Earlier this week in La Jolla, California, what appeared to be a massive oil spill in the water began creeping towards the beach. However, closer inspection revealed that the inky cloud was not a batch of Exxon-Mobil’s finest at all, but an enormous school of fish. Specifically, anchovies. (more…)
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California Oil Spill Turns Out to Be a Freakishly Massive Amount of Fish
Photo by Saffron Blaze via Wikimedia Commons Anyone who has witnessed a glassmaking demonstration can surely appreciate the skill that goes into a craft that dates back to 2, 000 BC. Named after the island from which it originates, Murano glass has been among the very best since the Renaissance, though the market has declined precipitously over the past few decades: according to The Guardian , the number of Murano sculptors has melted from “6, 000 in 1990 to less than 1, 000 [in 2012].” Even so, it’s hard not to be impressed by the practiced hands that churn out the souvenirs, kitschy though they may be, and at least one maestro has added a little flourish to the predictably well-documented process of sculpting a glass horse . This one is well worth watching in full: Post by Francisco Lopez Serrano . (more…)
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Making a Murano Glass Horse in Minutes with a Fiery Finish
Tech reviewer Marques Brownlee somehow got a hold of what is purportedly the screen for Apple’s forthcoming iPhone 6. Made of sapphire rather than Gorilla Glass, the screen has been rumored to be a big step up in durability. The material-minded will recall that Apple’s current iPhone features sapphire covers for both the camera and the home button/fingerprint sensor, and in those roles it is crucial the material not be scratchable, otherwise the functionality would be compromised. But how will it hold up with a much larger surface area, comprising the entire 4.7″ screen of the 6? On his YouTube channel MKBHD, Brownlee puts it to the test by working it over with a knife and a set of keys, before finally attempting to bend and break it. Have a look: (more…)
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How Will the iPhone 6’s Sapphire Screen Hold Up to Abuse? Watch and See
One of the best parts about skipping town for an exotic vacation is the anticipation of spending time in warmer (or cooler) weather. But what if experiencing that part of the getaway was simply a matter of pointing to a spot on a small, tech-enabled globe (a semi-sphere, if you will)? Just imagine: You could enjoy that ocean breeze without the rigmarole of Airbnb. Well, look no further than the Air Globe , a conceptual design by National Taipei University of Technology Master Degree Student Pei-Chih Deng, currently a contender in the Electrolux Design Lab competition . The premise is that the user can choose a geographical location on the globe and experience its climate within the comfort and convenience of his or her humble abode. The device simulates the ambiance of one’s destination by collecting real-time data on the temperature, humidity levels, smells and even the sounds of the area. The region’s geographical information, weather and name show up on the display for easy reference. Hence the tagline: “Bringing sunny Miami to your rainy Monday”—because no matter where you live, we all know how snowy/blustery/humid/monsoon-y Mondays go. (more…)
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Conceptual Climate Change: Test the Air in Lima from the Comfort of Your Couch with Air Globe
Reportedly developed some four millenia ago and revived by Italian artisans in the 16th Century, murrine is among those crafts that long predates the much-ballyhooed contemporary craft movement. Yet artist Loren Stump has found a way to breathe new life into the age-old glass design technique, in which canes of glass are fused (in parallel) and sliced to reveal intricately patterned sections. (Picture a Swiss cake roll, or that bakeable play-dough that could be mashed together and sliced to similar effect.) As with Takayo Kiyota’s sushi art , Stump works backward from a two-dimensional image, extruding the picture plane to extrapolate am arrangement of colored rods. Apparently he likes a challenge, considering he tends to to take on extremely detailed historical images like Da Vinci’s Virgin on the Rocks (seen above) and Henry VIII. He also does commissioned pieces, if you’ve got any special requests. Stump started out as a stained glass artist and eventually made the switch to working with molten varieties and creating his own process and tools—including a mysterious vacuum-controlled apparatus called the Stumpsucker . (more…)
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Murrine Core: Loren Stump’s Sliced Glass ‘Paintings’ Mark the Intersection of Art and Craft
There is a graphic design element to tennis courts, (American) football fields and basketball courts, with highly visible lines indicating boundaries and distances. These are fixed in place, as service lines, end zones and free throw lines aren’t meant to move. Soccer, though, has a unique problem that can’t be solved by fixed lines: When a player is fouled, he’s awarded a free kick from whatever spot on the field the foul occurred. The opposing team is allowed to assemble a defensive wall of players at a distance of ten yards from the kicker. The problem is that people cheat. The ref sets both the spot of the free kick and the site of the wall, and as soon as he’s not looking, the two may surreptitiously creep towards each other to improve their chances. Which is why for this year’s World Cup, you’ll see the referees carrying an aerosol can filled with a white foamy substance, and they’ll spray this on the pitch to clearly mark visual boundaries for the both the kicker and the wall. Seconds later the line mysteriously disappers. (Hardcore footie fans have already seen this spray as it’s been in action for years, but this is the first World Cup where it’s been used.) So what is this stuff, shaving cream? Nope. This “vanishing spray” is called 9.15 Fair Play , patented by an Argentinean journalist named Pablo C. Silva. Silva was playing footie in a local league and had a crucial free kick of his blocked by a defensive wall–one that had rushed him to close the distance to a mere three meters. “The referee didn’t book anyone and didn’t do anything, ” Silva fumed to The Independent. “We lost the game, and driving home later with a mixture of anger and bitterness, I thought that we must invent something to stop this.” (more…)
