10 Cool Future City Concepts

from:UrbanTitan

1. Seoul Commune 2026 (Green towers in the park), Seoul
The project by the Korea-based firm Mass Studies came as a response to Korea’s rapid technological and architectural development, which the designers describe as ‘anarchical.’ Covering 393 400 square miles, 15 towers of varying height- from 16 to 53 floors- function like one giant house in this park. It consists of two very contrasting elements: the park represents a public space, while the rising towers are an accumulation of individual dwelling units and demarcated private space. The Seoul 2026 proposal offers a fully-functional community development that is efficient, high-tech, and immensely sustainable. The buildings are being designed to use lattice-like geometric shapes to allow airflow as well as maximum strength while using a minimum of materials. They will be covered in plants. The towers’ internal functions are separated into public, private, and commercial, offering purely-private rooms called “cells” and communal spaces for public activity. Members of the commune may range from permanent residents to nomadic short-term lodgers. Seoul Commune 2026 suggests a minimized private space consisting of a bedroom and a bathroom in several spatial variations. Six elevators and six shaft spaces are used for transportation. The bases of all 15 towers offer programs for sports and leisure, educational facilities, a convention hall, conference spaces, cultural facilities, and supporting commercial facilities.

2. Ultima tower, San Francisco
Ultima tower is future city concept designed by Eugene Tsui. It’s designed to solve the problem with world population crisis. Conceptualized as human termite nest, these two miles green towers could house over one million people in area of only one mile. It’s shaped like a cone and would be able to fit full ecosystem of hills, ravines, lakes and rivers. The lakes would have sandy beaches, grass, trees and rocky islands. It’s imagined as if nature grew upwards with multi-soil levels. In the tower could be built residential, office, commercial, retail and entertainment objects. Ecological efficiency is a rule. The building will recycle goods and will use only eco friendly materials. Cars will not be let in. Only electric automobile, hybrid cars and bicycles would be allowed.

3. Sky City 1000, Tokyo
The project proposed by Takenaka Corporation in 1989 is another one which would be set to solve population crisis and lack of green space. It would house about 35000 residents and 100 000 workers. It’s 1000 meters high and comprises 14 concave dish-shaped “Space Plateaus” stacked one upon the other. The interior of the plateaus would contain green space, and on the edges, on the sides of the building, would be the apartments. Also included in the building would be offices, commercial facilities, schools, theatres, and other modern amenities. People would move with triple-deck high-speed elevators from floor to the top in less than two minutes. Each plateau will also have a monorail system which will help move people laterally. Authorities in Tokyo take this project very seriously; Sky City 1000 could be first realized future city concept.

4. Crystal Island, Moscow
450 meters tall self-contained city designed by Foster + Partners. It can fit about 30 000 residents in 900 apartments, but will also boast hotel rooms, cinema, theatre, museum, sports fields, shopping malls and school for 500 students. This project was already granted preliminary planning permission for construction on Nagatino Peninsula, just 4.5 miles from the Kremlin. The mega structure would form an amazing “second skin” and thermal buffer for the main building, shielding the interior spaces from Moscow’s weather. This second skin will be sealed in winter to minimize heat loss, and opened in the summer to naturally cool the interior. The building would be powered by built-in solar panels and wind turbines. The site would also feature on-site renewable and low-carbon energy generation. It will be built in a new park, which would provide a range of activities. This project was delayed in 2009 because of the global financial crisis.

5. Bionic Tower, Hong Kong/Shanghai
The Bionic tower is project designed by Spanish architects Eloy Celaya, Rosa Cervera and Javier Gomez. It’s proposed vertical city, an extremely large building purposed for human habitation of 100 000 people. It would be built on completely artificial island of 0.4 square miles connected to the mainland. It would cost about 15 billion dollars. Until now the cities of Shanghai and Hong Kong have shown interest for this project.

