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Friday, August 29, 2008

Transparent Underground



Link
Scroll down for today's pictures & links.

Transparent Underground

Simple, yet very imaginative ad for Madrid Metro. Your daily subway commute will never be the same.



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Today's pictures & links:

Eric Lafforgue Travels in North Korea

Very impressive photography from this God-forsaken place - see full portfolio here. Here is a taste:
Traffic controller in Pyongyang - with no sign of traffic:



Soul-deadening monotony:


(images credit: Eric Lafforgue)

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The Magnet Car

Read more info here - a car that reduces it’s environmental impact through the use of magnets. The design for this car was the winner of the Interior Motives Design Awards unseen technology award for 2007 (designed by Matus Prochaczka).

The weight of the car is reduced by using an electric engine with magnets the same polarity as the roads. The resulting upward force lightens the vehicle's weight by 50%.



(images by Matus)

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Light Painting UFOs

Long-time friend of our site Andy Hill had a great idea to combine "light painting" technique with vintage-looking "saucerbots". See what launched from his studio pad:



(images credit: Andy Hill)

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Yeah, I'm fine... what about you?


(original unknown)

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Bolivian Wrestlers
(in cooperation with National Geographic magazine)

National Geographic features the story about indigenous Aymara women from the highlands of Bolivia - they used to be mocked for their old-fashioned dress and traditional ways, but are now earning pocket money and street cred in the wrestling ring, wearing their many long petticoats, lacy shawls, their hair in long braids, and a bowler hat on top.



They do the kind of theatrical fighting that made Mexico's freewheeling lucha libra so popular, and on Sunday nights in the town of El Alte near La Paz, the crowds pack the arena and cheer for Yolanda La Amorosa and Evil Claudine, two of the biggest stars:


(images credit: Ivan Kashinsky, National Geographic)

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Mixed fresh links for today:

Luxury Private Castles - [wow lifestyle]
Most Unreliable Airlines in the World - [travel]
Hi-tech chairs to drool about - [geek tech]
Another great compilation of bridges - [architecture]
Intricate Rainforest Sculptures! - [awesome art]
Glass 3D Heart, interactive - [wow video]
Scary-looking Titan Robots - [cool video]
Subliminal Messages in Music - [weird video]
The Vortex Fountain - [wow video]
Transparent Underground - [wow video]

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New & Cool Japanese Graffiti / Street Photography Combination

Prone to lose your head in the hustle and bustle of urban jungle? Then do it in style, and replace it with favorite anime character:



(photo credit NetaMichelin)

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Buck Roger's Atomic Disintegrator

Some neat retro scifi graphics on this site (more to come). The Disintegrator you can buy at GoHero.



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London at Night

Old World Splendor... very classy imagery on this page by Shaun Tollerton.


(image credit: Shaun Tollerton)

Spectacular aerial shots of "London at Night" you can also check out at Big Picture site.

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Have some.... shampoo

This takes the cake for the Weirdest Design for a - a Nose Dispenser:
- via



Buy it here

Also, absolute winner for Psychedelic Furniture, that we recently featured is this "peeing / climbing" sofa:



This was exhibited by Kashya Hildebrand as part of "8 Artists from Korea" event.

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Wall Mosaic from 300,000 Wine Corks

Saimir Strati from Tirana, Albania likes to do such detailed and grandiouse projects. His last Guinness-record mosaic sculpture was made from 1 million toothpicks. This time it's only 300,000 corks - but the resulting art will be three-dimensional, with various levels of cork height.


(image credit: Saimir Strati)

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New sports are born in the wake of hurricanes

Do not try it on your own, of course, but since our last featured video where the local daredevil was street-tubing in the flooded neighborhood (with pretty miserable results) - we received this image, that takes the similar activity to a new level:



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Thick.

Looks like this guy has a lot to say... if you only let him.



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COMMENTS:

5 Comments:

Blogger rodbot said...

the magnets on the car reducing weight by 50%. hehe.
lets see.... traction on the road reduced by 50%. hence stopping, turning, and traction have been reduced by 50%.
thanks for making the world an unsafer place.

also as for having less weight doesn't mean it has less mass. so it will still take the same energy to accelerate.

no if you changed the polarity of the magnets so that it pulls you into the road you would gain traction and could stop much sooner. say by 50%.

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Anonymous Tangle said...

Don't let him. OMG don't let him.

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Anonymous bananasluggy said...

The link to the North Korea pictures had to be the creepiest lot I've seen in a while... especially the four-lane highway with one car and one bike... and that's it. The movie theatre with the leaders' pictures nailed up where the movie screen should be was creepy too... and the pics of the people... I haven't seen so many scared eyes in a long while. :( Lips smiling, eyes terrified. Eep.

- via

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Anonymous Sergio said...

Guy in the glasses is Anatoly Vasserman, champion of the "What-Where-When" TV show, one of the smartest guys in ex-USSR. He is A.K.A. Onotoley, icon of the hackers attacked VKONTAKTE.RU (russian clone of facebook).This photo was uploaded to the all hacked groups with caption "Onotoley is raging".

