Dan Harlow

In an attempt to rebrand the Cape Times newspaper in South Africa, the Lowe Bull Cape Town advertising agency created a series titled “The Day Before”. Meant to highlight the papers desire to reach a more intellictual audience, each image is designed to remind the viewer of how fast the world can change.

“With the advent of newer and faster technologies every day, newspapers are finding it harder to appeal to the market. The radio, television and especially the internet have become the information medium of choice for many consumers,” says Lowe Bull creative director Kirk Gainsford.

The ads are very effective and considering the subject matter they are dealing with, quite respectful too.

Agency: Lowe Bull Cape Town
Creative Director: Kirk Gainsford
Head of Copy: Alistair Morgan
Art Director: Brian Bainbridge
Copywriter: Simon Lotze
Account Manager: Lindsay Keen

Popularity: 7% [?]

Founded in 1987, the Chinese Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe is composed of performers with sight, hearing, mental and motor disabilities or speech impairments. The troupe is a symbol of the hopes and dreams of disabled people and has toured all over China and in about 40 countries on all five continents.

Their show is unique and dazzling both visually and musically. The story unfolds though a character who has several bodies. A deaf dancer moves to the rhythm of the music. A young paraplegic man delivers a song accompanied by choreographed gestures. The deaf and mute performers show off their mimicry, while those who are visually impaired speak their words for them.

In 2004, the China Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe participated in the closing ceremonies of the Paralympic Games in Athens, and is currently preparing for the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008. It has also been appointed “Ambassador for persons with disabilities” by the World Assembly of Disabled Peoples´ International (DPI).

Popularity: 6% [?]

Let’s say all of a sudden there were no humans left on the planet. What would the world be like? Would the Earth even miss us?

Author Alan Weisman decided to really think about a world with no humans and he wrote a fascinating book about the subject. Titled The World Without Us, the book is basically a grand thought experiment on a global scale and it reveals a wealth of interesting ideas about what could happen if we all died off tomorrow.

From Chapter 9

Newspapers, again belying a common assumption, don’t biodegrade when buried away from air and water. “That’s why we have 3,000-year-old papyrus scrolls from Egypt. We pull perfectly readable newspapers out of landfills from the 1930s. They’ll be down there for 10,000 years.”

In most way The World Without Us is a warning to each of us as to how tenuous a hold we have over the environment. We may think we are masters of our castle but in reality we are slave and prisoner to the whims of a planet that can get by just fine without us. However the book is not a total downer, in fact it’s meant to be educational and in a world that seems to be recognizing productiveness in the face of climate change and other global issues, Mr. Weisman’s book is quite possible the handbook all good citizens of Earth should carry to remind us why we care in the first place.

Below are paintings done by artist Kenn Brown which illustrates what would happen to Manhattan between 2 days and the next ice age if all civilization was to disappear right this moment.

Without humans to man the pumping equipment, subways would begin to flood after only 2 days.

After 2-4 years pipes would burs, buildings would moan and creek as their inner structures expanded and contracted and cockroaches which can’t survive in colder climates would die off.

Gas mains would explode after 5 years and fires would destroy most of the city.

After 300 years bridges would begin to fall, dams would fail or overflow and cities built in low laying areas along the coast would simply washout to sea.

500 years on forests would grow if the climate was right and much of the landscape would look like it did before development. Of course underneath the new landscape would be a foundation of old dishwashers, stainless steel cookware and a myriad of other forms of trash.

In 15,000 years the next ice age would be starting (that is if global warming has not already done permanent harm to the planet) and Manhattan would be eaten away by glaciers.

After 10 million years bronze sculptures would still be recognizable and CO2 levels would be back down to pre-human levels.

So what will happen to the Earth if we do decide to stick around, settle our differences of religion and culture, clean up the environment and learn to live in peace? The following animation will answer that question.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Crater in Western Arabia Terra with Stair-Stepped Hills and Dark Dunes

The HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) which is one of the marque scientific platforms aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been busy snapping pictures of potential landing sites for the Mars Science Laboratory. Unique to the images which have already been sent back is the fact all of these are in full, high resolution enhanced color.

While most people think of Mars as a boring dusty desert, the topography of Mars is actually quite varied and spectacular. By examining these images NASA planners will now be able to better determine future landing sites for the next batch of robotic missions. Previously scientists had to depend on lower resolution and fuzzy black and white images to pick interesting targets on our neighbor planet. With these new photos not only will interesting features become more readily apparent but they also make for some spectacular images.

The following text and images are credit NASA and JPL.

