Futuremaps ~ Apple's C3 Acquisition Is Siri-ous!

Mark Gurman at 9to5Mac reveals-speculates-confirms Apple's estimated $250M+ ultra-stealth purchase of Swedish SAAB spinoff C3 Technologies (old URL now dead)! This purveyor of amazing high-resolution photorealistic 3-dimensional cityscapes will be as epic in the next iOS release as Siri is now. Check out the few remaining videos of their now QT-hidden stuff... Or is NOKIA the purchaser -- perhaps they were end-run by Apple?! Anyways, here's SAAB backgrounder on rapid 3D-mapping...

PETMAN ~ Boston Dynamics Testable Anthrobot!

Thanks to Joi Ito for spotting PETMAN from MIT alumco Boston Dynamics, same folks who delivered the Big Dog!

"PETMAN is an anthropomorphic robot developed by Boston Dynamics for testing special clothing used by the US Army. PETMAN balances itself as it walks, squats and does simple calisthenics. PETMAN simulates human physiology by controlling temperature, humidity and sweating inside the clothing to provide realistic test conditions."

Tsunami Sakura ~ Walker on Japanese Resilience

Just saw Lucy Walker speak in the MIT ACT Zones of Emergency series about her documentary film-making experiences, including seeing snippets Devil's Playground, Waste Land, and fully half of Tsunami Sakura -- The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom...

"Survivors in the areas hardest hit by Japan's recent tsunami find the courage to revive and rebuild as cherry blossom season begins. A stunning visual poem about the ephemeral nature of life and the healing power of Japan's most beloved flower."

Supersized Shanghai ~ Ceaseless Urban Giant!

Shanghai Gets Supersized writes David Devoss in the Smithsonian together with Lauren Hilgers and with photos by Justin Guariglia!

"Shanghai has grown like no other city on the planet. Home to 13.3 million residents in 1990, the city now has some 23 million residents (to New York City’s 8.1 million), with half a million newcomers each year. To handle the influx, developers are planning to build, among other developments, seven satellite cities on the fringes of Shanghai’s 2,400 square miles. Shanghai opened its first subway line in 1995; today it has 11; by 2025, there will be 22. In 2004, the city also opened the world’s first commercial high-speed magnetic levitation train line. With more than 200 skyscrapers, Shanghai is a metroplex of terraced apartments separated by wide, tree-lined boulevards on which traffic zooms past in a cinematic blur. [...] With the Chinese well into their transition to what they call a "socialist market economy," it seems that they look upon the city not as an outlier, but as an example. "Every other city is copying Shanghai" [...] “Living in Shanghai is like being in a speeding car, unable to focus on all the images streaming past. All you can do is sit back and feel the wind in your face."

Check out this lovely Bund panorama -- plus the vista in 1920s...

Future Amsterdam ~ New Construction Continues!

DutchAmsterdam's piece on the recent reopening of the main entrance to Amsterdam Centraal Station -- the rail-bus-ferry-tram-bike-metro passenger superhub -- inspired my deeper interest in both the longer term development of the city and the ultra-challenging recent efforts. First, this nice timelapse map of Amsterdam's growth over centuries... The latest development is the construction of the Noord/Zuidlijn of the Metro, a tremendously difficult effort with muddy, sandy soil, risk of subsidence, and the fact that most current transit activities and 250K passengers per day have to keep using the facility! (FYI, they even have a progress map showing Here We Are Now) At the same time, the coordinating parties involved -- the City of Amsterdam, ProRail infrastructure, and NS Dutch Railways operator -- decided to massively upgrade the Centraal "Island" adding a new bus and ferry port, cleaning up the connection to the city, and upgrading the interior connective spaces massively. These construction videos are just great and give a taste for what's involved... Finally, here (in Dutch) are the Centraal masterplan visions... And more about the new Metro line...

