The Blow N Glo Special, built and driven by Maddog, is a nice-looking car built to compete in the San Fernando Valley Illegal Soap Box Federation races. The February issue of Hot Rod has an article about the S.F.V.I.S.B.F. "I've been doing dumb and d
Japanese food is famously colorful, and people often pack creative, artful lunches for their kids and spouses. The Jacket Lunch Box blog belongs to a designer/DJ/food enthusiast who likes to make American album covers out of food. Here's a replica of Public Enemy's Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age, made of seaweed, fish cakes, sour plum, and rice.
Weezer's Green Album is made with cabbage, seaweed, ham, fish cakes, paprika, and rice.
Three polar bears at Nagoya zoo in central Japan turned green this summer from swimming in a pond infested with algae. The zoo staff had been changing the water less frequently to save resources, and the hot weather had induced algae overgrowth in the pond and safety moat. The same thing happened at Singapore Zoo four years ago, and at the San Diego Zoo back in 1979.
Video by option8 shows 'how Apple could (or should) implement copy and paste on the iPhone: a demonstration of how they got it right 15 years ago on the Newton MessagePad.'
In today's Observer, columnist Henry Porter lays out the dismal facts of Britain's rush to authoritarianism and the failure of the big brother, surveillance state to make a civil land:
To put these figures in perspective, we spend more on law and order than any other OECD country including the United States, France, Germany and Spain. It is fair to say that Britain is in the grip of law and order obsession, yet we seem incapable of putting police officers on the beat to patrol our streets, investigate crimes and keep order with an eye to proportionate and sensible use of their powers. By that, I do not mean three officers on mountain bikes pursuing a colleague on his racer through crime-ridden Hackney to issue him with a £30 fine because he had avoided dangerous roadworks by briefly using the pavement. I don't mean texting the victim of a burglary, as happened to a friend of mine, to see if she had anything more to report.
Despite crime figures going down, we continue to spend more and lock up proportionately more people than any other free country. The most recent figures for London show falls of 14 per cent in both knife and gun crime and a 7 per cent reduction in violent crime generally. Since 1997, the official figures for the country claim a drop in the crime rate of 35 per cent. Academics suggest this figure is hugely inflated, but the downward trend is undeniable and could be claimed by Labour as a victory for its policies were it not for its sinister need to keep us in a state of permanent fear about crime.
The estimable Cherie Booth put her finger on the problem and inadvertently (perhaps) provided a grand analysis of her husband's cynical use of crime to push his authoritarian programme. On the release of a very good report from the Howard League for Penal Reform attacking the government's policy of building Titan prisons, which will hold 2,500 brutalised souls, she used the word 'punitive' a lot and referred to 'the hysterical rhetoric of politicians attempting to ride the tiger of public opinion'. Or what is perceived as public opinion, she added.
Tom sez, 'An international protest against undue surveillance is being held next month on the 11th of October. It is 'a broad movement of campaigners and organizations is calling on everybody to join action against excessive surveillance by governments and businesses'. We need to get this on the radar for the elections in the USA this year, the EU parliamentary elections next year and many more.'
Surveillance mania is spreading. Governments and businesses register, monitor and control our behaviour ever more thoroughly. No matter what we do, who we phone and talk to, where we go, whom we are friends with, what our interests are, which groups we participate in - 'big brother' government and 'little brothers' in business know it more and more thoroughly. The resulting lack of privacy and confidentiality is putting at risk the freedom of confession, the freedom of speech as well as the work of doctors, helplines, lawyers and journalists.
The manifold agenda of security sector reform encompasses the convergence of police, intelligence agencies and the military, threatening to melt down the division and balance of powers. Using methods of mass surveillance, the borderless cooperation of the military, intelligence services and police authorities is leading towards the construction of 'Fortresses' in Europe and on other continents, directed against refugees and different-looking people but also affecting, for example, political activists, the poor and under-priviledged, and sports fans.
People who constantly feel watched and under surveillance cannot freely and courageously stand up for their rights and for a just society. Mass surveillance is thereby threatening the fabric of a democratic and open society. Mass surveillance is also endangering the work and commitment of civil society organizations.
Artist Beverly St. Clair uses quilts to encode genetic information: it's beautiful and comfy!
My idea for genome quilts grew from the juxtaposition of two experiences at Wesleyan University in November 2001. First I viewed an exhibit of work by Anni Albers, an artist I have admired for many years. The show included her serigraphs of triangles arranged in a grid. I was struck by their similarity to quilt patterns. The next day I attended a lecture about the Human Genome Project and was impressed by the beautiful shapes of the proteins illustrated and the interesting patterns made by the microarrays. I realized that I could use a simple quilt block to represent each of the four bases in DNA: cytosine, guanine, adenine, and thymine. A square bisected into a light and dark triangle is rotated in four orientations to resemble the letters C, G, A, and T. These blocks are placed in sequences determined by the base sequence, so one can read the genetic code by looking at the quilt. The color and fabric choices influence the overall design. The quilts are visually pleasing, with their strong colors and seemingly traditional design, but they hide and reveal an entirely other construct of information.
Designer Laura Cahill wanted to make art without wasting new material. She did a bunch of research, and found out that used books are the most common unwanted objects; they're also notoriously hard to recycle because of the kind of glue bookbinders used to use. So she took her second-hand book collection and turned it into beautiful pieces of furniture.
The bench is pretty self-explanatory, but for flower vases and lamp posts, Cahill uses a band saw to cut the books into desired shapes and sizes, and then wraps the spines around test tubes to make the cylindrical core. It's such a cool, eco-friendly concept.
