Month: January 2010 (Page 2 of 3)

Transportation

What is it about bikes with squared off bits and pieces? Look­ing like some­thing made out of expen­sive can­dy box­es, the Mars.

Top Speed is either in on the joke or plen­ty dumb. This steam motor­cy­cle with a Piag­go look­ing front end is rad. (Note the Worth100 watermark.)

Bio-diesel motor­cy­cle with inter­est­ing stream­lin­er styling. Click on Met­al­back.

Who wants a jet pack? Not me. I want a Puf­fin, NASA’s sin­gle per­son flight pod. I like the expla­na­tion of the name as well.

Fail­ing that I’ll look back in time and take this. Amphibi­ous side­car?

—————–

Science

Oceans of liq­uid dia­monds, with sol­id dia­mond ice bergs? Best pos­si­ble sci­ence fic­tion world award win­ner for sure. Except that it could be very real.

——————

Culture and Society

I know that a num­ber of you saw the Bur­lesque Nut­crack­er this year, or watched “A Wink and A Smile”, the doc­u­men­tary about the Seat­tle bur­lesque scene. (Stream­able on Net­flix)  The New York scene is high­light­ed in this Coil­house arti­cle that touch­es on the past, present and future of bur­lesque. NSFW

——————

Art, Image, Design

Not exact­ly a zom­bie proof shel­ter but it does deal with mon­sters wear­ing sheets. A demo of the Dai­ly Shel­ter. 5 year olds aren’t the only ones who will want one.

Many of us are book fiends. Susan B. for­ward­ed me a link to this book about books. Or more pre­cise­ly a book about how peo­ple store their books. The idea of hang­ing about in a bosun’s chair while brows­ing my library is very appealing.

From Coro­net mag­a­zine, Sept 1949. Beau­ti­ful black and white por­traits of Amer­i­cans. The cap­tions are cringe wor­thy and the pho­tog­ra­phers uncred­it­ed but the images are pre­cious. Noth­ing is perfect.

Gustaf Teng­gren worked first for Dis­ney but left to pur­sue his own path. His illus­tra­tions of fairy tales helped set the tone for pic­ture books of the 30’s and 40’s. There are tons of exam­ples here, as well as a thought­ful com­men­tary on his devel­op­ing his own style after leav­ing Disney.

TGIF dar­lings.

Transportation

Inter­est­ing take on how the TARP funds for trans­porta­tion should be spent. The groups spon­sor­ing the report have an ax to grind but the log­ic is good. More mon­ey for bus­es, less mon­ey for asphalt may equal more, bet­ter, longer last­ing jobs. Hmmm.

It’s Blue, it’s French, that’s enough for me.

There’s that mag­ic word ‘scram­bler’ again. This time with an Ital­ian accent. A pro­duc­tion cus­tom (what­ev­er that is sup­posed to mean) based on the Tri­umph Bon­neville. (Click through for the orig­i­nal site — in Ital­ian — with good music)

I could include a Vin­ta­gent post every day. Anoth­er TT repli­ca heads up the sto­ry behind the orig­i­nal. Duz­mo Lev­ack TT Replica.

———————

Science

Prov­ing my point with­out me hav­ing to do a damned thing. Should the results of research paid for with gov­ern­ment (tax-payer) mon­ey be required to be pub­licly acces­si­ble?

Picky females. Ener­gy sav­ing strate­gies to insure that her repro­duc­tive efforts (eggs) don’t go to waste. Crea­ture cast #11. NSFW — car­toon ani­mal genitalia.

——————–

Tech, Tools and Mayhem

Air pow­ered under­wa­ter chain­saw. ‘Nuf said.

Cre­at­ing anoth­er kind of may­hem, Ama­zon fires the first shot in the next round of the eBook wars. If eRead­ers are now com­mod­i­ty devices the bat­tle field shifts to con­tent. Ama­zon sweet­ens the pot for authors but with a few strings.

——————

Art, Images, Design

Spi­ral stair case/slide — epic win.

WWIII — the cyber­war. Okay, maybe we need a bet­ter name for the inter­net war but we’ll have great posters.

Art stu­dent Jim Tier­ney, designs new cov­ers for Jules Verne clas­sics. I love jazz the feel of these.

Small Vic­to­ries. Found pho­tographs with odd, cap­ti­vat­ing sub­ti­tles. Not ter­ri­bly optimistic.

Now where did I put those ray gun plans…

Transportation

If you rec­og­nize that these cutouts are more than sad­ly mod­ern abstracts then you can have them on your wall. If you had to look at the descrip­tion to fig­ure out what they are, you would be pos­ing and that’s not cool.

In my house you hear a lot about the mys­ti­cal per­fect Tri­umph — the Scram­bler. Hell for Leather has a peek at a JoMo ver­sion that could make our garage/shop a lit­tle snugger.

The John­son Motor Com­pa­ny is mak­ing a come back. (See the bike above) The web­site is still pret­ty rough but you can see a lit­tle his­to­ry and click around a bit by start­ing here.

On the oth­er hand you might just want to go for urban com­bat com­muter prac­ti­cal. Ket­tenkrad. Googling for more info and more pic­tures is left as an amus­ing exer­cise for the reader.

———————–

Society

If you thought the Big­Me­dia copy­right treaty boon­doogling twirps were only mess­ing with the US nego­ti­a­tions of copy­right treaties you were wrong. Leaked docs show EU inter­ests plan­ning to lean on Cana­da to “upgrade” it’s IP laws. Ugh.

