As if their country’s tireless pursuit to produce a small army of elitist, preppy snobs was not tasteless enough, a team of German students from the Technische Universität Darmstadt (insiders call them the Darmstadt Dorks) just won first place in a competition to design and build the most attractive and energy-efficient solar-powered house. This competition took place in the United States of America, of all places, on the freakin’ National Mall, for crying out loud, at Al Gore HIMSELF’s birthplace or something, so-to-speak.
Clearly blinded by all that sunlight reflecting off the solar panels, judges failed to detect just how it was that the Teutonic technicians were able to aussteche (trump) our teams (20 teams in all) and take first place right from underneath our running noses, but anybody with any sense out there knows that it could not have been done in a fair and sportsman-like manner – even though many of these students must surely also take drugs, as well.
The America of my youth was geekier than this, people. American geeks were once world class, cutting edge geeks, geekier than geek, so-to-speak. They used to spread fear and loathing and amusement, all three at once, to anyone willing to watch them, which practically nobody ever was, of course, but still.
Are we just going to stand there and let a bunch of European Möchtegern (wannabe) environmental knights in shining armor come to our country and beat us at our own geeky game? Looks like. But at least there’s still baseball.
Come visit me at Observing Hermann…
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2 users commented in " German Geeks Steal Solar Decathlon Title "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackGermans are way ahead on wind energy, too. Darmstadt’s home cost 1.5 million to build, the most expensive in the competition I think. Maybe it is a bargain for a prototype considering the Osprey is costing the U.S. 30 billion plus. If a fraction of the 800 billion spent on Iraq, were spent on solar energy in the U.S. imagine how far ahead we would be.
By integrating solar cells/collectors into the shutters, I think the Germans did a groundbreaking innovation, and something special considering a lot of people “don’t want those things on my roof” because of appearance. However, I don’t know how fair it all was, them winning. I wasn’t there. I think the teams should be made to use the same reasonably priced appliances. Look at the bright side. At least yet another ugly-ass house from Colorado didn’t win.
While a little healthy competition might enliven the development, that the contest chose to include foreign countries was good I think. We are all living on this planet, and it is high time more attention is given to developing architects and engineers who will be interested in building energy efficient homes. It would be great to see world wide cooperation in this area.
I wanted Maryland to win. I just like the house the best, that’s all. The extra bed, or seating in the floor of the German house would have been a safety hazard in my view. Anyway, I hope the German people swell with pride over this accomplishment, and put more research into solar. They don’t exactly have the sunniest country. Come on, it sure beats marching into Poland and exterminating 6 million people and all that, doesn’t it? I think this generation of Germans learned a lot from their grandparent’s mistakes, so congratulations to them for winning.
I’m an American living in Germany. Your inflammatory comments are precisely what we don’t need from Americans today. At present our government is seen as an ambitious hegemony and our people as lumbering buffoons easily led about by shallow prejudices and without enough sense to grasp geo-politics.
That’s really unfortunate since, like Max Schnurbart noted previously, America seems bent on spending a lot of money to achieve military goals but remains reluctant to devote funding to sustainability issues.
Give the Germans their due…and chalk it up mainly to their deep pockets! I mean really, who could really afford to do these things. What someone needs to do is build good, tile roofing shingles that are also amorphous solar cells. Once we start incorporating green technology into standard designs, then we can start tweaking things. Ultimately people want to live in a home that IS a home, not a powerplant, concept demonstration or experiment.
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