magpie's shiny things

Transportation

In hon­or of the Iceholes hav­ing * all * made it across the bor­der. Piaggio Ape rac­ing. The mad­ness nev­er stops.

The 1955 Ariel offer­ing. “The only four cylin­der motor­cy­cle you can buy in America.” Moto jour­nal­ist hyper­bole is not new.  Click to en-biggen.

Industry news, changes in own­er­ship and man­age­ment at KTM and Mission Motors. I’m impressed that the lessons of the auto indus­try fail­ure are being heed­ed. Whether these new direc­tions are the best choic­es or not remains to be seen but at least they’re not repeat­ing the mis­takes of others.

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Society and Culture

This Recording is a source of good mid-afternoon reads. Literary and social obser­va­tions. Here the Italian poet and thinker Cesare Pavese’s diary entries for the year 1950. He’s not an opti­mist, but he observes closely.

The head­line “Kirkus Gets a New Owner — from the NBA” sent chills down my librar­i­an spine. The long stand­ing pub­li­ca­tion which pre­views upcom­ing book releas­es had failed and was up for sale. It’s pur­chase by a bas­ket­ball team own­er was a fright­en­ing prospect. Until you read the arti­cle and the quotes from Mr. Simon and his cho­sen chief exec­u­tive Mr. Winkleman. There is hope for the world of letters.

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Technology, Architecture

Air brakes and oth­er pas­sive safe­ty mech­a­nisms are explained. And the intrigu­ing ques­tion is asked. Can pas­sive safe­ty be a use­ful par­a­digm for soft­ware design? Discuss.

Wickedly cool pre­fab hous­ing that is dis­as­ter resis­tant and goes up in two days. The ulti­mate coastal storm watch­ing outpost?

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Art, Images, and Design

Prints avail­able from MotoClassique. Including the won­der­ful Geo Ham “At Speed” of  Farnsworth’s speed attempt on his Brough-Superior.

Astonishing paper sculp­tures by Anna-Wili Highfield. Raggedy birds in flight.

Mythic crea­tures from Seattle based Stacey Rozich. She is hang­ing her work at Dolce Vita right now. Opening tomor­row night. Perhaps a lit­tle sup­port for local art is in the future. (I’m not out of walls yet!)

Beautiful recon­tex­tu­al­iza­tion of clas­sic art on the walls of Paris. Zilda once again pro­vides an argu­ment against blan­ket graf­fi­ti erad­i­ca­tion pro­grams. (NSFW clas­sic nudes)

Martin Whitford’s series of paint­ings “Tempest”. Is this the new vision of the chaos of the end of times?

and that’s it for this week. see you on Monday.

Transportation

The lit­tle Honda RC125 is an instant walk down nos­tal­gia lane for many folks. Here’s a pho­to of a fine repli­ca and links to a bunch more fan sites.

Moto-porn and camera-porn in one go. Making of… videos for two recent Ducati ads (super­bike and hyper­mo­trad.) And can I just men­tion that not all bike video sound tracks have to suck. Ducati gets it right. (Sound)

Maybe I should­n’t post this… but you all are grown ups (kin­da). Julian Dupont does com­muter tri­als in Mexico City. Riding starts about 1 min in.  Note to P.Bear, BBQ Slayer, and a few oth­ers — No, I will not come bail your butt out of jail.
(Sound, bikes and music)

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Society and Culture

Excerpts from a book review for Asylum. The review­er pro­vides a glimpse at the utopi­an vision of the cre­ators of state and pri­vate insti­tu­tions for the insane. I am par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in track­ing down the intro­duc­tion by Oliver Sacks. Images from the book itself are avail­able through the link.

Brand new and unproven but intrigu­ing. The Web Trends Machine brings you TPUTH. Top tech sto­ries reduced to bad head­lines with links to source mate­r­i­al. “What’s hot in Google Reader” for smart ass­es. So far the links have been worth explor­ing. Try it your­self and let us know what you think.

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Art, Images, Design

More rac­ing ani­ma­tion. Sick, but what do you expect from Cyanide and Happiness.

Fabulously organ­ic door bell but­ton sur­rounds by the Nouveau mas­ter Rene Binet. So many oppor­tu­ni­ties for beau­ty have gone out of our lives.

Energetic, opti­mistic, col­or­ful, and occa­sion­al­ly baf­fling. Pre-WWII indus­tri­al exhi­bi­tion posters from Japan.

