(via Geisha asobi blog)

Here is another freaky video: Eurostar, Ye-Ye.

The song's kind of ho-hum, but the quick cut aways in some of the video scenes are brilliant & made me giggle. --dr

Katherine has put up the Documentation of our Scrapyard Challenge Workshops on her website, since I’m having some issues with my server lately. So check the above link to see all of the events we’ve held with pics and even some video clips! More to come!

Templating Ourselves: In Part Two in the series on stellar and terrestrial evolution, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Director of the Hayden Planetarium and host of the PBS/NOVA Series "Origins", discusses the human tendency of being self-centered, and how that can shape our reality and cloud our vision of the truth.
Link

Lois Walpole has developed a way to harvest a willow coat hanger. She grafted the hanger and sawed from a two-year-old plant. The coathanger and the wine rack (both can be bought online in kits) are part of her "grown home" ongoing research that aims at demonstrating that a functional product can be planted, nurtured, harvested, used and finally composted all in one location. These wooden products have used no fossil fuels in their production and have had only a beneficial effect on the environment in which they are "manufactured."

Her grown home pieces and the works of other arborsculptors will be on show from March 25th in the Growing Village of the 2005 World Expo in Aichi, Japan.

(Posted by Regine Debatty in QuickChanges at 01:28 AM)

Richard Reames helped put this show together. He's a really interesting guy and has lots of good info on his website. --dr

[t-minus] 2005 opening, feb. 1st, 5:30-7:30. @ synchronicity space, 13th/6av, new york. 13 digitally altered site-specific timelapse video artworks, by 15 artists from around the world.

Full Disclosure: I have a piece in this show. --dr

Quote: "The tiny, unseen life forms that live in Yellowstone National Park's most extreme environments still guard some secrets. But the search to reveal one of those secrets - the fuel for primitive life forms in Yellowstone's colorful hot springs - turned up a surprise. According to new research, the major energy source for certain primitive organisms living in the park's thermal areas is not sulfur, as your nose may have suggested to you, but hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe."
Link

painting of Steve Perry as Robocop

No comment. --dr

Words can't explain how very, very, cool the Escape Travel Album is. I know nothing about who is behind this, or where the pictures are from, but damn is it impressive-- and a lot of fun to look through. It offers 3D, 2D, and plain flat interface navigation through dozens of destinations around the globe with high quality photos from each. Taking a screen shot does not portray this sites depth one bit. If you’'ve got a few minutes, take a dive into it and plan your escape route.

---

Posted in: Travel

Whoa! This thing makes me feel like I'm living in the past and the future at the same time and I don't understand either... --dr

Tony Blow, a longtime commentor on Collision Detection and publisher of Typescape, has just launched the Squidblog -- a blog for people "who are fascinated by giant squid and related semi-mythical creatures." There could be no task more noble. This thing is now a daily part of my news diet.

And this month was a hell of a propitious time to start a blog about squid, because of the recent invertebrate invasion! Last week, about 1,500 jumbo squid washed up dead on the shores of Orange County in California. As The Seattle Times reported:

"These things are invading, and we don't know what's going on," he said. "It may be they're following a warm California current. Oceanographers don't have a clue why a large population of squid like this is moving north or why they strand themselves."

One theory is that fisheries have sufficiently depleted the area of sharks and and big tunas that the squid can now "forage without a threat".

Dear friends,

Should you be in New York City next week Friday-- please drop by ITP.

Best,
Trebor

END/BEGIN: Toward New Models of Activism

Panel Discussion.
6:30 PM.
Friday, February 4th, 2005.
Interactive Telecommunications Program, NYU.
721 Broadway, 4th Floor. New York City.

With an eye to the recent past, how might activists revise current models of
organization and practice? Which successes and failures in this arena have
proven most instructive? What 'real-world' realities prove most problematic
to activists and how can these be constructively approached?

Speakers:
1. Clay Shirky (Interactive Telecommunications Program, NYU)
http://www.shirky.com/

2. Trebor Scholz (Department of Media Study, SUNY at Buffalo)
http://molodiez.org/

3. Carrie McLaren (editor, Stay Free! magazine)
http://stayfreemagazine.org/

4. Tyler Nordgren (conglomco.org, The Yes Men, re-code.com)
http://conglomco.org/

Organized by Daniel Perlin and Brett Schultz.

