CANAL STREET CROSS-SECTION

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/canal-street-cross-section.html

"The problem," as he explains it, "was to make all that architecture work together and make sense visually. I was able to do that by having windows on the sides of the piece to accommodate the cross views. I gave the subway platform a sense of depth by using a carefully placed mirror at the far end. As with almost all of my projects, the sight lines were critical." The piece, we might say, required a kind of Piranesian optical correction so that all its cross-angles and counterviews could be spatially comprehensible.

Iron Man Gets Steampunk Makeover by Toy Modder

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/04/steampunk-iron-man/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29

Once More, With Feeling: Joss Whedon Revisits ‘Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog’

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/18/once-more-with-feeling-joss-whedon-revisits-dr-horribles-sing-along-blog/

"I have been alerted to this fact by certain of my friends. When I saw us going up against “Empire Strikes Back,” all I could think was, “Oh, they’re gonna hate it. They’re gonna hate us. They’re gonna call our fans names.” But while “Empire Strikes Back” is for me the more seminal film, “Serenity” at least has an ending. I don’t know when “The Matrix” got voted down – that’s my favorite. It is starting to be a double-edged sword. There’s no greater sadness than not still being on board that ship with that crew, in my career. All I can think is, maybe someday, someone at Universal will say, “Hey, we made money. Let’s do that again.” So I’m glad that it lives. But I also know that every time it gets in one of those polls, against beloved movies, we just get flamed. I feel sad, too."

Debut of the first practical 'artificial leaf'

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-debut-artificial-leaf.html

"The device bears no resemblance to Mother Nature's counterparts on oaks, maples and other green plants, which scientists have used as the model for their efforts to develop this new genre of solar cells. About the shape of a poker card but thinner, the device is fashioned from silicon, electronics and catalysts, substances that accelerate chemical reactions that otherwise would not occur, or would run slowly. Placed in a single gallon of water in a bright sunlight, the device could produce enough electricity to supply a house in a developing country with electricity for a day, Nocera said. It does so by splitting water into its two components, hydrogen and oxygen."

Templated growth technique produces graphene nanoribbons with metallic properties

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-templated-growth-technique-graphene-nanoribbons.html

"A new "templated growth" technique for fabricating nanoribbons of epitaxial graphene has produced structures just 15 to 40 nanometers wide that conduct current with almost no resistance. These structures could address the challenge of connecting graphene devices made with conventional architectures – and set the stage for a new generation of devices that take advantage of the quantum properties of electrons."

Desert Lodges

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/14287/oppenheim-architecture-design-desert-lodges.html

Abandoned Skyscraper in Venezuela is the World’s Tallest Shanty Town

http://inhabitat.com/squatter-infested-skyscraper-in-venezuela-is-the-worlds-tallest-shanty-town/

"In the middle of downtown Caracas in Venezuela is an abandoned 45 story tower that has been reclaimed by squatters who have turned it into a thriving vertical shanty town. Built during the booming nineties when the real estate market was putting up ever larger edifices to the banking industry, the project, which is one of the tallest in Latin America, became a financial white elephant. Named after developer David Brillembourg, an estimated 2500 people now call the Tower of David home. After his death the government took possession, but seems to not have the stomach to change the status quo. Two decades later, the tower has become a symbol of the decline of Venezuela for some, but can also be viewed as a triumph of the spirit its occupants."

Spidey Bites: Stan Lee’s Secret for Saving Spider-Man the Musical? More Stan Lee!

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2011/03/spidey-bites.html

"It never occurred to us to save any of those things. We never thought they’d have any value later on. We worked in a very small office, and the printer would send back all the original pages of artwork, but we had no place to put them. So when we ordered food, we told the delivery guy, “Hey, would you mind taking these pages and dropping them in the trash on the way out?”"

Word of the Day: Kentucky Fried Seizure

It's finger licking ACK!