Printronics ~ Exploring Flexible Circuits & Forms

Heroic Guardian ~ Interview with EIC Rusbridger

Al Jazeera's Listening Post interviews Guardian newspaper editor Alan Rusbridger about their epic investigative journalism...

"The Guardian is not Britain's largest newspaper -- there are 10 in the UK with a bigger circulation -- nor is the paper turning a profit. The company that runs it reportedly lost $50m last year. But the Guardian has been at the centre of two of the biggest news stories of the past 18 months [News Corp phone hacking and WikiLeaks]."

RelayRides ~ WGBH Spotlights P2P Carsharing

Nice WGBH piece on RelayRides peer-to-peer carsharing venture!

Throaty ~ Endoscope of Nate Ball Beatboxing!

Elizabeth Landau on CNN writes Inside the throat of a beatboxer...

"Nate Ball let the TEDMED audience see the inside of his throat Thursday night while he beatboxed. Dr. Quyen Nguyen used an endoscope on stage to give us an up-close-and-personal look at how these sounds are produced inside him. Ball, an engineer by training, has a keen curiosity about what's going in his body when he beatboxes. He let Dr. Charles Limb, also on stage, look at images of his brain while beatboxing, too, on a different occasion."

Future Visions ~ MS Dreams of User Experiences

Interesting stream of Future Visions videos from Microsoft, including this first one spotted by Jarrett Goetz...

Beyond Touchscreens ~ James Patten @ TED...

Lovely examples of Interactivity Beyond the Touchscreen by Media Lab alum James Patten at TED...

Atlas of Economic Complexity ~ Pathways Book

MIT and Harvard colleagues just published The Atlas of Economic Complexity: Mapping Paths to Prosperity...

"The book goes deep into the question of cross country differences in income and shows that complexity accounts for roughly 1000% more growth than education, governance and competitiveness measures."

Download free!

Price of Civilization ~ Sachs on CNN re: "7 Billion"

CNN spots Columbia's Jeffrey Sachs on the Price of Civilization...

"...unless the world population stabilizes during the 21st century, the consequences for humanity could be grim. A rising population puts enormous pressures on a planet already plunging into environmental catastrophe. Providing food, clothing, shelter, and energy for 7 billion people is a task of startling complexity. [...] What will it take to maintain a planet in which each person has a chance for a full, productive and prosperous life, and in which the planet's resources are sustained for future generations? How, in short, can we enjoy "sustainable development" on a very crowded planet? The answer has two parts, and each portends a difficult journey over several decades. The first part requires a change of technologies -- in farming, energy, industry, transport and building -- so that each of us on average is putting less environmental stress on the planet. [...] The second key to sustainable development is the stabilization of the global population."

Love Handles ~ Copenhagenize Reaches Out!-)

Love Handles for cyclists in Copenhagen. Hilarious! Plus, also includes a special bonus -- the Has Bin!

Silicon Island ~ NYC's New Uni on Roosevelt I...

Environmental Features in Science Campus Plans writes NYTimes' Richard Pérez-Peña...

"If Cornell University were to win the city’s competition to build a new science graduate school, it would install on Roosevelt Island almost four acres of solar panels, 500 geothermal wells, and buildings with the rare distinction of generating as much power as they use. Stanford University’s proposal for the island calls for minimizing energy use, creating a marsh to filter water, and recycling water from storm runoff and sinks, and possibly from toilets as well. [...] As the Oct. 28 deadline for proposals was approaching, several of the top contenders discussed their environmental plans as part of a public relations war intended to impress city officials who will decide which institution wins up to $400 million in land and infrastructure improvements. Stanford and Cornell, vying for the same city-owned site on what some involved in the process have begun to call Silicon Island, are widely seen as the universities to beat."

Very compelling! I believe this new New York campus will be one more key step to creating a networked family of top-tier tech-uni's, kind of a World Institutes of Technology & Science!

