Some day, people are going to look back at the Hummer and wonder what the hell 20th-21st century humanity was thinking. This monster of a gas-guzzling “vehicle” favored by egomaniacs peaked during the bloated years of excess just prior to the recession and now, it’s on its way to being just as antiquated as the horse cart.

At least, that’s what artist Jeremy Dean wants to convey with his new project: a $15,000 Hummer H2 annihilated with power saws to resemble “Hoover Carts”, old cars that were reclaimed as horse carts during the Great Depression.

From Dean’s blog, Back to the Futurama, via Inhabitat:

Taking the logic of the past and putting it in the context of our current economic and environmental disaster, I am making my own satirical prediction of the future- Unless we come up with alternative fuel sources and rethink our reliance on a hyper inflated consumption based economy; we may be left with no other options than to hook our cars up to a horse.

Dean hopes to sell the work of art to recoup his life savings, which he spent on the project.

For everyone who has ever flicked off a passing Hummer, the idea of going buck-wild on one with power tools has got to be pretty tantalizing. It’s like a metaphorical castration of greedy, arrogant, planet-killing assholes – a beautiful thing in the eyes of many otherwise peaceful treehuggers.

Link [Inhabitat] + [Back to the Futurama]

Uh-oh! Better act fast if you want to see presents from Santa under your tree tomorrow morning.  It seems he accidentally forgot to find out whether you were naughty or nice, and he’s going to have to resort to modern communications to get the info straight from you.

Head to See3 Communications for a very special holiday message from Santa, his elves – and, if you were naughty – Rudolph.

You might balk at giving Santa your cell number, imagining late-night calls from drunk-dialing elves, but don’t worry – your info will be kept private, and it’s totally worth it.

Video created by the totally awesome folks at See3 Communications

Link [See3 Communications]

From a distance, when it’s all lit up, you can’t even tell that this Christmas tree is anything other than a conventional fir strung with lights and ornaments. But take a closer look and the tree reveals itself to be a work of art – made from aluminum cans.

The tree might be eco-friendly, but the process of its creation wasn’t exactly healthy for graphic designer David Barstow and three friends, who spent three months guzzling Mountain Dew to come up with enough cans to make it.

From The Sun:

The 25-year-old came up with the idea as part of a creative recycling project when he was a student at California State University, Chico, in the US, in 2006.

But as the festive season draws nears again, David is bombarded with queries from people desperate to make their very own can Christmas tree. The decorative delight’s website, Mdewtree.com, received 1,000 hits a day at Christmas last year and continues to attract new fans on Facebook and MySpace.

Graphic designer David said: “There was an element of class that was lost when compared to a real tree, but everybody in Chico thought it was really cool.”

It’s a shame they didn’t use recycled cans – after all, Americans sure do love their Mountain Dew (and then throw the cans in the trash). But it’s quite a cool creation, especially at night. See more photos of the building process and the finished tree at MdewTree.com.

Link [MdewTree.com] via [The Sun]

Imagine crossing the country on bicycles with your kids… on a bicycle built for five. It might sound sort of crazy, but that’s exactly what the Harrison family, a.k.a. “The Pedouins” (a mashup of pedals & bedouins) are doing right now. Bill, Aramins & three young daughers, aged 3, 4 and 7 are making a 7,000-mile journey from Kentucky to Alaska, and they’re at the halfway point right now.

From Terrapass:

Cycle touring is incredibly rewarding, but it’s not easy work. Even at their moderate pace — about 25 miles a day — the Pedouins still have to deal with constant exposure to the elements, hills, headwinds, flats, crashes, and all the other challenges of bicycling. The family spends most nights in a tent. If the ride goes as expected, it will last for twenty months. Did I mention that Robin is 3?

The bike is designed with couplers that allow it be taken apart and reassembled as a two-person, three-person, or four-person vehicle when some riders want to hang back at the camp site. Notice the chain extenders on the second and third seats, designed to accommodate little legs.

Mom & Dad must have some super-strong legs to keep that bike going for so many hours a day, almost every single day, loaded down with cargo. The kids are being homeschooled during the ride, and the family expects to arrive in Alaska – where they’ll spend a year – next summer.

Few of us have the wherewithall for such a trip, but it’s an inspiring journey and their website, Pedouins.org, has all the details of the ride.

Link [Terrapass] + [Pedouins.org]

If more customers knew that Dasani water was simply municipal tap water – the same exact stuff that comes out of their own faucets at home – would they pay a premium for it? Probably not, as notorious eco-pranksters The Yes Men found out during a recent trip to Boston.

The Yes Men and “Coca-Cola spokespeople” unveiled a new, more truthful name and label for Dassani bottled water at a park and then spoke to people about whether they would buy it.

Check it out:

From The Phoenix:

The mock press conference, part of Boston-based Corporate Accountability International’s (CIA) Think Outside the Bottle campaign, protested Coca-Cola’s refusal to state Dasani’s origin — public water sources — on its labels, as Pepsi and Nestlé have done with their bottled-water brands.

“This is a classic case of deception,” said Mike Bonanno (a/k/a Igor Vamos), in town that day with main cohort Andy Bichlbaum (né Jacques Servin) for the opening of The Yes Men Fix the World at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. “They don’t want people to know that they’re drinking tap water because it’s pure profit. Basically, they’ve figured out such a great scam that they don’t want it to end.”

Check out the rest of their eco-pranks at TheYesMen.org.

Link [The Phoenix]

Hummingbirds are so fun to watch, with their colorful little wings that move so fast they’re a blur – but it can be hard to see them up close. One wacky new product allows you to see hummingbirds like you’ve never seen them before – an inch from your eyeballs.

