Transportation

Ore­gon race­way park — extreme shifter cart. Though 800 pounds makes it some­thing oth­er than a go-cart IMO.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/06/palatov-motorsports-dp4/

More extreme. These cars (and bikes) look like car­toon char­ac­ters. In part because they spring from Japans otaku culture.

Exam­ples of boso­zoku bikes are a lit­tle hard­er to find but here’s a cou­ple. (Nice non boso-Morowaki 600RR smack in the mid­dle of the thread.)

And for some­thing sooth­ing. Bernardet pro­duced a very com­mon and suc­cess­ful line of scoot­ers in France in the late 40s and the 50s. But from 1921 until 1940 they pro­duced rac­ing and street side­cars. Scroll down to see some wicked racers.

Science

Sci­ence of pret­ty. How do but­ter­fly wings get their color?

More sci­ence of pret­ty. How do fire­flies light up?

A slight­ly dif­fer­ent view on the prob­lem of lag­ging sci­ence inno­va­tion in the US. It’s not the edu­ca­tion it’s the jobs.

Art, Images, and Design

Peter Tay­lor’s round lit­tle fel­lows with pat­terns and swirly pret­ties. Jol­ly. (NSFW bare car­toon butts)

Only the shad­ow knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. The rest of us just assumed that the aver­age beach going kid has a bit of mon­ster in their heart.

Edmund Dulac illus­trat­ed many books in the 30’s Here is a set of scans from Trea­sure Island. Soft clear col­ors and charm­ing images.

Per­haps you could also look at his illus­tra­tion for the Rubaiy­at. Much dark­er and lush.

Animation

This is anoth­er one of those “how could I pos­si­bly write a bet­ter intro than Mered­ith wrote?” items. Czech chil­dren’s film — Kooky’s Return. I can’t. Just watch.

wel­come back to the real™ world