The cost of copy­right infringe­ment fear. 25 episodes of the Jack Ben­ny Show has been locat­ed in the CBS archives. They are old enough to be in the pub­lic domain. There are peo­ple will­ing to pay all the costs of hav­ing them con­vert­ed to dig­i­tal. Because CBS is afraid of being sued by own­ers of some lit­tle bit if music, they will nev­er see the light of day. If you have deep pock­ets you can’t be too careful.

————————–

Science and Tech

Marine worms (and earth worms) do amaz­ing things in the lit­tle shal­low world they inhab­it. Anoth­er final project from Dr. Dun­n’s lab explores the leg­gy, freaky marine worms and how they may have had a big role in cre­at­ing gyp­sum moun­tains. (Remem­ber the crys­tal caves of Mex­i­co from a cou­ple of weeks ago?) Mute for the first 48 sec­onds to get past a poor­ly cho­sen sound track but don’t skip the video por­tion. (Sound)

There’s a new class of tech­nol­o­gy being pushed at CES this year — the “smart­book”. Yeah, I know, WTF. About the size and capa­bil­i­ty of a net­book with the mobile con­nec­tiv­i­ty of a smart phone. Hence smart-book. Or some­thing. Ars gives us a look at two of the con­tenders. Take away — not quite ready for prime time, but I love the look and idea behind the Entourage Edge Dualbook.

————————-

Art, Images, Concept Art

Hervé Groussin, for the odd­ly attired sharks at the top of the post (and for the machetes.) There’s an image of one of the sharks being lift­ed into a water tank lat­er in the set. Those two images lead to hours of try­ing to put togeth­er the sto­ry that links them.

Again with the sharks in con­cept art. After the last set, the scene here with the shark and fish looks like a pas­toral. Imag­i­na­tive winged build­ings and bet­ter drag­ons than the usu­al slob­bers as well. Frank F. Hong

Jagged and col­or­ful, two roost­ers book­end a series of paint­ings fea­tur­ing the art of sumo wrestling. The young Ital­ian Fabio Ron­ca­to paints like a sculptor.

Leav­ing you all with this insight­ful por­trait of Che in 1963.

Now wake up get back to work my dar­ling slackers.

Transportation

It’s that time of the year. Icy roads can cut down on your two-wheel com­mute trips. Or not.

Bru­tal­ly evil look­ing elec­tric bike. Anoth­er entry for the TTXGP.

Anoth­er cool fast boat. And this one won’t get all smashed up by eco-terrorists. On the oth­er hand — it is in the Navy now. Lit­toral com­bat ship with a claimed 43 knot turn­ing speed.

—————

Science

Green Porno — which isn’t real­ly porno. An inter­view with the man who dressed Isabel­la Rosselli­ni as a starfish and a squid.

The zodi­ac light, an arti­fact of the space dust between Earth and the sun. Pho­tographed in Chile. It’s worth click­ing on the pho­to to enlarge it.

————————

Art, Images, Design

ROA of Bel­gium does giant line draw­ings of ani­mals in built and aban­doned envi­ron­ments. His giant birds are espe­cial­ly wonderful.

A dinosaur and his friend con­tem­plate the growth of col­ors. Cray­ola meets Moore’s law, though the time scale ia a lit­tle longer.

I enjoy look­ing into the process of cre­at­ing. PK of Bib­liOdyssey made friends with Yuko Shimizu and now he has a page of her draw­ings in var­i­ous stages of com­ple­tion. From pen and ink out­line to col­ored press ready. Fascinating.

Girl and bike. Yep, it’s cool.

Hap­py It’s Not Mon­day campers.

Transportation

Some Lomo­graph­ic pho­tos…of a very nice RD400. Yes, it’s orange.

Don’t you want to meet the guys (and girls) behind this col­lec­tion of
run­ning projects snapped out­side a din­er in Brook­lyn last March?

Roland Sands, meh. Nice cam­era work, awe­some sound track, sil­ly bike
stunts, yay! (Sound)

——————–

Science

Hav­ing views of Earth from space is one of the defin­ing differences
between the late 20th cen­tu­ry and all that went before in how we
per­ceive our place on the plan­et. This col­lec­tion high­lights sand
dunes. Par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing is this image of Lake Eyre in
Aus­tralia. The nor­mal­ly dry and dune filled lake bed is partially
refilled with water due to heavy rains in May of last year.

——————

Tech and Design

The only thing cool­er than this stain­less steel hose is the
real­iza­tion of it’s true pur­pose.

The eRead­er will have slipped firm­ly in the cat­e­go­ry of commodity
hard­ware by sum­mer of 2010, pre­dicts Ars. Here’s what’s around the
cor­ner for the rest of the year.

——————–

Art, Images, Illustration

Cut paper.

Three masks by Flur­ry and Salk. Lion, Owl, Cock­atiel.

Yuken Teruya’s cut paper projects use every­day items like fast food
bags and toi­let paper rolls to build del­i­cate forests. This is the bag
project, among the oth­er bests are Cor­ner For­est and Free Fish. (links
at the top of the gallery page.)
Anoth­er user of toi­let paper rolls, Anatas­sia Elias creates
sil­hou­et­ted scenes from a nos­tal­gic past

Not paper. Cut steel. Cal Lane makes lace with indus­tri­al dis­cards and
a plas­ma torch. (NSFW nudi­ty and sex­u­al pos­es in doillies)