R.I.P. John McCarthy ~ AI, LISP, Big Ideas Pioneer

Alas, John McCarthy, inventor of LISP, coiner of the term Artificial Intelligence (AI), and founder of the Stanford AI Lab (SAIL) has deanimated at 84. This is a major loss. While his formal professional achievements are epic, it turns out I know him most through his Sustainability of Human Progress writings, an enormous influence on me and one of the prime root sources of my blog name, Maximizing Progress. Among the highlights of his thinking...

"Humanity has progressed over hundreds of thousands of years, but until about the seventeenth century, progress was a rare event. There were novelties, but a person would not expect a whole sequence of improvements in his lifetime. Since then scientific progress has been continual, and in the advanced parts of the world, there has also been continued technological progress. Therefore, people no longer expect the world to remain the same as it is. [Very likely, the greatest rate of progress for the average person occurred around the end of the 19th century when safe water supplies, telephones, automobiles, electric lighting, and home refrigeration came in short order.] This page and its satellites will contain references to articles, my own and by others, explaining how humanity is likely to advance in the near future. In particular, we argue that the whole world can reach and maintain American standards of living with a population of even 15 billion. We also argue that maintaining material progress is the highest priority and the best way to ensure that population eventually stabilizes at a sustainable level with a standard of living above the present American level and continues to improve thereafter."

Big ideas and bold thinking, both highly needed in these trying times.

Brilliant Bogotá ~ Colombia's Transit Innovator!

A couple StreetFilms spotlight brilliant Bogotá, Colombia's transportation innovation city! First, bicycle Ciclovías and Ciclorutas... And second, TransMilenio, the Bus Rapid Transit system...

MIT 100 ~ Prof Winston's Innovation Corp Idea

Professor Pat Winston has a great idea -- The MIT 100 -- a kind of "Innovation Corp" of top global young talent invited to Cambridge and quenched in our creative cauldron...

"Each year, we would welcome to the campus 100 seniors nominated by 100 universities from 100 countries all over the world. We would embed them in MIT dormitories and FSILGs for a senior year and perhaps a fifth year master’s degree. [While MIT has international students and big relations with foreign uni's] few students come from poor countries and none of our deals are with universities in poor countries or universities in the Western Hemisphere or especially universities in poor countries in the Western Hemisphere, such as, say, Haiti. [This would rally] a corps of future world leaders all bonding together with MIT students headed in important directions."

What bold philanthropist will step forward to support this?

Fishy Business ~ Globe Seafood Fraud Expose...

Great Globe journalism spots rampant fraud in the seafood sector. In their cover-story expose piece on this seriously Fishy Business, Jenn Abelson, Beth Daley, and Scott LaPierre reveal it's On the menu, but not on your plate...

"...among the findings of a five-month Globe investigation into the mislabeling of fish [were] that Massachusetts consumers routinely and unwittingly overpay for less desirable, sometimes undesirable, species -- or buy seafood that is simply not what it is advertised to be. In many cases, the fish was caught thousands of miles away and frozen, not hauled in by local fishermen, as the menu claimed. It may be perfectly palatable -- just not what the customer ordered. But sometimes mislabeled seafood can cause allergic reactions, violate dietary restrictions, or contain chemicals banned in the United States. The Globe collected fish from 134 restaurants, grocery stores, and seafood markets from Leominster to Provincetown, and hired a laboratory in Canada to conduct DNA testing on the samples. Analyses by the DNA lab and other scientists showed that 87 of 183 were sold with the wrong species name -- 48 percent."

Thanks to Ian Lamont for emphasizing this great example of a strong and vibrant Fourth Estate in action.

Connected Crisis ~ NYTimes Debt Infographic...

Bill Marsh et al at the NYTimes crafted this rich infographic about the connected crisis of debt exposure among sagging economies...

A Different Future ~ PETISOS w/ Bariloche Kids

CNN's Brittany Stahl shares the heroic story of Elena Durón Miranda and her PETISOS colleagues Rescuing children from a trash dump...

