Morning Linkage (Feb 25)

Transportation

This is the cutest scoot­er. Ever. Red and yel­low, and it has tail fins
— and a rudder.

The Ghezzi-Brian web­site is pret­ty bro­ken and this par­tic­u­lar Furia
ver­sion of the V11 seems to have dis­ap­peared from it’s galleries.
S’okay this black ver­sion shown at TopSpeed looks bet­ter than the red
one on G‑B’s sites.

I know that a num­ber of you take advan­tage of Bike Bandit’s impres­sive
on-line col­lec­tion of parts fich­es. For the fan­bois there’s now an
iPhone app. That’s right, you can now look up and order parts right
from the break down lane on the free­way. It works pret­ty darn well and
it’s free.

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Science and Society

The Smithsonian reports on the exca­va­tions at  Gobekli Tepe and what
the find­ings might mean for the the­o­ries about the tran­si­tion from
hunter/gather soci­eties to agri­cul­tur­al societies.
“… these new find­ings sug­gest a nov­el the­o­ry of civilization.
Scholars have long believed that only after peo­ple learned to farm and
live in set­tled com­mu­ni­ties did they have the time, orga­ni­za­tion and
resources to con­struct tem­ples and sup­port com­pli­cat­ed social
struc­tures. But Schmidt argues it was the oth­er way around: the
exten­sive, coor­di­nat­ed effort to build the mono­liths lit­er­al­ly laid
the ground­work for the devel­op­ment of com­plex soci­eties.…” Read
more:

Do you remem­ber the movie “Valley Girls” and how we all made fun of
the odd­i­ty of adding the ques­tion­ing inflec­tion to each and every
sen­tence? The plague has spread into every nook and cran­ny and we are
now a nation that sounds as if we aren’t sure where we parked our
selves. Taylor Mali wrote a poem about it and Ronnie Bruce made some
type dance for it.

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Music

I’m get­ting kick out of lis­ten­ing to these 3 and half minute duels
between John Kessler and John Maynard as they pit their col­lec­tion of
obscure and whacky vinyl against the clock, a theme, and each oth­er. Record Bin Roulette.

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Art, Images, and Design

Weapons design for the cubi­cle slave/warrior. When the Zombies come
I’m bar­ri­cad­ing myself in the stock room at Staples.

Paper and stop motion ani­ma­tion. Yay! Like the G wag­on as well. (Video
with sound)

The line between live action and ani­ma­tion in big bud­get movies is
con­tin­u­ing to blur and purists are up in arms. James Cameron insists
Avatar isn’t ani­ma­tion despite the enor­mous num­ber of ani­ma­tors who
worked on his film. This is nice sum­ma­ry of the ker­fluffle with links
to Cameron’s state­ments and a well rea­soned response by Kristin
Thompson.

Blocky bod­ied, bendy armed, charm­ing, robots and oth­er crit­ters. The
near­ly anony­mous Exit man.

hang in there my dears, only one more day to go.

Morning Linkage (Feb 24)

Transportation

Yesterday it was bum­ble­bee fairy tales. This morn­ing it’s a bum­ble­bee hacked hack. Ural. Citroen engine. Really.

Aprilia’s print ads have a dis­tinct fla­vor about them, no mat­ter which part of the line up they are show­ing you. (NSFW butt cheeks)
Enclosed motor­cy­cle park­ing con­tain­er. Would you pay to be able to lock up your bike like this? The only down side I can see is that the 3 vehi­cles in one park­ing space advan­tage of rid­ing is elim­i­nat­ed by the bulk of the con­tain­er. Also avail­able for pri­vate pur­chase for your garage­less house.

Girl shaped moto gear is avail­able. Sort of. Mostly it’s guy gear recut and not designed from the ground up. Except maybe this grrl shaped chest pro­tec­tor. Tactical corsets indeed. (NSFW — black plas­tic girl shaped stuff)

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Science

3 videos of neu­rons at work. Awesome to think that all this stuff is going on inside my head. Keep the mutant com­ments to yourselves.

National Science Foundation  2009 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. A video in which some of the win­ners talk about their sci­ence and the illus­tra­tion there of. Also links to big­ger ver­sion of all the winners.

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Art, Images, and Design

Fritz Hoffman’s pho­tographs con­trast­ing the new and the old in Shanghai. For Nat’l Geographic. Flavorless mod­ernism does not age well, Shanghai will come to regret it’s push to elim­i­nate the old every­day parts of it’s city

Jason Holley’s paint­ings have appeared on the cov­ers of many well know mag­a­zines includ­ing, New Republic and Rolling Stone. He also writes well about each paint­ing and it’s role in cre­at­ing the theme of the issue. His anti-ode to Okra for the Texas Monthly echos my own hatred of that veg. Far left, fourth row.

Very, very obscene, slight­ly dis­turb­ing, lyri­cal­ly grace­ful, and a sly poke at the PC-filled world of BDSM. Bound a type face for spe­cial projects. By Gatis Cirulis. Don’t miss the sketch book pages at the bot­tom of the post. (NSWF)

that’s enough slack­ing for one day.

Morning Linkage (Feb 28)

Transportation

Alternate engine tech isn’t all about elec­trons; there’s still inter­est in steam. After the recent British retak­ing of the world speed record for a steam pow­ered car, the gents from the USA area ready to give it anoth­er go.