Neil Gaiman Explains How Alan Moore Nicknamed Him “Neil ‘Scary Trousers’ Gaiman: Master of Modern Horror

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=337-ycZz6IM&feature=player_embedded

A plan from the 1920s to drain the Mediterranean Sea and create the nation of Atlantropa

http://io9.com/#!5794669/a-plan-from-the-1920s-to-drain-the-mediterranean-sea-and-create-the-nation-of-atlantropa

"His most spectacular contribution-incubated in the mid-1920's and still clinging by its fingertips as an idea among some current thinkers-was to put a dam across the straights of Gibraltar. The dam would generate electricity of course, but most importantly to Soergel, it would also empty an enormous amount of water (lowering the sea by 200 metres) from the Mediterranean leaving vast new expanses of land to be developed and colonized over generations into the future. The water of course would have to go somewhere, and that somewhere was the Sahara Desert, somehow in its wake creating farmable and productive lands. Soergel was creating a certain, very wide, fantastical future of uncertain monumental prospects . . ."

Solar power without solar cells: A hidden magnetic effect of light could make it possible

http://ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=8368

"Light has electric and magnetic components. Until now, scientists thought the effects of the magnetic field were so weak that they could be ignored. What Rand and his colleagues found is that at the right intensity, when light is traveling through a material that does not conduct electricity, the light field can generate magnetic effects that are 100 million times stronger than previously expected. Under these circumstances, the magnetic effects develop strength equivalent to a strong electric effect."

New Way to Control Magnetic Properties of Graphene Discovered

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110414091110.htm

"University of Maryland researchers have discovered a way to control magnetic properties of graphene that could lead to powerful new applications in magnetic storage and magnetic random access memory."

Deaf Swearing

http://failbook.failblog.org/2011/04/17/funny-facebook-fails-deaf-swearing/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Failbooking+%28FailBooking%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Quote

Look, all I’m saying is that there is no such thing as disassociated mindforms existing on a plane of reality parallel and entwined with our own. And that these beings, which do not exist and you have no reason to worry about, are not driven by a hunger to split apart our universe until it becomes a disjointed mass of unconnected concepts and ideas, time is undone and meaningless, and they can scatter our psyches into the vacuum of non-forever and rebuild creation as if we had never been. Most of all I certainly am not involved in any form of hidden coordinated effort to fight back against their every plot.

Grant Morrison

Nanotech-fibre gas mask created at Cornell

http://grinding.be/2011/04/13/nanotech-fibre-gas-mask-created-at-cornell/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+grinding+%28grinding.be%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

"MOFs (metal organic framework molecules), which are clustered crystalline compounds, can be manipulated at the nanolevel to have cages that are the exact same size as the gas they are trying to capture", said Jennifer Keane ’11, a fiber science and apparel design (FSAD) major in the College of Human Ecology.

James Cameron’s Next Plan To Reinvent Cinema

http://gizmodo.com/#!5787970/james-camerons-next-plan-to-reinvent-cinema

"While the industry has been stuck at 24fps since the Roaring 20s, Cameron believes that by bumping that up to 48fps, or even 60fps, Hollywood can dramatically change our cinematic experience."

Original GTA Design Docs, dated March 22nd 1995.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikedailly/5548280212/in/photostream/

After following the link, hit the "Newer" button to scroll through the "Race'n'Chase" documents in order.

A beautiful but creepy vision of the "smart glass" future

http://io9.com/#!5781931/a-beautiful-but-creepy-vision-of-the-smart-glass-future

Super Batteries Made From ‘Frozen Smoke’ May be Here Soon

http://inhabitat.com/super-batteries-made-from-frozen-smoke-may-be-here-soon/

"Due to its carbon nanotube structure, the battery material would be able to detect even the slightest changes in pressure or temperature. As they also make up a large surface area, the nanotubes would be better able to store energy than conventional batteries."

Making nanomaterials just got a lot easier

http://io9.com/#!5773631/making-nanomaterials-just-got-a-lot-easier

"This new method could lead to massively easier and cheaper production of nanomaterials."

