Transportation

A con­cept bike should push an idea out beyond the run of the mill and what’s already on the show­room floor. Built for the imag­i­nary pur­pose of run­ning (the old ver­sion of) the Milan-Taranto endurance race and using such new-fangled com­po­nents as a tur­bo diesel engine and car­bon fiber wheels. What you get is Pao­lo di Giusti’s rad­i­cal sin­gle cylin­der Moto Guzzi.

I’m not sure I want to hear the word steam­punk applied to any motor­cy­cle let alone one that is sup­posed to be rid­able. And in fact I find the brass accents to be all wrong on this bike. But the idea of build­ing a cafe start­ing with the April­la RSV motor?  That makes me hap­py. And Welsh to boot. Taimoshan.

Science

Mur­phy is a right obnox­ious bas­tard, but he seems to have let loose of the NanoSail‑D solar sail project at last.  And, no, I did not know that the aim of the project is trash sweep­ing in low earth orbit either.

A video that demon­strates the pow­er of the pow­er of 10. By mov­ing out­ward from a square meter of an image of a nice cou­ple hav­ing a pic­nic in Chica­go and end­ing up at the every edges of human abil­i­ty to see into space in an image 100 mil­lion light years across.   Old IBM film but still rel­e­vant and still fun.

Art. images, and Design

Nice com­bos of sim­ple graph­ics and unso­phis­ti­cat­ed type. Steve Pow­ers explored the glo­ry and gory of rela­tion­ships on the walls of Philadel­phia. I’ve shown you sev­er­al of them before but this is my new favorite.

And now I’m lov­ing his “Dai­ly Met­al­ta­tion

This is as good as any place to start explor­ing the work of Dan Mount­ford. Dou­ble expo­sures made in the cam­era. The world before photoshop.

Animation and Moving Images

Chain-gang tap dance. Okay it’s a lit­tle hard to explain why two girls — the Holst Sis­ters — are tap danc­ing while attached at the ankle. But they’re good at it.

I have no idea who the band is or what the song is about or any of that — I don’t speak Japan­ese. But the music is cheery and vague­ly jazzy and the ani­ma­tion ranges from live­ly to over the top.