Is Flickr the best thing ever? --dr

This really, really cool: James Moody, a sociologist at Ohio State University, mapped all the romantic and sexual connections that had taken place an 18-month period at a 1,000-person high school, in a rural mostly-white area. Remarkably, he got 832 of the students to talk to him. He mapped out the connections, in that graph above. See that one huge clump? That's the most interesting part, as a university press release notes: The most striking feature of the network was a single component that connected 52 percent (288) of the romantically involved students at Jefferson. This means student A had relations with student B, who had relations with student C and so on, connecting all 288 of these students. While this component is large, it has numerous short branches and is very broad – the two most distant individuals are 37 steps apart.

Reader SB bestows on this vegetable a 2005 Natural Design Award.

I agree.

It's a piece of romanesco broccoli (a cross between broccoli and cauliflower).

SB bought and ate some over the weekend and - like William Blake, when he stopped a moment and really looked at a grain of sand - found himself not playing with but, rather, staring at his food.

So he thought I should have a look.

He was right.

Read much more about fractals, of which romanesco broccoli is a wonderful living example, here.

If you'd like to learn more about Benoît Mandelbrot, who invented the word "fractal," you can do so right here.

[via SB and callalillie.com]

Someone's been messing with the 3D printer again. --dr

Cory Doctorow: Geneva's been hit hard by a massive ice-storm that's left the city covered in thick ice. These photos of ice-crusted benches, boats, cars and so on are striking -- and chilling. I'm going there next week, so I'm praying for a thaw. Link (Thanks, Singularity!)

Correction Eric sez, "Please note that the photos of ice in Geneva on boingboing are due to water spray from the lake, not because of an "ice storm". If you look at more of the photos you will see that everything covered with ice is right next to the lake shore. If you look closely at some of the photos there are houses in the background that are free of ice."

Just to help you feel better about the little slush pile you keep stepping into when you cross the street. --dr

They've never met a padlock -- or six-pin paracentric cylinder -- they couldn't crack. Live, from the lock-picking championship of the world. By Charles Graeber from Wired magazine.

Lock picking is cool, but holy cow, that mullet!!! --dr

looks like someone got inspired by the Wooden Mirror project. "SensiTile uses daylight and ambient light as its source of power to respond to the movement around it by creating a dazzling set of ripples on its surface." [via]

Amazon's A9 Yellow Pages search has been causing some buzz around the place, some of it from dear curmudgeonly friends suggesting it is nothing new and that there have been many projects like this over the last 6 or 7 years.

I would suggest the difference is not that A9 have not just made the bear dance, but made it tango.

The user-experience of this service is pretty fantastic compared to predecessors - easy-to-use and with plenty of opportunities for users to refine and feeback on the information.

Inviting users to feedback on which is the most useful picture of a business or landmark is particularly clever, and could generate some fascinating insights for students of Kevin Lynch and other academics of urban persuasion!

Also - the amazon feature of inviting customers to contribute images could lead to a mappr-like photographic annotation of the United States...

I guess it goes without saying that this would become a must-have service if it could be ported sucessfully to the mobile phone, especially if you were trying to find places of high digital repute with pretty anonymous physical presences.

Speaking of Prentis Hall...I tried this search, and wound up with the image above. It's lovely, but I'm not sure it would help anyone find the building. However, I now have concrete evidence that those urinals have been cleaned at least once since the early 1990s, since the paint is no longer on them. --dr

Renzo Piano's plan to expand the Whitney has been recommended for a hearing before a Landmarks Preservation Commission on Feb. 1st, and could mark the first step to a multiyear plan beginning construction in 2007.

Renzo Piano is all over New York these days. Here are some pics of his vision for Columbia's north campus, like the building I work in, Prentis Hall, above. If you've seen the western end of 125th st, you'll know why this is a bit hard to fathom... --dr

BT develops a new search system for Tate's galleries that will help art lovers track down works they like.

...

Rather than search by the name of an artist or painting, users are shown a selection of pictures.

Clicking on their favourite will change the gallery in front of them to a selection of similar works.

It's interesting that the Tate is playing with an idea that until now has mostly been used by Amazon and friends to goad you into buying just one more book to get that free shipping... --dr

I have no idea what this is all about but that first graphic cracked me up harder than anything else in at least the last 72 hours.

He said "manimal." --dr

For fourteen years, Dutch artist Theo Jansen has been working on the creation of a new “life” form. His creations are walking skeletons made of electricity tubes and powered by the wind. His latest, the Animaris Rhinoceros Transport features a steel skeleton with a polyester skin and weighs two tons. But amazingly, it can be set into motion by a solo person...

