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Thierry Michel Rosset-Bibili Shelves System
At Design Interviews
(Excerpt) Interview with Thierry Michel Rosset : Frank Scott: What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?. Thierry Michel Rosset : The basic idea was to expand our living space without moving walls. To be accomplished, the imagined subterfuge was to intervene on furniture: to design a shelf truncated with any non-existent part immediately retrieved mentally. The result provides the impression that space continues beyond the wall where the shelf stands. .Frank Scott: What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?. Thierry Michel Rosset : To obtain the desired feeling it was necessary to obtain a dynamic and not an amorphous shelf. One triangulated upright shelf achieves dynamism, the other being not existing at first. The initial design was not convincing at all. By retaking and manipulating my wax sketches I noticed a surprising graphic line when two triangulated uprights were reversed. From there I did the 1:1 scale models and was very excited by the result. I failed in my original draft due to a line, the famous line I was always looking for, but ultimately it came to my rescue. .Frank Scott: What are your future plans for this award winning design?. Thierry Michel Rosset : First of all I would like to express my great pleasure at having been awarded "A design award" as "bibili" is only my second design realisation. I have not yet consulted the contest statistics, but I imagine that the number of applications received was awesome. It is somewhat a feat to have been awarded and, of course, it is really very important because it underlines my ability to recognize a good design. This reward is also crucial for the rest of my design activity. Here, unlike the artistic field, we are speaking about a marketable product with a potential return on investment. This is especially critical when you start. Therefore I hope that through this distinction my design will find an economic materialization. .Frank Scott: How long did it take you to design this particular concept?. Thierry Michel Rosset : Surprisingly little time. This was even more surprising because my previous realisation, the "ligne Guff", took and still takes me a lot of time without reaching yet the level of my expectations. As the "bibili" doesn't involve any technical difficulties, I was able to make the models myself in real size and so to quickly assess the results. This way we gain a lot of time. I was amazed by the speed of the inspiration process for this project. From a time perspective, the "bibili" was an ideal design. .Frank Scott: Why did you design this particular concept? Was this design commissioned or did you decide to pursuit an inspiration?. Thierry Michel Rosset : As a beginner I have little chance to work on order. Therefore, inspiration guides my work. If by chance I get a future in design, I am not sure that I'll be comfortable working on order even if it is certainly the best way to progress. The best way to know is to try. So if there are interested sponsors...welcome! .Frank Scott: Is your design being produced or used by another company, or do you plan to sell or lease the production rights or do you intent to produce your work yourself?. Thierry Michel Rosset : I hope that this design will be manufactured. Even if this business world is a black box for me now, I am pretty sure that the "bibili" is the type of product, which should interest editors of furniture. Let's check! .Frank Scott: What made you design this particular type of work?. Thierry Michel Rosset : The "line". While my first project failed, I discovered a graphic line that I found amazing and that convinced me to go ahead. .Frank Scott: Where there any other designs and/or designers that helped the influence the design of your work?. Thierry Michel Rosset : Certainly not! At this point it becomes a cultural deficiency. Indeed, I consider that we turn, all of us, around the same topic. A chair is still a chair. I therefore prefer to remain untouched by any outside influence. My approach to take on the design more "artistically", in the sculpture, fits me perfectly. .Frank Scott: Who is the target customer for his design?. Thierry Michel Rosset : Everyone! And I am very happy because this contributes greatly to the intrinsic quality of a design product. Everyone, because the product should be sold at a very reasonable price and because it is adaptable to a maximum number of spatial configurations thanks to its high modularity. A single module provides already a great effect. In addition the whole effect is reinforced by its profile view. Therefore it can turn tight spaces such as corridor lanes into "design" spaces. It can also have a very effective effect in shops, which are often narrow and deep. .Frank Scott: What sets this design apart from other similar or resembling concepts?. Thierry Michel Rosset : I would say that the « bibili » is specific by its very strong personality, its great modularity and the existence of corner modules. .Frank Scott: How did you come up with the name for this design? What does it mean?. Thierry Michel Rosset : "bibili" is the name chosen by disappointment! Indeed, all other names I thought of were already used. But finally this name suits me perfectly. It comes from the French word "bibliothèque". Commonly in French we summarize this word with "bibli" and as I like to play with words, I use quite often the word "bibili". As this term didn't seem to be already referenced, I choose it. .Frank Scott: Which design tools did you use when you were working on this project?. Thierry Michel Rosset : Mainly wax, extruded sajex and a 3D drawing application. .Frank Scott: What is the most unique aspect of your design?. Thierry Michel Rosset : To have managed to infuse the shelf with a personality and a quality of presence that I have rarely seen. .Frank Scott: Who did you collaborate with for this design? Did you work with people with technical / specialized skills?. Thierry Michel Rosset : In addition to the company that provided me with the finished materials with the desired dimensions, I appealed to a friend carpenter for the mounting of the modules. He is a young enthusiastic, hard-worker, who has created his "Exotic Construction" company whose passion is the realisation of vivarium, aquarium and plant walls. I was very pleased with this new collaboration. He immediately became enthusiastic about the project, did not count his time and provided some materials for free. This attitude is just fantastic and necessary to initiate projects, whatever they are. I am particularly interested by this way of working and I expect to develop it in the future. Of course, in case of success the favour will be returned immediately! .Frank Scott: What is the role of technology in this particular design?. Thierry Michel Rosset : Absolutely none. And I really like that. Indeed, I am particularly pleased with the result obtained somehow from simple boards. .Frank Scott: Is your design influenced by data or analytical research in any way? What kind of research did you conduct for making this design?. Thierry Michel Rosset : No research or approach in that sense. This is not my style, at least not yet. I am only using my feeling. .Frank Scott: What are some of the challenges you faced during the design/realization of your concept?. Thierry Michel Rosset : I was literally drowned in a 3D puzzle when assembling the shelves. All parts are ident.[ End of Excerpt: Read complete interview with Thierry Michel Rosset on Bibili Shelves System at design-interviews.com ]
Thierry Michel Rosset-Bibili Shelves System Images:
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NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The Lipscomb men's and women's track and field squad gets their 2013 indoor season underway at the Ed Temple Classic hosted by Tennessee State University.
The meet will pit eight NCAA Division I universities against each other including Austin Peay, Middle Tennessee State and host TSU.
"We want to get things started right and have a good attitude," Lipscomb head coach Bill Taylor said. "We are not as concerned about getting top marks in the first meet as we are about wanting to see a good effort.
"We are not running any distance or middle distance athletes. It is mostly sprints, jumps and throws. Even though we are not running everybody, the entire team will be there to support one another."
Taylor points out he is excited to see sophomore Colin Dempster compete in a new event.
"Colin is going to play with the 800 this year," Taylor said. He ran the 400 last year and some 100 but right off the bat he is going to run the 800 and see where his endurance is."
Taylor expects to see big things from a duo of sophomore throwers as well.
"Houston Ward and April Terry have made big progress during the offseason and we'll look to see where they are at."
Mixing a young team with savvy veterans, Lipscomb looks to see highlights from junior Tucker Peabody and sophomore Brenna Thompson.
"Tucker is always a highlight for us," Taylor said. "We'll see where he is at compared to last year after a pretty amazing year of sprinting."
Thompson looks to kick start her sophomore campaign where she left off from last year. She set the school-record in the 400 with a time of 57.45 in the A-Sun Championships.
The field events start at 8 a.m. with running events slated to begin at 8:30 a.m.
The meet is free and will be located in the Gentry Center on the campus of TSU.

subset: commoncrawl


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It's an incongruous notion: Making a video game set in a LEGO world of children wizards, dark and gritty.
But that's what the folks at developer Traveller's Tale set out to do with LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5 - 7, designer Wil Evans tells me.
"Years five to seven, that's where the really cool stuff happens," Evans tell me. "It gets a bit darker, we get to play with the darker side of the story."
To show me what he means, Evans drops us into year seven of the game, a portion of the Harry Potter end-story that features a father and his kidnapped daughter.
In the fiction of the movie and book, Harry Potter and his schoolmates are visiting the house of Xenophilius Lovegood when the eccentric newspaper publisher tries to betray Potter to the Death Eaters, who have kidnapped his daughter.
Things are not quite so abrupt in the game. First, Harry and his pals need to knock on the front door and in classic LEGO game-style, you need to find the pieces for the knocker and build it before you can do that.
Doing this relatively simple task involves solving some basic puzzles that have you using a spell that sort of turns your wand into a watergun. It also involves casting lumos, a spell that sort of turns the wand into a glowing flashlight.
It's here, with Harry walking around with a glowing wand, that I first notice just how much better the graphics look in this latest LEGO game. Weather rolls by in the background of the level, smoke drifts from pipes in the Rook-shaped house. And the lighting is spectacular.
"We have new lighting in the game," Evans points out. "It's real-time dynamic lighting. Lumos looks great, it casts shadows around Harry as he moves, the light shines on his face."
It's impressive, so impressive that the developers built entire levels around this new lighting effect, just to showcase it, he says.
There are plenty of gameplay additions to this latest LEGO title as well. The characters all have lots of spells they can cast. My time with the game and its makers was relatively short, so they tried their best to cram in as much as they could. They showed me plenty of new abilities, like the Quibbler spectacles that allow you to spot hidden LEGO. There's the diffindo spell that allows you to cut into a wall of LEGO and create your own pieces on the fly, not needing to worry about shapes or patterns. There are also times in the game when you can use a mind-control spell to take control of other minifigs.
Some of your minifigs can switch between the LEGO character and their familiar (owl, cat or frog). Hermione gets a bag this time around, a sort of bag of holding that can carry a city's worth of items. She will pull items out of the bag to comedic effect throughout the game, Evans said.
Right now she's pulling a giant ice cream cone out of the bag to attract a nearby hovering LEGO bee.
Ron Weasley also gets a new skill, the ability to open joke boxes left around the game by his brothers. Inside players will find helpful tools, like an instant swamp, fireworks or a pair of shoes that allow him to walk up walls. If someone other than Ron tried to open a joke box they'll get punched in the face with a giant boxing glove.
The game also features "dark objects", magical, forbidden items in Harry's world, but to use them you will need to control a character that knows dark magic, Evans said.
But that's not the darkest thing we were shown in the game. That moment came when Evans skipped us to the LEGO retelling of a fairy tale told in the book.
The Tale of the Three Brothers is a sort of fable told to children of the wizarding world, a cautionary tale about magic and morality. In it, three brothers escape their deaths with the help of magic. Death, angry at their near miss, offers them each a prize, one meant to lead to their deaths. The story is filled with gruesome deaths, suicide and the haunting figure of death itself.
To recapture the feel of The Tale of the Three Brothers, the developers decided to create levels that had players controlling the brothers as they proceeded through the story from left to right on a scrolling, two-dimensional screen.
This section of the game is presented like a sort of LEGO pop-up book, with characters that pop up from the landscape, and unfold in ornate sections of cut paper, created in LEGO pieces. Stark lighting and a gritty filter help complete the feel that you are reading a book as you play through the level.
"It's a really cool, really eerie artistic world created in an art style we've never done before," Evans said.
The Tale's Death, a towering cut-out creature of wings and serpentine neck, is a sight to behold.
When the team first started designing this level, they asked their LEGO designers to come up with a Death figure. The first one that came back was a minifig, but the team wasn't happy with it, Evans said, so they sent it back.
"Half an hour later they came back with a big model made of LEGO," he said.
This new Death had sticks for legs and arms, skeletal claws for hands, giant, tattered wings of LEGO and a long, serpentine neck. It's almost vulture like in it's appearance.
The Tale of the Three Brothers is a huge part of the game, Evans said, but it's not something you play through all at once. Instead players will return to the on-going tale as they make their way through the broader story of Harry Potter's final three books.
"We wanted to do it justice," he said.
The story within a story, while big, is just a small portion of what Evans said is a huge game world.
"Now you can leave Hogwarts," he said. "You can go to Hogsmead, Hogsmead Station, travel to London. You can go into the Leaky Caouldron, to diagonalley. The world itself is absolutely huge."


