Attention, bike geeks! Offering as much protection as a standard helmet, “Overade” folds up when not in use, allowing it to be easily carried in a purse or backpack.(via Designboom)
Stockholm-based street artist Akay has created the “Rainbow Warrior: Tool No. 05.1” which is part of his “Instruments of Mass Destruction (Complicated Technical Solutions to Aide in Simple Acts of Vandalism) Series,” that includes the previous “Robo-Rainbow: Tool No. 10.” For both of the “art-making’ tools, the individual attaches an implement to the back of his/her bicycle.(via Designboom)
Especially awesome in light of the impending winter-biking season: “Quickfix” and “Foldnfix” are portable, snap-on bicycle mudguards, produced by London bicycle accessories design company Full Windsor. Unlike conventional mudguards, the pieces affix universally across almost all bikes and require no tools to install. (via Designboom)
Beijing-based artist Nicholas Hanna has taken the art of temporary calligraphy to a whole new, digitized level. Hanna strapped big water jugs to the back of a sān lún chē, or tricycle rickshaw, and connected them to about 15 computer-controlled nozzles that are affixed to the back of the vehicle. As he pedals down the street, the contraption dribbles water, leaving temporary characters that look like a hybrid of hanzi and the classic video game Space Invaders. Keep reading …
The Crockpot: A Weekly Link-Digest from Utne
Bookish Virgos belong in literary Boston, intense Scorpios are drawn to Minneapolis’s calming river, and private Aquarii crave suburbia. Find out the best places to live depending on your astrological sign, according to EcoSalon. - Are you freaking out a little about climate change? Come on, you can do better.
- As Americans ditch fraternal organizations, the rest of the world is flocking to them.
- Learn how to pilot your bicycle in a decorous fashion.
- Docs say: please don’t use group health insurance to pay for your prettied-up labia.
- A surgeon with a good bedside manner isn’t just more pleasant in the operating room. Surgeon civility also results in fewer post-operative deaths.
- Don’t kick the bucket before watching the 50 Documentaries To See Before You Die.
- An unregulated American fertilization industry is creating super fathers, some with as many as 150 children.
- “The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy,” says Mike Lofgren, a former Republican party operative who resigned his post after a 30-year career out of disgust for the political process.
- A little confused about how electoral politics work? Micahel Bérubé wants to explain the process: “[T]here seems to be some serious misunderstanding of the dynamics of national elections in the US. So let me try to clear this up once and for all.”
- Barry Duncan is quite possibly the world’s first master palindromist, and he refuses to cede control to the alphabet.
- Here’s a list of the top ten things everyone should know about time. According to the author, most organisms have a lifespan of 1.5 billion heartbeats—which means you should hurry up and read.
- Have you ever wondered what to listen to while eating eggplant parmigiana? The blog Turntable Kitchen offers pairings for food and music.
- The Japanese branch of the Domino’s pizza chain has unveiled plans for the first pizzeria on the moon. For reals.
(via Designboom)
As part of a collaborative fundraising event between Elton John AIDS Foundation and W Hotels, six top creatives were invited to transform the distinctive blue “Boris Bike” used by Londoners into a a functional work of art, to by used by visitors to London’s W Hotel at Leicester Square. The project goes by the name WOW Bikes and Israeli-born UK-based designer Ron Arad was amongst the select group—which includes artist Benedict Radcliff, fashion designers Patrick Cox and Alice Temperley, singer Paloma Faith and illustrator Natasha Law—who each created a completely original, bespoke bike. Arad’s design involves sprung steel arranged in tesselated forms for its wheels.
How does a bicycle work? Turns out, not exactly how we’d thought … Many of us can repeat the conventional grade-school wisdom that the gyroscopic effect is the magical stabilizer of the spinning bike wheel—but scientists are finding that the physics of biking are much more complex than this, reports Science News. They are learning this in part by trying to knock over moving bikes. Read more …
"The bicycle is a parody of a wheeled vehicle—a donkey cart without the cart, where you do the work of the donkey. Although the technology necessary to build a bicycle has been around since ancient Egypt, bikes didn’t appear until the 19th century. The reason it took mankind 5,000 years to get the idea for the bicycle is that it was a bad idea. The bicycle is the only method of conveyance worse than feet. You can walk up three flights of stairs carrying one end of a sofa. Try that on a bicycle."
— P.J. O’Rourke on the tyranny of cycling.
