DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

RossIron makes Feng Shui-savvy sculptures from iron and stone. I saw a display at a kiosk at one of the ferry terminals in British Columbia (captive audiences make good art patrons, as evidenced by the two watercolors that found their way into my satchel).

The sculptures are whimsical and fun, and would likely make nice gifts for “people who have everything,” including space to put more stuff.

My favorite, I think, is the frog with a butterfly stuck to the end of its tongue. But a lot of the sculptures were neat. I try not to load up my suitcase with rocks, so I didn’t end up buying any of them.

The artist has an online catalog, but the tiny pictures aren’t representative of reality. The sculptures have more presence and appeal than is communicated there.

FastCompany’s overview of Whole Foods and John Mackey’s management style is really interesting. Corporate anarchy and organic produce… a winning combination!

The company had a written “Declaration of Interdependence“… It had a set of written core values (“satisfying and delighting our customers,” “team-member happiness and excellence”). And most striking of all, even for a small company, it had a set of quirky management rules that made Whole Foods an odd but effective workplace.

Each store had a book in the office that listed the pay of every employee for the previous year. The book was available to anyone — and was especially valuable if you were promoted or if you relocated, and wanted to see how your pay compared with your colleagues’. The pay book, surprisingly little used, set a tone of what Mackey called “no secrets management.”

Every store was divided into about eight functional teams: You were hired to the seafood team, or the prepared-foods team, or the cashier/front-end team. But you didn’t just get hired. You got hired provisionally. After four weeks of work, the team you had joined voted whether to keep you; you needed a two-thirds yes vote to join the staff permanently.

One more teaser quote…

Says Doug Greene, founder and former editor of Natural Foods Merchandiser, the 25-year-old trade bible of the organic- and natural-foods business: “If you look back 100 years from now, history will show that Whole Foods will be in the top-five companies that changed the world.”

The article also confirms that the “Whole Paycheck” meme is national.

(Seen at Kottke.org, along with some interesting responses from the community.)

The Museum of Anthropology at the U. of British Columbia hosts a great big sculpture from an artist named Bill Reid. Titled Raven and the First Men, it commemorates the Haida legend of the origin of the Haida civilization.

The presentation is pretty amazing. The sculpture sits in the “Rotunda” and dominates the space. It was so compelling, I took ten pictures. Then I bought a postcard with yet another picture, as well as a printed copy of the Haida legend to bring home. I have no idea what to do with them, now. (I guess I could store them with the sand dollars.)

You can preview the sculpture in situ at the MoA’s website, which provides a virtual tour of the grounds.

I had an opportunity to drive a 2004 Prius hybrid last week. I was renting a car for my periodic commute; the staff at Enterprise surprised me by having a showroom-fresh 2004 Prius gassed up and ready. It had 00060 miles on it. The kick-panel speakers were still covered with plastic scuff guards.

The Prius is the first car I’ve ever seen that comes with a quick-start guide — a small tear-off sheet giving startup instructions. Starting the car is different enough from every other car I’ve ever seen that the clerk at Enterprise had to walk me through it.

Check out the key. It provides a subtle break with reality as you know it. This plastic, electronic key looks like the remote doorlock and trunk control of a more traditional car. In fact, the engineers at Toyota essentially built the car key into the remote control. The result says, This is not your father’s Oldsmobile. And thank goodness for that.

The key device, which is about the size of a small box of wooden matches, slides into a slot in the dashboard. The next step in starting the car, according to the quickstart guide, is to press the POWER button. I had to laugh — this car boots up. I really enjoyed pressing that button.

Startup is silent, except for a beep or two and a quiet sighing as various systems come on-line. The gasoline engine starts up five or ten seconds later, almost as an afterthought. In a few cases I’d already begun driving.

The shift mechanism has been re-imagined. There’s a short lever on the dash that provides electronic shifting between Neutral, Forward and Reverse. Putting the car into Park requires pressing a separate button, which seems clumsy but works fine.

One of the nice features of the car is the set of controls on the steering wheel. One group contains all the necessary stereo controls: volume, track, source. Within minutes I was able to manage the stereo without taking my attention away from the road. A second group provides climate controls. This is a surprisingly useful feature. The buttons are marked with slight bumps and indents, enabling blind operation.

