[Sponsor] Demigod designer Philippe Starck has perfectly deconstructed the wristwatch by completely eliminating the center of the dial. All that is left is a big hole where traditional timekeeping has been flushed down the horological toilet. Surrounding the negative space where a watch once seemed to be isn't quite digital and not really analog but both do seem to co-exist in the perfectly designed Starck O-Ring Watches. Minutes are seen as liquid crystal segments growing clockwise around the donut shaped LCD display. The digital representation of hours show through the blocks either positively or negatively, depending where the minutes are located. Simply put, it's revolutionary. See all the Philippe Starck Watches at Watchismo
Quotes from RIM's chiefs End of the line for Flash on Android Compressed-air gramophones: a loud, bad, wonderful idea SimCity Social is horrible Arsonist burns out Cable hacker jailed National Review: supreme court "pretended" mandate was constitutional Derelict farmhouse turned into massive doll's house $4.5M in 72h Birds with human arms Art show with Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Dominique Sapel Notes from the bankruptcy of Stockton, CA Assange to UK cops: No, I will not come out of my Ecuadorean embassy Harvey Pekar's Cleveland Western US wildfires, as seen from space Bookcase that cunningly stores a table and chairs Kim Dotcom raid was illegal, New Zealand judge rules Stupid EU video PSA shows how *not* to promote science to young women Here lie the bones of the Boings "Obama" joins the NERF militia Darling Pet Munkee's monster songs Republican conventions better for strip bars than Democratic ones The hilarity of CNN + Fox's bungled Health Care Act reporting, in a single 'shoop Artist Mitch O'Connell's funny Hanna Barbera commissions Cool musicians drawn as South Park characters Nixie tube chess-set kits Data after a death? Narco Polo: Legal drug linked to more cannibalism than bath salts Chinese corruption and looting on a vast scale: industry, government, and military Rare three-axle 1959 Lincoln Quotes from RIM's chiefs
By Rob Beschizza on Jun 29, 2012 11:39 am "The most exciting mobile trend is full Qwerty keyboards. I'm sorry, it really is. I'm not making this up." Mike Lazaridis, May 2008. To mark RIM's $500m first quarter loss and impending doom, The Guardian offers a selection of quotes from its longtime but recently trebucheted chiefs, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis.
Read in browser End of the line for Flash on Android
By Rob Beschizza on Jun 29, 2012 10:35 am Adobe's Tareq AlJaber: "To ensure that the Flash Player provides the best possible experience for users, our partner program requires certification of each Flash Player implementation. ... There will be no certified implementations of Flash Player for Android 4.1."
Read in browser Compressed-air gramophones: a loud, bad, wonderful idea
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 29, 2012 08:58 am This web page (which is rather elderly itself) has valuable information on the long-lost Auxetophone and its successors and imitators, a family of compressed-air gramophones which were apparently very, very loud THE AUXETOPHONE: 1898-1918. Two Englishmen, Horace Short and Sir Charles A Parsons (yes, the steam turbine man) introduced the compressed air amplifiers known as ...
Read in browser SimCity Social is horrible
By Rob Beschizza on Jun 29, 2012 08:39 am Kyle Orland on a game that looks like Sim City but is in fact a mindless, pointless treadmill: "judged by the relatively low standards of CityVille clones, SimCity Social actually isn't a half-bad example". [Ars]
Read in browser Arsonist burns out
By Rob Beschizza on Jun 29, 2012 08:32 am An Arizona man collapsed and died in court Thursday immediately after his conviction for arson. [AP]
Read in browser Cable hacker jailed
By Rob Beschizza on Jun 29, 2012 08:26 am A good old fashioned hardware hacker is off to jail for 3 years for selling rooted modems. The boxes gave cable users actual unlimited internet. P.S. His book, Hacking the Cable Modem: What Cable Companies Don't Want You to Know, is available at Amazon.
Read in browser National Review: supreme court "pretended" mandate was constitutional
By Rob Beschizza on Jun 29, 2012 02:06 am As a Brit in the US, I landed on a left-leaning limb of the tree. This is not unusual—our conservatives are often more liberal than your liberals, after all. That said, I often found myself enjoying conservative writing on this side of the pond. Especially The National Review. NR offered a pleasing critical distance, a ...
