Word: californiaisms
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...moving water into electricity at Hoover Dam. Normal car brakes do convert kinetic energy into heat. And hybrid cars do have a set of normal brakes for use when necessary. But the heat created that way is dispersed into the atmosphere, not converted into electricity. Dexter Ford, manhattan beach, california...
...just two days before its official reopening, and the new California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco looks like the old MGM lot back when they used to shoot five pictures at one time. Caterers hauling pumpkins are brushing past construction workers sweeping out the man-made rain forest. Divers in wet suits are hauling themselves out of the coral-reef tank. And Renzo Piano, the Italian architect who is very good at finding order in chaotic situations, looks pleased...
...With the California Academy, a combination research institute, natural-history museum, planetarium and aquarium, Piano is back in stride. What he has produced is a fascinating hybrid of classicism and a romantic view of nature that stretches back to the 18th century. The original museum, a complex of 11 buildings constructed over decades in Golden Gate Park, was badly damaged by the earthquake that hit the Bay Area in 1989. While keeping some of the original Beaux Arts structure, Piano has wrapped it in a finely detailed package of glass and steel...
...roof the Academy really is overtaken by nature. It's topped with a 2.5-acre (1 hectare) field of native California plants, a "green roof" that aids in heating and cooling efficiency. The roof comes with its own topography of seven grassy humps, including two perforated by circular skylights. It's a surreal terrain, full of dreamlike, fertile swells. If Antoni Gaudí had been a hobbit, he might have designed something just like...
...once again worn tight enough to read Braille through the back pocket. It's the whole feckless, zipless, helpless vibe that has settled across the land, from the factories of Motor City to the gas lines of Charlotte, from the boardrooms of New York to the subdivisions of California. What's that word again? Oh, yes: malaise...