho, not
Nara City, although it is in Nara Prefecture in between Osaka and
Tokyo. A friend of mine used to live a couple of minutes away from it.
He told me that a lot of the visitors first visit the more famous
Horyuji Temple (about ten minutes away) and then make their way to
Kichidenji.

Here's a link: www.town.ikaruga.nara.jp/ikaho/e/guide/guide.html


According to the temple's chief priest, pilgrims making their way to
the temple will chant a holy phrase and beat a wooden block, which
makes popping sounds (thus the term ''to pop off''). I am not making
any of this up. Roger Ebert knows exactly what I am talking about: "No
muss, no fuss."

After his tweet, some of Ebert's followers chimed in with their
reactions to this Japanese loan word.

"Those crazy Japanese! What will they think of next?" one person told Mr Ebert.

A wit, and there is always a wit on the Internet, commented: "I
thought 'pokkuri' was about premature ejaculation, for a moment
there."

"I thought you were getting vulgar," said another person. "The boomers
will get to know it & pray 4 it w the future of health care."

And a philosopher of death countered with this reaction: "When pokkuri
happens in the middle of the night, a spouse or family is/are often
bereft of the chance to say goodbye."

So we're left with this: in Japan there is a temple devoted to popping
off, and the received word in Japanese is "pokkuri." In America, there
are no temples for popping off, and there is
no word for the concept in our common vocabulary.

But is it time now to borrow this word from Japan and make it our own?
Roger Ebert believes it could work here. I, do, too.

God, grant me a good life, a useful (and meaningful) life, and when
it's time, let me 'pokkuri' in a dignified, discreet way.

By the way, as a footnote, while the concept of praying for pokkuri comes out of Japan, I'm told that in Roman Catholic tradition, one can also pray for a happy death in another ancient and inherited tradition. According to legend, St. Joseph died in the arms of what Catholics refer to as the Blessed Mother and Jesus.

"What a way to go!" Alexandria Karako, of  San Antonio, Texas,  told me. "It is not uncommon among my co-religionists to think about death in those terms."




----------------

Dan Bloom is a freelance writer. His days are numbered. Are yours?

It's official: Dan Bloom has changed his name, legally, to Polar Cities Bloom -- and will be known by that name from now on and for the rest of his life (and his days are numbered, yes)

Polar Cities Bloom is now my legal name on driver's license, passport, library card, social security card and all other documents. Friends still call me Dan Danny or Daniel, of course, but legally I am now Polar Cities Bloom. Ask me why.

References: http://pcillu101.blogspot.com/

With the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and the coal fuckups, it's time to stop all use of coal and oil worldwide. Or else. Don't believe me? Come back in 500 years. I plan to.