6. X-Seed 4000, Tokyo
Although only an architectural dream, it’s cool. Created and developed by Peter Neville, and designed by Taisei Corporation, the 800 floors building would be 4 km high and 6 km wide, able to fit 500 000 to 1 000 000 people. It could eclipse even Mount Fuji, whose iconic shape has been attributed by the architects as their inspiration. X-Seed 4000 would be powered entirely by the sun, although it is unclear whether this would involve covering the facade with photovoltaic panels or next generation thin film solar panels. The interior of the building does appear to adhere to the Soleri’s ideology of humans in coexistence with nature; as seen above there is no shortage in terms of indoor foliage. The question remains: who would want to live in the shadow of a 2.5 mile tall building? However, X-Seed is “never meant to be built”. According to Georges Binder, managing director of Buildings & Data, a firm which compiles data banks on buildings worldwide. “The purpose of the plan was to earn some recognition for the firm, and it worked.”

7. Shimizu TRY 2004 Mega-City Pyramid, Shimizu
If built, Shimizu TRY mega-City Pyramid would be the largest man-made structure in world’s history; 730 meters high and 12 times higher than Great Pyramid in Giza in Egypt. Designed to accommodate 750 000 people, or 1/16 of Tokyo’s population, this building would help solving the problem of lack in space in Tokyo, knowing the fact that it takes space of only 1/47 of metropolis’ area. The proposed structure is so large that it cannot be built with currently available materials, due to their weight. The design relies on the future availability of super-strong lightweight materials based on carbon nanotubes. This pyramid city would be composed by 5 stacked trusses, each with similar dimensions to that of the great pyramid of Giza. It will use only renewable energy, mostly of the sea, the sun and the wind. For interior transport would be used accelerating walkways, inclined elevators, and a personal rapid transit system where automated pods would travel within the trusses. According to Discovery Channel’s documentary on the pyramid it would be complete within the year 2110.

8. Ziggurat Dubai Carbon Neutral Pyramid, Dubai
We can’t talk about Future City Concept if we don’t mention Dubai. The Ziggurat Dubai Carbon Neutral Pyramid is designed to house incredible number of 1 million residents, covering 2.3 square kilometers. This giant eco building was unveiled at Dubai Cityscape Event in 2008 and attracted a lot of attention by expert of the architecture, who were sure that project can be incorporated into grander plans, meaning that it may not be a one-off structure. The project was undertaken by Dubai based environmental design company Timelinks. The city will use natural renewable energy resources of solar, wind and steam making it completely self-sustainable in energetic terms and supported by a carbon neutral system producing zero carbon dioxide emissions. “Ziggurat communities can be almost totally self-sufficient energy-wise. Apart from using steam power in the building we will also employ wind turbine technology to harness natural energy resources. Whole cities can be accommodated in complexes which take up less than 10% of the original land surface. Public and private landscaping will be used for leisure pursuits or irrigated as agricultural land”, said Timelinks, MD, Ridas Matonis. The transportation network will make cars redundant and will have a plenty of green spaces for recreation and agriculture.

9. The Venus Project, Venus, Florida
Maybe this is the best known future city concept. The goal of The Venus Project is to restructure the world into green-thinking and energy-sustainable place. It’s based on the philosophy that technology will improve better if people are not so profit-minded. To prove it to the world, a group led by ideologist Jacques Fresco built research center in Venus, Florida, where new technologies are being developed. Cities would be based on the land, under the sea and above the sea. People, according to this concept, would live in very high skyscrapers, constructed entirely of reinforced and pre-stressed concrete, steel and glass, and stabilized against earthquakes. These super-size skyscrapers will assure that more land will be available for parks and wilderness preserves, while concurrently helping to eliminate urban sprawl. Each one of these towers will be a total enclosure system containing a shopping center, as well as childcare, educational, health, and recreational facilities. This will help alleviate the need to travel to outside facilities. Would be used only renewable energy, as anything else is not in line with their philosophy.

10. Sky-Terra, San Francisco
A designer from San Francisco Joanna Borek-Clement created this project of cities in the sky inspired by the neuron cells. Unlike the others which include great skyscrapers blocking the sun, these interconnected giant building would keep the sunlight out. The towers should reduce the urban heat island effect. Rainwater will be used for landscaping needs. The towers will be built from modular parts to conserve resources and energy. The transportation system consists of interconnected foot paths and also bike paths and electric car paths. Getting to the city will be done by elevator. The Sky-Terra towers offer many options from public parks, to greenbelts, playing fields, jogging paths, amphitheaters, pools or bath houses – all with the aim of providing people with access to open space.