Dunes in Wirtz Crater

Volatiles and Gullies

Inverted Channels Near Juventae Chasma

This image shows several long, sinuous features on the plains near Juventae Chasma. These features have been explained as former stream channels now preserved in inverted relief.

Inverted relief occurs when a formerly low-lying area becomes high-standing. For instance, depressions may become filled with lava that is more resistant to erosion. In the case of stream channels, there are several possible reasons why the channel might stand out in inverted relief. The streambed may contain larger rocks, which remain while fine material is blown away by the wind, or it could be cemented by some chemical precipitating from flowing water.

These features are old, since several impact craters cut the ridges. They provide important information about past processes on Mars. Understanding how streams could have formed is an important issue in understanding the history of water on Mars.

West Candor Layering

Section Through Largest of Holden Crater Fans

Layers Exposed in Crater Near Mawrth Vallis

This above image covers an impact crater roughly 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) in diameter. The portion highlighted above shows a 1 kilometer segment of the crater wall and rim.

The surface outside the crater (top) is relatively dark, while the interior wall of the crater exposes lighter, layered bedrock of diverse colors. A few dark patches on the crater wall have small dunes or ripples on their surfaces, and are likely pits filled with dark sand. The crater provides a window into the subsurface of Mars, revealing layered sedimentary deposits.

Just 30 kilometers (20 miles) to the east of this crater lies Mawrth Vallis, an ancient channel that may have been carved by catastrophic floods. In layered deposits surrounding Mawrth Vallis, the orbiting spectrometers OMEGA (on Mars Express) and CRISM (on MRO) have detected phyllosilicate (clay) minerals, which must have formed in the presence of water. In this region on Mars, the colors of layers seen by HiRISE often correlate with distinct water-bearing minerals observed by CRISM, so the color diversity seen here may reflect a dynamic environment at this location on early Mars.

Note: the color in these images is enhanced; it is not as it would normally appear to the human eye.

Light-toned Layering on Plains South of the West Candor Region

Layered Terrain Near Putative Phyllosilicates in Mawrth Valles

Southern Layered Mound and Floor in Gale Crater

This HiRISE image shows the interior of Gale Crater, a region being considered as a landing site for the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory.

Gale is distinguished from many other craters on Mars by a large interior layered mound that extends to the height of the crater rim. The top part of this image contains portions of the southeast part of the mound, with the bottom part showing details of the crater floor.

The mound material here is exposed as several distinct smaller hills. Close up, the hills show abundant rocks and debris aprons on their flanks, lacking distinct bedrock layers seen elsewhere on Mars. This suggests that the mound material is friable and easily eroded by the wind over time.

Other evidence of wind activity includes bright bedforms near the top of the image and dark bedforms and sand sheets at bottom. Between the hills and dark sand are a series of stacked stratigraphic units. Polygons are seen in some of the units, indicating contraction due to water loss, cooling, or some other process. Many of the polygons seem highly fractured.

Possible crossbeds are seen in some of the rock exposures near the bottom of the image. This and other images of Gale will be studied over the coming months and years in order to better understand the geology and further assess the potential as a future landing site.

Fan Delta and Layers in Holden Crater

Layers in Terby Crater

Layers in Becquerel Crater

The layers shown in the above image are formed by loose sediment accumulating within Becquerel Crater.

The layers are interesting in that there are repeated cycles of thick and thin layers. These cyclic changes in layer thickness shows that some environmental conditions varied in a repeated way as each subsequent layer was deposited.

These variations may be due to annual climate cycles and/or a cyclic variability in the source of the sediment. Most layers are parallel to each other, indicating that deposition occurred by material settling onto the surface. A few layers are cross-bedded, meaning that they are not parallel to the older or younger layers.

Cross-bedding indicates that at the time that the layers were deposited, the sediment was transported along the ground surface by wind or water.

Popularity: 12% [?]

At 100,000 square kilometers in volume, the lake pictured above is located at the southern pole of Saturn’s moon Titan and part of a complex of formations recently imaged by the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn. 20% larger than Lake Superior, which is one of Earth’s largest lakes, it also covers a larger percentage of land mass than that of our own inland sea the Black Sea. Of course you may not want to get your space dingy and carbon fiber astro-rod ready just yet because all of Titan’s lakes are filled with liquid hydrocarbons such as liquid ethane, methane and dissolved nitrogen.

From Live Science:

Scientists say it rains methane and ethane there, filling the lakes and seas. These liquids also carve meandering rivers and channels on the moon’s surface.