"...children as young as 3 years old rummage through a trash dump for food and valuable materials. [...] many children in Bariloche, a popular city for skiers and tourists in southern Argentina, drop out of school and spend their lives working at the dump. Determined to restore their dignity, Durón Miranda decided to stay in the country and start a nonprofit called PETISOS, which stands for Prevención y Erradicación del Trabajo Infantil SOS -- Prevention and Eradication of Child Labor SOS. The organization aims to provide children with free education and extracurricular programs so they have an alternative to working. [...] "All parents want a better life for their children than what they had," Durón Miranda said. "However, there are times when their situation is so precarious they have no other way out but for the whole family to work and try to make ends meet." [...the parents] realize we're concerned about the children. We give them an incentive to have a better future, a different future."

World on Fire ~ NASA Conflagration Timelapse!

Thanks to Discover for spotting NASA sat-cam timelapse of wildfires planetwide! Two sats, Terra and Aqua, help visualize vegetation, snow & ice cover, and fires worldwide from July 2002 to July 2011...

Supernetworked Firms ~ Global Corp Control...

New Scientist trumpets Revealed -- the capitalist network that runs the world, spotlighting The network of global corporate control by Vitali, Glattfelder, and Battiston...

"An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy. The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable. [...] When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a "super-entity" of 147 even more tightly knit companies - all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity - that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network," says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions."

Which, to the extent they manage mutual funds and the money of masses, is obvious. But nevertheless interesting!

Death to Dictators ~ Q'Daffy Tastes Own Medicine

Q'Daffy's dead. Good riddance. Now how about Assad, Mugabe, Chavez, Kim, Castro, Khamanei and the rest of the verminous swine? See here the bastard caught, courtesy DailyMail... Slain. And that's a good thing. Lockerbie avenged, among others...

Fostering Innovation ~ Joi & Jason @ EmTech...

Bonfire-side chat twixt Tech Review's Jason Pontin and Media Lab's Joi Ito at EmTech 2011 re: Fostering Innovation...

Smarthistory ~ More Free World-Class Education!

Excellent to hear that Smarthistory has merged with Khan Academy!

"A free and open, not-for-profit, art history textbook [and now] part of the Khan Academy, we use multimedia to deliver unscripted conversations between art historians about the history of art. We are seeking contributors -- especially for canonical non-Western material and other survey topics not yet covered. [...] We are excited to announce that Smarthistory is now part of the Khan Academy. For the past year, we’ve been so impressed by what Sal and his team have accomplished. Our missions are perfectly aligned -- we are all working toward a free world-class education to anyone anywhere."

Will To Change ~ History of Dutch Cycling Ways

Cycle Pathologist Mark Wagenbuur shares How the Dutch got their cycling infrastructure...

"...the way Dutch streets and roads are built today is largely the result of deliberate political decisions in the 1970s to turn away from the car centric policies of the prosperous post war era. Changed ideas about mobility, safer and more livable cities and about the environment led to a new type of streets in the Netherlands. [...] The Netherlands’ problems were and are not unique, their solutions shouldn’t be that either. [...] the Dutch could and should be copied. If you look at the key factors for the change in Dutch thinking, you see these are just as valid today. The world is still too dependent on fossil fuels and many cities in the world have congested streets. Streets and roads which are also very dangerous, especially for vulnerable road users like pedestrians and cyclists. And that is even more so when these road users are elderly or children."

Ultimate Simulator ~ 360-degree + Walk Tactile!

UniqueDaily spots Gadget Show's Ultimate Simulator...

"A unique FPS simulator that turns gaming into reality as you move, aim, fire and get shot within a 360-degree immersive environment. Using a pre-release copy of Battlefield 3 and a team of top technology experts from across Europe we've built a truly one of a kind simulator. Centred on the world's first, portable omni-directional treadmill (designed by Swedish company MSE Weibull) the simulator lets you control the movements of a Battlefield 3 character with your own body. Other key technology employed includes: 12 paintball markers that allow the player, in real time, to feel the enemy gunfire experienced in the game; a wireless gun system; ambient LED lighting; and an Xbox Kinect camera hack."