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That Foamy Stuff You See World Cup Refs Spraying was Invented by a Fed-Up Journalist
Beer was reportedly invented sometime around 5, 000 B.C. So it’s shocking to think that refrigeration wasn’t invented until the 19th Century. Because that means that the majority of man drank warm beer for nearly 7, 000 years. Which is kind of gross. Nowadays we can all enjoy a cold beer whenever we want, and your correspondent might even be enjoying one right now, depending on whether or not your correspondent’s bosses are reading this. But we rely on electricity and refrigeration to keep our brews frosty. Four fellows in Denmark, however, have figured out how to keep beer cold, outside, without using any power. Their invention is called the eCool , and it delivers “year-round cool beers” without being plugged into anything except the earth. To install the roughly four-foot-long device, you bore a hole into the ground using a garden drill, though they advise that “[the eCool] can be installed with a shovel as well, if you’re a real man.” Once you’ve got the hole dug, you insert the cylindrical device into the ground, then load it with up to 24 cans of quaff. The earth then keeps the beer cool, and when you’re ready to have one, you turn a handcrank attached to a vertical conveyor that serves you up a fresh can. “Do something great for yourself and the environment, ” the eCool guys write. “It’s easy to install in the garden or terrace, and uses no electricity. With the eCool you can always drink a cold beer with good conscience.” What we’d like to see next: A bottle version, please! (more…)
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How to Keep Beer Cold, Outside, with No Electricity: The eCool
Water might be good for our bodies, but it’s terrible for our stuff. Our smartphones, the walls in our home, the precious documents we’re carrying—water can ruin all of it. So when a material is created that can repel water so perfectly that whatever it covers essentially never gets wet, we take notice. This kind of material is called superhydrophobic. That means that water droplets remain in their spherical shape, sit on top of the material, and then roll off of it like pearls from a necklace. The droplets never really touch the material in the first place. Check out the photo below. The angle between the bottom of the droplet sphere and the surface will be more than 120 degrees. If it were 180 degrees the droplet would not touch the surface. There have been many variations of superhydrophobic materials and most involve embedding structures within the material that prevent the water from coming into contact. For instance in a recent study researchers from Brigham Young University used material that either had microscopic long ridges or posts (see photos below) that prevented the droplet from penetrating through the fibers. (more…)
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Superhydrophobia: Breakthroughs in Next-Level Waterproofing
Long before the days of annually featured colors with quirky names, there was this monster of a book by a mysterious artists that goes by A. Boogert. It comes in around 800 pages and features every color you can imagine—much like a grandaddy of the beloved Pantone color guide. Medieval book historian Erik Kwakkel (talk about a job title) found this encyclopedia and quickly it lit up the Internet after he featured his find on his blog . Kwakkel goes into more detail on where he found the book and what Boogert shared in the book on his blog : I encountered this Dutch book from 1692 in a French database today and it turns out to be quite special. For one thing, no Dutch scholar appears to have published on it, or even to know about it. Moreover, the object is special because it provides an unusual peek into the workshop of 17th-century painters and illustrators. In over 700 pages of handwritten Dutch, the author, who identifies himself as A. Boogert describes how to make watercolor paints. To illustrate his point he fills each facing page with various shades of the color in question. To top it he made an index of all the colors he described, which in itself is a feast to look at. (more…)
While China had their Industrial Revolution rather late in the global game, their production might and speed means they’ll likely advance new digital fabrication techniques before the rest of the world does. For example, it’s been ten years since the American outfit Contour Crafting first proposed 3D printing houses, but aside from a brief surge of TED-Talk-inspired press in 2012, they’ve been mostly quiet. In that time, meanwhile, China has begun developing their 3D-printed-house-erecting capabilities in earnest. The Shanghai-based WinSun Decoration Design Engineering company recently printed ten sample structures of 200 square meters each. What’s amazing is that they produced the entire lot in less than 24 hours, and that the cost of each house is less than US $5, 000. The concrete-like building material comes “entirely out of recycled materials [and is] a mixture of construction and industrial waste” which the company claims is environmentally friendly (although they don’t provide specifics on the material). (more…)
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China on the Forefront of 3D-Printed Housing