From The Daily Mail:

A new helmet with a built-in bird feeder will allow wearers to get amazing face to face contact with nature.

The flighty birds hover in front of the wearer’s face for up to 30 seconds as they drink a sugar-water solution from between the eyes of the feeder mask.

The wearable hummingbird feeder is covered in images of red rhododendrons to further attract the birds and protects your eyes and face from being pecked.

Those who want to try out the gadget need to have patience. The mask is first placed over a can of paint for a few days to allow the birds to get used to it.

It’s one of those bizarre products that’s probably wholly unnecessary – but then again, doesn’t use up much more plastic than a regular hummingbird feeder and gets people in closer (MUCH closer!) contact with nature. And, that’s a good thing, right?

Link [The Daily Mail]

As if plastic banana guards, leaf blowers and mechanized egg crackers weren’t enough, the brilliant inventors of the world just keep on creating unbelievably stupid, wasteful products for the masses to enjoy. The Huffington Post is pretty great at sniffing them out – the Top 10 Most Useless Items of Crapola, the 9 Stupidest Products Of All Time (including the ‘Tiddy Bear’) and now, in honor of No Impact Week, the world’s most wasteful consumer products.

Here’s a preview:

Spinning Ice Cream Cone (pictured above)

In the mood for ice cream but too lazy to move your tongue to lick? We’re not kidding – there is actually a product that “solves” this “problem.”

The Noseaid

For 30 dollars, avoid a nosebleed mess by applying this clothespin to your child’s nose. Pinching things with our fingers is apparently out — or just using an actual clothespin and some cloth.

Because there’s simply not enough random, useless plastic crap in the world. We need it to keep on coming as fast as it can. How did humans ever get by without this stuff?

Check out the rest – including demonstration videos – at The Huffington Post.

Link [The Huffington Post]

What if humans could blend into the environment as effortlessly as some animals can? A photography series by Beijing-based artist Liu Bolin called ‘Camouflage’ explores a fascinating way to do this, without the use of camo print: painting human subjects so that they disappear into a background.

Bolin painstakingly paints his subjects’ faces, hair, hands, clothing and shoes to match a chosen setting, taking up to ten hours per shoot to get it just right. In some photos, like the two shown above, it really takes a moment to spot the people in the photos. Often, passersby can’t even tell that they’re there.

Of the series, the artist says, “In my photography, historical statues, costumes and architecture become symbols of that which confines us. I am expressing the desire to break through these structures. I portray subjects that seem to disappear into these structures and become transparent. The subject is released from social constructs and he is free.”

Link [ArtInfo.com] + [Design Boom]

Some research is just so strange, so goofy, that according to Harvard University, it just shouldn’t be repeated. Harvard-based journal Annals of Improbable Research hands out the ‘Ig Nobel’ awards every year, timed to coincide with the real Nobel awards.

This year’s Ig Nobels included a couple of green concepts that may or may not deserve the dubious distinction – a bra made of two gas masks, and a panda poop-based trash additive.

From The Guardian:

Public health prize

Awarded to Elena Bodnar of Hinsdale, Illinois, for patenting a bra that, in an emergency, can be converted into a pair of gas masks, one for the owner and one for a needy bystander. “It was inspired by the Chernobyl nuclear accident,” said Bodnar, who is originally from Ukraine. “This way, the mask is always readily available.”

Biology prize

Fumiaki Taguchi, Song Guofu and Zhang Guanglei of Kitasato University graduate school of medical sciences in Japan share the prize for demonstrating that kitchen waste can be reduced by more than 90% by using bacteria extracted from giant panda excrement. Taguchi suspected panda faeces must contain bacteria capable of breaking down even the hardiest of foods because of the bear’s vast consumption of bamboo.

Is it just us, or does the panda poop concept actually sound like a great idea? People need to get over this fear of poop, because damned if it hasn’t proven to be incredibly versatile for a range of eco-friendly products and technology lately. And hey, at least the gas mask bra is dual purpose.

The whole list of Ig Nobel prizes is worth a look – for example, the Literature Prize was awarded to the entire police force of Ireland for repeatedly issuing citations to “Mr. Prawo Jazdy”, a ‘name’ that is actually the words “driver’s license” in Polish.

Link [The Guardian]

Most people who buy Hummers do so out of vanity or to make up for certain physical deficiencies. But, Hummer owners themselves actually believe that they’ve got the moral high ground because they’re – get this – defending America’s frontier lifestyle against anti-American critics.

A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research came to this conclusion after the authors researched attitudes toward owning and driving Hummers. They found that Hummer drivers see themselves as patriotic defenders of the American spirit, framing themselves as “moral protagonists” even as they unapologetically contribute to harming the very country they claim to love so much.

From Eurekalert:

“As we studied American Hummer owners and their ideological beliefs, we found that they consider Hummer driving a highly moral consumption choice,” write the authors. “For Hummer owners it is possible to claim the moral high ground.”

The authors explain that Hummer owners employ the ideology of American foundational myths, such as the “rugged individual,” and the “boundless frontier” to construct themselves as moral protagonists. They often believe they represent a bastion again anti-American discourses evoked by their critics.

“Our analysis of the underlying American identity discourses revealed that being under siege by (moral) critics is an historically established feature of being an American,” write the authors. “The moralistic critique of their consumption choices readily inspired Hummer owners to adopt the role of the moral protagonist who defends American national ideals.”

Amazing, isn’t it? Of course, Hummer owners aren’t the only ones that take this stance – conservatives in general employ similar excuses for their desperate attempts to preserve what they see as “the American lifestyle”. To them, being American is apparently synonymous with being selfish assholes who don’t give a shit about the next generation, only about their own desires.

Fuck you and your H2!

Link [Eurekalert]
Photo credit: FUH2