MetaFilter posts tagged with windmills

"Do you live here?"

you just lost the game — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:20:52 -0800

Offshore wind farm stirs up a tempest. Lines are being drawn in the battle over a proposed windmill development to be built in Lake Ontario two kilometres out from the Scarborough Bluffs? Is this just another case of NIMBYism? Or are wind farms unreliable, dangerous to migratory birds, and a source of health problems for people who live near them?

Les moulins de mon cœur

_aa_ — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 21:32:29 -0800

The first time I encountered this song was on an Anita Kerr Singers record I found in my dad's basement. The original was composed for The Thomas Crown Affair. When the film was remade in 1999, the song was performed by Sting, but his was far from the first recurrence. It inspired numerous covers, perhaps most popularly by Dusty Springfield. I find Jose Feliciano's version to be particularly soulful. Dorothy Ashby layed down some of the funkiest harp you'll ever care to hear. My personal favorite is Peter Nero's performance of the windmills on a Moog synthesizer. Cameron Carpenter puts the phantom to shame with his rendition. New Dawns Show Choir do it with jazz hands. Arturo Sandoval uses his jazz hands to a slightly more impressive effect. I could keep going but I feel like a door that keeps revolving in a half forgotten dream. Oh. The Muppets did it, too.

Tapping the Sky

fenriq — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 08:19:48 -0800

45,000 pounds + four 130 foot rotors + up to 200 mph Jet Stream winds = Energy Problem Solved
Like the monster mother of all kites, a company called Sky Windpower (which sports an excellent website about high altitude wind power) has been founded by an Australian engineer with three others to attempt to harness the near limitless windpower of the jet stream with a machine they call an FEG (Flying Electric Generator).
They're currently seeking $4 million to build a 200 kilowatt prototype but still need to get FAA clearance to fly it. The production models would generate 20 megawatts each and would be flown in farms of up to 600 turbines to generate enough power to light up two cities the size of Chicago. Power and control of the huge machines would be handled by a three inch thick tether connected to a winch on a ground station.
Man, I love Popular Science!

Final Frontier, the space between our ears.

troutfishing — Fri, 16 Apr 2004 07:39:11 -0800

A viilage to reinvent the world : Gaviotas "In 1965 Paulo Lugari was flying over the impoverished Llanos Orientales, the “eastern plains” that border Venezuela. The soil of the Llanos is tough and acidic, some of the worst in Colombia. Lugari mused that if people could live here they could live anywhere.....The following year Lugari and a group of scientists, artists, agronomists and engineers took the 15-hour journey along a tortuous route from Bogota to the Llanos Orientales to settle."

"...they would need to be very resourceful. So they invented wind turbines that convert mild breezes into energy, super-efficient pumps that tap previously inaccessible sources of water [powered by a child's playground seesaw!], and solar kettles that sterilize drinking water using the furious heat of the tropical sun....They even invented a rain forest!" (from "Gaviotas - A village to reinvent the World", by Tim Weisman) Amidst the strife of war torn Columbia, Gaviotas persists and even flourishes. " "When we import solutions from the US or Europe," said Lugari, founder of Gaviotas, "we also import their problems."....Over the years Gaviotas technicians have installed thousands of the windmills across Colombia....Since Gaviotas refuses to patent inventions, preferring to share them freely, the design has been copied from Central America to Chile."

Gaviotas is real, yes, but it is also a state of mind - as if Ben Franklin, Frank Lloyd Wright, Leonardo Da Vinci - all of the great those giants who reinvisioned the possible - were reincarnated : as a small Columbian village on a once-desolate plain. "Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez has called Paolo Lugari the "inventor of the world." "

realjanetkagan — Sat, 23 Mar 2002 21:09:24 -0800

From windmills to whirligigs... Please step lightly. It's an old site and I'd hate to see it overwhelmed. I love it and I thought you might like it too. Gently, please, gently.