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The fifth annual Trivia Night to benefit the Boys and Girls Club of Van Buren is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 14.
Sponsored by the club's Alumni Association, this year's event will be held at Northridge Middle School, 120 Northridge Drive, Van Buren.
Emcee for this year's event will be Ashley Beck, co-anchor of the KFSM Channel 5 news at 5, 6 and 10 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Registration will begin at 6 p.m. The trivia contest will start at 6:30 p.m.
Entry fee is $100 per team, due by Sept. 6. There is a limit of 10 persons per team.
There will be door prizes, complimentary dinner at intermission and silent auction.
Quiz categories are Cocktail Hour, The British Are Coming, Ducks in a Row, Where R U?, Faith, Founders, All in the Family and Marcus Welby MD.
There will be a $10 cover charge for spectators; cover charge will include dinner. No spectators will be allowed at team tables during the trivia competition.
Pairs and Spares is the defending champion.
Headliners, the Press Argus-Courier team, the winner in 2010, has finished second the past two years.
Team names with contact information along with the $100 fee should be mailed to VBBGC Alumni Association, P.O. Box 141, Van Buren, AR 72957.
For more information, call Connie Beyerle at (479) 414-5556 or Susan McCartt at (479) 461-7865.


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The New American and others continue to comb through the leaked PowerPoint presentation explaining PRISM — the National Security Agency's (NSA) program monitoring the Internet activity of millions of Americans.
Under PRISM, the NSA and the FBI are "tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person's movements and contacts over time," as reported by the Washington Post.
As the investigation proceeds, it is becoming apparent that the level of collusion between the surveillance agency and the country's largest tech companies appears much higher than representatives of those corporations would have customers believe.
As if that unconscionable cooperation wasn't enough, stories in other outlets report that the federal government's spying apparatus' corporate partners in the construction of the surveillance state are handing over more private customer data than has been revealed so far.
For example, consider this story published by Bloomberg:
Thousands of technology, finance and manufacturing companies are working closely with U.S. national security agencies, providing sensitive information and in return receiving benefits that include access to classified intelligence, four people familiar with the process said.
In addition to private communications, information about equipment specifications and data needed for the Internet to work — much of which isn't subject to oversight because it doesn't involve private communications — is valuable to intelligence, U.S. law-enforcement officials and the military.
Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process.
Larry Page, chief executive officer of Google Inc., said in a blog posting June 7 that he hadn't heard of a program called Prism until after Edward Snowden's disclosures and that the company didn't allow the U.S. government direct access to its servers or some back-door to its data centers.
These programs, whose participants are known as trusted partners, extend far beyond what was revealed by Edward Snowden, a computer technician who did work for the National Security Agency. The role of private companies has come under intense scrutiny since his disclosure this month [June] that the NSA is collecting millions of U.S. residents' telephone records and the computer communications of foreigners from Google Inc (GOOG). and other Internet companies under court order.
Many of these same Internet and telecommunications companies voluntarily provide U.S. intelligence organizations with additional data, such as equipment specifications, that don't involve private communications of their customers, the four people said.
And this, from Reuters:
Former U.S. officials and intelligence sources say the collaboration between the tech industry and spy agencies is both broader and deeper than most people realize, dating back to the formative years of Silicon Valley itself.
As U.S. intelligence agencies accelerate efforts to acquire new technology and fund research on cybersecurity, they have invested in start-up companies, encouraged firms to put more military and intelligence veterans on company boards, and nurtured a broad network of personal relationships with top technology executives.
And they are using those connections to carry out specific espionage missions, current and former officials say, even as they work with the tech industry to avoid overt cooperation that might raise the hackles of foreign customers.
Joel Harding, an intelligence officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the 1990s who went on to work at big defense contractors Computer Sciences Corp and SAIC, said spy agencies have at times persuaded companies to alter their hardware and software products to enable monitoring of foreign targets.
This last disturbing disclosure corresponds in many material ways to a story published by BusinessWeek online:
Through its open-source Android project, Google has agreed to incorporate code, first developed by the agency [the NSA] in 2011, into future versions of its mobile operating system, which according to market researcher IDC runs on three-quarters of the smartphones shipped globally in the first quarter. NSA officials say their code, known as Security Enhancements for Android, isolates apps to prevent hackers and marketers from gaining access to personal or corporate data stored on a device. Eventually all new phones, tablets, televisions, cars, and other devices that rely on Android will include NSA code, agency spokeswoman Vanee' Vines said in an e-mailed statement.
In a 2011 presentation obtained by Bloomberg Businessweek, Smalley listed among the benefits of the program that it's "normally invisible to users." The program's top goal, according to that presentation: "Improve our understanding of Android security."
Vines wouldn't say whether the agency's work on Android and other software is part of or helps with Prism.
How does the NSA come by such root-level access to technology millions of Americans rely on every day for hundreds of reasons?
Again, from Reuters:
Despite these secret collaborations, former intelligence officials and company executives say the great fear of overseas customers — that widely used U.S. technology products contain a "back door" accessible only to the National Security Agency or Central Intelligence Agency — is exaggerated. They said computers and communications overseas are captured by other means, including third parties such as the laptop reseller and special software developed by the agencies.
Defense contractors offer the government the means to break in to the products of virtually every major software vendor, according to a product catalogue reviewed by Reuters that was described as typical for the industry.
The scope of the surveillance and the collusion appears to be much more widespread and incestuous than previously reported.
The military-industrial-surveillance-technology complex is massive and the threat it poses to the Fourth Amendment can be neither overstated nor overlooked, if liberty is to be preserved.
The aggregate message of these separate accounts is that the federal government, in cooperation with several of the country's largest corporate entities, treats every American citizen as a suspect.
Moreover, the scope of the surveillance is being expanded to gather every word, every movement, every text, every conversation, every e-mail, and every social media post under the never-blinking eye of the federal domestic spying apparatus.
The hour is now late if this Republic is to remain a land under the rule of law. To that end, it is critical that Americans recognize that the sweeping surveillance dragnet thrown by the NSA, FBI, and other federal agencies is in direct, open, and hostile deprivation of the fundamental freedoms protected by the Constitution. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution clearly states:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
In the wake of the presentation of this appalling evidence of government-corporate collusion in the constant surveillance of innocent citizens, have Americans rushed to rid themselves of the devices sold to them by Silicon Valley?
No. According to BNAMericas online:
Worldwide smartphone sales are expected to reach 1bn units in 2013, compared to 675mn in 2012, research and consultancy firm Gartner said in a release.
Meanwhile, tablets are also expected to see continued rapid growth this year, with unit sales increasing 69.8% to 197mn.
The decline of liberty, it seems, has done nothing to slow the growth of dependence on the very tools being used to build the surveillance state.
Photo: AP Images


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Pitt and The Artist dominate New York Film Critics Circle Awards
The Hollywood hunk, who also landed a best actor honour at California's Palm Springs International Film Festival on Saturday (07Jan12), attended the Manhattan ceremony with his partner Angelina Jolie and picked up the trophy for his roles in Moneyball and The Tree of Life.
Silent movie The Artist also continued its success, being named Best Picture, while its maker, Michel Hazanavicius, landed the Best Director nod.
Meryl Streep was named Best Actress for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, and Pitt's The Tree of Life co-star Jessica Chastain garnered the Best Supporting Actress award.
Best Supporting Actor went to Albert Brooks for his role in Drive.
Other winners included Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin (Best Screenplay for Moneyball), Emmanuel Lubezki (Best Cinematographer for The Tree of Life) and Raoul Ruiz, who landed the night's Special Award.


