magpie's shiny things

Special Saturday Edition
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Transportation

Can’t get enough of the big Duc’s iden­ti­ty cri­sis? Now it wants to be
a GS and go out to play in the dirt on Saturday.

Topspeed has un-watermarked copies of the pix in res­o­lu­tions suitable
for your win­ter desk­top wall­pa­per.

Ducati North Beach had a take your pic­ture with the Ducati umbrel­la
girls event a cou­ple of weeks ago. There’s a cou­ple of odd four wheel
vehi­cles in the stream as well.

How not to treat your scoot­er.

What to do with a well worn ves­pa. This is the sec­ond seriously
rockin’ rock­ing horse I’ve shown you all. Maybe I need to do a theme post?

The Honda Ruckus, ide­al plat­form for per­son­al expression.

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Society

Lisa Gold once again pro­vides a round up of the lat­est on the Google
Books set­tle­ment. It’s look­ing more and more like an up-settlement.
Includes a link to the Slate arti­cle “Sergy Brin Blows Smoke Up Your Ass.”

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Technology

Esquire Magazine a look at the Creech Air Force Base home of the remote
fly­ers of the 42nd Attack Squadron. The men and women who remotely
pilot the Reaper and Predator UAVs. The slide into war by joystick
fright­ens me.

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Images

Totally cute hood­ie idea. Mouthman hood­ies that change when you cross your arms.

Contes absur­des, absurd sto­ries. Illustrated in ink and water­col­or by
Lou Beauchesne.

Annie Lebowitz is a tal­ent­ed por­traitist. These adver­tis­ing images for
Disney from 2007–2008 are unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly flat except for the sly irony with
which she casts the celebri­ties as Disney characters.

Sinister. Unsettling.

Lovely pack­ag­ing fea­tur­ing mega-fauna of cof­fee grow­ing regions. (Yes,
I saw the surfer. I’ll stick to my characterization.)

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Math Video

No groan­ing. A clever ani­mat­ed expla­na­tion of some of the cal­cu­la­tions
involv­ing pi.

Transportation

Wow, slow day. All I can give you is this. But hey, there are bikes in
the back­ground.

If you’re more inter­est­ed in long dis­tance trav­el this Nat’l Geo
info-graphic is a nifty way to track 50 years of awe­some trips. CG has it
right, go straight to the flickr ver­sion for close-ups.

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Infrastructure

Is this for real? (Yes.) A plan to route elec­tric­i­ty between the
grids. The elec­tri­cal cable tech­nol­o­gy is very cool.

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Art Architecture and What-Not

Reason num­ber 307 that I think the Olympics have got to go.
Architecture that would be unbe­liev­able in a mod­ern space opera.

Cigarette papers used to come in lit­tle, fan­tas­ti­cal­ly ornamented
book­lets. Explore art, sci­ence, and history.

Living up to my nick­name. But where the heck would I wear these
lus­cious­ly over the top boots?

A lit­tle back­ground for my obses­sion with street art and sten­cil­ing in
par­tic­u­lar. Banksy is now too com­mer­cial for most peo­ple but his
clas­sic moments were the source of hip illus­tra­tion and advertising
for a while.

Another sil­ly flash based, ran­dom plot gen­er­a­tor. It seems that I may
final­ly make my mil­lions by writ­ing a fish out of water tale set in an
under water cave. Uh huh.

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Videos

I’d nev­er heard of the com­pos­er Vangelis. He wrote the Blade Runner
score.  And it turns out the back­ground for this steamy damn near
total­ly SFW scene from the Year of Living Dangerously.

More music. A weird upbeat song about being Already Dead. Pen and ink
paper cut outs with a clear nod to Edward Gorey. Can I say that a
video about being dead made me happy?

hap­py mid-week review

Transportation

I was all het up to be able to bring you pic­tures of the 2010 Ducati
Stradaperta. Okay, so now you know what the head­light looks like. Not good.

Life mag­a­zine brings you a col­lec­tion of pho­tographs of space­craft
mod­els. From the sweet­ly adorable NASA  wood­en lunar mod­ule that opens
the set to the nee­dle shaped shut­tle from When Worlds Collide

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Art and Images

A review of xkcd: vol­ume 0. Tons of peo­ple will be get­ting and giving
this com­ic col­lec­tion for the holidays.