Cool video-mapping show projected on Prague's 600-year-old medieval Astronomical Clock

From Prague, a video-mapping show projected on the medieval Astronomical Clock in the city's Old Town Square. Part of a celebration for the 600th anniversary of the clock's construction.

Via the BB Submitterator, Boing Boing reader Treyka sends us the link and says, "I had no idea this was even possible with projector technology!"
Me neither! The dazzling visual show goes on for a full ten minutes.

BB reader Kerray says, "The people who worked on it are themacula.com, duber.cz and michalkotek.com, and the projection itself was done by avmedia.cz. Four months of work, 5000x1200 resolution, 2x Christie 18K HD projectors."

From Wikipedia, this schematic explaining what the various interlocking dials on the Prague Orloj represent.

from our friend Xeni at BoingBoing

Car Part Art

James Corbett makes cool pieces of art from old car parts.
From his website:

James, from Ningi, Queensland, Australia has been sculpting his incredibly life like pieces since early 1999, and since that time his unique works have found homes in all capital cities in Australia, also England, Switzerland, New Zealand, Japan, the United Arab Emirates and the U.S.A. He discovered his talent for creating his amazing pieces of art whilst running an auto recycling business in Brisbane.

from Now That's Nifty

"Stop Looking at my Moms"

Thanks, Luke

Latest GEF - Shepard Fairey Collaborationto be released this week

I've been a fan of Dr. Cornel West since the first time I heard him speak, he's no doubt one of my favorite people on the planet. The first time I actually met him was in November of 2000, the day before the dreadful presidential (s)election of G.W. Bush. He was traveling and speaking with a personal hero of mine, Ralph Nader. A year later I approached him (as well as Ralph Nader and a few others) to make a contribution to my updated version of The Idealist, since i was also planning on including a photo of him in it, he was happy to oblige and gave me some inspiring words for it's text. Since then we've seen each other a few times at various events and speaking engagements. Back in July of 2009 I went to see him speak at a Revolution newspaper discussion, and with less than 2 minutes to work I took the photo back stage that became the basis for the recent collaboration.

Last year some time when I approached Shepard with the idea of doing two more collaborations, he was immediately into it. One for 2010, and one for 2011 was part of the plan. So in 2010 we did the first, based on my photograph of Dr. Cornel West, mentioned above. Finally just the week before last we got Brother West to come down to the Studio Number One offices, out by Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, to sign the posters. Not since the Bad Brains collaboration, (that all of the original members signed), have I been so excited to get one of these signed by the subject and out. Shepard and I signed them back in January. Now, very appropriately it is being released on October 14th, the same day that in 1964 Martin Luther King Jr. became the youngest man ever to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. As usual the print will be available on the Obey Giant web site. This is a limited edition (450), they are numbered, and signed by all three of us. If you're interested, keep close attention to the site because they usually go within the first 24 hours (or in some cases the first 24 minutes!)






Oh, and for the 2011 print... Well, if you come to my show in San Francisco next month you'll get to see the "fine art" version before the poster version is released - hint: it will be released on February 13th 2011, on the subjects' 50th birthday!

Cars that Drive Themselves, in Traffic

smarter than you think
Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
from the New YorkTimes: by JOHN MARKOFF

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Anyone driving the twists of Highway 1 between San Francisco and Los Angeles recently may have glimpsed a Toyota Prius with a curious funnel-like cylinder on the roof. Harder to notice was that the person at the wheel was not actually driving.

The car is a project of Google, which has been working in secret but in plain view on vehicles that can drive themselves, using artificial-intelligence software that can sense anything near the car and mimic the decisions made by a human driver.

With someone behind the wheel to take control if something goes awry and a technician in the passenger seat to monitor the navigation system, seven test cars have driven 1,000 miles without human intervention and more than 140,000 miles with only occasional human control. One even drove itself down Lombard Street in San Francisco, one of the steepest and curviest streets in the nation. The only accident, engineers said, was when one Google car was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light.