“The lakes we are observing on Titan appear to be in varying states of fullness, suggesting their involvement in a complex hydrologic system akin to Earth’s water cycle. This makes Titan unique among the extra-terrestrial bodies in our solar system,” said Alex Hayes, a graduate student who studies Cassini radar data at the California Institute of Technology in the USA.

For those of you sill interested in making the longest fishing trip in human history, a seasons on Titan lasts for 7.5 years, a quarter of Saturn’s seasonal progression of 29.5 years.

Of course finding something to catch is another story and you might actually have more luck heading to Saturn’s smaller moon Enceladus.

New false color images also from the Cassini spacecraft highlight slushy geysers of what is almost certainly water ice. These geysers form the thin E-Ring of Saturn and have recently been discovered to emanate from the tiger stripes on the moon’s south polar region.

Scientists have theorized the geysers might be powered by the grinding of ice sheets against one another and the periodic opening and closing of gaps on the moon’s surface.

Both mechanisms were thought to be driven by a process called tidal heating. Because Enceladus’ path around Saturn is elliptical, it is pulled unevenly by the planet’s gravity at different points along its orbit. This creates a bulge on the moon’s surface that grows and shrinks depending on the moon’s distance from Saturn.

The repetitive motion generates friction and heat, which scientists suspect drives the tiger stripes to open and close.

Though Europa (the ice moon of Jupiter) and Mars have long been considered the prime candidates for finding life off of the Earth, many scientists believe Enceladus holds the best chance at harboring some form of life because most of the required organic compounds needed to create and sustain life (as we know it, anyway) already exists in fair abundance on the little moon.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Brooklyn’s local law 111 states that graffiti is “any letter, word, name, number, symbol, slogan, message, drawing, picture, writing … that is drawn, painted, chiseled, scratched, or etched on a commercial building or residential building.”

Sounds reasonable, right?

The law then continues to define graffiti as something that is “not consented to by the owner of the commercial building or residential building.” Under this definition not only can graffiti be the ugly spray paintings of gang members but also the colorful sidewalk chalk scribblings of 6 year old girls.

Natalie Shea, a 6 year old living on 10th street in Brooklyn drew the ire of her neighbors who called 311 to report that the little girl was breaking the law. Apparently someone on 10th street believes the blue blotch shown in the picture above is more troublesome than “dog poop, garbage from ill-kept homes, and noise from car alarms.” Soon she received a notice stating “PLEASE REMOVE THE GRAFFITI FROM YOUR PROPERTY,” “FAILURE TO COMPLY … MAY RESULT IN ENFORCEMENT ACTION AGAINST YOU.” The warning also says that she could face a $300 fine.

From The Brooklyn Paper:

“This whole thing is ridiculous. Admittedly, this drawing was not her best work — she usually sticks to cheerful scenes, not abstracts, frankly — but to send a warning letter like that is outrageous.”

Under the law it would technically become illegal to play hop-scotch or even sidewalk tic-tac-toe.

City chalk artists such as Ellis Gallagher has been creating sidewalk masterpieces for years and has never been arrested or issued a citation. Even when police ask him what he is up to, once they see he’s just drawing with chalk they leave him be. Chalk after all does wash away with the first rain.

Though it’s reasonable to get caught up in the stupidity of citing a 6 year old girl for drawing with chalk in front of her home, let’s not forget that someone actually called 311 on her. That’s right, one of her neighbors is such a douchebag that they called the cops on a 6 year old girl. Now who does that? I mean, have we as Americans become such ass holes that 6 year old girls with pigtails and handfuls of chalk can arouse in us bouts of “chalk rage”?

I so wish permanent blindness on whomever called the cops on Natalie Shea.

Popularity: 5% [?]

This is Toyota’s concept vehicle which has been entered in the L.A. Auto Show Design Challenge. Called the 2057 Toyota BioMobile Mecha, it runs on pollution which by the year 2057 should be pretty bad.

From Toyota’s Press Release:

“It is year 2057 and due to limited ground space, vertical architectures have caused the transportation industry to create new pathways that also explore vertical space.

An innovative solution is discovered in biomimicry. Inspired by life found in nature, the vehicle is powered by pollution with dynamic driving instincts and structural adaptations to accommodate the user’s need for space.

This vehicle’s unique capability to extract pollutants in the air and utilize it as an energy space source restores balance to our atmosphere. It is able to autonomously adapt its driving environment by utilizing its four nano-laser wheels. Nanotechnology also enables the structure of the vehicle to expand and contract horizontally and vertically to serve as a compact commuter, an aerodynamic performance vehicle and temporary dwelling”

I’m all for cleaning up the environment, but if things keep going south at least we’ll all be choking and burning to death in style. Check out the link to the auto show for some other mind-blowing designs or view some of the highlights below.