Some great videos on the main site: http://www.strandbeest.com --dr

Remapping High Wycombe is a project in England that is making use of derives and other psychogeographic techniques to remap High Wycombe. Specifically referencing Glowlab friend Social Fiction to begin a few derives, the participants seem to successfully allow the urban landscape to guide them so they find the hidden places of their town. The blog has very nice poetic journal entries accompanied by photographs taken during the derives.

Terrific images on the site. --dr

Wednesday, January 5th, 7pm at Location One in SoHo. Featuring the lovely and talented: Jason Freeman: Glimmer; Mike Rosenthal: The Travelling Sound Museum and Other Works in Progress; Neg-Fi: Uncontrollable Feedback Devices and Tape-Based Noise

The two-man Expedition Ten crew completed a five-hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station, installing equipment and discovering residue around a vent used by the station's balky oxygen generator. Leroy Chiao and Salizhan Sharipov spent five hours and 28 minutes outside the station on the EVA, which started at 2:43 am EST (0743 GMT). The two installed a German robotic experiment, Rovkiss, as well as a Russian experiment package, to the exterior of the station. During their time outside the station, the two noticed some residue, reported to be both white and brown in appearance, built up around vents used by the station's Elektron oxygen generator and other waste disposal systems. The nature of the residue was unknown to station engineers, as well as any role it might play in the problems experienced in recent weeks by the unit. Chiao and Sharipov are scheduled to perform another EVA in about two months, near the end of their stay on the station.

I read another account where they called the residue "goo" and said some of it looked like a honeycomb...spooky! So who's writing the script about alien insects colonizing the ISS... --dr

If botanical key chains don’t suit your grown-up requirements (or you don’t live in Japan and couldn’t get your hands on one), then perhaps you’ll find the My Grass terrarium more to your liking (or getting). These modern, minimal terrariums...

These are very cute...who's got plans for a low-cost DIY version? --dr

Our allies at IDFuel have a great piece up Built For Breakdown
, about the myriad ways in which companies are beginning to plan for the full life-cycles of their products, including their eventual dis-assembly and the return of their resources to productive use:

"Pop bottles and plastic grocery bags are quickly being outpaced by consumer electronics and household accessories as the dominant waste stream in the developed world. Since these new waste sources are complex assemblies that do not lend themselves to reuse or recycling, simply planning end-of-life strategies are not enough. We need to develop products which acknowledge that they will someday die.

"The increasing disposability of consumer electronics and appliances is troubling environmentally, and socially. But it is not going un-addressed in the design world.

"Major consumer electronics companies -- from Panasonic to Phillips -- are re-vamping their lines to make disassembly for recycling, and the remaining disposal as easy, cheap, and safe as possible. Features like low or no-lead solder, modular electronics boards, snap-fit rather than glued joints, and included instructions for disassembly make it easier for the dead product to have a new life. Whether as a repaired item with an easily replaced piece, a consumer disassembled and recycled piece, or one that can easily be scrapped out by more professional disassemblers, either locally, or in Asia. Design for disassembly is hot, and definitely needed.

"And it's not just electronics companies who are in on the action; Steelcases's new Think chair is a paragon of fixability and re-recyclability, with nearly 100 percent of the chair composed of easy to recycle or replace single-material pieces. There are all kinds of opportunities for this preemptive strike on waste, and not just in the assembly of the products. Steelcase set up three different factories around the world so that each of its markets could be served locally in order to cut transport costs, and support local economies."

>Check out also their sharp piece on cutting into the waste stream, perhaps even creating a Zero Waste economy. Add these ideas to the ongoing effort to make computers and other electronics more sustainable, and we'll be taking huge strides towards guilt-free and sustainable prosperity.

(Posted by Alex Steffen in A Newly Electric Green – Sustainable Energy, Resources and Design at 09:53 AM)

Who's making artworks with "end-of-life strategies" in mind? --dr

Good morning from SCREENFULL!!!