The Best of CarDesignFetish's Batmobile Redesign Contest

Lots more here: http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/03/30/cardesignfetish-batmobile-redesign-contest-art/#ixzz1I6LJQ4tD

The apocalyptic future of Portland, Oregon comes to life in this burning hot teaser trailer

Plug - teaser one from vyle-art on Vimeo.

http://io9.com/#!5773826/the-apocalyptic-future-of-portland-oregon-comes-to-life-in-this-burning-hot-teaser-trailer

The Craziest Urban Bike Race Looks Even Crazier On Helmet Cam

"Valparaiso, Chile. Crazy guy rides his bike down the city in a timed race through tightly twisted steep streets."

What it’s like to be a young writer working with Joss Whedon and Kevin Williamson

http://io9.com/#!5767405/what-its-like-to-be-a-young-writer-working-with-joss-whedon-and-kevin-williamson

"Okay, I lied when I said I could name the difference in one word. I'm going to use two more words right here – THE ROOM. And to be honest, this is the thing that makes writing under tight deadlines possible. There's nothing like working with a room full of talented writers to break story, find solutions to script problems, and often times split writing duties to get a script written quickly. When you're writing a spec script on your own, you have to do all these things by yourself – which is possible, but often takes much longer, involves banging your head against the wall a lot more, and is generally much lonelier."

Bendy batteries a step closer

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2011/February/25021102.asp

"Scientists from Korea have found that with the use of graphene nanosheets, the fabrication of bendable power sources is possible."

Fourteen Ways NFC Will Let Your Phone Replace Your Wallet (And More)

http://gizmodo.com/#!5768471/fourteen-ways-nfc-will-let-your-phone-replace-your-wallet-and-more

"First, the basics. NFC stands for Near Field Communication. Which still doesn't tell us much. Basically, it's a way for devices to transmit and receive very small bits of information, wirelessly, at very close ranges. How close? Centimeters close."

The AT-AT Deconstructed

http://nerdapproved.com/misc-weirdness/the-at-at-deconstructed-infographic/

Check Out Helsinki’s Underground Shadow City

http://www.grist.org/article/2011-02-23-check-out-helsinkis-underground-shadow-city

"Helsinki, Finland's capital, has decided to defeat sprawl by building down instead of out. Incised into the city's bedrock are a swimming pool, a shopping area, a church, a hockey rink, and a data center, not to mention "parking caverns" and a bunch of the city's necessary municipal doodads."

LotR Rewritten From a Mordor Perspective

http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/11/02/21/0234230/LotR-Rewritten-From-a-Mordor-Perspective?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Slashdot/slashdot+(Slashdot)&utm_content=Google+Reader

"In Yeskov's retelling, available in translation as a free download, the wizard Gandalf is a war-monger intent on crushing the scientific and technological initiative of Mordor and its southern allies because science 'destroys the harmony of the world and dries up the souls of men' and Aragorn is depicted by Yeskov as a ruthless Machiavellian schemer who is ultimately the puppet of his wife, the elf Arwen."

Largest antimatter trap ever under construction

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41673788/ns/technology_and_science-science/

"The problem is that whenever antimatter comes into contact with regular matter, the two annihilate. So any container or bottle made of matter that attempts to capture antimatter inside would be instantly destroyed, along with the precious antimatter sample one tried to put inside the bottle."

Warren Ellis interview: RED, RED 2, Jonah Hex, Gravel, screenwriting and more

http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/772097/warren_ellis_interview_red_red_2_jonah_hex_gravel_screenwriting_and_more.html

"When Alan Moore started out, and was getting known in the 80s, pretty much the first thing he did when he got the opportunity, is he set up a column in one of the British comics he was working on, The Daredevils at Marvel UK, where he could review fanzines and things.

Reading that as a kid, I kind of got the impression that that was part of the job. How once your profile got to the point where people actually paid attention to what you were saying, you should use that to direct their attention to things that are worth knowing about, by people who don't have that profile yet. I got the sense that that was what you did.

