shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: butterflies

Morning Linkage (Oct 21)

Transportation

Except for the choice of blue hoses, I can see this charm­ing CB550 being a some­one’s pride and joy in the ear­ly 80’s.

Love the paint. CB450. Yeah, anoth­er one.

1970 Japan. You do not want to see this police mod­el CB750 in your mir­rors. Orig­i­nal in Japan­ese (more pix)

(Bonus Trans­porta­tion Ani­ma­tion) REDLINE. Nope, it’s not mak­ing the lists of Christ­mas sea­son block busters. But we might get a look at Takeshi Koike’s rac­ing epic (with sub­ti­tles) in the Spring. Wicked cool, intra-galactic rac­ing. (Video — loud, vio­lent and full of aliens — oh and racing)

Science

I should be much more hyped about the deep eco­log­i­cal impli­ca­tions of the work of Lucy and Jorge Orta, but real­ly I just want to watch the but­ter­flies. (Video with voice over. 1:40) More details on the multi-media instal­la­tion “Ama­zo­nia” at the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Museum

Art, Images, and Design

If you need a lit­tle some­thing eldritch for your Hal­loween par­ty invites you could do no bet­ter than to con­sid­er one of Sid­ney Sime’s fine ghosties and ghoulies.

More grue­some images for late Octo­ber. The Wal­ter Pot­ter col­lec­tion has been (par­tial­ly) reassem­bled. “A fine exam­ple of Vic­to­ri­an whim­sy.” If your taste in whim­sy runs to stuffed squir­rels.

Pen and water­col­or. A lit­tle reminder to all those who don’t live here in Puge­topo­lis why we love it. Crisp, sun­ny, morn­ing in the ID.

Animation

Doomed, A bio­log­i­cal car­toon by Guiller­mo Gar­cia Car­si. Invert­ed hedge­hogs, coral par­rots, strange song­birds, and cube fish.  Click on the word Doomed to start the pre­view. Snork. (Video with voice-over. 1:07 — Flash)

Morning Linkage (Jul 6)

Transportation

Ore­gon race­way park — extreme shifter cart. Though 800 pounds makes it some­thing oth­er than a go-cart IMO.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/06/palatov-motorsports-dp4/

More extreme. These cars (and bikes) look like car­toon char­ac­ters. In part because they spring from Japans otaku culture.

Exam­ples of boso­zoku bikes are a lit­tle hard­er to find but here’s a cou­ple. (Nice non boso-Morowaki 600RR smack in the mid­dle of the thread.)

And for some­thing sooth­ing. Bernardet pro­duced a very com­mon and suc­cess­ful line of scoot­ers in France in the late 40s and the 50s. But from 1921 until 1940 they pro­duced rac­ing and street side­cars. Scroll down to see some wicked racers.

Science

Sci­ence of pret­ty. How do but­ter­fly wings get their color?

More sci­ence of pret­ty. How do fire­flies light up?

A slight­ly dif­fer­ent view on the prob­lem of lag­ging sci­ence inno­va­tion in the US. It’s not the edu­ca­tion it’s the jobs.

Art, Images, and Design

Peter Tay­lor’s round lit­tle fel­lows with pat­terns and swirly pret­ties. Jol­ly. (NSFW bare car­toon butts)

Only the shad­ow knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. The rest of us just assumed that the aver­age beach going kid has a bit of mon­ster in their heart.

Edmund Dulac illus­trat­ed many books in the 30’s Here is a set of scans from Trea­sure Island. Soft clear col­ors and charm­ing images.

Per­haps you could also look at his illus­tra­tion for the Rubaiy­at. Much dark­er and lush.

Animation

This is anoth­er one of those “how could I pos­si­bly write a bet­ter intro than Mered­ith wrote?” items. Czech chil­dren’s film — Kooky’s Return. I can’t. Just watch.

wel­come back to the real™ world