Wahoo! From: krawczyk*iit.edu Subject: Fermat's Spiral Mandalas Date: January 20, 2005 8:43:39 PM CST To: bruces@well.com Bruce, Thought you might like to see my latest project. http://home.netcom.com/~bitart2/spirals We are pretty busy here at IIT, here is our next exhibit. Bob Liquid --- Crystal art @ IIT will present an art exhibit titled “Liquid --- Crystal” opening January 17, 2005, with a reception held on Wednesday January 26th 5:30-8:30 pm, closing on February 26th. The focus of this exhibit will be to look at the not so common patterns formed by some common substances. Working with liquids is Stuart Larson from Texas, an assistant professor in graphics design at the University of Houston. Larson is a photographer who now uses a digital scanner to capture a variety of liquids in the search for patterns, texture, and flow. These images exhibit strong shapes and the illusion of forms that liquids are normally not associated with. Mark Eisenhauer, a local independent photographer, uses chemical crystals as his subjects. Using the same methods that geologists and chemists use to study rocks, photomicrography, he attempts to find the hidden structures in very complex substances. Using polarized light he is able to uncover colors in the crystals that are not visible to the naked eye. Both of these artists attempt to express the beauty they see when their view is focused on subjects that seem to be simple but capable of exhibiting surprising complex patterns. When scale and human reference is removed, another dimension of forms appears. The world within is much more complex than what we can perceive when only the surface is visible. Check http://art.iit.edu for exhibition hours. To view eCard: http://art.iit.edu/ecards/IITLiquidCrystal.jpg Bob ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Robert J. Krawczyk, Assistant Professor Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture, Crown Hall 3360 S. State St., Chicago, IL 60616 USA Office: Room 212 Bldg: 3410 Campus Voice: 312-567-5708 FAX: 312-567-6816 Off Campus Voice: 773-283-0313 http://www.iit.edu/~krawczyk and http://home.netcom.com/~bitart ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Victoria Vesna and James Gimzewski have a mandala-based piece called Nano Mandala at Location One until Jan 29th. --dr

Xeni Jardin: While that may sound like the title of a never-released album by Funkadelic, it is in fact an edible creation from chocolatier Enric Rovira.
Link (Thanks, Roger). Previously: Twinkie Sushi, Candy Sushi, Chocolate Sushi.

Imagine combining these with Ingo Gunther's info-rich globes (below)... --dr

a wonderful, gory homage

I guess Tom put me in the mood for blood... --dr

"The demon has materialized over Tokyo Bay!"
"Use the gamma beam--now!"
"It's not stopping--it seems to be eating the gamma radiation."
"We'll have to lure it back into the wormhole, using the gamma cannon as a decoy--move the ship into position, and on my signal..."

What would Francis Bacon have done with digital media? --dr

It could be worse. As a washed-up 80s pop star, Thomas Dolby could be playing Vegas piano bars for change. Instead, he’s recording ringtones, and has been pretty successful at it, according to The Wall Street Journal. Not only has Dolby written or arranged hundreds of tones, but it turns out he’s the man behind “Gran Vals,” also known as The Incredibly Annoying Default Nokia Ringtone (to be fair, Dolby didn’t write it; he just did the polyphonic arrangement). Still, we suspect that deep down, Dolby would rather be making the big bucks playing the nostalgia circuit like fellow 80s stars Duran Duran. Oh, and for the record, he still has nothing to do with Dolby Labs.

Not really a very interesting post, but just look at that glorious picture! He's making music with science!!! --dr

I just discovered the mind blowing work of Ingo Gunther, an artist, journalist, sculptor fusing interpretations of satellite data to freely distribute military and ecological information to the public, in projects like these amazing cartographic globes and the...

AIFF audio format. Horrible.

Maybe. A Japanese hamburger chain seems to be trying. The MOS Food company is recycling the food waste from their Mos Burger restaurant chain into energy. In the Kanto region, the company is taking all the broken buns and crushed...

Remember the part in the Yes Men movie where the WTO and MacDonalds were going to team up to sell "recycled" burgers to developing nations? This isn't like that. --dr

Disposable batteries bad. Rechargeable batteries good. Human-powered recharging of batteries excellent. Weighing only 90g (3oz) this wind-up charger, comes with adaptors to fit many models of mobile cell phones including Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung and Siemens. You’ll get either 30-60...

I often wonder what would happen if all electronic art were human powered... --dr

Two new Internet campaigns are using the Open Source ForwardTrack software developed by Eyebeam R&D. Eyebeam does not officially endorse either campaign, but we wanted to do a reBlog post to highlight the latest ForwardTrack developments.

The first campaign is the Tide Coldwater Challenge – a "cause marketing" initiative promoting a new Tide laundry detergent formulated to work in cold water. The Alliance to Save Energy is co-sponsoring the effort, Tide is donating $100,000 to help low income families pay their energy bills, and every person who signs up gets a free sample of the product.

The second campaign is NetworkForJustice.org – a coalition of people and organizations dedicated to stopping the death penalty in New York State. Partners include the League of Women Voters of NYS, Andrew Cuomo, 1199 SEIU, Russell Simmons, the NYCLU and many others. The site makes it easy to recruit friends, contact your local elected official, and browses the social networks of participants.