___  
Blogger Avi Abrams said...

Thank you Sergio, that's hilarious info!

___  

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  • Must be a mess in the wet.
    And where's general grievous' from the revenge of the sith? Now that was a monowheel!
    Read more

  • awesome. you dig up the craziest stuff. i love you daily!
    Read more

  • FYI, the Chinese monowheels at the top were probably the ones used in the Olympic closing ceremony.

    This also implies the artists during those ceremonies could've been soldiers? Strange.
    Read more

  • There was also a steam-powered monowheel in the Japanese Anime, Steamboy.
    Read more

  • actually they are the vehicles used in the closing.

    and yes, those are soldiers.
    they are the artistic section of the military.

    almost every military has one.
    Read more

  • Great post..!


    lots more interesting monowheels here!

    http://thenewcaferacersociety.blogspot.com/search/label/monowheels
    Read more

  • *wonders why they didn't show mr. garrison's IT*
    Read more

  • Now if only someone could figure out a way to attach four of these things together with some kind of carriage in the middle ... now THAT would be something.
    Read more

  • Have you checked out the Bombardier company's concept unicycle? Hydrogen cell for power, anime styling. Good pictures at http://www.gearbits.com/archives/000336.html
    Read more

  • amoeba - thanks, love your nick

    great info everybody, thanks, will use in next part

    feng - this is very visual... i can see it oh so clearly :0
    Read more

  • Well you did leave of the segway and the single wheel battery motorcycle.
    Read more

  • You know those Chinese mono wheels might have been for the Olympic ceremonies, they look the right size.
    Read more

  • There's a life size model of a monowheel high-tech (likely conceptual) racer at Johnson Space Centre in Texas.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/bjacques/2233110072/sizes/l/
    Read more

  • Thank you Gaz, will go into the next part
    Read more

  • These are seriously sexy! I love it!
    Read more

  • This post has been removed by the author.
    Read more

  • Sweet monowheel goodness! I must find one and drive it now.
    Read more

  • These pics are friggin' amazing. God bless the webernet.
    Read more

  • So which smiley face was the one in the Watchmen?
    Read more

  • The nice thing about that Moog was, that is was in fact monophonic. One note at a time :)
    Read more

  • Flintstones' dream car? More like Asphyxious! Looks like something on a Cryxian road!
    Read more

  • Arcologies were one of my favorite parts about the SimCity series. Loved to plant about 4-5 of those in an area.
    Read more

  • I can't imagine who would want to live in a place like that. You would never own your bit, only rent it, and you couldn't do anything serious to personalize it. Talk about the Neighborhood Association from Hell. Of course, I wouldn't mind if large numbers of other people went to live in one and left the real land open for people who appreciate it.
    Read more

  • I highly recommend anyone interested in it to do check out arcosanti if they find themselves north of phoenix.

    Sure, the project has mostly stalled in a larger sense, but is still self supporting. One thing the pics don't capture is the experience of being in those buildings, very unique, and very refreshing in a sense. It was early summer when I visited, very hot out, and yet quite cool and comfortable inside, without any AC on. The internal distribution of thermal energy and movement of air felt much more fresh and alive than the artificial cold tomb-like experience of most of Phoenix's large buildings that time of year.

    Aesthetics aside, Soleri has a gift for creating true living spaces.
    Read more

  • Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket... Having an entire city in one structure leaves the entire population very vulnerable to a variety of disasters: fire, epidemic, power failures, enemy or terrorist attack, etc., not to mention the attendant problems of utilities, waste disposal, emergency evacuation, and maintenance. Some ideas look a lot better on paper than in reality.
    Read more

  • They aren't such a clever idea, 1 million people crammed in, what if a bomb goes off in a very important place, you could have up to 1 million casualties!
    Read more

  • I've always thought that Solari's megacities were to some extant a reactin to Frank Loyd Wright's Broadacre City; a vison of continent ecompassing sprawl. PT: actually his vision was a bit more heterogenous. The exteriors aren't very uniform because building really only provides a concrete slab and basic infrastructure. Everything else would be built by the individual "condo-owner."
    Read more

  • All are legitimate concerns, thanks for this neat discussion.
    Read more

  • Good work and great images.
    In my blog i put another arcologies like X-Seed 4000 and Shimizu TRY 2004 Mega-City Pyramid
    Read more

  • These are all grand ideas that lead to something bigger. While the concerns raised by the commenters here are all valid, these represent the first step in being able to colonize other worlds once they are determined to be able to sustain life, or we have developed the capacity to make other worlds sustain life.

    Arcologies like this provide us with an opportunity, built on Earth, to discover the flaws, problems, logistical hurdles and potentials for disaster that exist in the designs prior to building them in space and sending them, fully loaded, to another world, or building them on that world. If they can be made stable in an environment that is already relatively stable, they have passed the first step towards being able to support human life elsewhere in the universe. It is only a few more baby steps to design them in such a way as to be able to survive elsewhere and/or travel there under their own power and land safely.

