Macropinna microstoma

{image} {video} The bizarre "barreleye" fish Macropinna microstoma.

The Atlas of the Real World

Image Internet Users in 1990 from The Atlas of the Real World.

Worldmapper

Life After People

Channel 4: Life After People

The 11th Hour (film)

Saw on Channel 4: The 11th Hour (第十一個小時)
專家們提出的概念觀點值得深思

China earthquake stories in comics

Moving stories from recent China earthquake depicted in comics drawn by Coco Wang.

Sexual purity and the new global terrorism

Shere Hite: Sexual purity and the new global terrorism
A thoughts-provoking discourse around arguments such as why sex being opposite of purity, reproduction pressure and men's ownership of women, the lack of expressing of private feelings and more..

No End In Sight

... intelligence provided by sources in the Iraqi National Congress on Iraq’s weapons programs seemed to support the Bush administration’s worst fears about Saddam Hussein, although some in the intelligence community and the State Department suspected the information might not be accurate. And so, this time without the support of the United Nations, the United States, supported by the United Kingdom and a coalition of allied countries, invaded Iraq in March of 2003.
(No End In Sight: THE WAR, INFO ON IRAQ)

No End In Sight and trailer

What is the economy there for?

A recent BBC survey showed that Britons were happier in the 1950s than we are today, despite a threefold increase in wealth.

"Countries that have most closely followed the Anglo-Saxon, strongly market-led economic model show up as the least efficient," commented Nef's policy director, Andrew Simms.

"These findings question what the economy is there for. What is the point if we burn vast quantities of fossil fuels to make, buy and consume ever more stuff without noticeably benefiting our wellbeing?"

Based on its analysis, Nef's prescription for happy European countries with low per-capita carbon footprints includes measures such as:

• mandatory short-term targets for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions
• reducing inequalities in income, education, health and social opportunity
• using the emerging science of wellbeing as a driver of policy

BBC: Emissions don't make Europe happy

Five Ways To Save The World

BBC: Five Ways To Save The World

"Once you start managing nature you have to continue to manage nature, there is no use hoping that it will restore itself to a new equilibrium set up by humans." -Professor Ian Jones-

Futuristic fleet of 'cloudseeders'
Creating a 'sulphur screen'
Global sunshade
Multiplying the ocean's CO2 guzzlers
Artificial trees: A green solution?

Steganography | SeymourPowell's Design

BBC: Hiding messages in plain sight
使用普及化的數位隱寫術可以透過手機的相機辨識直接由印刷品連結上網.

隱寫術相關: 聖經密碼
--- --- ---

SeymourPowell design studio

2009: A Space Odyssey
A virtual tour onboard the Virgin Galactic spaceship

{Airy Schooner: Clipper in the Clouds}
via BusinessWeek

doomsday vault

BBC: 'Doomsday' vault design unveiled

prehistoric hug

BBC: Italy mystery of prehistoric hug

green Apple campaign

{image} {image}

We love Apple. Apple knows more about "clean" design than anybody, right? So why do Macs, iPods, iBooks and the rest of their product range contain hazardous substances that other companies have abandoned? A cutting edge company shouldn't be cutting lives short by exposing children in China and India to dangerous chemicals. That's why we Apple fans need to demand a new, cool product: a greener Apple.

=====
[03/May/2007]

A Greener Apple:
Steve Jobs updates the state of Apple’s environmental record.

How we are being watched

BBC: How we are being watched

CCTV CAMERAS
There are up to 4.2m CCTV cameras in Britain - about one for every 14 people - making it one of the most watched places on earth.

AUTOMATIC NUMBER PLATE RECOGNITION
SHOP RFID TAGS
MOBILE PHONE TRIANGULATION
STORE LOYALTY CARDS
CREDIT CARD TRANSACTIONS
OYSTER CARDS

SATELLITES
No-one outside the military and intelligence community really has any idea of the level of monitoring from the skies.

But the popularity of Google Earth must lead users to guess that the military probably have their hands on something a whole lot better.