So, once my profile got to that point, that's what I did. And it didn't dawn on me till later that not everybody does that. And I was never interested in just limiting it to comics, because I'm interested in more things than just comics."

Robots to get their own internet

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12400647

"Called RoboEarth it will be a place that robots can upload data to when they master a task, and ask for help in carrying out new ones."

Ruskie Shooting Water-Filled Milk Jugs Point-Blank With Guns Of Varying Calibers

"This is a video of some crazy Ruskie (whose accent alone makes the video worth a watch) demonstrating the effects different caliber bullets have on water-filled milk jugs."

DNA engine observed in real-time traveling along base pair track

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-dna-real-time-base-pair-track.html

"Resembling a monorail train, the system relies on the self-assembly properties of DNA origami and consists of a 100 nm track together with a motor and fuel. Using atomic force microscopy (AFM), the research team was able to observe in real time as this motor traveled the full length of the track at a constant average speed of around 0.1 nm/s."

Word of the Day: Cataphile

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataphile

"Cataphiles are urban explorers who illegally tour the Paris "catacombs", the term popularly used to describe a series of underground tunnels that were formerly a network of stone mines."

Breakthrough nanotape tech promises cooler chips

http://www.thinq.co.uk/2011/1/24/new-nanotape-tech-promises-cooler-chips/

"The new material promises a lot: featuring a thermal conductivity comparable to copper but a flexibility and ability to expand and contract as a result of temperature changes without breaking that is more like a foam, its creators believe that it could be a major breakthrough in the race to create ever-smaller and ever-faster devices."

Tuning Graphene Film So It Sheds Water

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110201155628.htm

"Windshields that shed water so effectively that they don't need wipers. Ship hulls so slippery that they glide through the water more efficiently than ordinary hulls."

A 240-Year-Old Map Is Reborn

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/01/17/nyregion/20110117-map-restoration.html

"In May 2010, a tattered and brittle map was discovered in storage at the Brooklyn Historical Society. Experts identified it as a rare item, a Bernard Ratzer “Plan of the City of New York” map in its 1770 state. Until then, only three copies were thought to exist. After a painstaking restoration to remove layers of shellac and grime and repair dozens of breaks, the map is now behind plexiglass and ready to be displayed to the public."

Steampunk Palin

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/01/20/steampunk-palin-comic/

Robama: Sarah, before you rush off, you need to know... Big Oil And Nuke have taken over Alaska and are mining it's natural resources. It's no longer the idyllic place it once was, and the Russians have a force at the border that is not to be trifled with.

Steampunk Palin: Obama, don't even think of getting in my way. Big Oil And Nuke and the Russians have gone to far and must be stopped.

Taurus 28 Gauge Revolver

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2011/01/25/big-gun-short-lived-taurus-28-gauge-revolver/

Star Trek writers and Wolverine director pen script to Ender’s Game

http://io9.com/#!5747043/star-trek-writers-and-wolverine-director-pen-script-to-enders-game

"On Friday, Kurtzman tweeted, "Ender's Game! Us(K/O), Oddlot, and Gavin Hood taking his amazing script to the town! Who wants some?""

Robotic Ghost Knifefish

The Incredible Robot Fish from Northwestern News on Vimeo.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-robotic-ghost-knifefish-born-video.html 

"The team then created a computer simulation that showed that when these “inward counterpropagating waves” are generated by the fin, horizontal thrust is canceled and the fluid motion generated by the two waves is funneled into a downward jet from the center of the fin, pushing the body up. The flow structure looks like a mushroom cloud with an inverted jet."