If you want some free Tide detergent sign up here and if you want to stop the death penalty sign up here. Either way, you will see some of the latest improvements to ForwardTrack.

The supernatural is super boring: Quote: "Enough with the aliens. And no more clairvoyant prognosticators. Please. Can we shutter Area 51? Lock Los Chupacabras in a cage? Dump cement into Loch Ness? Stop speculating about Roswell? While we're at it, can we all declare a temporary moratorium on ghosts, demons, vampires, witches, poltergeists, crop circles, crystals, shape-shifters, time-travellers, spoon-benders, Satanism, channelling, remote viewing, cryptozoology, psychokinesis, and any paranormal phenomena recognized internationally by a three-letter acronym — UFO, OBE, ESP, EVP? Can we put this stuff on an empirical shelf? At least until it seems fresh again? People, there's way too much White Noise."
Link

A rant against the entertainment industry's obsession with the supernatural. Best line, re: CBS's new crime show, "Numb3rs": "Yeah, he's using 'math.' So why does it seem more like 'magic?'" --dr

No, it's not high tech chapstick or a mentholated nasal inhaler-- it's a Video Bulb.

Ryota Kuwakubo is a device artist. His wearable LED animation Bitman, a cute little guy that dances around within the confines of the display edges, has gotten plenty of attention in the art-gadget scene. His latest evolution of Bitman is in the form of this RCA video plug. Just pop it in to the input socket on your TV and it will endlessly play a Bitman animation.

$38 at Compact Impact

---

Posted in: Art

Sooooo clean! LoVid and I have been working on something like this for a couple years now...but ours is butt-ugly. I wonder about the batteries. --dr

The winner of our Engadget in Public contest (Ray D.) had the impossibly-classic analog version, but who are we to stop progress? 256 characters, 6 messages, 9 speeds, 9 brightness levels… it’s on now, yo. Side-by-side with the search engine belt buckle; bits and bling, 2getha 4eva.

[Thanks, Del]

Speaking of fabric fetish...but you really should be a proper dork and make your own! --dr

Apparently Glad has scored a bit hit with its new ForceFlex garbage bags -- which can stretch to seemingly impossible dimensions, and thus contain the ever-greater volumes of nonrecyclable carcinogens the average American family craps out every day. ("Hey honey, Johnny doesn't like his Jungle Gym anymore!" "No problem, sweetie -- we'll just shove it inside a single ForceFlex garbage bag and send it off to the dump so Johny's grandchildren can drink the entire goddamn thing 80 years from now when it leaches into the water table.") Anyway, there's a great piece by Brendan Koerner in today's New York Times, in which he interviews Glad and discovers some interesting facts about the design process: A ForceFlex bag looks a bit like an overgrown paper towel, with row upon row of embossed diamond shapes. Those patterns, explained Shaun T. Broering, Glad's technology leader, make the bags stronger and more...

This is disconcerting; I find myself getting a bit excited about the prospect of a cool new trashbag...some strange amalgamation of gadget envy, fabric fetish, and sloth. Although I guess you could claim that people will use fewer trashbags this way... --dr

Spike Jonze directed it. An anthropomorphic cat co-stars. What's not to like? Watch here (Real)....

There's a link to a QuickTime version of the video here: http://www.bjork.com/medulla/triumphvideo/triumphoftheheart.mov
It's hard to not love a cat in a muscle shirt... --dr

AP - A study conducted on the case of a statue of the Madonna reported to have shed tears of blood a decade ago concluded that the event has no human explanation, an Italian newspaper reported Sunday.

As I start my stint as guest reBlogger for the next couple weeks my primary goal is to avoid bloody tearshed of any sort. Events with no human explanation are, however, always welcome. --dr

My job is done here. Held the reBlog over for a week while rolling out the new design, and upgrading to reBlog 1.2 on the backend.

Starting tonight is Douglass Irving Repetto, who has something to do with dorkbot: people doing strange things with electricity and ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show. Go Douglas!

A new digital camera from Ricoh has a built-in GPS feature and encodes each photo with information on where in the world it was taken. Special software can then automatically use that information to enable, for example, special travel-photo blogs that bring up photos when you click on locations on a map.