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More on the ruination of college football
November 21, 2012 Leave a comment
I realize my sports-related posts are among the least popular, but given what's going on with my two favorite conferences, ACC and Big 10, the present situation is near and dear to my heart. And, I really like the points Chait brings up:
The core of the financial logic of expanding the Big Ten, and other league expansions, as Derek Thompson has explained, is cable television. The Big Ten has its own network and can charge cable operators to carry it. The more people who live in the Big Ten's footprint, the more households will be paying their cable operators an extra dollar a month or so to carry the Big Ten network. Hence the logic of adding Rutgers and Maryland. While the athletic traditions of both schools are, respectively, mediocre and terrible, they geographically encompass large, populous regions whose cable television subscribers will, for the most part involuntarily, be paying the Big Ten conference a chunk of their cable television bills.
In other words, as a profit-making mechanism, this is essentially a scam. It relies on an opaque pricing mechanism (bundled cable television) forcing people to pay for a product they don't want. Right now, it's a highly lucrative scam. But bundled cable television pricing is not going to last forever, and possibly not very long at all. There is already a revolution in video content under way that is going to render the cable television bundle model obsolete. When that revolution has finished, the Big Ten will realize it pulled apart its entire identity to grab a profit stream that has disappeared.
Now, to be sure, it will all be worthwhile if the Big Ten's new members have fully acculturated themselves. It is possible that, in a decade or two, pulling apart century-old rivalries between Midwest institutions to replace them with matchups like Maryland-Minnesota and Rutgers-Iowa will seem like a brilliant piece of insight. Proud alumni will walk around New Brunswick and College Park wondering how they had ever got on without the Big Ten. Cultural artifacts like Paul Bunyan's Axe and the Ten Year War will be part of their shared campus heritage.
But it seems highly unlikely.
And, my favorite part:
Like the Big 12, the ACC learned that taking a bunch of fan bases that reside in the same general region and declaring that they should start caring passionately about beating each other is not enough to make it happen. And if you can't gin up fan interest in a manufactured rivalry between real football powers like Virginia Tech and Miami or Nebraska and Texas, what possible hope is there for Maryland, Rutgers, and … anybody? Is there any possible outcome here for the Big Ten other than brand dilution?
The superconference experiments failed because you can't manufacture tradition, and tradition is the only thing college football has to offer. Without tradition, college football is just an NFL minor league. Big Ten football mainly consists on a week-to-week basis of games like Michigan versus Minnesota and Illinois versus Wisconsin. Those games have meaning to the fans in ways outsiders can't grasp. The series have gone on for a century. They often have funny old trophies. Every game is lodged into a long historical narrative of cherished (or cursed) memory. Replacing those games with some other equally good (or, as the case may be, not good) program is like snuffing out your family dog and replacing it with some slightly better-trained breed. It is not the same thing. And that deep well of sentiment, not the conferences' ability to exploit a series of local cable cartels, is its ultimate source of value. [emphasis mine]
Yep. And sure, modern air travel means the crazy distances don't have quite as dramatic an impact on the student athlete, but it's still something. College Park to Charlottesville or Durham sure beats College Park to Minneapolis. And, of course, the players always will fly. What about parents, dedicated fans, etc. They're just screwed. But, of course, this isn't about the fans, alumni, student athletes, etc., even one little bit.
Now, as for the economics of all this, there's one little part– as explained by Derek Thompson— that I don't quite get:
Cable channel make money in two ways: (1) advertising and (2) the small cut of your monthly cable bill. For most BTN subscribers, that small cut is $1 per household. That's one dollar, each month, from your checking account to the Big Ten, through the TV.
Stop right there. Stop thinking like a college fan who wants to preserve the 1980s-era conferences, and start thinking like a television executive. I just told you that every pay-TV household with BTN is worth one dollar a month. The obvious question is: How do I get more of those folks? Answer: You expand into more television markets where people haven't had any reason to care about the Big Ten, yet. Each time the Big Ten adds a school in a new city, the Big Ten Network adds a market. So, more schools, more schools!
The University of Maryland, which just announced it would join the Big Ten in two years, sits in a local market around Washington, D.C., with more than 3 million households paying for television. Let's say Maryland joins the Big Ten, and BTN negotiates with those local cable providers to get the same deal it's made in the Midwest. [emphasis mine]That's a cool $36 million for the conference "before the first ad gets sold," Andy Staples writes.
Here's what I don't get. Why in the world would DC area cable providers be willing to pay BTN anything near what Midwest cable providers do?! If they do they are absolutely asinine and totally screwing their customers (hmmm, cannot imagine a cable company doing that). Is there any question whatsoever that the value of the BTN to the average cable subscriber is astronomically higher in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, etc., than in the DC suburbs? If that's the case– and it obviously is why shouldn't the BTN receive way less revenue in its new markets where there is very little traditional Big 10 fandom? What am I missing here?


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Wine Finder
Looking for a bottle of Paraduxx near you? Take a look below! Our Wine Finder lists retail establishments across the country that carry our wines in stores and restaurants.
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To be eligible, students must have completed the first two quarters of their junior year in residence at UCSD and have an upper-division GPA of 3.5 or better and a 3.0 overall UC GPA. However, it should be noted that meeting and even exceeding minimum requirements does not guarantee admission. The B.S./M.S. is open to students in their junior year. Students taking a fifth year of undergraduate study are not eligible.
The Five-Year B.S./M.S. requires two applications. The first application, submitted during the junior year, is to the Department of Bioengineering and is reviewed and approved by the BENG Graduate Studies Committee. The second (university) application, submitted upon conferral of the B.S. degree, is required for admission into UCSD's graduate program and includes a $80 application fee ($100 for international students). Please note: students in the B.S./M.S. will have their academic records reviewed upon conferral of the B.S. degree. At that time, the Graduate Studies Committee will decide, dependent upon a student's academic success in prescribed coursework, whether the student will be admitted to the M.S. degree program effective the following Fall quarter.


