Celebrity Art | Tilda Swinton, ‘The Maybe’

gothamist

Tilda Swinton has currently taken up residency sleeping at MoMA. It’s part of an unannounced, surprise performance piece called ‘The Maybe’ that will be taking place on random days all year.

A MoMA source said, “Tilda Swinton will be doing unannounced, random performance art pieces sleeping in a glass box in the museum. Museum staff doesn’t know she's coming until the day of, but she’s here today. She’ll be there the whole day. All that’s in the box is cushions and a water jug.”

Natural Pest Control | Israelis Eat Locusts

BBC

Locusts, which eat the equivalent of their body weight every day, are gnawing their way through fields of potatoes and corn in Israel. So Israelis are eating their space invaders.

Call it revenge, or just a practical killing of two birds with one stone - whatever the motivation, many Israelis have decided to cook them up, and eat them.

Locust is the only insect which is considered kosher. Specific extracts in the Torah state that four types of desert locust - the red, the yellow, the spotted grey, and the white - can be eaten.

As with fish, there are no rules surrounding their ritual slaughter, making them a particularly versatile ingredient for culinary connoisseurs, like chef Moshe Basson, founder and owner of the famous Eucalyptus restaurant in Jerusalem, and a specialist in reviving ancient Biblical foods.

For the uninitiated, he recommends serving them crunchy - an effect that is best achieved as follows:

Drop them into a boiling broth, clean them off, and roll in a mixture of flour, coriander seeds, garlic and chilli powder. Then deep-fry them.

Pan-frying is another good option, and they are "crunchy, tasty and sweet", says Basson, when mixed with caramel and sprinkled into meringue.

Dr Carolyn Dean on Coast to Coast Radio 21 March 2013

Dr Carolyn Dean, The Magnesium Miracle

Dumbo the Owl | A Day in the Life

Dabbawalla | Indian Food Delivery

The Perennial Plate

Each day in Mumbai 4000 men in white outfits and matching hats transport 175,000 lunches across the big city. They retrieve the lunch containers of food from mothers and wives, and bring them (by foot, train, bicycle and even carried on top of their heads) to the office buildings of waiting husbands and sons. The Dabba Wallas have been doing this since the late 1800s. Despite the unsophisticated mode of transport, the lunches always arrive on time (the error rate is 1 in every 16 million transactions).

Pentel Graph 1000 Pencil

Pencils. I wouldn't call myself a pencil pusher. I rarely use them at home, and I only use them occasionally at work. That said, I really appreciate a good mechanical or drafting pencil. There's just something cool about actuating a mechanism to extend an always-sharp piece of lead into the ready position. Plus, I don't like wooden pencil shavings on my desk, in my desk drawers, or anywhere near my personal space.

One of my earliest posts was about my Pentel Sharp Kerry. I still like the Kerry, its design, and the color. I found, however, that capping and uncapping it can be tedious at times, and that it doesn't really have an ideal grip for serious pencil drawing, drafting, and sketching use. Accordingly, I convinced myself that I really NEEDED another mechanical/drafting pencil for everyday use at the office. So, I started looking at various retail websites and other blogs (such as Dave's Mechanical Pencils) for ideas. Long story short, I acquired this gem:

This stealthy looking item is the Pentel Graph 1000 for Pro drafting pencil, with 0.4 mm lead. I wish they sold a "for Amateur" or a "for Hacks" version of this pencil, but whatever. I was originally interested in the Rotring pencils, but I decided to buy another Pentel because I recently purchased a tube of those useless little eraser plugs and thought that it would be nice to keep things compatible. I was also ready for a departure from my 0.5 mm comfort zone and decided to try the 0.4 mm size, even though refills are not readily available.

I really like the sleek and simple design of this pencil. The clip looks nice, and the white labeling stands out on the black body. This pencil is available in several lead sizes, and the ends are color-coded to indicate the lead size (the green on mine corresponds to 0.4 mm).

The lead size is also conspicuously visible at the end for easy identification when stored in a pencil holder. The end is also outfitted with a lead hardness indicator that allows the user to select and show the type of lead that is currently loaded in the pencil. There is a nice clicky feel to the selector, which includes the following: B, HB, H, and 2H. Strangely, the selector also has two blank positions. Why didn't Pentel use those positions for two other lead hardness labels?