Autonomous cars are years from mass production, but technologists who have long dreamed of them believe that they can transform society as profoundly as the Internet has.

Robot drivers react faster than humans, have 360-degree perception and do not get distracted, sleepy or intoxicated, the engineers argue. They speak in terms of lives saved and injuries avoided — more than 37,000 people died in car accidents in the United States in 2008. The engineers say the technology could double the capacity of roads by allowing cars to drive more safely while closer together. Because the robot cars would eventually be less likely to crash, they could be built lighter, reducing fuel consumption. But of course, to be truly safer, the cars must be far more reliable than, say, today’s personal computers, which crash on occasion and are frequently infected.

The Google research program using artificial intelligence to revolutionize the automobile is proof that the company’s ambitions reach beyond the search engine business. The program is also a departure from the mainstream of innovation in Silicon Valley, which has veered toward social networks and Hollywood-style digital media.





During a half-hour drive beginning on Google’s campus 35 miles south of San Francisco last Wednesday, a Prius equipped with a variety of sensors and following a route programmed into the GPS navigation system nimbly accelerated in the entrance lane and merged into fast-moving traffic on Highway 101, the freeway through Silicon Valley.

It drove at the speed limit, which it knew because the limit for every road is included in its database, and left the freeway several exits later. The device atop the car produced a detailed map of the environment.

The car then drove in city traffic through Mountain View, stopping for lights and stop signs, as well as making announcements like “approaching a crosswalk” (to warn the human at the wheel) or “turn ahead” in a pleasant female voice. This same pleasant voice would, engineers said, alert the driver if a master control system detected anything amiss with the various sensors.

The car can be programmed for different driving personalities — from cautious, in which it is more likely to yield to another car, to aggressive, where it is more likely to go first.

Christopher Urmson, a Carnegie Mellon University robotics scientist, was behind the wheel but not using it. To gain control of the car he has to do one of three things: hit a red button near his right hand, touch the brake or turn the steering wheel. He did so twice, once when a bicyclist ran a red light and again when a car in front stopped and began to back into a parking space. But the car seemed likely to have prevented an accident itself.

When he returned to automated “cruise” mode, the car gave a little “whir” meant to evoke going into warp drive on “Star Trek,” and Dr. Urmson was able to rest his hands by his sides or gesticulate when talking to a passenger in the back seat. He said the cars did attract attention, but people seem to think they are just the next generation of the Street View cars that Google uses to take photographs and collect data for its maps.

The project is the brainchild of Sebastian Thrun, the 43-year-old director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, a Google engineer and the co-inventor of the Street View mapping service.

In 2005, he led a team of Stanford students and faculty members in designing the Stanley robot car, winning the second Grand Challenge of the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, a $2 million Pentagon prize for driving autonomously over 132 miles in the California desert.

Besides the team of 15 engineers working on the current project, Google hired more than a dozen people, each with a spotless driving record, to sit in the driver’s seat, paying $15 an hour or more. Google is using six Priuses and an Audi TT in the project.

The Google researchers said the company did not yet have a clear plan to create a business from the experiments. Dr. Thrun is known as a passionate promoter of the potential to use robotic vehicles to make highways safer and lower the nation’s energy costs. It is a commitment shared by Larry Page, Google’s co-founder, according to several people familiar with the project.

The self-driving car initiative is an example of Google’s willingness to gamble on technology that may not pay off for years, Dr. Thrun said. Even the most optimistic predictions put the deployment of the technology more than eight years away.

One way Google might be able to profit is to provide information and navigation services for makers of autonomous vehicles. Or, it might sell or give away the navigation technology itself, much as it offers its Android smart phone system to cellphone companies.

But the advent of autonomous vehicles poses thorny legal issues, the Google researchers acknowledged. Under current law, a human must be in control of a car at all times, but what does that mean if the human is not really paying attention as the car crosses through, say, a school zone, figuring that the robot is driving more safely than he would?

