Loosely Assembled

Fill this jacket with any kind of on hand insulation

After noticing NYC’s new Ride the City site, I rediscovered bycycle.org for bike route mapping in Portland. To celebrate, I’ve created a little route from Pirate Island to Pirate Town, enjoy the summer by bike!

A new study points out the possibility that the universe might spiral out and out and out to much farther reaches than conventional models. The fractal nature of this model could also be thought of as some kind of optical illusion, or quantum mirroring effect, where a small handful of galaxies are replicated infinitely across space, relying on the existence of an observer.

The driver of the art work Shared Propulsion Car was arrested by Toronto Police on October 25 on Queen Street West in Toronto. The revolutionary vehicle is an art work create by the just-announced winner of the 2007 Sobey Art Award Michel de Broin. It was made of a Buick Regal 1986 body stripped of its engine, suspension, transmission and electrical system and propels by the will to power of its passenger. The vehicle retains the illusion of the mass-produced luxury automobile, but is now reduced to a shell with a top speed of 15km per hour. This unique car needs no petrol, produce no toxic emission and is not responsible for the innocents people killed for petrol in the Middle East. Furthermore, in this individualist society, this convivial car was proposed as a good solution to bring people together and take over the street. Dean Baldwin an experience driver, took the steering wheel and with his fellows Elaine, Dave and Dan drove the car carefully on the street. The reaction of the public was enthusiasm, solidarity and sympathy. They drove 9 blocks (from Lisgar to Strachan) before being pulled over by the police.

The driver and passengers were left to wait for 30 minutes in the car while we suspect the cops tried to determine which exact law was broken. They settled on “operating an unsafe vehicle” and a tow-truck was called.

We believe there is noting in the law against this car, the problem is only in the perceptions: police can’t accept a car to be modified and to be moving without petrol. They gave the driver an order to appear before a judge on the 21 of November. The problem for the court will be to argue that the Shared Propulsion Car can be dangerous while we all know that the danger remains in the use of petrol car. It is rather the other car that are obviously dangerous. We believe the court is taking a big risk of bringing our car to spotlight. It is always striking when art become politic and win its right publicly. Our Plan is to tow the car to the courthouse, win our cause and then be able to drive the car freely on the street of Toronto.

watch the video

coming off the back of a bike

read the details about the floating ecopolis for ecological refugees

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

This weekend.

Comment: Putting evolutionary theory into practice - opinion - 06 May 2008 - New Scientist: “A new journal called Evolutionary Applications has just been launched. The first issue is dedicated to making the point that applying evolution is crucial, and it makes a convincing case.”

New Scientist has a dreamy article about a new potential kind of identity authentication.

Instead of a person’s biometric signature being stored on a distant database, they would reside only in the daemon – a small gadget carried around by its owner.

Like a real pet, that daemon would learn to imprint itself on its owner. After that it would thrive on their unique biometric signals, such as their voiceprint, fingerprints or walking style.

The human-daemon bond would be further cemented by games and interaction between the two. “Think how people bond with babies,” says Briggs. “You would do the same things with your daemon – cuddle it, stroke it, play verbal games.”

In the presence of its owner, those nourishing signals make the daemon “happy” and able to verify the owner’s identity, just like a PIN or password.

I say, “Put a bunch of these things *facing* each other and create a huge artificial valley.”

Apparently in a new Old Town location (4th and couch), i’ll check it out later today and post a pic.