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Here, you will find a complete listing of Riverbend plants. Some plants are offered seasonally, based on bloom time or season of interest. We have now designated which plants are no longer in production, but have left the information for you to use as a reference. Please visit our Availability page for on-hand inventory or to place an order..
Achillea 'Desert Eve Deep Rose'
Common Name: Yarrow
This yarrow forms in low mounds with fern-like foliage. It has large, vibrant clusters of deep pink flowers. It is heat and drought tolerant and makes a great pollinator....
Achillea 'Desert Eve Terracotta'
Common Name: Yarrow
Early-flowering varieties bred for compact growth and large flower heads...
Achillea 'Summer Pastels'
Common Name: Yarrow
This 1990 All-America Selection provides flowers in a delightful range of pastel shades. Excellent for the garden or cutting. Very reliable heat and drought tolerance. Attracts butterflies....
Achillea millefolium 'Apricot Delight'
Common Name: Yarrow
Plants are compact and bushy, with very uniform blooming over a long season. This selection has clusters of flowers varying in shade from soft apricot to rich rose pink, with best colour in full sun conditions. Excellent for cutting. One of the best Yarrows for growing in containers. Deadheading faded blooms should encourage more buds to form over a long season....
Achillea millefolium 'Paprika'
Common Name: Yarrow
Spicy-red flowers rise in tight clusters above the finely divided foliage. As flowers age, the color progresses to light pink, and then to creamy yellow. Try it massed in borders or cut for fresh or dried flowers....
Achillea millefolium 'Pink Grapefruit'
Common Name: Common Yarrow
The Achillea millefolium 'Pink Grapefruit' has grey-green foliage and fragrant deep pink flower clusters that age to a soft light pink color....
Achillea millefolium 'Pomegranate'
Common Name: Common Yarrow
Achillea millefolium 'Pomegranate' is a long-blooming perennial with clustered blooms of a bright scarlet red. They have a spicy fragrance and coarse hairy foliage....
Achillea millefolium 'Saucy Seduction'
Common Name: Yarrow
A brightly colored yarrow with sturdy, compact stems and an upright habit with fuchsia pink flowers with a tiny white eye that age to medium pink. Loves it in the hot, dry sunny garden. Deadheading faded blooms should encourage more buds to form....
Achillea millefolium 'Summer Wine'
Common Name: Yarrow
Deep wine flower clusters rise above fernlike foliage. As flowers age, they gradually lighten to a pale wine color. An excellent fresh or dried flower. Very heat and drought tolerant....
Achillea X 'Coronation Gold'
Common Name: Coronation Gold Yarrow
Attractive, long-lasting golden-yellow blooms atop sturdy, gray-green, well-branched plants make this a choice landscape selection. Highly valued as a cut flower, fresh or dried, it also adds color to borders. Attracts butterflies....
Achillea X 'Moonshine'
Common Name: Moonshine Yarrow
A great profusion of lemon-yellow flowers rises above the silvery, fernlike foliage. Foliage and flowers are outstanding cut, as dried flowers, or in the border....
Acorus gramineus 'Minimus Aureus'
Common Name: Miniature Golden Sweet Flag
A moisture loving plant. It can be planted in a shallow pond or in the woods. It has non- invasive rhizomes and can adapt to many different conditions. Use between stepping stones, where it exudes a fresh citrus fragrance....
Acorus gramineus 'Ogon'
Common Name: Golden Variegated Sweet Flag
Features iris-like tufts of narrow, grass-like, variegated leaf blades which are striped with yellow and green but primarily appear as yellow. Tufts slowly spread by creeping roots to form a dense ground cover. Foliage is sweetly fragrant. Inconspicuous, sedge-like flower spikes (with spadixes to 3" long) of tiny, densely-packed, greenish-yellow flowers appear in late spring to early summer....
Aegopodium podagraria 'Variegatum'
Common Name: Bishopsweed
This vigorous plant with creamy white and green variegated foliage produces flat clusters of white flowers. It may become wide-spreading if not contained. Tolerates dry conditions. An excellent ground cover for slopes or large areas....
Agastache 'Arizona Mix'
Common Name: Hyssop
Agastache 'Arizona Mix' is a has a variety of tubular apricot, yellow, and light pink blooms that grow in an abundance of spikes and have a minty scent. This is a heat loving, drought tolerant perennial that attracts butterflies and hummingbirds....
Agastache 'Arizona Sandstone'
Common Name: Hyssop
Agastache 'Arizona Sandstone' has mint scented spikes of bright orange tubular flowers that bloom throughout the Summer and into Fall. It has grey-green foliage and is a heat loving, drought tolerant plant....
Agastache 'Arizona Sun'
Common Name: Hyssop
Agastache 'Arizona Sun' has spikes of mint scented, tubular yellow flowers that bloom during Summer and grey-green foliage. This is a heat loving, drought tolerant plant....
Agastache 'Arizona Sunset'
Common Name: Hyssop
Agastache 'Arizona Sunset' has mint-scented, tubular flowers in a lilac-pink color that bloom in Summer and attract butterflies and hummingbirds. This is a heat-loving and drought tolerant Hyssop....
Agastache 'Blue Fortune'
Common Name: Anise Hyssop
Stems are topped with hundreds of large bottlebrush-shaped, soft blue flowers. Extremely attractive to butterflies. Tolerates clay soil, excessive heat and seasonal drought....
Ajuga 'Chocolate Chip'
Common Name: Bugleweed
Short spikes of blue flowers in spring. The low-growing chocolate-colored foliage with burgundy highlights spreads quickly. Does best under light shade in moist soils. Keeps weeds away with its thick growth....
Ajuga pyramidalis 'Metallica crispa'
Common Name: Bugleweed
A unique selection ground cover with colorful foliage and spikes of blue flowers in spring. Crinkly foliage is bronze/burgundy with a metallic sheen. The color is more pronounced in late summer. Spikes of deep blue flowers in spring....
Ajuga reptans 'Black Scallop'
Common Name: Black Scallop Bugleweed
Inky, scalloped oversized black foliage makes this eye catching bugleweed a best seller. Deep blue flowers accent the dark foliage from spring thru summer. For darkest color in foliage Ajuga Black Scallop should be planted in full sun. Use as a superb cover for the garden floor or as a dramatic touch to mixed containers. Black Scallop is more tolerant of variances in soil and moisture levels....
Ajuga reptans 'Bronze Beauty'
Common Name: Bugleweed
Beautiful blue-purple flower spikes rise above wavy, rich green and metallic burgundy foliage. This vigorous spreading plant forms lush, low-growing mats. An excellent plant for rock gardens, edging for borders, or as an adaptable ground cover....
Ajuga reptans 'Burgundy Glow'
Common Name: Bugleweed
Vibrant blue-purple flower spikes rise above exquisite burgundy, cream and green variegated foliage. This vigorous, spreading plant forms lush, low-growing mats. An excellent plant for rock gardens, edging for borders, or as an adaptable ground cover....
Ajuga reptans 'Mahogany'
Common Name: Bugleweed
Ajuga 'Mahogany' forms a low carpet with round, mahogany-red leaves and has deep purple-blue flowers in Spring. This is a great groundcover for shady areas....
Alcea 'Peaches 'N' Dreams'
Common Name: Hollyhock
Peach, rose, and cream shades of huge double flowers, tall and stately, perfect for the cottage garden, blooms early to mid summer, grows 5-6'....
Alcea rosea 'Chater's Double Mix'
Common Name: Hollyhock
Vibrant double flowers in mixed pastel hues over a long season add dramatic effect to butterfly or flower gardens. Great as a background planting for smaller plants and along walls and fences....
Alchemilla mollis 'Auslese'
Common Name: Lady's Mantle
This Lady's mantle has bright green chartreuse flowers that rise in clusters above the gray-green foliage. It is a summer bloomer that grows in an upright habit. The leaves are large and scalloped....
Alchemilla mollis 'Thriller'
Common Name: Lady's Mantle
This ground-hugging plant is a charming addition to shady areas. The silken, pleated leaves tend to cup upwards and glisten when wet. The clusters of greenish-yellow flowers are excellent for cutting or spilling over the edges of walkways and garden borders....
Allium 'Millenium'
Common Name: Ornamental Onion
It forms a compact, upright clump of glossy green, thick and strappy leaves which emit a slight smell of onion when crushed. In early-mid summer a profusion of large 2", bright rosy purple, tightly rounded clusters of flowers appear on strong stems just above the attractive foliage. Butterflies and honeybees adore the flowers' sweet nectar but deer and rabbits steer clear of this perennial beauty. This plant has not been known to reseed in the landscape and is very easy to grow....
Allium ampeloprasum
Common Name: Leek
Popular onion-like vegetable that is great in soups and salads. Lavender blooms appear from July to August, and the seeds ripen in August. This species has the same medicinal virtues as garlic, but in a much milder and less effective form. The whole plant is said to repel insects and moles....
Allium cepa (Aggregatum) Bulbous
Common Name: Shallots
A mild sweet tasting onion that is said to reduce blood pressure and blood sugar. Requires rich, well-drained soil....
Allium sativum 'Russian Red'
Common Name: Russian Red Garlic
Medium sized bulbs with purple stripes and brown-purple skin. Strong flavor and easy to peel....
Allium schoenoprasum
Common Name: Chives
Small lavender flowers form a round head above the hollow, tubular leaves that add a mild onion flavor to soups, salads and potato dishes, blooms late spring - early summer....
Alyssum 'Clear Crystal Lavender Shades'
Common Name: Sweet Alyssum
Alyssum 'Clear Crystal Lavender Shades' has clusters of small lavender blooming flowers and mounding foliage great for containers....
Alyssum 'Clear Crystal White'
Common Name: Sweet Alyssum
Alyssum 'Clear Crystal White' has an abundance of small, clustered white blooms over mounding, spreading foliage....
Amoracia lapathifolia 'rusticana'
Common Name: Horseradish
Fleshy roots are grated to make a relish that goes with meat or fish....
Amsonia hubrichtii
Common Name: Blue Star
Clusters of eye-catching cool blue, star-shaped flowers rise above the medium-green leaves. Foliage becomes a beautiful golden yellow in the fall. A splendid addition to the front or middle of the perennial bed or border....
Amsonia tabernaemontana 'Storm Cloud'
Common Name: Bluestar
Amsonia 'Storm Cloud' has dark, near-black stems, dark green leaves with silver veining and light blue star-shaped blooms. It has a mounded habit....
Amsonia x 'Blue Ice'
Common Name: Blue Star
Striking blue flowers last 5 weeks or more. Dense, compact mound of dark green leaves that turn brilliant yellow in fall....
Anacyclus pyrethrum var. depressus compactum 'Silver Cushion'
Common Name: Anacylclus
Very tight and compact plant with gray lacy foliage and white daisy flowers in spring. Excellent for dry, gritty areas along paths, patios and borders. Blooms early to late summer....
Andropogon virginicus
Common Name: Broom Sedge
This easy-to-grow warm season grass has golden copper fall color. It is native to North America and does well in poor, infertile areas, as well as floodplains....
Anemone 'Cinderella'
Common Name: Anemone
Anemone 'Cinderella' has rosy-pink blooms from mid to late summer over clumping foliage....
Anemone 'Fantasy™ Pocahontas'
Common Name: Japanese Anemone
This beautiful, compact gem is a "must see for yourself". Produces double pink blooms from July to September that are on sturdy stems. Great for containers!...
Anemone 'Little Princess'
Common Name: Japanese Anemone
Delicate pink blooms with golden stamens bring late season color to the shaded garden. Medium green maple-leaf foliage form neat mounds....
Anemone 'Lucky Charm'
Common Name: Windflower
Anemone 'Lucky Charm' has deep pink blooms with golden yellow centers that bloom late Summer through Fall. It has dark green leaves with purple undersides. It has a compact mounding habit and attracts hummingbirds, butterflies, and bees....
Anemone cor 'Harmony Blue'
Common Name:
Large, bright collored blooms have wide blossoms on fuzzy stems on top a dwarf plant. It has periwinkle purple flowers with navy blue centers....
Anemone Coronaria 'Harmony Orchid'
Common Name: Windflower
Attractive pinkish purple flowers bloom atop a short compact mass of foliage. Flowers can get up to 3", and go dormant in Summer until they are reborn the following spring. Great for planters!...
Anemone hupehensis 'Prince Henry'
Common Name: Japanese Anemone
Compact plant featuring small, semi-double rosy-mauve blooms. Well branched for good cut flowers....
Anemone sylvestris
Common Name: Snowdrop Anemone
An excellent plant for naturalizing as a ground cover, especially at the edge of woods or in rock gardens. They produce pure white, dainty flowers in spring. May rebloom in fall. Tolerant of many growing conditions, but prefers light shade....
Anemone x 'Party Dress'
Common Name: Japonese Anemone
Cheery, pink, double flowers with glossy green foliage. It is a great cover for the dying foliage of spring bulbs....
Anemone x 'September Charm'
Common Name: Japanese Anemone
Three-foot stems bear flowers of silvery-pink, with rose and mauve accents. A wonderful plant when placed in the back of the border. Invaluable for fall flower color....
Anemone x hybrida 'Honorine Jobert'
Common Name: Japanese Anemone
The best white-flowering anemone. In fall, clouds of 2-3" dazzling white flowers emerge on tall stems. A wonderful plant when placed in the back of the border. Invaluable for fall flower color....
Anemone x hybrida 'Queen Charlotte'
Common Name: Japanese Anemone
This perennial has bright pink poppy-like flowers that grow in clumps of about 4" semi-double blooms. Creates strong clumps of color above mounded, dark green foliage. Great for naturalizing landscapes....
Anemone x hybrida 'Whirlwind'
Common Name: Japanese Anemone
A stately plant with beautiful, pure white, semidouble flowers that seem to float above the dark green foliage. A wonderful plant when placed in the back of the border. Invaluable for fall flower color....
Anemone x hybrida 'Pamina'
Common Name: Japanese Anemone
A beautiful large double magenta bloom growing atop medium green foliage. The beautiful plants make a great border but must have room to grow and spread. It is a hardy plant that forms clumps and will spread over time....
Anethum graveolens
Common Name: Dill
One of the easiest herbs to grow, dill self seeds and can be directly sown into the garden. Yellow umbels are held above airy grey-green foliage. Adds flavor to bland foods and used in teas. Does best in a rich, well-drained soil....
Antirrhinum majus 'Snaptini Peach'
Common Name: Snapdragon
Snapdragon Snaptini 'Peach' has spikes of clustered peach blooms over mounding foliage....
Antirrhinum majus 'Snaptini Rose Bicolor'
Common Name: Snapdragon
Snapdragon Snaptini 'Rose Bicolor' has deep pink blooms over compact foliage....