And in the event of an accident, who would be liable — the person behind the wheel or the maker of the software?

“The technology is ahead of the law in many areas,” said Bernard Lu, senior staff counsel for the California Department of Motor Vehicles. “If you look at the vehicle code, there are dozens of laws pertaining to the driver of a vehicle, and they all presume to have a human being operating the vehicle.”

The Google researchers said they had carefully examined California’s motor vehicle regulations and determined that because a human driver can override any error, the experimental cars are legal. Mr. Lu agreed.

Scientists and engineers have been designing autonomous vehicles since the mid-1960s, but crucial innovation happened in 2004 when the Pentagon’s research arm began its Grand Challenge.

The first contest ended in failure, but in 2005, Dr. Thrun’s Stanford team built the car dubbed Stanley that won a race with a rival vehicle built by a team from Carnegie Mellon University. Less than two years later, another event proved that autonomous vehicles could drive safely in urban settings.

Advances have been so encouraging that Dr. Thrun sounds like an evangelist when he speaks of robot cars. There is their potential to reduce fuel consumption by eliminating heavy-footed stop-and-go drivers and, given the reduced possibility of accidents, to ultimately build more lightweight vehicles.

There is even the farther-off prospect of cars that do not need anyone behind the wheel. That would allow the cars to be summoned electronically, so that people could share them. Fewer cars would then be needed, reducing the need for parking spaces, which consume valuable land.

And, of course, the cars could save humans from themselves. “Can we text twice as much while driving, without the guilt?” Dr. Thrun said in a recent talk. “Yes, we can, if only cars will drive themselves.”

Woody Allan had them in "Sleeper" and every time I go to Los Angeles and have to drive I think "why not?" Next thing i'll be looking for will be electric power strips in the road similar to the old "slot cars" we used to race as kids, powering and guiding the automobiles.

Creative, Intellectual Lives are Not Self-Indulgent

from Richard Metzger at Dangerous Minds:

Wonderful and thought-provoking essay at The Chronicle of Higher Eduction website from Nation/New Republic contributor, William Deresiewicz about not boxing yourself and your life into what others think you should do with your short time on this planet. You will only ever get one life, so live it wisely, but of course, that’s easier said than done and Deresiewicz counsels constantly questioning the choices you’ve made and not being afraid to face up to what your heart desires.

This was adapted from a talk delivered to a freshman class at Stanford University in May, 2010 and comes near the end. Absolutely worth reading, no matter if you are a student or a senior citizen. A straight life and a job or career is not for everyone and Deresiewicz, while not exactly saying “fly your freak flag high,” offers much to ponder here for iconoclastic and creative personalities who might be pressured to conform:

In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce has Stephen Dedalus famously say, about growing up in Ireland in the late 19th century, “When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.”

Today there are other nets. One of those nets is a term that I’ve heard again and again as I’ve talked with students about these things. That term is “self-indulgent.” “Isn’t it self-indulgent to try to live the life of the mind when there are so many other things I could be doing with my degree?” “Wouldn’t it be self-indulgent to pursue painting after I graduate instead of getting a real job?”

These are the kinds of questions that young people find themselves being asked today if they even think about doing something a little bit different. Even worse, the kinds of questions they are made to feel compelled to ask themselves. Many students have spoken to me, as they navigated their senior years, about the pressure they felt from their peers—from their peers—to justify a creative or intellectual life. You’re made to feel like you’re crazy: crazy to forsake the sure thing, crazy to think it could work, crazy to imagine that you even have a right to try.

Think of what we’ve come to. It is one of the great testaments to the intellectual—and moral, and spiritual—poverty of American society that it makes its most intelligent young people feel like they’re being self-indulgent if they pursue their curiosity. You are all told that you’re supposed to go to college, but you’re also told that you’re being “self-indulgent” if you actually want to get an education. Or even worse, give yourself one. As opposed to what? Going into consulting isn’t self-indulgent? Going into finance isn’t self-indulgent? Going into law, like most of the people who do, in order to make yourself rich, isn’t self-indulgent? It’s not OK to play music, or write essays, because what good does that really do anyone, but it is OK to work for a hedge fund. It’s selfish to pursue your passion, unless it’s also going to make you a lot of money, in which case it’s not selfish at all.