This years theme for the designers was to visualize concepts for the year 2057 so don’t get too excited because none of these designs are being considered with any degree of seriousness. First of all the technology some of these designs rely on isn’t even close to being invented and besides these design shows are more of a way for the auto makers to show off their creativity. Still, some of the ideas are intriguing and leaps forward in technology usually get started with a single great imaginative vision.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Archaeologist William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853-1942) is known as the father of Egyptian Archeology as well as being the real life inspiration for the fictional Indiana Jones. Though Petrie never had to jump from a Nazi airship, escape pits of poisonous snakes and outrun giant stone boulders, he did contribute significantly to our understanding of ancient Egypt. He is most famous discovery was that of the Merneptah Stele, a granite slab containing the earliest known reference to Isrir, better known as Israel.

Petrie was also the founder of London’s Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology (always name a museum after yourself, by the way) which is home to some of the most important Egyptian artifacts ever found. A portion of the collection is on tour in the United States and is currently on display at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe. The exhibit features 221 of Petrie’s finds and will run from Sep 01, 2007 - Jan 06, 2008.

Being that I live in Colorado I am thinking about making the trip down there for a day or two. Over the years I’ve been to New Mexico quite a few times and I’ve always had a great time. Santa Fe (and Taos) are beautiful cities and I highly recommend traveling there if you ever get the chance.

Popularity: 6% [?]

“Colour possesses me… colour and I are one. I am a painter.”
- Paul Klee

German/Swiss painter Klee wrote those words in his diary during the 1920’s when he was on a trip to Tunisia. In his lectures he said “Colours do not sing in unison… but in a kind of three-part harmony,” and “how enormous are the differences between red and a colour which contains no red at all!”

Though famous for his use of color, Paul Klee was not as concerned with color as a subject before 1914. It was not until a trip to Tunisia in 1914 “where he discovered the emotive intensity of colour. His direct experience of the sensuality of the southern light was decisive on his work.” From that moment on Klee’s work shifted dramatically and evolved into the colorful, abstract masterpieces we enjoy 100 years later.

Klee’s work in abstract color as it turns out is not such an original idea after all. 11,000 years ago in Syria a “neolithic settlement of Djade al-Mughara on the Euphrates, northeast of the city of Aleppo” was home to hunter gatherers who had built a communal house with a wooden roof and painted a remarkable image on the rock walls. Before the village was abandoned and the house filled with mud, some unknown artist or artists created this modern looking masterpiece by using burnt hematite rock for the reds, crushed limestone for white and charcoal for the blacks.

From Yahoo:

Mustafa Ali, a leading Syrian artist, said similar geometric design to that in the Djade al-Mughara painting found its way into art throughout the Levant and Persia, and can even be seen in carpets and kilims (rugs).

The excavation has been ongoing in this region since the early 1990’s and has been headed up by a French team of archaeologists lead by Eric Coqueugniot. “France is an important contributor to excavation efforts in Syria, where 120 teams are at work. Syria was at the crossroads of the ancient world and has thousands of mostly unexcavated archaeological sites.”

Popularity: 11% [?]

I’m sure you’ve seen allot of images like the one above floating around the internet for some time now yet very little information about how they work has been presented. The explanation though is actually quite simple - it’s called parallax.

The most basic definition of parallax is the apparent motion of an object against a more distant background due to a change in the position of an observer. Illustrated below is parallax working on the astronomical scale where a bright star seems to move in relation the background stars as the Earth (with all us little observers) revolves around the sun.

On a smaller more manageable scale you can see parallax in action by just holding your finger about a foot away from your face and switching from closing your left eye to closing your right eye. Everything in the background seems to move relative to your finger when in fact it’s really just an effect of your eyes being spaced a few inches apart.

So how does parallax work to make flat 2 dimensional images appear 3D? Because us humans have binocular vision (2 eyes in front) enabling us to gauge how far away something is in a given space such as a deer on grassy plain or a tree in a forest. These animated images then work by replacing space with time - the speed of the timing between the flickering of each image. Click on any of the images below to see more examples of the effect (credit Jim Gasperini)

It should be noted that these images are not truly 3 dimensional because you are only seeing one flat image at a time. For true 3D images you need to see two unique images at the same time. The effect however is quite striking and even works with just one eye so people with a visual impairment can experience the effect, albeit to a lesser degree than with both eyes.

For a more challenging illusion, click here.

Popularity: 8% [?]