"They are everywhere: around us, beside us, beneath us, busy in their small, secret world. Tiny, alien, comic and fierce, stalk legs and compound eyes, extravagantly built for plain purposes: they fly, they mate, they hunt and feed."

Nice close-ups and perspective from this weird world....from Rick Lieder at www.bugdreams

a one page reference source from Wikipedia for information on events, people, inventions and discoveries dating from the 11th century....

from www.votos.de , an interesting gallery of onstage photos. All feet (or foot) shots of a variety of performers from Bowie to Lucinda Williams to Sonic Youth.

Pictured is Neil Young.

...from the London review of Books personal column. A sample...

"Male readers of the LRB: trawling for sex as your opening gambit doesn't really work. Talk to me about your favourite author; the painting that means the most to you; what smells remind you of your childhood; the day you first saw your parents differently; your first holiday; your favourite place to read; the last recipe you followed; the most recent newspaper clipping you kept; the name of a lover you most recently remembered; your favourite stretch of water; what you like most about Paris or Rome or London; the last time you fed ducks on a pond. Actually, I'm short on time. Go ahead and trawl. Woman, 39. Publishing. Get on with it. Box no. 08/09 "

An online guide to a special exhibit from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

"The present exhibition aims to offer a unified portrait of Leonardo as a draftsman, integrating his diverse roles as an artist, author, scientist, inventor, theorist, and teacher within a chronological framework that can shed light on his development. Unlike most Italian Renaissance artists, Leonardo inscribed a number of his notebooks and drawings with dates and reminders of places and purposes."

how does this go together? , or come apart....?

Combining industrial machining processes with artistic design results in one impressive looking pizza cutter.

"My work investigates one of a kind objects and their role in a world based on mechanical reproduction. Industry has removed the aura from objects and stripped them of their individuality. My pizza cutters seek to demolish the sterile conformity of mass produced objects and represent the stylistic and flamboyant embellishment of groups who live on the fringe of popular culture"

More than one would really need to know about the current state of development of this device.

"For most people, toilets are a private perch, a place for quiet contemplation. But not for plumbing researchers. Their job demands that they dream of toilets that never were and ask, "Why not?" Lately they've been pushing hard. Ever since regulators clamped down on the volume of water allowed per flush, more users have reported clogs. New low-flow toilets, great in theory, just aren't cutting it. Independent testers, frustrated by the industry's lackadaisical response to these problems, have started to apply the same kind of pressure to toilet makers that JD Power did to car companies in the 1980s. The result: Manufacturers have begun using computer models and sophisticated math to create toilets that flush cleaner, faster, quieter, and more efficiently."

all kinds of interesting services are popping up, employing the search and graphic functions of Google

A glimpse of what modern architects are coming up with.

Structures that are making use of limited ground space, and innovative shapes and materials...all designed within the last decade and scheduled for completion within the next.

Twenty-five projects, including designs for the World Trade Towers and London Bridge tower.

Pictured, left, is the 'Industrialized Housing System', 660ft, Korea - a modular, multi-configurable system, with the basic units built off-site and assembled as pieces. The 'Turning Torso', right, Malmo, Sweden, 623 ft, is an office and apartment complex.

"This exhibition presents large-scale models, drawings, and photographs of twenty-five skyscrapers from around the world. Designed within the last decade, these buildings redefine the genre for the twenty-first century."

Nasa scientists have been tracking the orbit of many asteroids, and one in particular is noteworthy."2004 MN4" ( named), will pass very close to earth on this day.

"On April 13, 2029, the predicted trajectory now passes within 5.7 Earth radii (36,350 km or 22,600 miles) of the Earth's center - just below the altitude of geosynchronous Earth satellites."

This one will be closer even, than "2002 MN" , which was only discovered after it had whizzed by us, well within the Moons orbit, in June of 2002.

I can only imagine the buildup to this event. I wonder if it falls on a Friday.....?

As annoying as modern advertising is, it reflects the the current stage of our technology - in many cases, that's what it's selling. It's interesting to look back at the earlier means of delivering ads, and who was behind them.

In this case, Dr Seuss used his artistic talents to get him through some lean times by drawing ads for a number of companies selling a variety of products.

"The Dr. Seuss Collection, housed at the Mandeville Special Collections Library at the University of California, San Diego, contains many examples of Dr. Seuss's advertising artwork. The library has scanned a selection of these advertisements for greater access. Besides promoting the Standard Oil companies Flit and Esso, Dr. Seuss's creations have hawked such diverse goods as ball bearings, radio promotional spots, beer, and sugar."

An interesting visual representation of the places in the news, and how the locations are inter-connected, generated from current news feeds.

Locations that appear more often are represented by red circles on the map. The more frequently the cities appear, the larger the circle. Connections between locations are determined by intercontextual referencing in news articles. These connections are represented by lines between locations. The stronger the connection, the darker the line.

I sure would like to see this one in it's entirety.

a couple of pics of this amazing mural are posted on Wooster......

"A few weeks back we posted a photo of an amazing mural found on the streets of Lima, Peru..........The artist who did the mural is know as 3:38. The photos above where sent to us by our friend BE in Lima."

Remember these guys...?

From woostercollective.com ..... a contribution with images from a UK resident.