Quantum Levitation ~ Cool & Entrapping Physics!

Thanks to John Mills for spotting Quantum Levitation demos! Wow!

Pano Ballcam ~ Throwable 360° Imaging Array...

Thanks to Cynical-C for spotting this überimager -- the throwable 360° pano ball cam! Lovely stuff from the Computer Graphics Group at TU Berlin presented as an Emerging Technologies demonstration at the SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 by Jonas Pfeil, Kristian Hildebrand, Carsten Gremzow, Bernd Bickel, and Marc Alexa...

Occupier Humor ~ Idiots, But With a Sense of...

Yes, they're idiotic anarcho-socialists, but the Occupiers do have a sense of humor...

Small Spaces ~ Apartments, Hotels, Homes...

I'm very interested in ultra-tiny small abodes. For instance, Unfolding Apartment 450 sq ft... Chang's Domestic Transformer 344 sq ft... Tiny Home 89 sq ft... Tiny Japanese Capsule Hotels ~30 sq ft... And Hong Kong "Cage Homes" 625 sq ft shared with 18 others....

Hatsune Miku ~ J-Pop V-Star's "World is Mine"

Crypton's Hiroyuki Ito is at MIT now, discussing among other things creating J-Pop virtual star Hatsune Miku...

"...computer music software that enables users to create synthesized singing of unprecedented quality and remarkable realism by just typing in lyrics and melody. Powered by Yamaha's Vocaloid (= Vocal + Android) technology, Hatsune Miku was developed by Crypton Future Media in Sapporo, Japan, and released on August 31st, 2007. Since then, there have been more than 100,000 songs and movies [...] posted on popular video sharing websites..."

Check out her World is Mine performance!

When Is Enough? ~ Reflections on Eldercare...

RNW has an important piece by Eric Beauchemin on Treating elderly patients: when is enough enough?

"A 72-year-old woman has sparked off a debate in Dutch society about how far doctors should go in treating elderly patients. In an article in one of the major Dutch dailies, she wrote that more and more 85 and 90-year-old friends, family members and neighbours are not being allowed to die of disease or illness. Marie Louise Cuijpers gave five examples she knew of, including a 90-year-old woman who suffered a stroke. Everyone was convinced that she would die, but she was hospitalised and treated. The woman recovered but was no longer able to speak, walk or eat on her own and was sent to a nursing home, where she remained for three years. She came down with pneumonia and was treated for that too. Finally she passed away. The cost of medical care in the Netherlands is rising sharply. It costs three times more, for instance, to treat people over the age of 65. So when is enough enough?"

CITIES @ UN ~ Design with Other 90% Exhibit

Design with the Other 90%: CITIES exhibit is at UN NYC HQ and...

"...features sixty projects, proposals, and solutions that address the complex issues arising from the unprecedented rise of informal settlements in emerging and developing economies. Divided into six themes -- Exchange, Reveal, Adapt, Include, Prosper and Access -- to help orient the visitor, the exhibition shines the spotlight on communities, designers, architects, and private, civic, and public organizations that are working together to formulate innovative approaches to urban planning, affordable housing, entrepreneurship, nonformal education, public health, and more."

Here's just one compelling exhibit element, the Medellín Metrocable and Northeast Integral Urban Project...

Living Skyline ~ Hyams Green Vision for London

In a breathless CNN piece, 'Living' buildings could inhale city carbon emissions, George Webster extrapolates from contemporary synthetic biology to constructing bioactive buildings in future cities. He closes with words from architect Richard Hyams, an advocate of self-regulating materials...