Antirrhinum majus 'Snaptini Yellow'
Common Name: Snapdragon
Snapdragon Snaptini 'Yellow' has lemon-yellow blooms over compact foliage....
Aquilegia 'Biedermeier'
Common Name: Columbine
This variety is an excellent compact plant featuring a lovely mixture of densely clustered pastel flowers. The finely textured foliage forms graceful, airy clumps. A wonderful choice for border and rock gardens, or as cut flowers....
Aquilegia alpina
Common Name: Alpine Columbine
Striking flowers of blue or blue and white with short spurs appear above the delicate foliage. These durable plants are very versatile, and may be used in a sunny rock garden or border or to naturalize lightly shaded areas. Excellent cut flowers....
Aquilegia caerulea 'Origami Blue & White'
Common Name: Columbine
Showy bicolored flowers that bloom in Spring in blue & white. It is a clump-forming perennial that attracts hummingbirds and butterflies....
Aquilegia caerulea 'Swan Pink and Yellow'
Common Name: Columbine
Soft coral-pink outer petals with creamy tips blend harmoniously with pastel yellow inner petals. The blooms of 'Swan Pink and Yellow' face outward. Very high bud count for more flowers per plant. Makes excellent Cut Flower....
Aquilegia canadensis
Common Name: Columbine
This Columbine has bell-shaped red blooms with yellow centers that bloom throughout the Summer. The flowers are attractive to humminbirds....
Aquilegia canadensis 'Corbett'
Common Name: Gold Wild Columbine
Attractive butter yellow lantern-like blooms held above medium green foliage will work wonderfully in small bed or large gardens....
Aquilegia canadensis 'Little Lanterns'
Common Name: Dwarf Red Columbine
Dainty, nodding flowers are fiery red with a yellow corolla, resembling little lanterns. These native wildflowers are very versatile, and may be used in a sunny rock garden or border, or to naturalize lightly shaded areas....
Aquilegia canadensis 'Pink Lanterns'
Common Name: Columbine
Aquilegia can. 'Pink Lanterns' has dainty, nodding flowers that are a pastel pink color with a creamy white center. They resemble tiny lanterns. The foliage is mounding with lacey leaves....
Aquilegia vulgaris 'Blue Barlow'
Common Name: Columbine
This harbinger of spring announces itself with showy and large double royal blue blooms atop graceful, arching stems. The foliage is delightful as well with it's ferny-grey/green scalloped leaves....
Aquilegia Vulgaris 'Clementine Mix'
Common Name: Columbine
Great mix of color in this variety, in additional these plants do well in a mixed flower bed and have a substantial bloom time. Makes great cut flowers....
Aquilegia Vulgaris 'Winky Double Dark Blue White'
Common Name: Columbine
Brilliantly colored Aquilegia with hues of Purple, Lilac, and White. Very uniform and compact plant that resists mildew and grows rapidly....
Aquilegia vulgaris 'Winky Double Red & White'
Common Name: Columbine
Charming upward facing blooms in contrasting red and white frills and yellow centers, ideal for a stunning display in containers, an excellent dwarf for the front of the border, blooms late spring to early summer....
Aquilegia vulgaris 'Winky Mix'
Common Name: Columbine
Very floriferous, upright facing blooms in unique colors. Mildew tolerant and known as a good overall performing perennial....
Aquilegia x 'Origami Mix'
Common Name: Columbine
Beautiful 3" flowers of pink, yellow, blue, red and white hues bloom in late spring. Perfect for pots on the patio or naturalizing the shade garden. Also very nice cut flowers lasting for as long as two weeks....
Aquilegia x 'Origami Rose and White'
Common Name: Columbine
Dark green foliage with bright white and rose colored blooms....
Aquilegia x caerulea 'Sunshine'
Common Name: Columbine
This columbine has golden-yellow flowers with long spurs that rise above a compact mound of lacey green foliage. It is easy to grow and is great for pollinators....
Aquilegia x hybrida 'Hummingbird Mix'
Common Name: Columbine
A desireable mid height Columbine with an abundanrt mix of reds, yellow, and white above icy blue foliage, are highly attractive to Hummingbirds. Good for naturalizing in the sunny border....
Aralia cordata 'Sun King'
Common Name: Golden Japanese Spikenard
Aralia 'Sun King' has bright chartreuse to lime green foliage and white flowers that bloom in late summer. The foliage will turn more lime green in heavier shade. The flowers are followed by deep purple, inedible berries....
Armeria maritima 'Rubrifolia'
Common Name: Red Leaved Thrift
Very shiny green hair-like foliage turns reddish purple tones in spring and bronze in fall. Deep pink pom-pom flowers bloom late spring to mid summer. Excellent front of the border plant....
Armeria maritima 'Splendens'
Common Name: Thrift
Charming bright pink flowers clustered in tight pom-pom flowers bloom cheerfully on slender stems above tufts of narrow leaves. Grasslike foliage forms low clumps; ideal as a small-scale ground cover or as edging in the garden....
Armeria maritima 'Victor Reiter'
Common Name: Dwarf Thrift
A very dwarf mounded thrift of gray-green spikes covered with long lasting globular clear pink tufted flowers, drought tolerant, easy to grow, fast growth rate, blooms late spring - mid summer, grows 2-4"....
Armeria pseudarmeria 'Ballerina Lilac™'
Common Name: Thrift
Perennial that performs excellently and can be overwintered in some zones fairly easily. Very neat growing and compact cultivar....
Armeria pseudarmeria 'Ballerina Red'
Common Name: False Sea Thrift
This broader leaved Armeria is evergreen! Large 1" red pom pom flower clusters on a sturdy stem dancing above the foliage. The Ballerina series includes compact, uniform varites that is a heavy spring bloomer and with deadheading will rebloom thru the summer months. Great for planting in mass, borders or containers....
Artemisia 'Powis Castle'
Common Name: Wormwood
Soft, extremely feathery silver foliage adds color and texture to the garden. Forms a dense, spreading mound. Use in dried arrangements, or in borders and herb gardens....
Artemisia dracunculus
Common Name: French Tarragon
Attractive, narrow, dark green leaves have a mild, aniselike flavor. This is an excellent addition to vinegars, sauces, meats and eggs. Best when planted in the herb garden or patio pots....
Artemisia schmidtiana 'Silvermound'
Common Name: Silvermound Wormwood
Most commonly grown variety, with mounds of silver-gray, feathery foliage that add texture and contrast to the perennial garden. Excellent in the rock garden or for edging. For best results, plant in well-drained soil....
Aruncus dioicus
Common Name: Goatsbeard
Large, feathery plumes of creamy-white blossoms rise above broad, fernlike foliage. This tall perennial forms a dense, bushy clump. Excellent as a background plant in the garden or as a cut flower....
Asclepias curassavica
Common Name: Blood Flower
This type of milkweed has gorgeous fiery red-orange umbel shaped blooms with yellow hoods and bright green upright foliage. It is known to attract Monarch butterflies....
Asclepias curassavica 'Silky Mix'
Common Name: Butterfly Weed
Asclepias 'Silky Mix' is a tropical milkweek variety that has large clusters of showy, fragrant gold and red flowers that bloom in Summer and attract butterflies....
Asclepias incarnata
Common Name: Butterfly Weed
Native to swamps and wet meadows. Fragrant, pale to dark pink flower clusters attract a profusion of butterflies and their larvae....
Asclepias incarnata 'Ice Ballet'
Common Name: Swamp Milkweed
Long-lasting white flowers have a vanilla fragrance. Attracts a profusion of butterflies. Excellent for perennial gardens, boggy areas or water gardens. Both flowers and seedpods are prized for cut arrangements....
Asclepias incarnata 'Soul Mate'
Common Name: Butterfly Weed
Clusters of deep rose-pink flowers, late to break dormancy, needs moist soil, blooms late spring - mid summer....
Asclepias tuberosa
Common Name: Butterfly Weed
Fragrant, bright orange flowers, drought-tolerant native plant, late to break dormancy, blooms mid to late summer, grows 26"....
Asclepias tuberosa 'Blonde Bombshell'
Common Name: Butterfly Weed
This variety of Butterfly weed has golden yellow flowers that bloom during the Summer and attracts butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds. It has dark foliage that grows in a uniform habit....
Asclepias tuberosa 'Hello Yellow'
Common Name: Butterfly Weed
The brilliant yellow flowers turn into attractive seedpods for fall and winter. Provides a spectacular show when planted en masse. Trouble-free plant....
Asclepias verticillata
Common Name: Horsetail Milkweed
This milkweed has white clustered flowers and needle-like whorled leaves. It is fragrant and is known to attract Monarch butterflies!...
Aster 'Blue Autumn'
Common Name:
Remarkably vivid violet blue, daisy-like flowers set this aster apart from all others. It's such an unusual color to see in the fall, so it really stood out in our trial gardens when it bloomed from late summer into mid-fall....
Aster 'Kickin Carmine Red'
Common Name:
This is a new series of perennial garden Asters with a very bushy, compact habit. They are covered in semi-double, vibrantly
colored flowers from late summer through fall....
Aster 'Kickin Lavender'
Common Name:
These naturally compact asters have a superb habit, forming a bushy, relatively short mound of foliage. Every inch of foliage is covered in flowers late in the season, creating a huge splash of color in pots and in the landscape. They really do live up to their name!...
Aster 'Wood's Light Blue'
Common Name: Aster
A low, rounded habit with profuse blooming. Can be used as an alternative for mums. This perennial is bred for its compact habit, heavy flowering, and long bloom period....
Aster frikartii 'Monch'
Common Name: Frikart's Aster
Aster 'Moench' has cool lavender-blue flowers with golden yellow centers that bloom on upright foliage....
Aster laevis 'Bluebird'
Common Name: Bluebird Smooth Aster
Abundant, unusually large, light violet-blue flowers (1"+) are borne in large clusters at the top of red stems. Mildew-resistant. Use in the perennial border for late season color or in containers....
Aster nova-angliae 'Purple Dome'
Common Name: New England Aster
Large, semi-double, deep purple flowers, profuse bloomer with a compact habit, blooms late summer - mid fall, grows 15-18"....
Aster novae-angliae 'Andenken an Alma Potschke'
Common Name: New England Aster
A long-flowering, disease-resistant variety with masses of bright pink flowers. An excellent choice for brightening the garden and also as a cut flower. Attracts butterflies....
Aster novi-belgii 'Henry III'
Common Name: Michaelmas Daisy
A favorite for borders and edging; it gives great autumn color. Forms bushy clumps with numerous small daisy flowers. An excellent container plant....
Aster novi-belgii 'Marie III'
Common Name: Aster
Pink blooming aster for fall, very free flowering and easy to grow. Pairs well with the Aster Peter or Henry. These will also do well in seasonal containers....
Aster novi-belgii 'Peter III'
Common Name: Michaelmas Daisy
Beautiful blue-lavender double blooms that contrast with the rich, dark green foliage underneath. Does well around borders or as edging. Also an excellent container plant....
Aster oblongfolia 'Raydon's Favorite'
Common Name: Aromatic Aster
Tremendous plant with fragrant foliage and produces a mass of finely textured blue flowers....
Aster x dumosus 'Prof. Anton Kippenberg'
Common Name: Hardy Aster
Lavender-blue flowers, profuse bloomer with compact, globe-shaped mounds, blooms late summer - mid fall, grows 12-15"....
Aster x dumosus 'Wood's Pink'
Common Name: Hardy Aster
Cheery, clear pink daisylike flowers bloom profusely on this mildew-resistant plant. A noninvasive plant that flowers over a long season. Ideal for the sunny border or as a container plant....
Astilbe arendsii 'Cappuccino'
Common Name: False Spirea
Astilbe 'Cappuccino' has frothy, creamy white blossoms that appear above dark bronze foliage during the Summer. The thick plumes appaer on red stems. The leaves mature to a dark green....
Astilbe arendsii 'Red Light'
Common Name: False Spirea
This perennial has long, bright red feathery plumes that are fragrant and bloom during the Summer. They have mounding shiny green foliage....
Astilbe chinensis 'Purple Candles'
Common Name: Chinese Astilbe
This Chinese Astilbe has a plume-like flower with dark purple-red coloring and dark coarse foliage....
Astilbe chinensis 'Visions in Pink'
Common Name: Astilbe
Vibrant pink flower plumes are striking mid-summer in the shaded or woodland garden or as a ground cover. Excellent cut flower, fresh or dried. Tolerates drier soils than other astilbes....
Astilbe chinensis 'Visions in Red'
Common Name: Astilbe
Beautiful pink-red flower plumes on dark red stems are striking in the shaded or woodland garden or as a ground cover. Excellent cut flower, fresh or dried. Tolerates drier soils better than other astilbes....
Astilbe chinesis 'Visions In White'
Common Name: False Spirea
A prolific flowering selection! This variety produces loads of creamy white triangular plumes in midsummer. Thrives with dappled sun and consistant soil moisture....
Astilbe simplicifolia 'Sprite'
Common Name: False Spirea
This 1994 Perennial Plant of the Year has arching, shell-pink, feathery plumes accented by dark bronze-green foliage. May be planted in sun if given plenty of moisture. Wonderful plants for the moist border, woodland edges, or planted en masse....
Astilbe x arendsii 'Brautschleier' ('Bridal Veil')'
Common Name: False Spirea
Beautiful plumes of pure white flower clusters rise above deeply cut foliage, blooms early to mid summer....
Astilbe x arendsii 'Deutschland'
Common Name: False Spirea
Tall stalks of striking long, white, feathery plumes rise above finely cut foliage. May be planted in sun if given plenty of moisture. Wonderful plants for the moist border, woodland edges, or planted en masse for a colorful display. Good cut flower....
Astilbe x arendsii 'Fanal'
Common Name: False Spirea
Striking, deep blood-red, feathery plumes are accented by deep green to bronze-green foliage. Tolerates sun with plenty of moisture. Wonderful plants for the moist border, woodland edges, or planted en masse for a colorful display. Good cut flower....
Astilbe x arendsii 'Peach Blossom'
Common Name: False Spirea
Beautiful spikes of pure peach-pink flowers bloom above deeply cut foliage. May be planted in sun if given plenty of moisture. Wonderful plants for the moist border, woodland edges, or planted en masse for a colorful display. Good cut flower....
Astilbe x arendsii 'Rheinland'
Common Name: False Spirea
Showy, clear rose-pink, feathery plumes flower above elegant, finely cut foliage. May be planted in sun if given plenty of moisture. Wonderful plants for the moist border, woodland edges, or planted en masse for a colorful display. Good cut flower....
Astilbe x arendsii 'Sister Theresa'
Common Name: False Spirea
This Astilbe has plump peachy-pink plumes above lacey green foliage. It is a fragrant Summer bloomer and tolerates sun with plenty of moisture....


