Posts Tagged ‘ecology’

The Russian architect agency Alice.ru plans to build an underground ecological city in an abandoned mine in Siberia. Underground cities might be the cities of the future especially in colder areas. They are much easier to heat and can potentially be heated by the warmth of the earth itself.

Click here for the larger picture

But there are some huge obstacles to the idea. One is the immense effort of the digging and support of the city. Another is water management. A third one is earthquakes, which are even far more dangerous to underground cities than to normal cities. No one wants to be squeezed between two earth platters.

Then there is the problem of fresh air, and the problem of lack of sunlight and thus lack of Vitamin D. To live ones life only in artificial light is not healthy. There’s a challenge: could it be somehow possible to invent a light source that is not artificial but completely mimics the qualities of real sunlight?

I am doubtful about the entire news item now, since I was unable to trace any architecture agency in Russia named ‘Alice’. So it probably a hogwash story. Nice stuff to think about though and nice imagery, wherever it came from!

Or could the Russians really plan to go underground, perhaps as a counter-move to the illustrious ‘rocket shield plan’ of the US which got even more ridiculous by now because they now claim to only install short and middle range rockets – check the fly-path of a missile from Iran to Europe and see if it somehow crosses Poland…

It sounds unlikely, but then again this city is one of the most unlikely places on earth anyway: there’s an official butterfly plague going on in Istanbul. Yesterday I saw to my amazement that there were hundreds if not thousands of butterflies flying through the neighbourhood where I live. My wife told me it was all over the turkish news too. There’s a butterfly plague. I have never even heard of the possibility. What could have caused it?

It must have been that some natural enemy of the butterfly has been wiped out in some ecological disaster. Or could there be another explanation? Who are the natural enemies of butterflies anyway? Wasps perhaps. Haven’t seen a wasp in ages! And wasps are known to feed on butterfly larvae. But as butterflies also do pollination, they might be the solution for a lack of pollination due to bee or wasp starvation which is a huger ecological problem than most other ones. Once plants and flowers cant pollinate any more they are finished and you can say goodbye to crops, fruits and vegetables.

Meanwhile, I cant say this is the worst plague I have witnessed so far. The sight of hundreds of butterflies surrounding my house is a spectacular sight. My stomach feels differently, luckily, for falling in love must be one of the worst things that could happen to a writer. Or to anyone else, really. A writer should be jaded like the butterfly – spreading the golden dust of youth to intoxicate others but hardly touching it himself.