"As with any significant step-change, it's slow to take off," said Hyams. "From developers, to agents, to buyers themselves, people generally don't want to be the first to risk investment in a relatively untested industry when the costs are high." In addition, says Hyams, legislation is slow, "slicing off the worst building practices from the bottom, rather than advancing the best ideas at the top." [...] as the burden on cities to reduce their vast carbon footprints intensifies, the market will look to more radical solutions."

It's apparently Hyams vision for future London pictured above and in the CNN piece.

Bike Lane Upkeep ~ Proper Maintenance is Key

Cycle Pathster David Hembrow spotlights bike lane maintenance in a recent piece on Autumn leaves... The need for such action is even greater in a snowy winter. I wrote about such civilized cycling support earlier and here you can see, courtesy Copenhagenize, all about bike lane snow clearance! Finally, here Mark Wagenbuur shows cycle path pavement upkeep...

Android @ Home ~ Automation Infostructure...

Interesting to see the Android @ Home vision as shared at their recent Google I/O 2011 conference... Curious how/if/whether MS advances a compelling alternative ecology embracing Kinect, Skype, TellMe, XBox, Mango, etc...

Coast ~ BBC Explores UK Shoreline & History...

Beautiful snippet from the BBC Coast series, here looking at the southwest English coast... And here the Caledonian Canal...

Tomorrow Project ~ Intel's Future Envsionings...

The WSJ interviewed Intel's Brian David Johnson about the Tomorrow Project and their effort to envision the future...

"This is a unique time in history. Science and technology has progressed to the point where what we build is only constrained by the limits of our own imaginations. The future is not a fixed point in front of us that we are all hurtling helplessly towards. The future is built everyday by the actions of people. It's up to all of us to be active participants in the future and these conversations can do just that. The Tomorrow Project engages in ongoing discussions with superstars, science fiction authors and scientists to get their visions for the world that's coming and the world they'd like to build."

Safe Cycling ~ Witness Dutch 8 to 80 Year Olds!

Cycle Pathfinder Mark Wagenbuur serves up Eight to Eighty video of everyday Dutch humanity making some moves! This is what civilized normality looks like!

Media Lab Livestream ~ Open Webcast Week...

I hope you checked out live MIT Media Lab webcasts past few days!

STEM to STEAM ~ RISD's Maeda on a Betternym

STEM is a true craponym -- Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths are surely important and yet the resultant moniker is totally uninspiring and even demoralizing. In no small measure this is because it misses what inspires and motivates and uplifts us -- namely the Arts! RISD President John Maeda's been among the champions for rectifying this oversight and his STEAM betternym is a pretty good improvement. In homage to our recently felled giant, Maeda writes in the Huffington Post, Jobs Added Art to STEM to Create STEAM...

"Were it not for Jobs' influence, I may not have come to believe -- as I do so fervently today -- that you need the "A" for Art to turn STEM to STEAM. Jobs fueled my career as a technologist, artist, designer, and now as a leader of the art and design school by which all others are measured in the world. All of my artistic work -- like the five works that went into MoMA's permanent collection -- was written on a Mac. [...] Jobs foresaw that innovation now extends beyond smaller, faster and cheaper technology -- that technology didn't have to be a rational thing. The MP3 player wasn't a new thing when the iPod came out, nor was the iPhone the first smart phone. But they were the ones that made you give a damn. In his own words, the reason why the Macintosh was so successful was that it was created by artists, musicians, poets and zoologists. Jobs saw that artists and designers could make the technology emotional, desirable, human. [...] On a grander scale, I thank Jobs and Apple for proving that art and design are poised to transform our economy in the 21st century, like science and technology did in the last century. It is this realization that will keep America competitive; the next Apple will be born if America invests in turning "STEM to STEAM" in its research and education."

I think even STEAM could be improved. How about DREAMS skills maybe? Design, Reasoning, Engineering, Arts, Maths, and Science?