Read in browser Derelict farmhouse turned into massive doll's house
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 29, 2012 12:18 am A Canadian artist called Heather Benning converted a derelict farmhouse into a giant doll's house, open on one side. Her photo gallery includes several making-of images that are quite marvellous. She created it while serving as artist-in-residence for the town of Redvers, Sask, and notes that she found the house in 2005. heatherbenning.ca | Dollhouse ...
Read in browser $4.5M in 72h
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 28, 2012 11:08 pm Louis CK's experiment in direct retailing the tickets for his upcoming comedy tour is a huge success: $4.5M in business in three days!
Read in browser Birds with human arms
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 28, 2012 10:50 pm The Birds With Arms Tumblr has a simple command for the net: "Photoshop arms on to birds. Send them to us." This turns out to be remarkably effective. Birds With Arms (via Kottke)
Read in browser Art show with Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Dominique Sapel
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jun 28, 2012 08:53 pm The Museum of Comic & Cartoon Art (MoCCA) announced “Miami Makeover: Almost Anything for Beauty”, an exhibit featuring the work of Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Dominique Sapel. They "set out to entirely re-imagine their body image. Donning new outfits, wigs, jewelry, nails, makeup and padding in just the right places, the two artists remade themselves in ...
Read in browser Notes from the bankruptcy of Stockton, CA
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 28, 2012 08:44 pm The LA Times's Diana Marcum tells the story of the bankruptcy of Stockton, California, a city of about 300,000 people, which has just filed for bankruptcy. The city -- and its developers -- borrowed heavily in the past decade to build a series of follies: a luxury hotel, a marina, a promenade, in a bid ...
Read in browser Assange to UK cops: No, I will not come out of my Ecuadorean embassy
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 28, 2012 08:42 pm WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is in no hurry to depart his refuge inside the embassy of Ecuador, in London, where he has been holed up for about a week. British authorities are demanding that he do so, and head straight to a police station as part of his extradition process to be questioned in Sweden ...
Read in browser Harvey Pekar's Cleveland
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jun 28, 2012 08:32 pm Jeff Newelt snapped this photo of Robert Crumb reading a copy of the recently-published book, Cleveland, one of the late Harvey Pekar's final contributions to comics. It has beautiful art by Joseph Remnant and an introduction by Alam Moore. A lifelong resident of Cleveland, Ohio, Harvey Pekar (1939-2010) pioneered autobiographical comics, mining the mundane for ...
Read in browser Western US wildfires, as seen from space
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 28, 2012 08:20 pm NASA/NOAA GOES Project. Caption: NASA Goddard, Rob Gutro The NASA GOES-15 satellite captured this image of the western United States which shows smoke from fires in many states creating a brownish-colored blanket over the region. The dawn's early light revealed smoke and haze throughout the Midwest, arising from forest fires throughout the Rockies. While the ...
Read in browser Bookcase that cunningly stores a table and chairs
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 28, 2012 07:45 pm Orla Reynolds's "As If From Nowhere" is a bookcase with four removable chairs and a dining table cunningly worked into its frame. It's basically a storage unit for an extra table. As if from nowhere (via Bookshelf)
Read in browser Kim Dotcom raid was illegal, New Zealand judge rules
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 28, 2012 07:42 pm New Zealand's high court today ruled that a raid on Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom's Auckland mansion was illegal. From the Guardian: Justice Helen Winkelmann said the warrants used when more than 90 New Zealand officers stormed the Megaupload founder's home and other properties in January were too broadly cast, "lacking adequate specificity as to the ...
Read in browser Stupid EU video PSA shows how *not* to promote science to young women
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 28, 2012 07:29 pm [Video Link] The title tells you there's gonna be trouble even before you hit play. "Science: It's a Girl Thing!" is part of a European Commission campaign to promote science careers to young women, who remain greatly outnumbered in the field and face gender discrimination in academic and professional environments (yes, guys, even today). More ...
Read in browser Here lie the bones of the Boings
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jun 28, 2012 07:26 pm Gareth Branwyn sent this to me, via Candi Strecker.