From the Royal Gardens at Kew via the Smithsonian. Exquisite pho­tographs of car­niv­o­rous plants. So pret­ty and bright green they make a good anti­dote to the gray of a Northwest February,

One more day to go my freaky darlings,

Transportation

WSDOT presents: build­ing the new fer­ry the Chetzemoka. Lovely lit­tle video mon­tage of con­struc­tion pho­tos, includ­ing a month­ly time lapse. (Sound — bad looped music)

Okay, these guys look like our kind of bugnutz. The Dumb Way Down. Around the world on a cou­ple of bit­sa bikes from the 30’s. It’s look­ing to be a multi-year project. Check out the web­site, the bios of the cul­prits and their gear are a gig­gle. They’re some­where on the east coast of the USA at the moment. Not the finest choice of geog­ra­phy giv­en the ongo­ing Snowpocalypse.

Truly one of the ugli­est bikes I have ever seen, the Ducati based Duster. Kittens were sacrificed.

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Science and Technology

Quantum inter­ac­tions in the dal­i­has? The expla­na­tions of pho­to­syn­the­sis get weird­er and weirder.

Of pos­si­ble inter­est to some of you old school SEGA moto game fans. A sound track album, srlsy.

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Art, Images, Design

There’s lit­tle infor­ma­tion about the artist beyond her taste in movies and music. These large­ly com­ic book illus­tra­tions cross between ani­me and noir with bits of com­men­tary on the nature of being human. Or in this case a cat, as the lit­tle white cat comes across some orange paint and imag­ines her­self a tiger. Amazingly not trite. (Other images in gallery mild­ly NSFW)

From Golden Age Comics,
Hannes Bok & Edd Cartier’s alter­nate­ly eerie and humor­ous sci-fi fey cal­en­dar illus­tra­tions in black and white for 1949 and 1950 Gnome Press Calendars. Robots, fairies, mush­rooms, and a mutant duck (?) all in one pic­ture. There are illos from at least three dif­fer­ent cal­en­dars mixed togeth­er here, mak­ing the view­ing even more surreal.

A lit­tle some­thing to remind you all that it could be worse than just a Wednesday. Dianna Rigg and scale mod­el rail­road­ing. Oh, go on, look, you know you want to,

Transportation

The Porsche Family Tree ad from a cou­ple of months ago was a fine show­ing of clas­sic cars. Here’s a Making of …video for your enjoy­ment. Shameless self pro­mo­tion at it’s finest. (sound — but nice sound)

In antic­i­pa­tion of Bonneville Speedweek, tal­ent­ed auto­mo­tive pho­tog­ra­ph­er Jerry Garns put up three shots from 2009.

BMW R69S Custom from Ritmo Sereno.

The Ritmo Sereno site trans­lat­ed from Japanese by the ever help­ful Google.

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Food, Society, and Technology

A fab­u­lous Annie Leibovitz pho­to­graph and a reminder that one of my favorite food writer has been unread for too long. MKF Fisher. Sadly not avail­able in the Kindle.

On a more mun­dane note, the ubiq­ui­tous and use­less ketchup pack­et has final­ly got­ten a redesign.

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Art, Images, Design

More Jim Flora and the very good news that there will be prints.  Skittish horse is kind of sin­is­ter indeed.

With a style that is sim­i­lar­ly sim­ple in line and col­or choice, illus­tra­tor Jon Klassen gets a nice write up at Design Sponge.

The ring a day project. Doing some art every­day is a good prac­tice (zen) for any­one who wants to keep their brain tuned up and devel­op a skill. Designing a mak­ing a ring a day is project for jew­el­ers and metalsmiths.

Milky way trans­port map — a la London.

A lit­tle Valentine’s ani­ma­tion. Set in Paris. With nin­jas. Can it get better?
nin­ja love sto­ry — ani­ma­tion (paris)

Happy Monday my lit­tle hyper­ac­tive gerbils.

Transportation

Massive con­struc­tion under Grand Central Station in NYC. A slide show of images of tun­nel­ing for the new LIR con­nec­tions. Note — indi­vid­ual cap­tions are to the right of the images.

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Science and technology

Hunter and preda­tor robots. Neural net­works and ran­dom muta­tions allow robots to evolve behav­iors.

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Art, Images, Design

13 pic­tures from the Women’s Bureau archives of women doing war work. The National Archives is mak­ing good use of Flickr. The slide shows are enter­tain­ing and the infor­ma­tion about the indi­vid­ual images are well cat­a­loged and well pre­sent­ed. Best of both worlds.

It’s not in English (yet) but dang do I want it to be. Cartoon Cooking. Illustrated recipes and techniques.

Economy, sim­plic­i­ty, time­li­ness. More of life should be as fine­ly drawn as these line based por­traits done on the Tokyo trains.

A hand­ful of bril­liant open­ing cred­its for recent movies. (video — sound)

Another clas­sic chil­dren’s book. Aesop’s Fables with illus­tra­tions by Milo Winters.

We’ve almost made it. Just a lit­tle further.