The picture above shows the business end of the Graph 1000. I believe that the section with the rubber grip pieces is metal (the rest of the body is plastic). This metal and plastic combo results in a somewhat lightweight yet well-balanced instrument. It weighs in at 10.8 grams, loaded with several leads. Overall, I like the matte black Darth Vadar look, and I like this pencil better than the Pentel Sharp Kerry for typical everyday use.

As I mentioned above, 0.4 mm lead is not very common. So, I also purchased two packs of 0.4 mm lead to go with the pencil. Pictured here is one of the two packs. Once again, the Japanese score high on the scale of downright awesomeness.

Check out the crazy lid opening and dispensing mechanism that is integrated into the box. The picture shows the box after the "open" lever has been actuated. As shown, a tiny spout extends so that the lead can be easily dispensed with little to no hassle. Nice touch.

To summarize: (1) I don't use pencils very often, but when I do, I break out my new Pentel Graph 1000 for Pro; (2) 0.4 mm lead is for rebels; and (3) my Pentel Sharp Kerry got demoted to home use.

New York City | Skyhouse

David Hotson Architect

SkyHouse is a penthouse occupying four floors at the summit of an early skyscraper in Lower Manhattan. Angel caryatids at the corners advertise its original role as the headquarters of the American Tract Society, a publisher of religious literature which constructed this building in 1896. ​

The American Tract Society building is one of the earliest—and one of the oldest surviving—steel framed skyscrapers in New York. It is the last survivor of a group of early skyscrapers, built across from City Hall to house competing publishers, which were the tallest buildings in the world at the time they were constructed in the late 19th century.

The Skyhouse features a tubular slide portal, constructed from mirror-polished stainless steel, which emerges through a circular hole cut in the seamless sloping glass partition at the south end of the Attic.

Windows in the slide admit natural light from the dormer windows and provide fleeting vistas through the entire length of the penthouse.

To compete with the drama of the slide as it sweeps through the space and out the window to the stair, interior designer Ghislaine Vinas installed a startling mural, inspired by Michael Jackson’s Neverland, in the only vertical wall in the room. The saturated colors of the mural are fractured in the mirror polished facets of the slide, scatting patterns of color along the inner surface of the slide.

Caro Emerald | Tangled Up

Deborah Anderson | Aroused

Deborah Anderson, The Aroused Project

Christo | Big Air Package

Christo’s “Big Air Package,” is billed as the largest indoor sculpture created to date. The artist likens the experience to stepping within a light-filled cathedral.

KT Nelson | Transit

Yoav Goren | Movie Trailer Music Composer

Video: Michael Coleman

Emma, Le Trefle

Death Wish Coffee | 200% More Caffeine

Death Wish Coffee

You will not find this coffee at your local diner or at your sissy ‘Starbucks.’ Death Wish Coffee is the most highly caffeinated premium dark roast coffee in the world—200% the amount of caffeine as your typical coffee shop coffee. All while being grown organically, fairly traded, and shade grown (saves the land). This is Extreme Coffee, not for the weak.

Below: National Public Radio

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The World's first Diamond Ring

Valued at approximately $70 million and weighing 150 carats (more than three times the weight of the Hope Diamond), the one ring to rule them all is made entirely out of a cut and finished diamond.

APP

Gizmag
Ben Coxworth

It’s generally agreed upon that it’s improper to check one’s smartphone while watching a movie in a theater. The new Dutch thriller APP, however, encourages viewers to do so. The film’s soundtrack contains a digital audio “watermark” – inaudible to human hearing – that causes exclusive supplemental content to appear on smartphones running the APP app.

The film centers around a young psychology student named Anna. The morning after a wild party, she awakens to find an app called IRIS (try spelling that backwards) installed on her phone. The all-knowing IRIS seems pretty helpful at first, but gradually turns nasty, sending compromising text messages, videos and photos to people on Anna’s contacts list. When she tries to rectify the situation, mayhem ensues.

The real-life APP app allows viewers to see the trouble-making messages, etc. on their own phones, as the characters receive them in the movie. It also provides access to additional scenes, and background information regarding what’s currently taking place on screen. The app should also work with DVD and Blu-ray releases of the film.

