magpie's shiny things

If you don’t go any fur­ther this morn­ing, go here. Not only is this
exhib­it on the top­ic of gov­ern­ment pro­pa­gan­da time­less but the
pro­duc­tion val­ues for the web­site encour­age exact­ly the kind of
explo­ration the top­ic deserves.
http://www.ushmm.org/propaganda/

On with the show.

What to do with a sane but ugly vehi­cle. Smart TwoTipping. Because
there aren’t enough cows in Amsterdam for a prop­er round of cow
tipping.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/07/smart-tossing/

A nicer design for an insane sport. Ice rac­ing. The video linked at
the bot­tom isn’t worth your time.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/07/audi-design-study-is-cold-as-ice/

From the sleek to the ungain­ly. You all have seen the EVE and all the
oth­er hot machines from Oshkosh. Here’s my favorite. Elvis.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/07/elvis-oshkosh/

Elvis is entire­ly func­tion­al design and ugly as sin. Here’s a bit of
func­tion­al design that’s eas­i­er on the eyes. The ori­gin and mean­ing of
the TV test pattern.
http://designobserver.com/archives/entry.html?id=38895

Because the blue rat is cute and the arti­cle con­tains the following
quote: “One of the rea­sons no one had done this before is that food
sci­ence is very sep­a­rate from neu­ro­science,” PETA rants will be
shit-canned.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/07/bluerats/

On to the arts:

Three short sto­ries from the Big Picture. The first one about a bride
cross­ing the Israeli-Syrian bor­der is manip­u­la­tive IMO. The second
about the plight of albi­nos in Tanzania is trag­ic and under reported
except as a “in odd news today” way. The third sto­ry — the one I’d
real­ly like to link to sep­a­rate­ly — is about the “Sea Gypsies” in
Borneo. So damned much smil­ing in one place. You can’t help but have a
bet­ter day.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/07/stories_from_israel_tanzania_a.html

Merce Cunningham has died at the age of 90.
http://www.merce.org/index-content.html

I was all up for grab­bing a plane down to LA tomor­row for the Secret
Identity: (The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster) Party.
Until I saw that I’d have to deal with the past their pull by date
Suicide Girls. I’ll just post a book review when my copy gets here.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/07/27/secret-identity-part.html

Here’s a pho­tog­ra­ph­er Madame Peripetie (prac­ti­cal­ly anony­mous) whose
work I find intrigu­ing but often inex­plic­a­ble, per­haps dense beyond my
comprehension.
http://cyanatrendland.com/2009/07/27/madame-peripetie-conceptual-photography/

Not my design but going on the stu­dio wall as an inspriation.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/downtothewiredesigns/3746548031/

And to leave you hap­py. Maurice Sendak talks to/about Spike Jonze
mak­ing where the Wild Things Are.
http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/where-the-wild-things-are/featurette-maurice-sendak

More tomor­row,

Starting Monday out with beer:

A list of 10 very old com­pa­nies. 3 of them are brew­eries, found­ed in
1040, 1074, and the new com­er in 1328. There’s also a hotel/restaurant
that’s been serv­ing beer for more than 1000 years.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/29340

On to motorcycles.

I like the lived in look of this Wrenchmonkee’s Moto Guzzi.
http://wrenchmonkees.blogspot.com/2009/07/blog-post_942.html

We need to get one of these for­pass­ing around to the younger generation.
http://designyoutrust.com/2009/07/15/the-rocking-horse/

Intellectual Property: Two impor­tant bits this morning.

On patent­ing plant mate­ri­als. Larry Proctor has lost the first round
in his attempt to main­tain a ridicu­lous patent he duped the US Patent
office into giv­ing him on the com­mon sta­ple (in some Latin American
areas) azufra­do or Mayocoba bean.
http://www.ciat.cgiar.org/newsroom/release_31.htm

The Swedish Pirate Party is gain­ing legs in Europe and mak­ing small
inroads into the USA. Copyright reform is, of course, onthe big planks
in thi­er plat­form. (Does any­one else use that metaphor anymore?)
Richard Stallman has pub­lished a piece on how the pro­posed 5 year
copy­right lim­it might adverse­ly affect the GNU (copy­left) licensing.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pirate-party.html

Ars com­ments intel­li­gent­ly on Stallman’s argument.
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/07/pirate-partys-copyright-reform-cannon-could-sink-copyleft.ars

And the best kind of pirates. Lesbian Space Pirates! Jocelyn turned me
on to this com­ic when she post­ed a link to this shoe lament. SWF (If
you decide to read fur­ther, and you should, some bits are NSFW.)
http://rosalarian.com/lesbianpirates/?p=34

A cou­ple of inter­est­ing sets of archives.

A col­lec­tion of resources on the Eugenics move­ment in the USA. This
lit­tle rec­og­nized move­ment has chill­ing lessons to teach about the
urge to pre­scribe what’s best for every­one else.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/07/27/american-eugenics-mo.html

On a less ter­ri­fy­ing note. Duke uni­ver­si­ty has opened the John Hartman
Center’s Archive of ads from the 50’s through the 80s cre­at­ed by the
D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles agency. I expect to see a lot of these
turn­ing up on the ‘net real-soon-now. Requires iTunes — sorry.
http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adviews/explore/

Speaking of iTunes and Apple’s rumored tablet. The thing I miss most
about buy­ing music on-line is album art and lin­er notes. Especially
lin­er notes. Apple may fix that. Not quite enough moti­va­tion for me to
buy an Apple com­put­er but close. Link to arti­cle about the Tablet is
behind a reg­is­tra­tion wall at the Financial Times. Boo.
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/apple_tablet_confirmed_newschool_device_for_oldschool_media_14151.asp

On books and what­not. The argu­ment about how to arrange the books has
unset­tled many a mar­riage. Well not mine but I’m a trained librarian
so I have an auto­mat­ic win on this one. How do two librar­i­ans manage?
Read the com­ments too.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jul/21/books-arrange-james-purnell

Images for today.