Do you see how absurd this is? But these are the nets that are flung at you, and this is what I mean by the need for courage. And it’s a never-ending process. At that Harvard event two years ago, one person said, about my assertion that college students needed to keep rethinking the decisions they’ve made about their lives, “We already made our decisions, back in middle school, when we decided to be the kind of high achievers who get into Harvard.” And I thought, who wants to live with the decisions that they made when they were 12? Let me put that another way. Who wants to let a 12-year-old decide what they’re going to do for the rest of their lives? Or a 19-year-old, for that matter?

Read the entire essay: What Are You Going to Do With That? (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

What Internet activism looks like.

from BoingBoing:

Anil Dash hits one so far out of the park it attains orbit in this response to a silly Malcolm Gladwell column that decried Internet activism as incapable of achieving meaningful change. It's all must-read stuff, but here's the bit that made me want to stand up and salute:

Today, Dale Dougherty and the dozens of others who have led Maker Faire, and the culture of "making", are in front of a movement of millions who are proactive about challenging the constrictions that law and corporations are trying to place on how they communicate, create and live. The lesson that simply making things is a radical political act has enormous precedence in political history; I learned it well as a child when my own family's conversation after a screening of Gandhi turned to the salt protests in India, which were first catalyzed in my family's home state of Orissa, and led to my great-grandfather walking alongside Gandhi and others in the salt marches to come. Today's American Tea Partiers see even the original "tea party" largely as a metaphor, but the salt marches were a declaration of self-determination as expressed through manufacturing that took the symbolism of the Boston Tea Party and made it part of everyday life.

To his last day, my great-grandfather wore khadi, the handspun clothing that didn't just represent independence from the British Raj in an abstract way, but made defiance of onerous British regulation as plain as the clothes on one's back. At Maker Faire this weekend, there were numerous examples of clothing that were made to defy laws about everything from spectrum to encryption law. It would have been only an afternoon's work to construct a t-shirt that broadcast CSS-descrambling code over unauthorized spectrum in defiance of the DMCA.

And if we put the making movement in the context of other social and political movements, it's had amazing success. In city after city, year after year, tens of thousands of people pay money to show up and learn about taking control of their media, learning, consumption and communications. In contrast to groups like the Tea Party, the crowd at Maker Faire is diverse, includes children and adults of all ages, and never finds itself in conflict with other groups based on identity or politics. More importantly, the jobs that many of us have in 2030 will be determined by young people who attended a Maker Faire, in industries that they've created. There is no other political movement in America today with a credible claim at creating the jobs of the future.

Make The Revolution

You like chicken nuggets don't you?

nice post on BoingBoing to wet your appetite in case you never watched the must see movie "Earthlings".

above Visual treat of the day: mechanically-seperated chicken paste.

Someone figured out in the 1960’s that meat processors can eek out a few more percent of profit from chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows by scraping the bones 100% clean of meat. This is done by machines, not humans, by passing bones leftover after the initial cutting through a high pressure sieve. The paste you see in the picture above is the result.

This paste goes on to become the main ingredient in many a hot dog, bologna, chicken nuggets, pepperoni, salami, jerky etc…

The industry calls this method AMR – Advanced Meat Recovery.

Mechanically separated chicken paste looks like strawberry soft serve

watch EARTHLINGS on google video free in it's entirety,
thank me later. Narrated by Joaquin Phoenix.

It's the Northern Lights, Mother Fuckers!

In 1621 French scientist Pierre Gassendi decided to name the strange natural displays of light he had observed in the sky. He took the name of the Roman goddess of the dawn, Aurora and combined it with the Greek name for the north wind, Boreas. The world had a name, finally, for these mysterious light shows - aurora borealis.


For those who find Latin/Greek combination names something of a mouthful there is still the alternative name – the Northern Lights. The closer you are to the North Magnetic Pole the more likely you are to see the lights. Many confuse the magnetic pole with the geographic North Pole but they are not the same thing at all.