DataDragon asks: "Here's the situation- I'm a now 30something computer programmer in Silicon Valley working for one of the local billion+ dollar tech companies. I'm unhappy with my present job, but am thankful that I've got one. Although I pride myself on having written over a million lines of code in my career, with nearly 15 commercial software products under my belt (8 of them were my own concepts from start-to-finish). I've had carpal tunnel for 6 years now, my skillset looks like it came from a 3 year old magazine, and I didn't make good on stock options. Since settling down in a quiet place somewhere and having a family sounds like a great idea to myself and my bride-to-be, I was wondering: instead of all the buzz I always get like Google's 'Do you <insert technology task> in your sleep?' job opportunities I've read about, are there any employers that would rather have a person who: wants to put in an honest day's work; get to know the job and the people well; and a desire to ultimately be a mentor for the company processes, instead of a here-today-gone-tomorrow programmer, who is interested in actually working there until retirement age?"

from Adventurelounge

funny

twisted

Mike Frumin, our guest reBlogger, is quite the dancer, so I know he will reBlog this link.

sadly, i don't dance nearly as well as this flash widget. --mf

somebody over at spark fun decided that those 1980s zach morris cell phones just weren’t retro-cool enough.  keith swett sent us the link to this hack which involves retrofitting an old 1950s at&t rotary phone with modern day tri-band cell hardware.

make sure to turn it off when you are in the theatre.

Xeni Jardin: An anonymous inauguration coronation day gift from a friend of BoingBoing. Link to full-size.

So you think that a fork is for eating, a comb for combing your hair, an alarm clok for waking you up...
But is that really all there is to these objects?

In Tool's Life, by Minim++ (Motoshi Chikamori, Kyoko Kuno and Yasuaki Kakehi), a set of steel objects on a table are illuminated from above so that the objects cast long shadows across it. Touching the objects triggers modification in the shadows that reveal their true characters: the holes in scissor handles become eyes, or the shadow of a handle squirms away like a snake.

This toy-room of projected images offers a contrast to much of the high-tech interaction expected for much of Japan's creations. Instead, we are dependent upon exploratory movements and accidental discovery.

The work questions our new "simulation culture" in which media output, in changing the things it sees, creates multiple realities.

Don't miss the video.

Ron Harris of the Press Democrat thinks the iPod is really shiny. “It gleams,” says he. All love stops there, however. You see, Ron also says the iPod sounds too tinny without Simpl Acoustics’ A1 iPod clip-on headphone amp. The unit adds what is supposed to be louder, deeper sound response for those who want a little extra kick in their pods. Ron sure seems to think the A1 makes a difference, and he even tried them out with everything from the stock Apple earbuds to the Sennheiser 590 earbuds. His conclusion? The $149 Simpl Acoustics A1 is a good thing.

i want one, and it's almost my 1/2 birthday. --MF

Here is another ascii generator, this one converts your pictures into ascii. Once the results come up you got to press Print Screen then paste into Paint (or whatever) and crop the picture down. Here is a little sample of what is does:

OR, just cut and paste the underlying HTML for text-based wackiness. duh. --MF

AP - Rolling Stone magazine declined to run an advertisement for a new translation of the Bible aimed at young people, the nation's largest Bible publisher said Wednesday.

for making sweet email signatures --MF

For three winter months of the year, Rattenberg, a mountain village near Innsbruck, is permanently in the shadow of the Stadtberg Mountain. Inhabitants can see sunshine across the valley, but for three months they get nothing and feel depressed.

(bigger image)

To bring some light to the village, engineers at the Bartenbach Light Laboratory in Aldrans, Austria, plan to install up to 30 mirrors on an opposite hillside. Computer-controlled motors will tilt the mirrors so they continuously track the sun's position. Light will be bounced onto a second bank of mirrors, which in turn will illuminate the streets below.

It would take a mirror 10 times the size of the village to illuminate all of it, but an array of mirrors, each up to 2m across, will be able to pick out individual streets, squares and building facades, says Zangerl.

Via The Guardian, Deutsche Welle and The Telegraph.

this isn't even phallic to me. I just love sandwiches. See http://www.flickr.com/groups/girlseatingsandwiches/pool/ for more. --MF

a tree of life choices, illustrated with little people icons

h-o-t (re-posting this cuz the image got pulled yesterday, but now I cached it on our server) --MF

Motorola said on Tuesday that fourth-quarter net income jumped 34 percent as demand surged for higher-price handsets.

The results surpassed Wall Street's expectations in both sales and profit, with fourth-quarter earnings reaching $3 billion for the first time in the company's history.

Yahoo Inc. posted strong fourth-quarter profits, driven largely by strong advertising sales and a sizable windfall from sales of an investment.

see a trend here? --MF