Earlier this week, I linked to an article about lighting by gravity. And the critiques begin, almost immediately. A Clean Energy Breakthrough
Floppy Disk Desk [Article]
Nostalgic for the days of the 3.5″ floppy disk? (Now, now, don’t let your mind wander!) You can have it in your living room, in a much larger size as a desk! Check it out.
Gee Pee Yes? [Article]
The pervasiveness of GPS has taken the fun out of navigation, says this Smithsonian article. Quite possibly true. I prefer maps personally – even though it takes a little longer to get to where we need to – maps allow you to get a sense of the environment & the geography in a way that electronic devices don’t.
Amelia Earhart on Marriage [Letter]
Fiercely independent, the pioneering female aviator Amelia Earhart wrote this letter to her future husband, George Putnam.
Flush with [insert feeling here]
The height of American excesses, as demonstrated by this advertisement for, of all things, a commode.
Ustad Ravi Shankar [Videos]
Ravi Shankar, who passed away on Wednesday at the age of 92, recorded while teaching George Harrison.
Watch him energize a sleepy audience at the Monterey Pop in 1967, in a spellbinding minute performance along with the great master of tabla, Alla Rakha. The audience erupts at the end of this performance. (for context about this, read this blog post) And here’s a video of him collaborating with Alla Rakha’s son, another giant of Indian classical music, Zakir Hussain.
Santa vs Snoop Dogg [Video]
An epic rap showdown! Brilliant!! Even if you believe in either Moses or Santa Claus. Or both. Or not.
Would anyone miss you? [Trailer]
What if you died & no one knew? From a review of a disturbing documentary, “Dreams of a life”, here’s an excerpt: ” In January 2006, reports broke in London newspapers that Joyce Carol Vincent had been found dead in her bedsit flat in Wood Green, a northern suburb of the city. She was in her late thirties. She had been tall, vivacious and always smartly dressed—she reminded some people of Whitney Houston. She had had an Indian mother and a West Indian father; they were dead now, but Joyce had sisters. No cause of death could be ascertained because she had been dead for nearly three years. The sketch of a corpse was there on the sofa, a window was slightly open, and the television was still playing.”
Lit by gravity [project]
GravityLight, as the name suggests, is an attempt by designers Martin Riddiford and Jim Reeves to “develop a realistic alternative to kerosene lamps by harnessing the power of gravity”. Watch the awesome video for the idea. I hope they achieve success in this venture.
PS: They’ve already reached their crowd-funding goal of raising $55,000.
Papal Twittering [News]
Keeping up with the Church’s tradition of quickly embracing technology (when it can’t decimate it), Pope Benedict XVI is on Twitter (as if you didn’t know that already!). With just over 666k followers at the time of this blog post, I thought his first tweet needs to be documented. You know, just for historical reasons.
No apologies.