    Big plans require big ideas.
    Read more

  • To those who dismissed the idea's based on fear filled sentiments, I am profoundly sorry. A bomb can cause 1 million casualties due to the close proximity of the living quarters? Damn, all it takes is a bigger bomb, which you know each country is always developing and the benefits of being spread out are lost, and the cons are all thats left. Destruction of natural ecosystems around the entire world have been destroyed based on people wanting to own "their" piece. At least with arcologys nature has a better chance of surviving. And humans still just have human problems, like thinking you need more than you have. Americans wake up to the world your part of please.
    Read more

  • Another cult complete with a saintly founder who enjoys his own opulent private quarters (with desert swimming pool) while his acolytes do all the drudgery trying to get his unwieldy designs to work.

    He nowadays passes his time making styrofoam models for the trademark wind chimes. Incidentally, his eco-friendly minions directly invest molten metal into the styrofoam sending gouts of poisonous black hydrocarbons into the otherwise pristine high-desert skies.

    "Thinking globally but acting locally." What a crock!
    Read more

  • Mainly someone said this seems like putting all your eggs in one basket - well think about it this way: Earth = One Basket. We need to spread out and this is a logical primer.

    Next to the guy who said leave land to the people who appreciate it. The point of this is to give everyone the opportunity to appreciate land not divide it up and fence it off and 'customize' it.

    There will never be enough land to go around and some of the best land is taken by people who assume they have a right to keep it from everyone else.
    Read more

  • lets build one of these over the darian gap!?

    glass bottom city-structure overlooking the last and wildest uncivilized part of the world.

    it would be quite poetic! the most advanced in conservation and sustainability with a view of that which is untouched.
    Read more

  • Bogie... Your comment made my day. Quite an idea!
    Read more

  • vinyl player??? It's called a turntable
    Read more

  • I think this post is wonderfully hilarious and that some one is just a crabby pants...
    Read more

  • There's a candidate for the Darwin Award in the first picture of the wheelbarrow BBQ!

    First, the heat of the fire will most likely cause the wood frame to start smoldering or burst into flames. Second, the wheelbarrow is not stable and is likely to tip over. But the worst offense is the uncapped gas can in the background...
    Read more

  • "vinyl player??? It's called a turntable"

    What do you think Turn Tables are? They are vinyl players. Are you like 12?

    -

    Great post.
    Read more

  • that was hilarious .. had a good laugh lolz .. thnx for the post
    Read more

  • dude, only 2 pics were from romania, stop being mean :P
    Read more

  • good read, love the site
    Read more

  • The drunken animals clip sounds suspiciously like the film "The Gods must be Crazy 2". The first film had the "myth" that rhinos stamp out fires!
    Read more

  • The clip belongs to the film Animals are beautiful people, from the same director of TGMBC. It's a great film, but it's been known for a while that this scene and several others were actually staged and/or manipulated for dramatic effect.
    Read more

  • hahhah i have a lego calendar! except mine is red.
    Read more

  • The American Eagle is the remains of an F-104 Starfighter fuselage, an aircraft which was also powered by a J-79. What? No-one is impressed by a fact a brief google search would have revealed? Fine, be glad we're living in the future, rather than in the book-laden, internet-free past.
    Read more

  • Thank you for publishing my pic and linking to my photo blog.

    But you got a couple of things wrong.
    The village is called "Planina v Lazu" and the mountain on the right looking down on it is "Slatna". The picture was taken from "Prvi Vogel" which is 2181m high.

    Thanks again and be sure to check out more pics on my blog.
    Read more

  • The Buchwald lamps might be the coolest things I have ever seen.
    Read more

  • Cool!!! wireframe furniture!!!
    Read more

  • If it was "Mad IKEA in the Wonderland", it'd be fecking impossible to assemble

    via
    Read more

  • 'A Piece of Awesome - Would like to know who the artist is.'

    The artist is Tony Ariawan.

    http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Stop-Haunt-Me-Everyday-Collection/53669

    FYI - I found out using a site called TinEye http://tineye.com/
    Read more

  • Thank you David, this "tineye" is quite a find!
    Read more

  • Eiffel Tower Modification is few months old awesome canadian joke.
    Read more

  • Aircraft carrier looks like its coming into port everglades, in Ft. Lauderdale. FL. They used to have the air and sea show every may and before/after the event the boats/subs/aircraft carries parked in Ft. Lauderdale Harbor...seriously cool
    Read more

  • Huge army ships there. Is it stuck at the shore?..hehe
    Read more

  • The squirrel drinking a Guinness gif is taken from a longer Guinness commercial called "Dream On", which may be found here:
    http://www.spike.com/video/guinness-dream-club/2444983
    Read more

  • That's a chimpanzee bathing the cat, not a monkey.
    Read more

  • Yay!
    You changed "monkey" to chimp.
    I salute you and this fantastic site!
    Read more

  • LOL! )
    Read more

  • The weird arm-flapping guy on the third animated gif is Andre van Duin, a dutch commedian. This clip is from very early in his carreer. I think he is like 60 jears old now, while in the clip he must be in his early 20's.
    Read more

  • A (kind of) plate on the Tour Eiffel ?!!!
    It is the most stupid idea ever !
    (and looks ugly)
    That tower must remains as Eiffel did it, beautiful.
    Read more


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