Archive for August, 2008
oh, it is Rome that will be modeled in Xinjiang
Yesterday, I joked that one day, the Chinese would use Google Earth to make an entirely new New York in western China. And then today, we read in Leonardo Bonanni’s hyperexperience that “CityEngine is a powerful tool for modeling entire cities in perfect detail.” And they’ve already done Rome, with “200 monuments painstakingly modeled by [...]
hands off our avian flu, bro
Here’s a concept you’ve probably never heard of: “viral sovereignty.” This extremely dangerous idea comes to us courtesy of Indonesia’s minister of health, Siti Fadilah Supari, who asserts that deadly viruses are the sovereign property of individual nations — even though they cross borders and could pose a pandemic threat to all the peoples of [...]
the sun rising on mars
Image: From the Mars Phoenix Lander, which is currently sitting on a different planet from Earth and sending us pictures for our blogs. JPL/NASA
BLDGBLOG: comp lit construction
I do wonder, meanwhile, if the temporary micro-culture of the construction site has been adequately documented by architectural historians. Industrial yards have certainly had their day, from documentaries about WWII dockworkers to historical surveys of Solidarity; and construction sites have obviously long been a focus for painters and photographers.
But have literature and history given the [...]
New Scientist: Goblin shark caught on video
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZzehRHxtB8&color1=11645361&color2=13619151&hl=en&fs=1]
New Scientist Environment Blog: Goblin shark caught on video.
Retractable jaws should be incorporated into more robots.
mother jones’ time series map of global troop deployments
The map animation that opens this package uses Pentagon worldwide troop data from every half-decade since 1950, plus 2007, the latest year for which the data is available. These numbers are often fuzzy: Some deployments are classified, others are temporary, and just because the Defense Department claims 30 US troops in Indonesia last year doesn’t [...]
automatically-milled topographic tables from google maps
Here’s how it works: Identify your quadrant of interest with the Google Maps tool on the Fluid Forms Web site (fluid-forms.at). That data is converted to an algorithm that generates a 3-D digital model, which gets sent to a computer-controlled milling machine. Then a carbide bit begins to cut, moving in a spiral path, shaping [...]
hans ziock of los alamos on creating protocells
The idea for this project was put forward by Steen Rasmussen and Liaohai Chen and others. We asked ourselves, “What are the common features of life?” Life is an information-generating system, so you need a genetic component to carry information. In order to have information, you need a metabolism to generate it and you need [...]
spot us in the new york times
In an early test of its concept, Spot Us solicited ideas on its Web site and raised $250 for an article examining whether California can meet its ethanol demand. That might not pay the weekly phone bill for a lot of reporters.
Crowd Funding – A Different Way to Pay for the News You Want – [...]
logistics for good
ColaLife is a new organization that has realized that humanitarian aid could piggyback on the logistical operations normally used to distribute for-profit products. As described by Daniel Bachhuber:
ColaLife is a “campaign to try and leverage the distribution muscle of a multi-national corporate institution to get life saving medicines to children in developing countries.” In short, [...]
Inventing Green by Alexis Madrigal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
