What the heck!? Wooden Skyscrapers?

First thought? Chicago, October 8 – 10, 1871. A city constructed mostly from wood didn’t work out so great for Illinoisans, you know what I mean. What’s the big idea?

“Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) is as strong as steel but weighs 80% less.”

“Eco-friendly: extensive fossil fuels are needed to make steel, concrete, and bricks.

Traps and stores carbon dioxide instead of emitting it, unlike other materials.”

See where the Inconvenient Truthers are going with this? Although, there is the sticky tree issue.

“Wood construction sites produce less waste, noise, and traffic than conventional sites.”

Wood? Like, tree wood? It’s ok, Mr. Tree Hugger. It’ll only hurt a little.

“Sustainable logging will be implemented, targeting only dense forests susceptible to wildfires and decay.

There are presently huge timber reserves in the world because people now are using less paper.”

If I understand the marketing pitch here, environmentalists suggest constructing multi-floor structures with decay vulnerable material and advocate strongly for global logging because we’ve saved too many trees.

They do cite things like steel structures can burn, too and all buildings need sprinklers.

“Wood is being billed as the answer to creating greener cities — lightweight and sustainable, it is even said to be more fire resistant than steel.”

“All buildings over a certain size need to have sprinklers and active fire suppression systems — irrelevant of whether it’s wood, concrete or steel.”

Apart from the greener-is-better white paper, there is a certain appeal to the timber towers. Sure. Why not?

“People tend to feel relaxed around wooden buildings,” says [architect Kevin] Flanagan. “People associate wood with green spaces, they have an affinity to it. There would be a real benefit to introducing wooden structures to the cities where people live.”

“Children working in the timber classrooms, researchers found, were more relaxed, displaying lower heart rates.”

Then, of course, there’s Russia.

“Russia has huge timber reserves, largely because we’re finally using less paper,” he explains.

NewsWorthy?

The Obamas are laying roots in the swamp. January 21st Michelle and Barak moved into a rental home neighboring with the Kushners. The past Wednesday the Obamas bought the 8,200-square-foot, 1921 era home for $8.1 million.

“Spokesman Kevin Lewis, in a statement, said the purchase just made sense for the family: ‘Given that President and Mrs. Obama will be in Washington for at least another two and a half years, it made sense for them to buy a home rather than continuing to rent property.’ “

General Motors announced plans to layoff half of its manpower (about 300 workers) at its Michigan plant. GM has already cut nearly 5,000 jobs since November. With car sales declining,  the number 1 automaker has decided to curtail any surplus by trimming its workforce at their transmission plant in Warren, Michigan.

“Recent actions to reduce passenger car production have caused us to adjust transmission production,” said GM’s statement. “This action will help maintain more stable production and provide the smallest impact to plant employment going forward.”

Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Patton out at NatGeo. There seem to be some creative issues. NatGeo Channel, a 20th Century Fox (owner of Fox News), insists their scrapping the made-for-tv because it sucked, not because O’Reilly is a serial sexual harasser. Or that’s the story they’re sticking to.

“It was in development for a couple of years, and it was a difficult project to crack creatively,” the network said Thursday in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “Like most projects in development, it didn’t go the distance, so we passed on it.”

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