Morning Linkage (May 8)

The Design Edition Starting with a cou­ple of fur­ni­ture designs. With a welder and some scrap from out behind the barn we could make up a cou­ple of these lawn chairs. Not sure I want to sit on one. Humor in design is good. http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/sitting_on_the_fence_13389.asp And anoth­er report­ed by Core77. Proving that lack of humor in design thinking … 

Morning Linkage (May 7)

The arts and crafts edi­tion. Oh, and one toy. Now you nev­er have to be with­out a train set. http://www.paulsmith.co.uk/new-online-255/blumenau-model-train-set-r8sr-gama-88100–1/product.html?LproductId=16155 Art from books. I don’t always hold the line with the “nev­er destroy a book” crowd. Here are two exam­ples of why. The flickr set of Nicholas Galanin’s What Have We Become . http://www.flickr.com/photos/galanin/sets/72157594357065714/ Thomas Allen’s pho­tographed dioramas … 

Morning Linkage (May 6)

Silly chil­dren’s book. The draw­ings are delight­ful. The text abom­inable — in a cute sex­ist way. Don’t both­er read­ing the com­ments. http://michiedo.blogspot.com/2008/12/im-glad-im-boy-im-glad-im-girl.html News: Librarians are wor­ry­ing about the Google Books set­tle­ment. No access to put of print books vs. access con­trolled by giant corp. Rock and hard place. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/05/libraries-weigh-in-with-worries-on-googles-book-settlement.ars There was a lot of wor­ry about eBay encouraging … 

Morning Linkage (May 5)

Transportation: More on the sad state of our rail sys­tem. (With a lit­tle swine flu pan­ic thrown in.) http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/05/flu-pandemic-could-put-send-us-freight-system-to-the-icu/ A cool fold­ing two-wheel trans­port. Summary here: http://www.core77.com/blog/events/mobility_concept_wins_buckminster_fuller_challenge_13365.asp More images here. http://challenge.bfi.org/winner_2009 Stupid prod­uct — fun­ny videos. (A seg­way knock off for the under 8s.) http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/05/05/dareway-unsafe-at-any-speed/ Technology: A use­ful site list­ing alter­na­tives to var­i­ous soft­ware. Some of the alternatives … 

Morning Lnkage (May 4)

Science: Seattle is adopt­ing new math text books. Cliff Mass has some­thing to say about it. You should too. http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2009/05/seattles-big-math-decision.html A study of zebra finch­es brings up new ques­tions about how bird song is taught/learned. I nev­er feel com­fort­able with the broad con­clu­sions about the nature of cul­ture and cul­tur­al inher­i­tance that peo­ple want to draw from these …