WorldChanging: WITTs, YOYOs, and Why Americans Don't Go Green

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/005129.html#more
(Moom lights the blue touchpaper and runs away)

Seriously, though, there are some very interesting conclusions from this marketing report on Americans' attitudes to the environment. Not that I'd make sweeping generalizations about anyone who might read this ;) - but some of the points remind me of comments made about why people buy SUVs, in terms of acknowledging that most of our consumption is mediated by a deeply reptilian and nonrational part of our brain. In partricular, there were some interesting comments made on that subject in the comments after Jessica whatserface's thing on cupholders...

The place of cupholders in society

... holding cups, presumably.

Jessica Helfand rants about cupholders, and other decadent artefacts which are undermining our society's moral fibre (like manicures). It's a funny article, and I started out agreeing with her - my parents recently bought a new Volvo which had, if I recall correctly , SEVEN cupholders between FOUR people - but when she says that "it vexes me to think that design, in this context, is merely a support mechanism for increased comfort and added convenience" - I can't help thinking "well, isn't that what design is? A mechanism for making life easier?"

So anyway. I really just wanted to record the moment that the phrase "security beverage" entered the language.

What is Art Clay Silver?

http://www.artclay.co.jp/htm/what.html


It's cool, is what it is!

Apologies to an arty crafty people who have seen this stuff before, but I am intrigued. Art Clay Silver is a malleable putty made up mostly of pure silver particles, with added water and 'organic binder' (which with a name like that could be anything - the mind boggles, recoils, and boggles again). According to the sales blurb, it can be worked like ordinary modelling clay, but when fired in a kiln the water and binder are burned off, leaving something which is 99.9% pure silver.

Although a kiln (which I don't own) is recommended, there is a method described for firing it on a gas hob (which I do own - yay!). Strangely, though, using a microwave isn't mentioned...

WorldChanging: Tracking Hasan Elahi

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/005105.html#more
...and today's weirdness comes from (wait for it) a performance artist! Y'know, I can't help feeling that the performance artist tribe is one whose relationship to Darwin is inextricable and yet somehow uncertain - are they hurrying evolution along, or living in defiance of it?

Whatever.

In any case, an encounter between the FBI and a performance artist can have only one outcome. Hasan Elahi has been obsessively documenting his life ever since he was stopped in Detroit airport and questioned (equally obsessively) by the FBI. Since then, he's been constantly providing himself with an alibi by hacking his cellphone to talk to a tracking bracelet he wears on his wrist, and uploading photos of everywhere he goes. Apparently he once spent four days in Singapore without leaving the airport and clearing customs, leaving a four-day 'hole' in his official traceability - while documenting every minute of it online.

(oh, and in case you were wondering about the picture, I was watching "Belleville rendezvous" last night - fantastic movie. One review I read complained of its crude anti-Americanism, but apart from the fact that all the Americans in it are enormously fat, they really don't seem to take much part in the story, so I think whoever that critic was, he/she was talking bollocks. I thought it was superb, anyway. I particularly loved the stretch 2CV limos).

Putting your day to music

There are certain moments in my day which have songs inextricably linked to them. Two examples spring to mind:

1. When closing Unigraphics on the ol' CAD machinen, a dialogue box pops up which says "Do you really want to exit?" For some reason, that always plays in my head to the tune of "Do you really want to hurt me?" by Culture Club.
2. Similarly, we have a sandwich man who comes in during the morning to sell us sandwiches (actually we have two, but now isn't the time to get into the Riccarton Sandwich Wars). His cheery cry of "Sandwiches!" always starts me off singing "Sandwiches, da da da da da da da sandwiches" to the tune of whatever that song is that goes "hooray for Hollywood"...

Are there any parts of your life that seem to have attracted tunes?

Broken Angel

http://www.flickr.com/photos/onebadapple/sets/127493/show/
I guess this is probably a well-known landmark to any New Yorkers reading this, but it's the first time I've come across Broken Angel - the combined home and sculpture-in-progress of Arthur and Cindy Wood. They're now threatened with eviction after a small fire in the upper floors attracted the attention of the New York City Building department, so this collection of photos from their son may soon become a memorial rather than a living record. Let's hope that doesn't happen; while most of their art is not to my taste (which doesn't run to pigeon skeletons nailed to the wall), I think the house itself is fantastic.

SNAIL SHELL SYSTEM (these people are clearly mental)

http://www.n55.dk/MANUALS/SNAIL_SHELL_SYSTEM/SSS.html
Is it a tent that rolls? Or a caravan that floats? I dunno, but the SNAIL SHELL SYSTEM (only available in capitals) tries to cover so many stools that it's inevitable it's going to fall between some of them. Personally, I'll be putting mine in the middle of a pond somewhere expensive, like Hyde Park.