Battlestar Galactica Series Bible

http://www.harvardwood.org/resource/resmgr/hwp-pdfs/battlestar_galactica_series.pdf

"The Series Arcs run through the life of the show, dealing with long-term stories such as the Cylon pursuit of our fleet, while the Multi-Episode Arcs allow us to spend 2-4 episodes dealing with a specific crisis, say on one planet discovered by the Galactaca, and the Episodic Arcs provide closed-end narratives for each show and giving any viewer a chance to watch this week's episode. By employing this structure, we gain the benefits of long-term story-telling, embroidering on the existing tensions and situations in the premise which have already hooked our audience and thereby delivering a richer and more compelling experience to the dedicated viewer, while at the same time making allowance for hooking the more casual viewer who may not be familiar with the long-term tales but is drawn Into this week's episodic storyline."

Project Iceworm

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/project-iceworm.html

"A fully-functioning "underground city," Camp Century even had its own mobile nuclear reactor—an "Alco PM-2A"—that kept the whole thing lit up and running during the Cold War."

Ultralight Multiwalled Carbon Nanotube Aerogel

http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/nn102246a

"We have fabricated the lightest free-standing monolithic MWCNT aerogels with a density of 4 mg/cm³. The strong chemical bonding interactions between MWCNTs played a key role in the fabrication, which was proved both experimentally and theoretically. The MWCNT aerogel has an anisotropic macroporous honeycomb structure with straight and parallel honeycomb channels and mesoporous honeycomb walls. The MWCNT aerogel is a hierachically porous material with a surface area of 580 m²/g and electrical conductivity of 3.2 × 10⁻² S·cm⁻¹ (0.67 S·cm⁻¹ after high-current pulse treatment). The MWCNT aerogel demonstrates excellent compression recovery property. The unique anisotropic honeycomb structure combined with the hierarchical porosity with large surface area, compression recovery property, and high electrical conductivity makes the MWCNT aerogel promising for applications as chemoresistant vapor sensor and ultrasensitive pressure sensor. Other potential applications of the MWCNT aerogel may include catalyst supports and novel electrodes."

Word of the Day: Anthropocene

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene

"The Anthropocene is an informal geological epoch that serves to mark the recent extent of human activities that have had a significant global impact on the Earth's ecosystems."

Fox's 'Alien' Prequel Dead, 'Prometheus' Rises

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/blogs/heat-vision/foxs-alien-prequel-morphs-prometheus-72052

“While Alien was indeed the jumping off point for this project, out of the creative process evolved a new, grand mythology and universe in which this original story takes place,” said Scott in a statement. “The keen fan will recognize strands of Alien's DNA, so to speak, but the ideas tackled in this film are unique, large and provocative. I couldn't be more pleased to have found the singular tale I'd been searching for, and finally return to this genre that's so close to my heart.”

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2125

Exploring Urban Exploring

Urban Explorers: Quests for Myth, Mystery and Meaning from Bradley L. Garrett on Vimeo.

This video is a 30-minute introduction to the practice of urban exploration. Constructed as a video article for the journal Geography Compass, the article uses footage from the author's own explorations in California, Las Vegas and London to visually depict a theoretical unpacking of the practice by 5 academic geographers. 

Good Code

http://xkcd.com/844/

Newfangled Microsoft Surface demo at CES 2011

http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2011/01/newfangled-microsoft-surface-demo-at-ces-2011/

"Wait a sec — “infrared sensor pixels”? Hey….

Quote

BEING CONCISE: What could be more unfashionable than an epigram? The devil is a black glove we wear to hide our own fingerprints. I blame you.

Steve Aylett

Space Controller

Space Controller from Enrique Ramos on Vimeo.

This video was produced for the module "Digital Studio" at the Bartlett's Adaptive Architecture and Computation Msc.
An Android based phone sends OSC data to a Processing sketch, controlling a "manipulator" that interacts with a cloud of agents and modifies its configuration.
The result is finally exported and rendered. 

Undercity

UNDERCITY from Andrew Wonder on Vimeo.

After dodging trains, security guards, climbing the Williamsburg Bridge, and making us all extremely nervous, Andrew Wonder and Steve Duncan have compiled a short of their NYC adventures. "Guerrila historian" Duncan does a pretty excellent job summing up each scenario.