The Geographic North Pole is the point at which the axis of rotation of our small blue planet meets its surface. The North Magnetic Pole is where the magnetic field of the planet points down at an angle of 90° - vertically in other words. A moveable point, it is at the moment hosted by the Canadians and as such, aurora borealis is common in that country.


As you near the magnetic pole the Northern Lights appear high above your head but as you go further away from the pole they seem to light up the whole of the northern horizon. They are normally a greenish glow though sometimes red can be seen in the patterns. It is almost as if the sun is rising from a strange new angle.


Of course, Gassendi was not the first person to give the phenomenon a name – his suggestion was just the first that stuck. The Cree people of the North Americas called the Northern Lights the Dance of the Spirits which is more than appropriate as a visual metaphor.

A Norse account from the thirteenth century ponders the origins of the aurora borealis. Three possibilities are mooted – the first that the oceans must be surrounded by fires of such enormity as to make the sky glow. The next was that glaciers became fluorescent after soaking up sunlight.

The third however was a good guess for 1230 AD. It maintained that flares from the sun were so powerful as to reach around the world and illuminate the night side. This theory was wrong but given scientific knowledge of the time was as good a guess as we were going to get.


The Northern Lights are caused atoms becoming excited. Nitrogen and oxygen atoms become excited by solar winds above the fifty mile mark in the atmosphere. This is when the energy levels of the atoms are elevated due to the higher temperatures in the atmosphere.

The Northern Lights are also a result of ionisation. An atom is transformed in to an ion when charged particles (such as electrons) are added (or removed). What causes this was a mystery for centuries. The culprit comes from the sun itself.


In the case of the Northern Lights atoms from the two elements have had an electron removed by the solar wind. When they regain an electron and return to what is known as their ground state they emit photons which is the basic unit of light. These become visible to the naked eye because there are so many of them being emitted by the nitrogen returning to its ground state.

Oxygen atoms mostly emit green light although it can be a reddish brown too depending on the amount of energy that has been absorbed. Nitrogen on the other hand appears either blue if the atom has reclaimed it missing electron after ionization. It appears red if it has been in an excited state and is returning to its ground state.

For more incredible almost live aurora images, look here.

thanks, PreSurfer
from Kuriositas (please check here for all the photo credits)

American atheists and agnostics know more about religion than professed believers

from BoingBoing

A new Pew survey on religion in America finds that atheists and agnostics are more likely to be well-versed about different religions' beliefs and practices than people who profess a belief in those religions. For example, atheists and agnostics are more likely to know that during Communion (Catholicism's central rite), the wafer and wine are meant to transubstantiate into the literal flesh and blood of Christ -- they aren't merely symbolic, as 40% of Catholics believe. Atheists and agnostics are also more likely than Protestants to know that Martin Luther sparked the Protestant Reformation (the majority of Protestants could not identify him).

Interestingly, Mormons are, on average, better versed on the traditional New Testament Bible than evangelical Christians and mainstream Christians, many of whom consider Mormonism to be apostasy.

A new Pew survey on religion in America finds that atheists and agnostics are more likely to be well-versed about different religions' beliefs and practices than people who profess a belief in those religions. For example, atheists and agnostics are more likely to know that during Communion (Catholicism's central rite), the wafer and wine are meant to transubstantiate into the literal flesh and blood of Christ -- they aren't merely symbolic, as 40% of Catholics believe. Atheists and agnostics are also more likely than Protestants to know that Martin Luther sparked the Protestant Reformation (the majority of Protestants could not identify him).

Interestingly, Mormons are, on average, better versed on the traditional New Testament Bible than evangelical Christians and mainstream Christians, many of whom consider Mormonism to be apostasy.