Warren Ellis pro­vides a link to a trail­er for the Asian ani­me version
of wolver­ine. Very ani­me, not very mar­vel. Judge for yourself.
http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=7576

Best. Slash pic­ture. Ever. Every pos­si­ble cliche in one draw­ing. (if
you don’t know what it means don’t ask — it’s total­ly squick)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcus_e/917607569/

I had a ter­ri­ble time last night fig­ur­ing out what to eat this week
that would­n’t require either heat­ing up the house with the stove or
get­ting burnt to a crisp try­ing to BBQ in the heat. Salad is often
good but lacks pro­tein. Here’s a nice look­ing sal­ad that won’t turn
you into a rab­bit. (Fry the bacon and boil the eggs ear­ly in the day.)
http://www.joyfulabode.com/blog/2009/07/25/belt-salad-blt-with-egg-with-roasted-asparagus/

That’s it for today.

Once you ignore the point­less lux­u­ry brand logo on the pipes this is
an inter­est­ing look­ing bike.
http://www.bikeexif.com/chanel-motorcycle

For the kindlers. An archive of pub­lic domain books that are set up
for over-the-air down­load. I’m going to suck down Shakespeare real
soon now ™
http://feedbooks.com/help/kindle

For all your radish slic­ing needs. The Lego Microtome.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Lego-Microtome/

I for­get about Square America and then I run across a ref­er­ence to it
and go back and spend hours look­ing through the archives. Square
America curates found snap­shots. Here’s a reli­gious­ly themed
collection.
http://www.squareamerica.com/ingodscountry/

I’m head­ing out of town for a short vaca­tion. Depending on the quality
of the side­walk cof­fee hous­es you may or may not get link­age tomorrow
and Friday.

smooches for y’all

Short list this morning.

Piccoli Bastadi means, of course, lit­tle bas­tards. Here’s a page of
shots of lit­tle (most­ly 50cc) Italian bikes from the 70s. The siter is
in Italian but worth crawl­ing around.
http://www.piccolibastardi.it/index2.html

Materials Science con­tin­ues to amaze me. Here is a struc­tur­al steel
beam that can be moved into place with­out cranes. (or — as implied by
the pic­tures on the front page — car­ried around by one guy with a big
smile on his face.)
http://www.litesteelbeam.com/

Brain whacks by McLuhan. (I can take or leave — well most­ly leave
McLuhan but these are an inter­est­ing look into the mind that gave us
“the medi­um is the expres­sion” and oth­er over-used media memes.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/86954993@N00/sets/72057594094068031/

Mental Floss has a new game. Lit Slits — which is no where as dirty as
it sounds but is an inter­est­ing way to pass a quar­ter of an hour. (For
some­one who con­sid­ers her­self quite well read — I suck at this game.)
http://www.mentalfloss.com/quiz/quiz.php?q=669

Auto-topia reports: BMW to pro­duce an elec­tric scooter?
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/07/bmw-scooter/
There’s a pic­ture and a google trans­la­tion here:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww2.soloscooter.com%2Fnoticia.asp%3Fref%3D22286&sl=es&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF‑8

Moto uni­corn chas­er for the men­tion of the C‑1:
http://www.bikeexif.com/ducati-bobber

Pop-tarts may be the break­fast pas­try of choice on your house but
these look way better:
http://www.chezpim.com/blogs/2008/08/how-to-make-you.html

Today’s pho­to galleries:

Woodstock: (some NSFW)
http://www.laurencemillergallery.com/currentexhibition.html

Ozark’s Music Festival — almost as old as Woodstock: (some NSFW)
http://www.mannmadephotos.com/ozarkmusicfestival
(Black ground info and more links.)
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/07/20/ozark-music-festival.html

Dear Friends at the International Center for Photography. American
Portraits of Men Together 1840–1918
http://museum.icp.org/museum/exhibitions/dear_friends/intro1.html

Awesome use of ship­ping con­tain­ers to cre­ate a liv­ing space on a West
Texas ranch.
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/07/15/dining/20090716-rogerblack-slideshow_index.html

Not quite so awe­some but still awe­some. Mosaic table of the Simpsons.
http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2009/07/simpsons_mosaic_table.html

More awe­some — this time a paint­ing by Julius Grimm of the sur­face of
the moon based on his pho­tographs tak­en in the 1870s and 1880s.
http://butdoesitfloat.com/20623

A mock-up of an Iraqi vil­lage on a stu­dio back lot in San Diego.
Eerie, creepy, and a lit­tle ludicrous.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/29237

And that big blob that was eat­ing shore birds in Alaska? Algae. (Is it
just me or is there a law that says that any news report of an unusual
nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na must now include glob­al warm­ing as one of the
pos­si­ble explanations?)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090718/us_time/08599191151700

more tomor­row,