Morning Linkage (May 3)

Transportation

Apparently things are lit­tle dif­fer­ent in GT rac­ing in Japan. Anime fran­chis­es spon­sor cars paint­ed like space ships, dri­vers wear suits pat­terned after offi­cers uni­forms and the ‘race queens’ look like cos-players. Evangelion gets the treatment.

It’s not all Evangelion and Gundams. Run’a did Toy Story. (It’s worth run­ning this through Google trans­late of Babble Fish. The dri­ver is a fun­ny guy.

Speaking of car­toons: Are you cool enough for the Dark Knight? Yup, they’re back — for a lim­it­ed time you can get your very own, per­son­al, cus­tom craft­ed, bat­man moto gear.

Closer to home and bit more real: A nice, very cus­tom, Harley flat-tracker. Lots of build info too.

Society, Culture, and Literature

There’s a new esti­mate of the dol­lar val­ue of fair use: $4.7 tril­lion. Google’s pol­i­cy blog sum­ma­rizes and points to the full PDF. I’ve been wait­ing for the con­tent car­tels to pro­vide some counter points argu­ing against the num­bers giv­en here. I haven’t seen them. Hmmm.

Art, Images, and Design

Shoes and fan­ta­sy pho­tog­ra­phy No, it’s not what you think it is. These are images cre­at­ed by Khuong Nguyen for Louboutin’s Fall-Winter 2010 fash­ion mag­a­zine ads.

Free-form blocks, in bright col­ors and pat­terns. Alberto Garcia makes com­mer­i­cal illos in Spain. Check out the Red Hot Chili Peppers CD art.

Paper quilling is an old fash­ioned art. Something for maid­en aunts to do in the kitchen on week­nights. Or the young Russian, Yulia Brodskaya, to cre­ate for Starbucks and Nokia to use in some very cheery and col­or­ful adver­tise­ments.

Animation

You might want to turn the sound off after the first minute of so — the music does­n’t get any bet­ter — but def­i­nite­ly watch the video all the way through. Yes, your print­er is haunt­ed :-) (Sound)