Read in browser "Obama" joins the NERF militia
By David Pescovitz on Jun 28, 2012 07:21 pm I went to the NERF site to look for a basketball set for my first grader. Not only is the NERF brand now mostly about pretending you are in an elite special forces unit (protecting NERF Nation, no less), they have drafted President Obama into their non-expanding recreational foam militia. (Yes, I know it's not ...
Read in browser Darling Pet Munkee's monster songs
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jun 28, 2012 07:07 pm I'm a big fan of the garage punk band, Darling Pet Munkee (Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling's Michael J. Epstein and Sophia Cacciola and Cathy Capozzi of Axemunkee). They write songs based on old comic book ads: X-Ray Specs, Sea Monkeys, Monster S-I-Z-E Monsters, Darling Pet Monkey, and more. Michael just sent me ...
Read in browser Republican conventions better for strip bars than Democratic ones
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 28, 2012 07:00 pm As the Democratic National Convention prepares to descend upon Charlotte, the Charlotte NPR affiliate perform the regular ritual of sending their reporter to talk to strip bar owners about how Republicans are much better for strippers and their employers than Democrats: "Hands down, the Republicans have always been our best customers," says Angelina Spencer, the ...
Read in browser The hilarity of CNN + Fox's bungled Health Care Act reporting, in a single 'shoop
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 28, 2012 06:31 pm Gary He of Inside Images today tweeted his photoshopped interpretation of an epic CNN gaffe. His 'shoop visually references the historic 1948 photo of just-elected President Harry Truman displaying before a crowd a newspaper that incorrectly reported his defeat. The image went viral after inclusion in this New York Daily News article on how CNN ...
Read in browser Artist Mitch O'Connell's funny Hanna Barbera commissions
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jun 28, 2012 06:22 pm Mitch O'Connell says: Back in 2003 I was asked by Warner Bros (who owns Hanna Barbera) to come up with my take on those great characters. I could choose from Atom Ant, Dastardly and Muttley, The Flintstones, The Herculoids, Hong Kong Phooey, Huckleberry Hound, Jabberjaw, The Jetsons, Josie and the Pussycats, Magilla Gorilla, Penelope Pitstop, ...
Read in browser Cool musicians drawn as South Park characters
By David Pescovitz on Jun 28, 2012 05:58 pm The Noise Park Tumblr features dozens of avant-garde, indie, and outré music artists reimagined as South Park characters. Above, Throbbing Gristle, Sun Ra, and Peaking Lights, whose absolutely fantastic new album Lucifer I just bought at Aquarius Records, where you can also hear some bits!
Read in browser Nixie tube chess-set kits
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 28, 2012 05:40 pm Tony from LaserMad is poised to offer kits to build your own magnificent Nixie-tube chess-sets: This is not a project for beginners – it makes extensive use of surface mount components. The circuits are not complicated and are laid out with plenty of space between parts where possible but you will still need to be ...
Read in browser Data after a death?
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 28, 2012 05:25 pm Open question: when a friend dies, what should her loved ones do with the data on her hard-drives? Assume that she has been using the Internet for more than a decade and has archived email, personal files, etc, on her machine(s), and has not expressed any particular wishes about this data. Assume also that the ...
Read in browser Narco Polo: Legal drug linked to more cannibalism than bath salts
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jun 28, 2012 05:14 pm Visit Rob Arthur's blog for the complete cartoon and his additional comments. (Not for weak stomachs.)
Read in browser Chinese corruption and looting on a vast scale: industry, government, and military
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 28, 2012 05:00 pm Here's a well-cited and pretty scary article describing the vast scale of corruption at the highest levels in China, and the extent to which "the success of 300m Chinese who live in western level prosperity depends on the continued exploitation and good nature of one billion people who live on an average of $5000 per ...
Read in browser Rare three-axle 1959 Lincoln
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 28, 2012 04:00 pm Phil Are Go has performed the vital service of close-cropping the finned beast from this 1959 Lincoln ad, for your clip-art pleasure, but not before adding a much-needed third axle. A vanilla two-axle model is also available. 1959 Lincoln - Fab one and a half.
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