magpie's shiny things

Transportation

I’ve known of cou­ple of bike nuts from Alberta. Something about the hor­ri­bly, long , dark win­ters leads to the cre­ation of awe­some bikes to be enjoyed dur­ing the 16 hour sum­mer days. Things like this love­ly Duc.

Oh so old school, oh so cool. A turquoise Indian. The details pics of the leaf springs will make you weep.

The Partridge Family was a sta­ple of my tween­er life and David Cassidy was on the cov­er of every dang issue of Tiger Beat for years. But I’m grown up now and sweet­ened up, hair band singer, wanna-bes do noth­ing for me. That bus they drove, on the oth­er hand, I’d still buy.

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Science

Olive trees show how sex­u­al dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion in plants can change over time. And why that change may remain incom­plete. Fascinating botany and a reminder that gen­der is mutable.

The world’s old­est tree, it’s a some­what con­test­ed title. I mean, what exact­ly is a tree? and how do you mea­sure old? None-the-less, here’s scoop on 12 con­tenders. Including this tiny spruce in Sweden named after a geol­o­gist’s dog.

Science on a larg­er scale. Tides are the result of the moon and the sun mess­ing about with the water float­ing around the Earth. There’s a nice set of expla­na­tions, some ques­tions answered, and sim­ple ani­mat­ed graphics 

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Art, Images, and Design

The Chinese have a long tra­di­tion of ges­tur­al land­scape paint­ing. Sail has updat­ed the mate­ri­als and meth­ods but still pro­duces dreamy images of places you’d like to be. A plum tree on a wall in Shanghai. Done with spray paint.

Bunnies, bees, a baby rein­deer. Tulips, cher­ry blos­soms, and welling­ton boots. The Big Picture has a round of spring images.  (And there’s a Magpie!)

Shepard Fairey brings his sig­na­ture style to a multi-cultural trib­ute on Melrose Ave.

the sun is out! the hail will return, no doubt.