So you’re stand­ing in Borders look­ing at the New Releases in Paperback
dis­play, have you ever won­dered where the art for the cov­ers comes
from? There’s a guy in Russia who will cre­ate the cov­er art and
mar­ket­ing images for your mas­ter­piece, for $750. Here’s a gallery of
94 of his images. Mouse over the image for the title (in English) of
the book. You’ll rec­og­nize a lot of them.

Speaking of books, Mutt Ink has a new book out, There was an Old Lady.
Which leads us to his port­fo­lio page for chil­drens books. Tasty lines,
mut­ed col­or and sly humor.

Jen Lobo has a revamped web­site. Whimsical ani­mal paint­ings that
ref­er­ence famil­iar stories.

Cafe Racer Society brings us two of Ralph Steadman’s (of Hunter S
Thompson fame) images fea­tur­ing motor­cy­cles.

Mike Stillkey has new work that sits hap­pi­ly next to Steadman’s
car­i­ca­tures. Angular, angsty peo­ple liv­ing in a not quite hostile
world. His cats look sleek and curi­ous.

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Video

Milton Glaser talks about draw­ing as a way of observ­ing the
world, while draw­ing a por­trait. He starts with the eye­brows. hmmm.

Laugh out loud fun­ny. A love sto­ry about two squid (and skinny
deliv­ery dri­ver.) French short film that was nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar.

Stormy Tuesday? That’s not quite right.

Transportation

Monday Morning Jump Start. First use of a Lambo to video/chase another
Lambo? Turn it up.

Sweet lit­tle essay on very ear­ly rac­ing. A cou­ple of nice pics too.

Wrench Monkees is teas­ing with peepshow pic­tures of the next cou­ple of
projects.

Very nice retro restora­tion of a Honda CB450.

Book end­ing the black Lamborghini, this CBR900 in black, black, and more black.

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Culture and Fashion

A curat­ed and anno­tat­ed col­lec­tion of 19th Century images of women.
Beauty, Virtue, and Vice.

A 70’s use of the female image to sell gad­gets. Like you thought this
was a new thing. The image is SFW. The CG page men­tions porn sites.
Any links you fol­low from here are like­ly VNSFW.

Zombies offi­cial­ly jumped the shark, maybe sev­er­al sharks, when they
get used as props in a Harper’s Bazaar fash­ion shot.

Today’s shoe link.

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Art and Images

God Dog. Nuff said.

Work done with a palette knife in oils is not grab­bing the attention
of the image and design hunters like it should. These Leonid Afremov’s
will remind you why the tech­nique deserves to be revived.

An ABC of cities drawn from Google street view images. Lesser known
cities are cho­sen so the images may be new to you.

Vania Zouravliov works in ink and pen­cil. Eastern European influences
com­bine with mod­ern graph­ic nov­el sto­ry telling to cre­ate qui­et­ly
seduc­tive images. Some NSFW.

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Definition of Cool.

Newman.

have a decent Monday darlings,

Transportation

The first road cer­ti­fied elec­tric motor­cy­cle. $9,950 will get you the
Zero S or Zero all nice and street legal. There are some nifty tax
breaks as well.

The BMW C1 is back. As an elec­tric. Still laughable.

Concepts cars you’re like­ly to see at the Tokyo motor show this year.
Lots of lit­tle elec­tric urban run-abouts. I’m fas­ci­nat­ed by the
retro-futuristic feel of some of the interiors.

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DIY Halloween Edition

Because its Friday and I know you all are plan­ning on spend­ing the
week­end doing up the home­stead for the upcom­ing festivities.

Autonomous rov­ing pump­kin!

Cheaper than a real one. A paper skull for you mantelpiece.

Ultimate pump­kin chuckin’. Today we bomb Carnation, tomor­row the moon.

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Science

We bombed the moon. This may have been a mis­take. The com­ments are priceless.

Just so you don’t miss it the .wav file of Marvin scold­ing humanity
for it’s aggres­sive attack.

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Art and Images

The man who arguably invent­ed mod­ern fash­ion pho­tog­ra­phy is gone. RIP
Irving Penn.

Jim Flora has a be-bop sen­si­bil­i­ty that I love. I swear the drum­mer on
this cal­en­dar is Krupa.

The LOC has put anoth­er set of dig­i­tized images on-line. World War I
posters from coun­tries on both sides of the con­flict. Detailed
search­ing is avail­able but start­ing here with the select­ed examples
will fill up your morn­ing cof­fee break.

Apropos our favorite cock­tail par­ty/mailing list.

hap­py fri­day darlin’s