Extraordinarily pret­ty Opel Motoclub. The red tires just bring the whole look together.

I hes­i­tate to post this, some of you will not make it back to check out the rest of this morn­ing’s links. Ah well, ser­vice is what we’re about here. Loudpop Voyager, hours of brows­ing and that’s just the bike pics.

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Society

From NPR, an inter­est­ing pro­pos­al for rebuild­ing Iceland’s econ­o­my, a safe haven for ideas and infor­ma­tion. Think Canary Islands for Wikileaks.

Cross plat­form gam­ing, mas­sive­ly coop­er­a­tive game play, and a girl who stretch­es all the way across the solar sys­tem? All that and Pluto is still a plan­et. Noby Noby Boy, please go down­load it and play. I want to see the ending.

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Science

I love my Kaufman Guide to Birds. There is now anoth­er filed guide from Kenn Kaufman — The Kaufman Guide to Insects. (Also insect puns in the comments.)

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Art, Images, and Design

Today, a look at what’s up in the world of Urban and Street Art.

Ripo’s large scale work is cre­at­ed using words and phras­es, cho­sen to be rel­e­vant to the loca­tion. Well, except the guy moon­ing the cruise liners.

el Crudo has tak­en the walls left when a neigh­bor­ing house was torn down and recre­at­ed the imag­ined life of it’s occu­pants. The park­our cat trip­ping down the stairs (green back­ground) is par­tic­u­lar­ly fine.

Another flickr set. This time the bum­ble bee news­box sto­ries. Each news­pa­per box con­tains a scene. The pho­tographs con­tains lots tags that expand the story.

2:12 makes mar­velous sten­cil based images in Houston. Here the tan­go dancer and the geisha. The video of paint­ing the geisha sign is worth watch­ing. (Video with Sound)

That should keep you all busy until tomorrow.

Morning Linkage (Feb 22)

Transportation

I seri­ous­ly need this truck. Well, okay, a few of you seri­ous­ly need this truck. Site Commander — the ulti­mate work truck, every­thing you need to run a nuclear pow­er plant build out. And an all ter­rain Segway, with it’s own lit­tle garage. Entries close May 1st.

The Fiat 500 Abarth of my dreams is com­ing to America. But not soon enough.

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Science

Strain spe­cif­ic antibi­ot­ic. More dif­fi­cult, more expen­sive, and quite pos­si­bly safer and more effec­tive than the cur­rent shot­gun approach. If noth­ing else, a fas­ci­nat­ing and reveal­ing look into how bac­te­ria function.

A rather more sane than usu­al pro­pos­al for clar­i­fy­ing copy­right and fair use.

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Art, Images and Design

Remember the mock ups of the “new” cov­ers for the Jules Verne clas­sics? Jim Tierney has fin­ished his project. Four love­ly, mem­o­rable cov­ers for four favorite books. (Video)

Insanely great design­er and builder of wood­en clocks.

Stick bomb­ing, mon­key chains, xylo­ex­plo­sives, call them what you will. Tongue depres­sors, acrylic paint, and an excess amount of free time leads to this.
Directions for build­ing your own.

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii devel­oped a tech­nique for tak­ing and print­ing full col­or pho­to­graph­ic images in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. Involving three glass plates and col­ored fil­ters, the process is com­plex and awk­ward. But the results are love­ly. Images of the Russian Empire just before it’s dis­so­lu­tion. From the Library of Congerss collection.

And “Precisely who thought a Warren Ellis alarm clock was a good idea?”

That’s all for today my freaky darlings.

Morning Likage (Feb 18)

Transportation

This is right and wrong in so many ways. Live action ani­me with an ice vil­lain and a super hero who trans­forms into a motor­cy­cle. Your patience will be reward­ed at 1:54 but no skip­ping ahead or you’ll miss much of the cheezy good­ness. (Video-Sound)

Why do Honda CBs make the best cus­tom cafe rac­ers? Here’s Whitehouse’s CB750. Click through to the Japanese web­sites for more eye candy.

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Science

There was a time when sci­ence was open to ded­i­cat­ed enthu­si­asts and those who had oth­er oblig­a­tions. Significant con­tri­bu­tions to the study of marine biol­o­gy in Japan were made by the Emperor.

I love cook­ies. You’ll love this huge col­lec­tion of sci­ence themed cook­ies too.

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Art, Images, and Design

Welcoming the Year of the Tiger. A col­lec­tion of pho­tographs from the Big Picture.

And in hon­or of the year of the tiger. The win­ner of the 39th National Wildlife pho­to con­test (mam­mals, ama­teur) is a tiger pho­tographed by Subharghya Das. The com­plete set of winnners in all cat­e­gories is here.

Russian Constructivist N.P. Akimov did many posters for the­aters. This col­lec­tion scanned from a 1963 book shows some of his best work.

Nice Mardi Gras reminder from Stinkfish on a  wall in Bogata.

Using old books are sketch books isn’t new. But I haven’t seen a set that so sen­si­tive­ly incor­po­rates the text block into the sketch before. Simonetta Capecchi from Naples.

Just in case you need even more to look at, WebUrbanist has a round up post of Digital Artists new to them. Nicely diverse. You’re bound to find some­thing you like here.