"Every day, on my way to work, I pass the famous Abbey Road recording studio in St John's Wood. The wall at the front is used as a kind of giant guest book. Every so often an interesting and or unique picture appears. This week whilst trying to avoid tourists reenacting the front cover of Abbey Road by The Beatles, I noticed an elaborate drawing of the yellow submarine. I thought I might record it for posterity. Unfortunately every 3 or 4 months the whole wall is whitewashed and it all starts again."... Martin Clabburn UK

Kevin Kelly at Cool Tools has a review of a great sounding device that'll clean house floors much like the swimming pool robots that randomly scour the pool's bottom.

"It has some lovable quirks: you need to block it from going down stairs (going down the stairs has not damaged it, but I worry). It does not find its way back to its recharger when done, so you need to locate it after it has cleaned. The electrostatic cleaning pads need replacing after 5-10 cleanings, and cost 30-40 cents each, so the cost per cleaning is 3 to 8 cents."

I'm not sure how Grace the cat would take to the new resident, but I like the idea...

Micheal Geist, a law professor at the U of Ottawa has written an article that tries to explain how peer to peer (p2p) file sharing and resulting music downloading and copying, are not the reasons for the ills of the Canadian music industry and it's declining cd sales (and royalty) figures.

"Canada is in the midst of a contentious copyright reform with advocates for stronger copyright protection maintaining that the Internet has led to widespread infringement that has harmed the economic interests of Canadian artists.The Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) has emerged as the leading proponent of copyright reform, claiming that peer-to-peer file sharing has led to billions in lost sales in Canada."

This article examines CRIA’s claims by conducting an analysis of industry figures. It concludes that loss claims have been greatly exaggerated and challenges the contention that recent sales declines are primarily attributable to file-sharing activities. Moreover, the article assesses the financial impact of declining sales on Canadian artists, concluding that revenue collected through a private copying levy system already adequately compensates Canadian artists for the private copying that occurs on peer-to-peer networks."

Fabien Cousteau gets up close to the Great Whites in a submersible craft designed to look and act like the real thing, with some assistance from the movie industry's special effects designers.

The sub, nicknamed "Troy," has three cameras, including one cleverly hidden above the shark head in a fake remora, or suckerfish, that looks like the ones that commonly attach themselves to great whites. The aft camera is hidden below the two rear ventricle fins. The third camera records Cousteau's behavior inside the sub. Small, waterproof monitors and control mechanisms for the cameras and navigation are located inside the shark's head, where Cousteau can control them.

A gallery of user submitted images of wall, building, sidewalk, construction site, etc, graffiti and other quotations.

Their manifesto:

"Art is not like other culture because its success is not made by its audience. We, the public, fill concert halls and cinemas every day. We read novels by the millions and buy records by the billions. We, the people, affect the making, the taste and the quality of our culture.

The Art we look at, however, is made by only a select few. A small group create, promote, purchase, exhibit and decide the success of Art. Not more than 5000 people in the world have any real say. When you go to an Art gallery you are simply a tourist waving flags at a parade. A parade where the winner was decided without you.

We want to make Art that charts. We thought of calling it a revolutionary new way to sell Art but it's not revolutionary. It's just cheap.

The malls are coming out of the walls."

Lots of puzzle type games, including crosswords and other word games, jigsaw puzzles, mechanical puzzles and other brainteasers.

Here is a nice little project for a cosy resort......

" with this latest Dubai island project shaped like the continents of the world. The World will consist of between 250 to 300 smaller private artifical islands divided into four categories - private homes, estate homes, dream resorts, and community islands. Each island will range from 250,000 to 900,000 square feet in size, with 50 to 100 metres of water between each island. The development is to cover an area of 9 kilometers in length and 6 kilometers in width, surrounded by an oval shaped breakwater. The only means of transportation between the islands will be by marine transport. "

A neat assortment of vintage postcards collected from all over, with the option of sending to someone with your own message...

from the site.....

"This project was prompted by my father giving me several hundred postcards sent between 1900 and 1910 by members of my family. "

a nice collection with images of oddities, illusions, puzzles and other optical diversions.

Dutch artist M C Escher (1898-1972) produced woodcuts, engravings, lithographs, sketches which are fascinating to look at. His details with geometric progressions, odd perspectives and creating impossible objects in two dimensions are bizarre, and appealing .

His work plays with the symmetry of objects, and sometimes the forms have been slightly (or not so slightly) twisted out their proper shape, resulting in an almost dream-like quality.

" Jurgen Burkhardt, a 48-year-old photographer from Leinfelden, Germany, competes in the freestyle-mustache category at international beard and mustache championships. Burkhardt used to compete in the imperial-mustache category, one of 17 officially recognized styles. He switched to the freestyle class after a 2004 rule change barred closed-loop whiskers from the imperial-mustache category."

This is the big league in facial hair.

For portraits and relevant information concerning your favorite scientists, Scientific Identity has a large selection to choose from.

Browse by name or field of expertise....

Pictured is Christiaan Huygens, in honour of the current Saturn mission underway.

for a glance at what words are big in the latest news, there is 'wordnews'. Taken from various news feeds, the more the word is used, the bigger it appears. Simple and effective.....