Behind the Scenes ~ Amsterdamize Exposé ;-)

Turns out there's a backstory to the Cycling For Everyone vid as revealed by Amsterdamize in an Exposé! Here's Behind the Scenes... And here's the extra goodness... And, of course, the iconic start image...

MV Reefed ~ NZ Maritime Disaster Unfolding...

gCaptain spotlights the MV Rena grounding, quoting the WSJ...

"...the worst environmental maritime disaster in New Zealand. [...] the containers on board, including the ones holding dangerous goods, are all intact on the vessel and [Maritime NZ] is monitoring the dangerous-goods containers. The vessel is carrying four containers of ferrosilicon, a solid matter that can give off hydrogen and cause a fire risk if it comes into contact with water."

Yikes! The BBC's Enviro Correspondent Richard Black writes...

"The authorities are asking questions of the Rena's captain as to how he came to crash into a well-known reef. In time, they may raise familiar questions over the flags of convenience system that effectively allows international shipping to operate without a host government having to take responsibility."

Makes me wonder: We have bigcos Schlumberger and Halliburton for oil exploration & energy development services, but who's the equivalently important & effective champion provider of emergency response & environmental remediation services? Here's the MV Rena owner apologizing...

CineSkates Showdown ~ Cinetics Video Contest!

Nice! Check out the CineSkates Showdown video contest from MIT Imaging Ventures alumco Cinetics...

Kenya Vision 2030 ~ Competitive & Prosperous

Thanks to Martin Mbaya of Nairobi Capital for spotlighting this Kenyan Vision 2030 country development plan towards achieving global competitiveness and prosperity and generally Transforming Kenya. Three Pillars of development include:

• Economic ~ To maintain a sustained economic growth of 10% p.a. over the next 25 years
• Social ~ A just and cohesive society enjoying equitable social development in a clean and secure environment
• Political ~ An issue-based, people-centered, result-oriented, and accountable democratic political system.

I especially like the Flagship Projects section and map...

1K Pops! ~ Cobra Weave Exploding Stick Bomb!

This is just irresistible! 1,000 popsicles form a Cobra Weave Exploding Stick Bomb, here courtesy The Kid Should See This, et al...

Occupiers ~ Reason.tv Groks the "Movement"...

Reason.tv interviews the Occupiers, attempts to grok the "Movement"

Utrecht Centraal ~ Rush Hour in NL Transit Hub!

Rush hour at main Netherlands rail & bus superhub, Utrecht Centraal! Thanks to Busfotodotnl for posting this lovely timelapse! And, not to be forgotten, is this earlier timelapse by Cycle Pathster Mark Wagenbuur spotlighting the Utrecht cycling rush hour too!

Floating Solutions ~ Flexible Heavy-Lift Action...

I've written before about floating hospital ships, Shell's ginormous LNG processing ship, floatable power plants, and other flexible infrastructure (including lots of containerized stuff) and even a jail. Here's some new additions to the list! First, NEAPO's float-in three-storey apartment block built at Turku Shipyard and transferred in one go by water to the island of Hirvensalo, Finland... To build the Snøhvit LNG processing facility in the remote northern Barents Sea, Norway's Statoil commissioned the liquefaction plant from a Spanish engineering firm and floated it via heavy-lift to the Melkøya Island off Hammerfest... Perhaps the most (in)famous example of this is American billionaire Daniel Ludwig's Project Jari, shifting a Japanese-made paper pulp mill around the world and up the Amazon to a Brazilian wood plantation! Here'a a more recent example on a personal scale in this BBC Horizons show on Innovations on water featuring Dutch architect Marlies Rohmer and her waterfront development. Each of the dozens of apartments "floats" are made in a shipyard.