Sitting in the middle of the dashboard is a multi-function LCD touchscreen. The default view shows the “Energy Monitor,” a representation of the powertrain. Animated lines (like Photoshop’s “marching ants”) indicate the flow of energy. For example, when driving up a steep driveway, the gas engine powers the wheels. Coming down that same driveway, the gas engine is idle (or off), and the wheels power the electric motor, which stores the surplus energy in the battery. The genius of the Prius is in efficiently switching among these various modes to conserve energy, reduce gas consumption, and reduce emissions.

At the bottom of the screen, a calculation of the vehicle’s gas mileage at the current instant is displayed; it ranges from about 7 MPG (when I floored the accelerator from a stop) to 99 MPG (on any flat or downhill road).

This “Energy Monitor” screen is fascinating. It’s a driving hazard, there’s no question. New Prius owners should have someone else drive them around until the urge to stare at the screen can be managed.

Beyond the whizzy graphics, it provides a huge benefit: it reinforces good driving habits. Because the Prius recycles momentum as electrical power, it is important to slow down gradually rather than stomp on the brakes at the last moment. Coasting is another high-MPG strategy. Accelerating gradually, ditto. The instant-mileage meter keeps a sort of score on your driving habits. If you drive senselessly, your mileage will suffer. This is of course true for every vehicle on the road; the difference here is that the Prius lets you watch it happen.

In a previous article, I mentioned that some Prius owners report mileage far below EPA estimates. I was very pleased to see that I could not reproduce those damning numbers. I drove about 150 miles, beginning on rural highways, then the interstate, then city streets, more highways, and then office park-ways — a ridiculous, life-draining commute, the sort of commute society could sentence people to for lifestyle crimes — and at the end of the day the car had averaged 53.9 MPG.

I didn’t have to calculate that figure; one of the control screens on the LCD provides a trip odometer and trip mileage calculator.

Once underway, the Prius drives like any other modern car. Acceleration is smooth. Transitioning from electric to gas power is imperceptible, although if you’re paying attention you might feel a vibration as the engine starts.

The car won’t win a street race with, say, an old Camaro, but unlike me you’ve probably outgrown your desire to do smoky burnouts at every residential intersection. Oh, OK, I have too. Really.

Braking felt slightly weird. During my commute I had three semi-emergency stops, due to insane Bay Area traffic and my unfamiliarity with the car’s brakes. I had the sense that braking pressure increases non-linearly with pedal travel. That is, I think the Prius’ braking rate accelerates as the pedal is depressed. In any case, I’m sure I could get used to it, but I’d have to recommend that new owners drive even more defensively than usual.

All in all, I enjoyed driving the Prius, and I realized an immediate financial gain, in that I spent less on gas than I normally would for such a commute.

Moreover, as I sat in stop-and-go traffic for an hour on the way home (welcome to Marin County), and the Prius’ gas engine shut itself off, I realized the promise of hybrid technology. Every car around me was spewing carbon monoxide and toxic chemicals into the air, but my Prius burned nothing and spewed nothing. Every hybrid on the road reduces rush-hour pollution. This has an immediate positive impact on the health of the people in traffic and of everyone who lives nearby. It also helps prevent, erm, going to war to secure future oil supplies. It simply makes more sense.

(Click for more of my Prius articles.)

In the, err, vein of RealAge, Harvard University offers Your Disease Risk, an online survey designed to highlight risk factors for any of five diseases: cancer, diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, and stroke. (Hat tip: Bim)

Also provided are Nine Ways To Stay Healthy and Prevent Disease. Sure, these are common sense, but then again 61% of adult U.S. residents are overweight… so maybe these are really uncommon sense.

Disease is a societal as well as personal challenge. Your government pays an enormous amount of money to treat the sick, even the sick who through dangerous lifestyle choices brought their disease on themselves. Sample statistic, from the American Diabetes Association:

[T]he nation spends $13,243 on each person with diabetes, compared to $2,560 per person for people who don’t have diabetes.