Tomorrow's Buildings/Today's Heat Rays
This is a fantastic little story about an accident of engineering that I couldn’t pass up, despite the fact that it’s making the rounds pretty vigorously.
Among the victims is one Bill Pintas, whose tale of woe was recently printed in the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
[A]fter a brief dip in the hotel pool, he was sunning on a recliner. He was on his stomach, relaxed, eyes closed. But suddenly, the lawyer became so uncomfortably hot that he leaped up to move. He tried to put on his flip-flop sandals but, inexplicably, they were too hot to touch. So he ran barefoot to the shade. “I was effectively being cooked,” Pintas said. “I started running as fast as I could without looking like a lunatic.” Then he smelled an odor, and realized it was coming from his head, where a bit of hair had been scorched. (Via my friend Anycheese, Via engadget, Via BoingBoing)
Never mind that any comic book fan will tell you this is a heat ray and not a death ray, this is exactly the kind of thing we need to be considering as design technology becomes increasingly flexible in its usage.
Who has to live in the shadow of a space elevator? Who gets to live next to the genetically-modified-animal MegaZoo? How much polution does a floating city put out, and where does it go?
Personally, I’d like to see some of these proposed Choi & Shine Architects’ electrical towers roaming the landscape.
Leave a Reply