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"Impressive, suave… a delight!" - The Times
Having delighted audiences across the globe for the past decade, the Rolls Royce of Flanders & Swann shows returns!
Join multi award-winning comedian Tim FitzHigham and BBC Radio 4 musical maestro Duncan Walsh Atkins as they starch their beards and trim their dinner jackets, ready to bring you the wit and wordplay of those ingenious comedy songsmiths, Michael Flanders and Donald Swann.
Lifelong fans and the uninitiated alike will delight to see the boys breathe new life into the much-loved words and music of Flanders & Swann, including all the classics: The Hippopotamus (Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud), The Gnu, The Gas Man Cometh and many more - plus a few hidden gems along the way!
Every show has a different song list so make sure to check them all out!
"Such energy and relish… caught the period remarkably well… well worth seeing" - The Independent
"Astute wit and genius wordplay... great" - The Guardian
★★★★★ "A delectable hour for fans old and new" - Broadway Baby
★★★★★ "You'll love this show" - ThreeWeeks
Should you wish to enjoy dinner or a light bite to eat before or after your show, Brasserie Zédel is located just across the foyer from Crazy Coqs. To book a table, please call 020 7734 4888 or visit us online at www.brasseriezedel.com/reservations.


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PWA racer Ben van der Steen has recently changed from previous sponsors Loft Sails to Gaastra Sails. Now Boardseeker shares an exclusive gallery of shots, with Benny absolutely ripping on his new wave equipment, as well as finding out more from the man himself.
Name: Ben van der Steen
Sail number: NED57
Disciplines: Slalom, Speed, Formula.
Best results: 3rd in PWA 2012, IFCA World Champion 2009
Sponsors: Gaastra, Starboard Mystic, Different.
What made you decide to change for 2013?
It's been great racing on the Lofts but the negotiations didn't run smoothly and it was time for change. I was looking for a bit more off a long term thing to really work with a brand without the stress at the end of the season and with Gaastra we found a solution for a longer term agreement together with very good sails and this is the way to continue for me.
What new companies are supporting you, and how did their support come about?
Starboard with the windsurfing boards after a good season in 2011 they took me up in the team for racing and for R&D.
Gaastra with windsurfing sails booms and mast after two good years of solid results they picked me up into the team to race alongside Ross and I will work with the guys on the racing designs.
Mystic with wetsuits harnesses and all accessories; I have been with them for more then five years now and I really like what they stand for and their vision on the sports they support.
Different with sunglasses; I am currently working with them on my own model which will come out soon and will be something that's never been done before
What are you plans for 2013?
Of course I will be doing the whole PWA slalom tour and some GPS speed where I can and maybe Luderitz if it looks like it will happen. I will be doing some clinics around Europe as well to help people with their rigging and sailing skills. Apart from that I am sure I will go to some promo events and visit some places and some shops here and there.
What equipment will you be using and why?
The Starboard 90 107 127 iSonic 2013 I will be
registering for PWA as these are the boards I like the most for my personal sailing style. For speed I have the speed-specials 49 and 44, also I have the formula 167 and for some wave riding the nuEVO 93 and KodeWave82. I will have the full quiver of the Gaastra Vapor for racing and speed and have a couple off the power wave Poison wave sails.
What are you goals for competition this year?
The goal with competition should be to win ! So I will do my very best on the racecourse!! The goal is at least the same as 2012 or better.


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Habits: Make It and Break It
No one is entirely sure where the 21-day rule originates, but it seems to have first been set forth in a book called "Psycho-Cybernetics." It's a self-help book first published in the 1970s, and in it, you find out you can create or break a habit in just 21 days.
The problem is, the evidence supporting the theory is empirical, or based on experience, not clinical, or based on controlled experiments [source: Benefit]. The theory caught on, though, and has been backed up in other forums since then. In 1983, for instance, a woman chronicled her efforts to start flossing and stop criticizing in a piece for "Reader's Digest." The article was called "Three Weeks to a Better Me."
But does it really work for everyone, or are these just the experiences of a couple of individuals?
The reality is, habits are easier to make than they are to break. If you repeat a behavior often enough, those synaptic pathways are going to get worn in. The human brain is a very adaptive piece of machinery. But does that take 21 days? Who knows? Everyone's brain is different, and habit formation also relies on aspects of experience and personality.
Breaking a habit is a lot more complicated, because while parts of those worn-in pathways can weaken without use, they never go away [source: Rae-Dupree]. They can be reactivated with the slightest provocation [source: Delude]. If you've ever tried to quit smoking, you already know this. You can go a year without a cigarette, and then give in one time and BAM, the habit comes right back.
The best you can do, then, is to form a new, parallel pattern, like exercising when you feel stress, rather than indulge the old pattern, which triggers "cigarette" in response to stress.
So what about these 21 days?


