shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: Fiat

Morning Linkage (Nov 30)

Transportation

Bor­ing Euro sedans, re-makes of already clas­sic cars, and the Porsche con­vert­ible for the mass­es. This list of 10 future col­lec­tor cars from folks at Hager­ty Insur­ance Agency does­n’t make me want to run out and buy some­thing to stash in the barn. Except maybe the Fiat or the Mini Club­man. But you can still get the orig­i­nals if you’re look­ing for clas­sic. Whad­da ya think?

I am dis­turbed that the com­mon name for the own­ers and oper­a­tors of these wild­ly cus­tom vans from Japan is Yan­kee. Or maybe it’s just the reac­tion to see­ing so many fly­ing plas­tic wings and those low­er mandible spoil­ers. Bonus — all these vans make the 2 cus­tom sedans includ­ed in the gallery look real­ly tame.

I like this Sport­ster. I like old school and I like satin paint. New­Blood by Deus.

Anoth­er Sport­ster. Com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from VTM in France. Best Tron-ish future bike I’ve seen recently.

Very ear­ly attempt at the hub steer. Many more inno­va­tions in this 1921 Ner-a-Car.

Science

Fly­ing squid. It’s a con­fus­ing mix of squid­li­ness (ten­ta­cles) and ray­ness (flap­ping wings) but the video is cool and the glimpse into doing deep-sea research with remote-controlled sub­marines will make your desk job seem bor­ing. CreatureCast.

Where’s George? And what can the data col­lect­ed on the web about the trav­els of dol­lar bills tell us about the coun­try we live in? First things first. How are you going to look at all those bills? This student-created video from North­west­ern shows how some of the cal­cu­la­tions of net­works and bound­aries look while they’re grind­ing away. Cool.

Art, Images, and Design

Orig­i­nal­ly I was just going to point out the pic­ture of the under­side of the wave. But that’s just not the only awe inspir­ing pic­ture in this round up of Nat’l Geog­ra­phy 2010 Pho­tog­ra­phy Con­test.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/11/national_geographics_photograp.html

These pho­tos of ants in mossy places look like the set designs for Avatar. Maybe bet­ter, the nar­ra­tive makes more sense.

DieLine takes anoth­er look back­wards — this time to the seed pack­ages of old. The let­ter­ing is love­ly, flow­ing, and all hand drawn.

Animation

I don’t care if it is in Span­ish — it’s not like we’re going to need to fol­low the dia­logue. Javier Oli­vares does a new  Bat­man car­toon for TV. The look is just right, goth­ic, gotham, and lit­tle grainy.

Morning Linkage (Nov 5)

Transportation

I have no expla­na­tion for the face paint that match­es the hel­met. But it’s the nicest B&W bike pic I’ve seen this week.

Vin­ta­gent pulls togeth­er a brief his­to­ry of a 1938 BSA Gold Star for sale in Oz. Bonus pic of the “movie-star hand­some”  Wal Han­d­ley who earned the cov­et­ed gold star at Brook­lands for BSA.

None of the rac­ers I know has this kind of class. The FIAT trans­porter that fer­ried around the Fer­rari cars in the late 1950s isn’t exact­ly with­in the bud­getary con­straints of most of my rac­er mates either.

Offi­cer Silent is sneak­ing up behind you. First it was the elec­tric cars in the NYC fleet. Now Utah based ATK would like to sell your local LEOs some elec­tric bikes.

Science

The physics of the wet-dog shake (as well as mice, rats, and griz­zly bears.)

Why do gigan­tic pump­kins always look like they were left in the sun and melt­ed? All squat and squashed? There’s an answer to that. It’s a bet­ter shape than round for grow­ing out sized squash.

Art. Images, and Design

Ani­malar­i­um high­lights the ani­mals por­trayed in the work of two Finnish illus­tra­tors. San­na Annuk­ka whose work for Marimekko you can find on her web­site. (The look into the pro­duc­tion process for Marimekko fab­rics is cool.) And Klaus Haa­panie­mi whose large-scale pic­tures of fan­ci­ful ani­mals always make me smile.

The Book or Rev­e­la­tions is puz­zling to even the most devote of schol­ars. Com­men­taries have been writ­ten through­out the cen­turies. Bib­liodyssey brings images from the Bea­t­us Apoc­a­lypse. Noah’s ark fea­tures some par­tic­u­lar­i­ty unset­tling animals.

I have to agree. The posters for Black Swan are so unlike the usu­al run of actor’s faces poor­ly pho­to­shopped onto stand-ins’ air­brushed bod­ies in front of CGI explo­sions that at first I did­n’t real­ize that Black Swan was a movie. (It’s a ballet/psychological thriller movie. Who’s going with me?)

Love­ly cal­lig­ra­phy exe­cut­ed on video. Lega­cy of Let­ters pro­mo piece. Luca Bar­cel­lon­a’s econ­o­my of motion while let­ter­ing is amaz­ing. (Video)

Animation

When you have a band named the Kandin­sky Effect. the best pos­si­ble pro­mo video would fea­ture a piece (or two) of Kandin­sky art, no? (Video)

But is you need some­thing a lit­tle less high-brow you can’t go wrong with the episode of Saari. A preschool pro­gram designed by a Finn and pro­duced in Spain. Charm­ing. (Video)

And that’s it for this week. be hap­py, have fun, be safe.