Nick Woodman | GoPro Billionaire

Forbes

Go anywhere active these days, whether it’s the mountains of Vail or the scuba-diving depths of Honolulu’s Hanauma Bay, and you’re bound to see a GoPro or 20. Kids these days don’t film their wave rides or half-pipe tricks. They GoPro them, strapping the $200 to $400 cameras to helmets, handlebars and surfboards. The cinema-grade, panoramic “point-of-view” footage that comes out of a GoPro transforms mere mortals into human highlight reels, without blowing a huge hole in the budget.

Himalaya Water Tower

eVolo

Housed within 55,000 glaciers in the Himalaya Mountains sits 40 percent of the world’s fresh water. The massive ice sheets are melting at a faster-than-ever pace due to climate change, posing possible dire consequences for the continent of Asia and the entire world stand, and especially for the villages and cities that sit on the seven rivers that come are fed from the Himalayas’ runoff as they respond with erratic flooding or drought.

Zhi Zheng, Hongchuan Zhao and Dongbai Song’s “Himalaya Water Tower” is a skyscraper located high in the mountain range that serves to store water and helps regulate its dispersal to the land below as the mountains’ natural supplies dry up. The skyscraper, which can be replicated en masse, will collect water in the rainy season, purify it, freeze it into ice and store it for future use. The water distribution schedule will evolve with the needs of residents below; while it can be used to help in times of current drought, it’s also meant to store plentiful water for future generations.

The lower part of the tower is comprised of six stem-like pipes that curve and wind together and collect and store water. Like the stem of a plant, these pipes grow strong as they absorb their maximum water capacity. In each of the six stems, a core tube is flanked by levels and levels of cells, which hold the water. The upper part of the building – the part that is visible above the snow line – is used for frozen storage. Four massive cores support steel cylindrical frames that, like the stems below, hold levels that radiate out, creating four steel tubes filled with ice. In between the two sections are mechanical systems that help freeze the water when the climatic conditions aren’t able to do so, purify the water and regulate the distribution of water and ice throughout the structure.

At the bottom of the structure, surrounding the six intertwined water tubes is a transport system that regulates fresh water distribution to the towns and cities below. The curving channels connect the mountains to the villages, and are also hold within them a railway for the transport of people and goods.

Bike World | 18 March 2013

World 1343

Fran Silvestre Arquitectos | House on the Cliff

How Ink is Made

The Printing Company

Emily Anthes | Frankenstein’s Cat

National Public Radio

In Frankenstein's Cat: Cuddling up to Biotech's Brave New Beasts, science journalist Emily Anthes talks about how the landscape of bioengineering has expanded. Scientists, she says, are now working to create pigs that can grow organs for human transplant, goats that produce valuable protein-rich milk, and cockroaches that could potentially serve as tiny scouts into danger zones for the military.

One lab in China is even tackling the human genome by way of the mouse genome. There, researchers are randomly disabling mouse genes one at a time, in order to identify the function of each gene.

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Mediums Used to Create the Atomic Bomb

Payday

Bob Dobbs explains to James Kidnie that mediums were used to develop the atomic bomb in WWII.

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Airport Skyscraper

eVolo

Ninety-seven percent of Chinese airports will need to be rebuilt by 2020, according to a recent survey, causing huge implications for cost and land use issues, and the city of Beijing is currently planning the construction of a second airport.

ZhiYong Hong and XueTing Zhang, designers of the Air@Port, propose avoiding using precious land for new airports by constructing one 450 meters in the air. The airport sits atop the bases of dozens of thin towers that mushroom out at the top with wide platforms that all connect to support the runways and airport facilities on top. Being so high up will mean that there won’t be height restrictions on the buildings erected on the platform. Also, because wind speed is higher 450 meters in the air than it is at sea level, the length of the runway can be effectively reduced, saving space.

Vertical air buses will transport visitors from the ground (or underground, if they are arriving via subway) up the stems of the tall structures. In addition to air transport facilities, this air city will also include a hotel and commercial, conference and office spaces; these areas are located in the towers beneath the airport.

Portal | Aperture Science R&D