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Ancient Number
Group Size
Several pieces of silverware or short wooden sticks (e.g. matchsticks)
Set Up
Tell members of the group that you are going to use sticks/silverware/etc. to recreate an ancient number system. It is their goal to figure out how the system works. Place several sticks or pieces of silverware in a formation on the table. Unknown to the participants, the number will always be the number of fingers you have placed discretely on the table. If a participant thinks he or she knows the pattern, ask him of her or to give an example rather than stating the answer so that other participants can continue to play.


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Yesterday was my daughter Joyce's first birthday.
Getting ready for photos:
Baby and Grandma:
Hiking, Climbing, Camping, Trail Running, Snowshoeing...
neverwashasbeen wrote:Nice pictures HJ, very pretty girl. However, I'm a gear guy, where's the pictures of the presents, I want to see the sleeping bag, backpack, boots and other stuff
Thanks, Steve,bluerail wrote:You two are so lucky and have so much ahead of you that words can't even get close to. She's beautiful you guys. Congratulations to all three of you on her first birthday.
Thanks for sharing the pics.
Hikin_Jim wrote:[ She literally arrived 9 months to the day after Christmas. HJ
lilbitmo wrote:"Dad" I got to get a leg up on the competition - I also got to get some camo gear to hide from the DWA
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791-480 American Drew Cherry Grove Bed Bench - KD
Believed to be the longest running traditional suite in the industry, Cherry Grove turns 50 and has never looked so good. The original Cherry Grove collection introduced in 1960 reflected the classic 18th century tradition in design and craftsmanship, with elegant Queen Anne styling. The new collection promises the same timeless quality and appeal with a full line of dining room, bedroom, home office, entertainment and occasional furniture.
Legs - KD


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Ohio Northern equips students with the tools and technology they need to be successful in preparing for a career in law. In addition to the state-of-the-art Taggart Law Library, students are able to access library materials online, get experience with legal research tools like LexisNexis and Westlaw, and receive professional support for their technology needs.
The university's wireless network can also be accessed from the library and rooms throughout Tilton Hall.


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by Tom Utescher
When Germantown Friends School girls take up their field hockey sticks for their first practice next Monday, it'll be under the guidance of a new head coach, Dana White.
Originally from Pottstown, Pa. and one of a groundbreaking group of female athletes at the historically all-male Hill School, White went on to play collegiate hockey at Colgate University, where she became team captain and a regional All-American in her senior year.
After graduating from Colgate in 2006, she enjoyed a peripatetic lifestyle in Europe along with her husband, Jeremiah, who was playing professional soccer there at the time. He's also a Philadelphia area native – a Haverford School product who went on to play for Wake Forrest University before going abroad. Returning stateside towards the end of 2010, the couple settled in Elkins Park.
White had a lot of experience training young hockey players at sports camps, and also worked one-on-one with individuals looking to hone their skills. Eventually, she decided it was time to jump back in with both feet, and while looking about for job openings as a hockey coach, she came across news of the vacancy at GFS.
"With my husband and I both having private school backgrounds, it was an interesting opportunity," she related. "The more I learned about the school and its athletics program, the more I liked it."
Growing up in Pottstown, White played a number of team sports and ran track, as well. She first tried field hockey in seventh grade at her local middle school, and quickly took to the sport. Two years later, White became a prep school pioneer when she enrolled at the Hill School, which was beginning to admit female students after spending its first 146 years as an all-male institution.
"I was actually part of the first class of girls to complete high school there," she noted.
After her successful college career at Colgate, she and her husband went abroad as he pursued his pro soccer options in several countries. She didn't really have occasion to pick up a hockey stick while the couple were living in Poland and in Saudi Arabia, but she found more of an opportunity to play at the adult club level during the several years they spent in Denmark.
"A lot of it was indoors, and it's different from our indoor hockey in the U.S., but the basic skills are the same," White said.
Back in the U.S., she went to work in the financial department of an advertising agency in center city Philadelphia, so in the afternoons it won't be difficult for her to get to her new job at GFS.
Serving as a valuable liaison between the Tigers' new skipper and her players is Dana Griffin, the longtime assistant coach for the Germantown Friends stick squad. The two have more in common than their first name; while White was playing hockey at Colgate, Griffin was on the team at another Patriot League school, Lehigh University.
Before getting into tactical details, White will obviously need to become familiar with her team and league in which the Tigers compete. Still, she's going in with some important general goals for her athletes.
"You want to have them realize the importance of the team concept," she stated. "You will always have some individuals with very good skills and natural ability, but they can't achieve success on their own. There are different roles on a team, and everybody's role is important."
She continued, "I also want to make sure that the lines of communication are always open, between the coaches themselves, and between the coaches and the players. Everyone needs to understand how we're going to put all the pieces together to make a perfectly-functioning field hockey playing machine."
Over the summer, some of the GFS players have been participating in pick-up games hosted by Bryn Mawr's Shipley School, which has won six of the last eight Friends Schools League Championships. Academy of the New Church currently holds the FSL title, which was last won by GFS in the 2003 season.
White has attended several of those summer sessions and has gotten to know some of her new charges.
"They seem very motivated and excited to get going," she reported, "and I'm really looking forward to working with them."


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Amazon has finally launched a Web-based version of its Kindle reader, allowing users to read their Kindle purchases on any device with a Web browser, without having to download special software. The Web-based reader, called Kindle Cloud Reader, sports both an online and offline mode and can even sync your last page read (among other things) across Kindle devices. But while Kindle Cloud Reader could be used by almost anyone, it's clear that the design was largely made for the iPad, allowing Amazon to sidestep Apple's in-app content constraints and even offer the iPad-friendly Kindle Store it couldn't implement in its native iOS app.
Since I'm an avid Kindle book reader on my iPad, I gave the new HTML5-based reader a spin on that platform to see how it differs from the native Kindle app. Upon logging in via read.amazon.com (which can be accessed from a browser, iPad or not), Amazon warns you that you'll have to authorize the Web app to expand its local database size up to 50MB so that you can download and store books for offline reading. If you're worried about the space, you don't have to store books offline—you can read them directly from the "cloud," so long as you have an Internet connection. However, as most Kindle users can attest, there are plenty of times in which you are likely to find yourself in the mood to read but without a connection—the train, the beach, during a power outage—so the offline feature is a definite plus.
Once you authorize Cloud Reader to take up more space on the device, you're presented with a screen listing every book you have purchased. Tap and hold any book and it will begin downloading for offline reading. You can toggle between Cloud and Downloaded books using tabs at the bottom of the screen.
The UI from within the book-reading interface is just slightly different from the native Kindle app(s). The default view keeps all of the controls hidden on the screen (same as on the iPad) until you tap the screen to bring them up. Things like book navigation, font size/page color, and bookmarks/highlights can be found across the top of the screen while your progress bar remains at the bottom.
Cloud Reader allows you to see the notes, highlights, and bookmarks that you've made from another device in any given book, but this is one area where Cloud Reader fails: you can't make new notes or highlights unless you go back to a native app or use a real Kindle.
Cloud Reader's main strength is its integrated Kindle store, which is one of the elements that makes Cloud Reader more suited for the iPad than, say, for the computer. The Cloud Reader's Kindle Store is not at all designed like Amazon's normal website—instead, UI elements are laid out in big, touchable areas and navigation is designed for the touchscreen user.
Accessing any of the typical book lists that you might get from the website is easy, and downloading new book purchases or samples is as easy as using the Kindle store on an actual Kindle device. And unlike the native Kindle app on the iPad, when you finish reading a sample, you have an easy-to-use way to buy the full version. (On the native iPad app, you must ditch the book sample altogether when you are finished, open up Safari, buy the book, send the book to your iPad, go back to the Kindle app, tell it to refresh, download the book, and then find your place again.)
Just for kicks, I gave the Cloud Reader a run around the block in Safari 5.1 under Mac OS X Lion as well (the Web app works under Safari and Chrome for now—Firefox isn't yet supported), and things functioned in pretty much the same way as on the iPad. You must re-download books that you downloaded in other instances of the Web app if you want to read them offline on different devices, of course, but don't worry about losing your spot; Cloud Reader can still sync your last read location across devices.
I have written in the past about Amazon's native desktop apps for Mac and Windows, and I don't consider reading books on the computer to be an activity that most people would do voluntarily, though Cloud Reader could work for people who want to sneak in a chapter or two during lunch at their office computers.
Aside from not being able to create notes and highlights, the cloud-based Web app has a few other drawbacks. If you subscribe to newspapers or magazines through the Kindle Store, you won't be able to read them via Cloud Reader. (Incidentally, the native iOS app only recently gained the ability read this content, so score one point for native apps.) The ability to search a book for keywords is also missing, and the built-in dictionary that some users have grown fond of is also nonexistent in Cloud Reader. And, although the Cloud Reader interface is quite smooth and responsive for what it is, the UI elements still react to touches and clicks perceptibly slower than the UI elements in a native app. (Feel free to insert an e-ink Kindle joke of your choice here, because nothing reacts slower than the Kindle hardware's own interface.)
Apart from the inclusion of the built-in Kindle Store, users have little reason to use Cloud Reader on a smartphone or a tablet over a native app. The store is the Web app's major highlight, and I can see people using Cloud Reader to buy content more than actually reading the content there. For reading, I still prefer either the native iPad app or the Kindle hardware itself, but the availability of the Web app does make it easy to read from anywhere. I don't believe Amazon will ditch its apps for iOS or Android, either—users like options, after all, and the experience is a bit more smooth—but Amazon has clearly seen the benefits of using the Web to get around app store rules.