ELECTORAL ROLL
NHS PATIENTS RECORDS
PERSONAL VIDEO RECORDERS
PHONE-TAPPING
BUGS AND HIDDEN CAMERAS
WORKER CALL MONITORING

COOKIES
One of the most subtle forms of surveillance is the use of HTTP cookies - small packets of data that are used to communicate between websites and your computer. They are used to set your preferences when you visit a website for a second time and for a host of other reasons.

You can switch your cookies off but then there's a host of websites that you will be unable to use properly. Want to shop online? Well then you might just have to accept being watched.

BBC: Britain is 'surveillance society'
Fears that the UK would "sleep-walk into a surveillance society" have become a reality, the government's information commissioner has said.

BBC: iPod add-on 'fails' privacy test
Joggers using the iPod Sport kit to keep fit are putting their personal privacy at risk, warn scientists.

theFLOW™

designing sustainable growth
theFLOWmarket™ / theFLOWinstitute™

new needs
A rising demand for sustainable innovation

Throughout the 20th century the pursuit for technological and economic progress has given the industrialized world great new possibilities but has also resulted in a wide range of imbalances and challenges on 3 levels:

• The individual - man’s relation to oneself: (rising stress- depression- and obesity curves, addictions, eating disorders, symptom treatment etc.)

• The collective - man’s relation to society: (over-consumption, increasing fear, xenophobia, global inequality, cultural rectification, conflicts over resources, commercialisation etc.)

• The environmental - man’s relation to nature: (pollution, agricultural toxics, factory farming, decreasing bio-diversity etc.)

Challenges that individually and together bear witness to an unhealthy development of our societies. As a response a need for more sustainable growth is rising to the top of the agenda of individuals, business and nations.

Thus a new consumer market based on values is expanding rapidly, where the materialistically rich consumer increasingly judges products and sevices on their immaterial values and on level of sustainability.

Businesses, whose role is changing from being production units to becoming ”corporate citizens” know this. They themselves point towards social responsibility and innovation as the most important competitive parameters of tomorrow, but they lack the skills to combine the to notions.

Unreported World

{image} UK Channel 4: Unreported World

Guide to green electronics

{image} Your guide to green electronics @ Greenpeace

The Solar System

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The scientists agreed that for a celestial body to qualify as a planet:

- it must be in orbit around the Sun
- it must be large enough that it takes on a nearly round shape
- it has cleared its orbit of other objects

@ BBC: Pluto loses status as a planet

Criticism @ BBC: Pluto vote 'hijacked' in revolt

"It's an awful definition; it's sloppy science and it would never pass peer review - for two reasons.

"Firstly, it is impossible and contrived to put a dividing line between dwarf planets and planets. It's as if we declared people not people for some arbitrary reason, like 'they tend to live in groups'.

"Secondly, the actual definition is even worse, because it's inconsistent."

Real-colour display technology

Arrays of thousands of tiny "super prisms" controlled by robotic muscles could bring real colour to TV screens for the first time, scientists say.

The devices, known as electrically tunable diffraction gratings, have been built by researchers in Switzerland.

They manipulate light to reproduce the full spectrum of colours on screen, impossible using existing technology.

The team say the devices could also be used to make computer displays with the same resolution as high-end LCDs.

"Today's displays can only reproduce a limited range of colours," said Manuel Aschwanden of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and one of the team behind the work.

"The main advantage of this technology is that it can display all colours."

Full article @ BBC: Artificial muscles light up TVs

How many planets are there?

{image}

How many planets are there?

So what definition have they decided on?
For a celestial object to be considered a planet, it must satisfy two conditions:

1- The object must be in orbit around a star, but must not itself be a star
2- It must have enough mass for the body's own gravity to pull it into a nearly spherical shape

Any object with a mass greater than 0.6% that of our Moon and a diameter greater than 800km would normally meet the second condition. But borderline cases will have to be resolved by more observation.

Some objects currently considered to be moons and asteroids could be eligible if they meet those basic tests. So the definition leaves the door open for other objects to join the expanding club.

@ BBC: Q&A New planets proposal