Created by a group called N55, who seem to have shares in a firm making polyethylene stuff. Other interesting/loopy ideas include ROOMS (which are, um, rooms) and an unstable CHAIR. Crazy? Challenging? Inspired? I dunno, but for my money this is design as a political act, rather than a practical one.

...polyethylene's thermoforming, right?

One for all you stargazers: Cassini-Huygens images

(via Bruce Sterling's blog)

Wow. Look, it's Saturn! Seen from the wrong side!



Some pretty awesome composite images from NASA's Cassini probe are catalogued here. Apparently, this view of the planet backlit by the sun shows us rings that we never knew Saturn had, but you can go look at the catalogue for the proper sciencey stuff. For pure aesthetic attraction, this one is my favourite.

Photography: Thomas Weinberger

Via BDLGBLOG:

Just come across these photos from Thomas Weinberger. His subject matter might seem grim, but the results are almost luminescent, as if Heaven were an abandoned industrial site. Pesumably it's done with heavy dodging (is that right?), or some cunning overexposure - whatever, the result is certainly unusual.

Iritis

And I was doing so
well.

It's been what, six
weeks?, since I started taking the 6MP immune suppressant ex-chemo-drug, and
it's been going pretty well. As ever, still taking it pretty easy (um.. well,
except for a weekend of dashing madly around London trying to see everything)...
so no lacrosse or sailing. In fact, one choir rehearsal a week is proving a
sufficient challenge right at the moment. But I've been putting on
weight! I haven't done that since I was...um... I dunno, fifteen?
Maybe? And in the last month I've put on about 7 kilos, which is unheard of.
Admittedly, I've been pretty tired, and felt slightly queasy, which may or may
not be normal - but it's still better than the alternative. So I've been pretty
happy.

Until last Saturday,
that is. Last Saturday my left eye started to feel slightly sore, as if I'd been
wearing a contact lens for too long. Over the weekend it got gradually worse,
until yesterday I could stand it no more, and took myself off to the eye
hospital, where it turns out I have Iritis. Yup, it's not a made-up word ("I
have eye-itis?!"), it's a real illness. Personally, I always thought the iris
was the name for the hole in your eye, and I was wondering how that could be
inflamed - but that's just me showing my ignorance. Apparently iritis is often
linked to ulcerative colitis - your eye gets very red and irritated (just like
leaving a contact lense in for a couple of days too many), and bright lights
hurt.

So anyway, now I
have two sets of eye drops and an ointment to stick in as well (not as bad as
I'd thought), and my pupils are two different sizes. And it sounds like I'll be
that way for a couple of weeks. Really not sure if I should be driving (probably
not).

Having eye problems
does make you wonder about what would happen if you lost an eye, or worse. I did
get quite despondent; engineering and design are pretty visual careers, and right now I'm
having difficulty focusing on anything closer than about a foot away which makes
detail work doubly hard. But then, Gordon Banks managed to still be a
professional goalkeeper with only one eye, and if you can do that then pretty
much anything is possible, right?

Guardian: Tortured Canadian wins battle for truth

http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,,1885684,00.html
Wow.

The Mounties shed their fluffy image, and turn out to be complete bastards.

(For those who aren't going to read the story, the guy wasn't actually tortured by the Mounties - they just lied about him to the Americans, who arrested him and turned him over to the Syrians who beat the crap out of him for 10 months. The RCMP have now apologized.)

via

IWOOT: Joint-the-dots calendar

Christmas is coming - yeah, I know, I know, it's ages away really. In fact, it's maybe a little premature to be even talking about the beginning of December, but since that's the time of Advent calendars, this is maybe a timely product*: a join-the-dots calendar! Scribble little notes on it, and as the month goes on you can join the dots to create a little friend for the month! NB joining the dots in order is necessary - no creatives please.


* how about that for a link?! Yes, my career as a jurnalist is assured.

One small step for a man, actually.

As the BBC reports today, apparently new analysis of Neil
Armstrong's famous words shows that he really did say "That's one small
step for a man", as he's often claimed. (When you
can get him to do an interview at all - the man is famously hard to pin
down).



I'd like to put the same question to you lot as the BBC are asking on
their blog: What would you have said if you'd been the first person on
the moon? At your current age, obviously, rather than the age you were
in '69.



I think mine would have been much less edifying than Neil's: something along the lines of "Holy Crap! I'm On the MOON!"