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When Wei Te-sheng (魏德聖), the director of Cape No. 7 and Seediq Bale, heard of a Chiayi high school baseball team that "almost" won the all-Japan Koshien summer tournament in Kobe in 1931, he just knew he had to make a movie about it. So he wrote a script, signed on as producer, asked Umin Boya to direct it, raised a pile of money, hired a cast of Taiwanese actors and extras, and the film, currently in production in Chiayi and other cities, is set to be released in early 2014.
The movie's working title is "Kano," the nickname of the old Chiayi Agricultural and Forestry Vocational High School, which no longer exists. The nickname comes from the first two English letters of the two Japanese words "Ka-gi No-rin," with 'Kagi'' being the Japanese word for Chiayi and ''No-rin'' being the Japanese term for agriculture and forestry.
"From time to time, Japanese tourists will stop here," says Yu Guei-in (余佳蓁), a senior at National Chiayi University (NCYU), who works part-time as a secretary at the museum.
"Last summer, a Japanese reporter from the Sankei Shimbun newspaper came here to look around and ask us some questions about the movie, and three French tourists stopped by in August while visiting the city's temples," Yu says.
While most people in Chiayi know about the team's exploits in 1931, few are aware that just a few steps from the modern 15-story glass-paneled city hall there is an old one-story Japanese-era building, hidden behind a long cement wall, that serves as an informal Kano museum for the team.
The building, still sporting sweet-smelling tatami mats and sliding paper doors in the Japanese style, houses the offices of the Kano Alumni Association. Supported by the city and a local university, it has a volunteer staff and is open Monday to Friday for tourists, scholars and history buffs. It's a quiet place now, but once the movie is released, it could get crowded.
Inside the wooden structure, built in the 1920s, there is a library with dozens of copies of the Kano Alumni Association annual magazine, still published in Chinese by National Chiayi University (MCYU), and hundreds of old black-and-white photographs of the 1931 baseball squad. Outside in the courtyard there's even a statue of one of the original team's players holding up a bat and seemingly still ready to play ball.
Tourism opportunity
The Chiayi city government sees an opportunity in the 2014 release of the Wei-produced movie, which is said to be a cross between a baseball drama and a love story. Yes, Wei wrote a young woman into the script, and she'll be the love interest of one of the players. So with expectations high that the movie will attract tourists from across Taiwan and Japan in the future, the city government's tourism department donated a nice chunk of change — NT$500,000 — to help fund the movie.
Nearby, National Chung Cheng University, just a 30-minute bus ride from Chiayi, is planning to set up a tourist attraction based on the movie, since some of the action scenes will be filmed at Chung Cheng University.
According to Angel Chen (陳廷萱), a graduate student working on her master's degree in marketing, the movie's connection to Chiayi and Taiwan's history during the Japanese Colonial Period (1895-1945) offers a "perfect storm" of public relations and tourism opportunities for all those involved in the movie's production. [read more...]


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Seven circus tigers poisoned in Russia
from: newstrackindia.com
Russian Federation,Crime/Disaster/Accident, Wed, 05 Dec 2012 IANS
Moscow, Dec 5 (IANS/RIA Novosti) The untimely demise of seven young tigers training to be stars at a Russian circus could have been due to poisoning, their trainers said.
"We seriously suspect they've been poisoned. It is deviltry, pure and simple," trainer Karina Bagdasarova said.
Seven young tigers died after entering training at the Moscow-based Nikulin Circus over the past six months. The circus was touring Russian cities at the time to mark its 90th anniversary.
None of the animals had any health problems. The autopsy brought up no poisons, but some harmful substances are known to completely dissolve in the blood.
"We've lost our most talented tigers, three of them ready for the arena. All we've left is one tiger cub that has shown no talent so far," said Bagdasarova, who runs the circus' tiger show along with her brother Artur.
The show is down to seven adult tigers, she said.
"We're inclined to believe someone wants to rob us of our peace of mind. We perform in all (Russian) cities to great success, someone may not like it," Bagdasarova said. She named no suspects.
The Bagdasarovs utilized the help of a psychic to uncover the cause of the animals' death, but to no avail, the trainers said.
Now the case is in the hands of the Federal Inspection Service for Natural Resources Use, which pledged to look into the deaths of the tigers, an endangered species.
A tiger cub costs $3,000 to $5,000 and takes up to two years to train for arena performance.
--IANS/RIA Novosti
--IANS/RIA Novosti


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Japan seemed to be a country perfectly suited to wind energy. It is the world's third-largest economy and an industrial powerhouse, with tremendous electricity demand but scant indigenous energy supply. Yet even after the worst nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl led to the closure of all reactors the wind sector has languished.
But now change is in the air.
Vigorous policy support for offshore projects and a mandated purchase price for their power are among signs that the business climate for Japanese wind is improving. "Everything is moving," says Yoshinori Ueda, international committee leader for the Japan Wind Power Association.
In early March, the government mandated purchase prices for offshore wind of JPY 36 ($0.35) per kilowatt hour. That same month, a bill aimed at calculating the optimal balance between all power generation sources was going through the final stages in parliament. It is expected to provide clarity on policy support for wind, albeit not until 2016. That year is also when utility unbundling is expected to result in easier grid connection for wind projects.
Japanese wind insiders talk about how Hiromasa Yonekura, chairman of the powerful Japan Business Federation known as Keidanren and a long-time critic of renewables as ineffective and costly, will soon be succeeded by Sadayuki Sakakibara, chairman of Toray Industries, which has developed carbon-fibre composites for wind-turbine blades and is seen as less beholden to the entrenched nuclear industry. His leadership is expected to nudge businesses and policymakers towards wind in the years ahead. "In 2015 or 2016, many conditions will have changed politically and economically," says Ueda.
Room for improvement
The Japanese government acknowledges that the lead time for Japanese wind farms has ranged between four to seven years, and that this has impeded projects from benefiting from mandated purchase prices for wind. Japan's wind industry is pressuring the government to bring this down to two years. As of March 2013, only two wind farms were receiving the feed-in tariff. A mere ten wind projects were under construction in March 2013, when the government issued an update on the situation, while 70 projects were crawling through the permitting process.
Japan's wind sector must still walk a very fine line. Following the 2011 catastrophe, strong grassroots support for scrapping nuclear power in favour of renewables emerged. But wind advocates are careful not to push their agenda too forcefully, lest they anger the nuclear supporters in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
The country has mothballed its nuclear reactors at great financial cost to the companies that have built them. The establishment is keener to restart reactors than to engineer a transition to renewables. But even if the country does turn some of its 50 reactors back on, policymakers are said to be quietly targeting a far lower level of operation than in the past, opening the door to renewables.
Market buzz
That is clearly behind some of the optimism on display at Wind Expo 2014 in Tokyo in February. Nearly 180 exhibitors attended the event, up from 167 at last year's inaugural event, part of a wider renewables event.
US wind turbine manufacturer GE had stayed away from Japan's moribund wind market for seven years, but chose Wind Energy Expo to announce its return with a 2.85MW turbine tailored to the country's frequent typhoons, lightning and turbulent wind conditions. "This is an example of technology that is designed very specifically for a market," GE vice-president for renewable energy, Anne McEntee, said in the keynote session.
The turbines turning in the waters off Japan demonstrate that this sense of purpose is not new. Just over six months following 2011's natural disaster, Japan's government approved a budget for the offshore wind farm in the waters near the devastated region. A consortium led by trading giant Marubeni and comprising some of the biggest names in Japanese industry got stuck into the project. "To move from budget approval to steel in the water in two years, is incredibly fast," says Annette Bossler, owner and managing director of Maine International Consulting, which advises on Japanese offshore wind.
Change on the offshore horizon
Floating offshore turbine development has grabbed big headlines - particularly after October, when the consortium commissioned a 2MW Hitachi turbine installed off Fukushima. Two Mitsubishi 7MW turbines will follow later this year or 2015.
At around the same time, other developers - with support from Kyoto University — commissioned a single 2MW Hitachi turbine installed off Nagasaki Prefecture's Goto islands in the East China Sea. The project, set to run for two years, produces electricity in demonstration tests conducted by Japan's environment ministry. The data gathered will be studied for the turbine's impact on fisheries and its ability to withstand typhoons.
The offshore sector did suffer a setback in January after publication of a government study that estimated installation costs for a hypothetical large wind farm exceeding 100MW to be double the average costs in northern Europe. Bossler agrees that until Japan develops a robust operations-and-maintenance supply chain, operation costs are liable to be high.
But she is puzzled by what she characterises as a passive response to the study from the Japanese wind sector and foreign companies eager to enter the Japanese market. She says the authors are known proponents of offshore wind, yet refrain from describing how significant drops in cost parallel to those seen elsewhere in wind and solar might occur. "Once you build a supply chain, costs will come down, but the report doesn't say that," Bossler says.
That market will take shape, believes Bossler. Japan has many necessary skills for building offshore wind, but it does not have offshore wind technicians, service vessels, or an offshore wind logistics approach. "Where do you store your parts for offshore," she says. "If you look at the entire supply chain that you need for offshore wind operations and maintenance, it doesn't exist in Japan. It's new for them. That is the opportunity for European companies."
Foreign suppliers and service providers apparently agreed, comprising 38% of exhibitors at Wind Energy Expo. Alongside Enercon and Siemens of Germany and South Korea's Kyungshin Cable was a Dutch government-backed delegation of eight wind-energy companies, who believe Japan is open for business. They include shipbuilder Damen Shipyards and energy research institute ECN. "The Japanese are searching for how it should be done," says Eric Kamphues, director at Dutch firm Offshore Consulting Partners. He says Japan is applying onshore regulations offshore. "That's somewhere we can contribute by sharing our knowledge and experience on regulations."
There are perennial suspicions in Japan of protectionist barriers erected by domestic industry. But fellow Dutch delegation member Justus Schoemaker said: "The Japanese are interested in general in innovative products and if it is something they don't have themselves, they are definitely interested."
Foreign help
Schoemaker says the Japanese government is encouraging developers to turn to foreigners to keep development of offshore wind to a strict timeframe, but even the new offshore tariff will not be enough to make projects with solely Japanese involvement viable "Companies will lose a lot of money if they do everything themselves. They need to start optimising and increasing efficiency," he says. This could be achieved through imports or even acquisitions, and if Schoemaker's hunch is right, Japan's years of being off the global radar for wind may now be numbered.