Paddy artistry is a (rice) cracker of an idea

via theage.com.au

NEARLY two decades ago, village hall clerk Koichi Hanada received an unusual request from his superior: find a way to bring tourists to this small community in rural northern Japan that has rice paddies and apple orchards but not much else.

The conscientious Mr Hanada spent months racking his brain. Then one day he saw schoolchildren planting a rice paddy as a class project. They used two varieties of rice plants - one with purplish stalks and the other with green ones. Then it struck him: why not plant the coloured varieties in such a way to form words and pictures?

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Boeing Factory Creates Clouds

The Boeing Factory in Everett, north of Seattle, the largest factory by volume in the world is so massive that it started to develop its own weather system forcing them to design a custom air conditioning system.

A state-of-the-art air circulation system had to be installed inside the monolithic manufacturing plant because clouds - the product of accumulated warm air and moisture - were forming inside.

I don't really know why I found that interesting enough to share. Thanks for your patience.

I lived in Seattle in the 1980s when Microsoft was just a start up that nobody had heard of and Boeing was the only game in town. Their massive factories were interesting to look at for just that reason. The scale of their facilities compared to everything else around was a bit surreal.

I got a feel for the scale of the 747s when I used to commute between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. When you got on in Singapore it was from an air bridge. In Kuala Lumpur in the old airport, you would walk out to the plane and climb on by stairs. Massive, very glamorous and indadvertent cloud makers.