mass-transit or teb talks

Showcased at the latest Beijing International High-Tech Expo, the Transit Elevated Bus (TEB) could potentially alleviate some of China’s infamous traffic snarls. If deemed street-ready, production of such machines, whose bus stops would be raised above fray as well.
I suppose such a vehicle might prove viable if the omnibus could kneel and raise-up accordingly to negotiate bridges or lorries. I have to wonder, however, how many other arteries might be clogged above street-level with more and more eventually adopting this model, like the exponential potential for the skies to become clogged with fly-cars. Driverless cars might be better plenipotentiaries for managing traffic flow—perhaps, if allowed to communicate with one another and not at cross-purposes. Can such a vehicle be programmed to sacrifice its timely arrival for the sake of letting the flow continue? Can a driverless car sacrifice the life and limb of its single occupant to avoid a deadly collision with a TEB full of passengers. In any case, I hope such steamrollers go into production.

A3, M4

Though not equal to the experience of seeing the performance live in concert, Boing Boing’s appreciation of the 1979 treatment of Kraftwerk’s Autobahn to a rather surreal and psychedelic animated feature by Roger Mainwood—a devoted fan and back then fresh out of an prestigious London art school, is indeed a close second, a surprise but somehow vaguely familar. Although stylistically very different (from both Kraftwerk and A-ha!), the adaptation reminded of the music video for Take on Me, an imaginative visual correspondence with the lyrics.

dichtum und wahrheit

We had the chance recently to scamper around Weimar for a return visit and take in the sites, for myself at least, with a fuller sense of appreciation, recognising how since the residence of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe overlapping with that of Friedrich Schiller, the town became a focus of pilgrimage for intelligentsia and academics.
The iconic statue by Ernst Friedrich August Rietschel, position before the court theatre and venue for many of Schiller’s plays under the direction of Goethe, is rather a quirky curiosity on its own, representing the cult-like elevation of the two figures, aligned with the town’s (and its independent avatar’s) tradition of patronage. Notwithstanding the republican experiment, the Bauhaus movement, and musical significance (plus all the other things to see and do), the bespoke and iconic monument to the two writers, scientists and collectors is a symbol of Thuringia and has been faithfully copied in America and China many times over. The gigantic likenesses place the two at equal height, though Goethe was quite a bit shorter in stature, and both offer their laurels for inspiration.

incident and diffusion or the worshipful company of carpenters

When I first read about the Royal Institute of Stockholm having engineered transparent wood—that could eventually replace windows and the glass of solar panels, I was bit sceptical as the announcement coincided with April Fools’ Day and was proud of myself for having not been taken and falling prey to a prank.
Now the development is confirmed, however, with the process of chemically stripping the lignin (which is the stuff of paper pulp) and replacing it with an epoxy, a strengthening agent, being reproduced by a team at the University of Maryland. As a natural insulator, replacing pains and other architectural materials with see-through wood could see immense savings in climate-control, not to mention industrial costs buried in extraction and refining. Can you think of other applications for this rather amazing sounding treated timber?

stør or edugraphics

IKEA instruction manuals getting a send-up with the time-honoured Simpson’s Couch Gag gave me a tickle.
Surely a bigger accolade than more ephemeral recognitions like being doodled (though still no smål achievement), this running visual joke began as a buffer to make the episode adhere to scheduled commercial-breaks has been a regular sequence since 1989 (with some repetition but used as an element of fore-shadowing as well). This news also makes me realise that I’ve no idea when the show premieres for domestic audiences, as the last I recall, The Simpsons was airing on Thursday’s line-up and led to the demise of the The Cosby Show, with its similar signature opening fanfare.

faux chateaux

Via the always thought-provoking Mental Floss, we learn of the rather questionable (though possibly nothing ought to be taboo in the name of science, and equally not surprising given our native stinginess and de-enterprising ways of finding short-cuts) endeavour of crafting wine without the fruit of the vine.  San Francisco-based Ava Winery simplifies and expedites the whole time-tested, involved process of growing, harvesting, fermenting and ageing through chemistry.

The preliminary results, after a tasting, were not however described in the usual savoury and celebratory vocabulary of foxy or smokey or smooth by oenolgists but rather with harsher descriptors, but I suppose this was just the Premier Cru and it takes time to perfect the formula. What do you think? I am not liking this (I think) and wonder what the point is. I wonder what sort of obnoxious name will have to be invested for grapeless wines—wintage, Vino Vidi Vici®—and feel that we ought not voluntarily give up on traditional methods while they are still viable.

they'll be bluebirds over

For us, of course, Dover and its surrounds were more than a departure point and terminal, with its iconic chalk cliffs and stretches of beaches.  As always, click on any image to enlarge.
We were delighted, however, to also discover the series of white escarpments outside the town of Seaford (between Brighton-by-the-Sea and Eastbourne) in East Sussex called Beachy Head and the Seven Sisters. It was a pleasant hike through a tidal estuary, populated by cows and sheep, to the undulating cliffs, marching along pebbly strands that were abundant with the signs of partial fossil imprints—though no terribly exciting specimens were to be found.
The Seven Sisters, owing to their whiter character and lack of potentially anachronistic additions (there being only a sedate golf course a top the cliffs), are often favoured by film-crews as a substitute site, an understudy for the more famous White Cliffs of Dover.

détente or space-race

First recommended by the always interesting Everlasting Blört, with additional reporting from Gizmodo’s Paleofuture department, we learn about the pioneering work of one of the Soviet Union’s first missile and rocket test sites, Kaspustin Yar, whose existence was made public only to protect the secret identity of the cosmodrome of Baikonur. A cache of photographs from the test-ground’s early days has been recently declassified in celebration of the facility’s seventieth anniversary. Be sure to visit both of the links above (scroll down a bit on the Blört) to see video footage and a curated gallery of images.