Uplifting Innovations ~ On Elevators & Escalators

Several interesting lift & shift innovations have caught my attention recently. First, my MIT Media Lab colleague Kent Larson pointed me to the very inventive Finnish firm NEAPO which makes Tubetowers, modular & retrofitable elevators & shafts... And another colleague Ryan Chin spotted the Helixator, a hybrid escalator x elevator creating a continuous vertical transit system... As I first wrote about a few years ago, MagneMotion employs Linear Synchronous Motors (LSM) for a variety of very compelling movers, including ultra-heavy Navy ammo lifting and this ultra-conveyor... And their most recent Lite lightweight packet automotion offering... On the showy but cool end of things we have this Parisian stairs plus open elevator centerpiece at the Louvre... Finally, an oldie but goodie, the Paternoster...

Solar Burps ~ Imaging Stellar Plasma Fountains!

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory images the stellar essentials!

Boston Harbor Access ~ Walkways & Waterways

Boston's waterfront and harbor have increasingly shifted from industrial-grade and highly polluted to pleasurable and cleaner. This Boston Harbor Association HarborWalk Map highlights progress in boosting accessibility to pedestrians... And see here Fort Point Pier an (almost) public dock in Downtown Boston with access to harbor by Steve Hollinger of KayaluGear...

Flower Towers ~ FT on Forests in the Urban Sky!

Christopher Woodward, director of London’s Garden Museum, writes in the FT about The age of flower towers...

"Architects are tackling the problems of the concrete jungle with ambitious schemes using green technology to grow forests in the sky. [...] The most exciting new tower in the world is under construction in Milan. At 27 storeys high, Bosco Verticale is a splinter beside the Shard, the 87-storey skyscraper under construction in London. What sets the Milan tower apart is that it will be the world’s first vertical forest, with each apartment having a balcony planted with trees. In summer, oaks and amelanchiers will shade the windows and filter the city’s dust; in winter, sunlight will shrine through the bare branches. Bosco Verticale is the vision of Stefano Boeri..."

Fantastic stuff! Read the rest of the FT article and check out the Garden Museum's From Garden City to Green City exhibition link too!

SF Guide ~ How To Navigate NPR's Top 100...

My MIT colleague Cody Sumter sez...

"So you want to read a science fiction or fantasy book, but don't know which you should pick? Here's a handy flowchart..."

Adopt A City ~ Forbes Spots Romer on Charters

Forbes video Adopt a City spotlights Paul Romer and his Charter Cities idea...

Rising Cain ~ On Reading US Constitution...

Watch here rising US Presidential candidate Herman Cain back in mid-2010 encouraging everyone in DC to actually read the American Declaration of Independence and US Constitution -- and maybe learn! FYI, Cain's surely the only serious candidate with math and CS degrees and who has actually successfully run multiple entrepreneurial ventures! And here's Cain in WSJ Big Interview... Finally, here's 21 Things I didn't know about Cain.

Hieroglyph ~ SF Inspiring Big Stuff Getting Done

Neil Stephenson writes Innovation Starvation in the World Policy Journal where he writes...

"I worry that our inability to match the achievements of the 1960s space program might be symptomatic of a general failure of our society to get big things done. [...] “You’re the ones who’ve been slacking off!” proclaims Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University [...] He refers, of course, to SF writers. The scientists and engineers, he seems to be saying, are ready and looking for things to do. Time for the SF writers to start pulling their weight and supplying big visions that make sense. Hence the Hieroglyph project, an effort to produce an anthology of new SF that will be in some ways a conscious throwback to the practical techno-optimism of the Golden Age."

Hieroglyph = a project of science fiction writers to depict future worlds in which BSGD (Big Stuff Gets Done).

Roofhouse ~ Urban Residences Plopped Up Top!

Learned about this Boston roofhouse just now!

Cycle-Friendly Bus Stops ~ High-Safety Bikelanes

Cycle Pathologist David Hembrow shares practical design tips for making bicycle-friendly bus stops instead of US-style deathtraps... This has been Dutch cycling sensibility for decades...

R.I.P. Jobs ~ Resilient & Inspired Giant Laid Low