Atheists, agnostics most knowledgeable about religion, survey says

Anti-smoking sign from 1915

I think this is great!


thanks, BoingBoing

White Amerikkka has lost it's fucking mind

I saw this on the street the other night and was planning to blog it ASAP, but Richard Metzger at Dangerous Minds beat me to it, or did he get it from when i mentioned it on FaceBook? haaa! Insane article just the same. Here's his comment and a piece of it:

Hey, you know something people? I’m not black, but there’s a whole lots a times. I wish I could say I’m not white”—Frank Zappa, “Trouble Every Day”

There is a well-written, fascinating—but fucking depressing—cover story (avec an awesome Drew Friedman cover illustration) by Steven Thrasher in the Village Voice today. Not much for me to add to this, I snarked myself into exhaustion yesterday, just read it and weep amongst yourselves:

About 12:01 on the afternoon of January 20, 2009, the white American mind began to unravel.

It had been a pretty good run up to that point. The brains of white folks had been humming along cogently for near on 400 years on this continent, with little sign that any serious trouble was brewing. White people, after all, had managed to invent a spiffy new form of self-government so that all white men (and, eventually, women) could have a say in how white people were taxed and governed. White minds had also nearly universally occupied just about every branch of that government and, for more than two centuries, had kept sole possession of the leadership of its executive branch (whose parsonage, after all, is called the White House).

But when that streak was broken—and, for the first time, a non-white president accepted the oath of office—white America rapidly began to lose its grip.

As with other forms of dementia, the signs weren’t obvious at first. After the 2008 election, when former House majority leader Tom DeLay suggested that instead of a formal inauguration, Barack Obama should “have a nice little chicken dinner, and we’ll save the $125 million,” black folks didn’t miss the implication. References to chicken, particularly of the fried variety, have long served as a kind of code when white folks referred to black people and their gustatory preferences—and weren’t many of us already accustomed to older white politicians making such gaffes? But who among us sensed that it was a harbinger that an entire nation was plunging into madness?

Who didn’t chuckle, after all, the first time they heard that white people had doubts that Barack Obama had even been born in the United States and was therefore ineligible to be president? It sounded like one of those Internet stories in which some (usually white) writer does his best to prove something everyone knows to be true is actually the exact opposite. And you go along with it for a few paragraphs to see how long the writer can convince you that what you know is right is actually wrong.

Seemed like that, didn’t it? After all, what was the beef? Obama’s father was Kenyan, and the kid was born in Hawaii—which is barely a part of the United States to begin with (only a state in 1959!). His mother was white, and after the Kenyan guy left, she married an Indonesian guy, so little Barack lived in Jakarta for a while before coming back to Hawaii to be brought up largely by his white grandparents. . . . And that’s it? Come on, this was after-school-special material, the kind of thing that brings a tear to your eye because little half-Kenyan/half-white Barry made good, not the stuff of conspiracy novels.

But the more you shook your head at it, the more it seemed to have taken root deep in the lizard part of the white nervous system. Obama is not an American. He says he’s Christian, but he has a Muslim-sounding name. He’s not black, he’s not white. . . . Is . . . is he even human?

Today, Newsweek has found, nearly a quarter of Americans believe that Obama is a Muslim, with barely 42 percent of the nation accepting his claim that he’s a Christian. CNN finds that a quarter of Americans also believe that Obama was “probably or definitely” born in another country.

Harris found in an online poll that 14 percent of Americans believe in their hearts that President Barack Obama is the antichrist, with nearly a quarter of Republicans saying so.

Read more of White America Has Lost Its Mind (Village Voice)

Just Do It: documentary on "environmental extremists"

from Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing:

Emily James, a talented documentary filmmaker, is working on a new movie called "Just Do It," about "environmental extremism" -- activists who are willing to risk beatings and arrest to stop environmentally catastrophic projects. She's raising money to fund the film though donations, and will make it a free download when the editing is finished. They're looking for volunteers to help with everything from graphic design to making tea for the editors. Having watched the trailer, I've kicked in £150 -- this is a movie I'd love to see made!

In early 2009, acclaimed documentary filmmaker Emily James began filming the clandestine activities of several groups of environmental civil disobedient activists in the UK. Allowed unprecedented access, her footage shows us the people behind the politics, providing the often overlooked human element to their story as we watch them take on the combined forces of global capitalism, run-away climate change and those pesky metropolitan police!

Their adventures will entertain, illuminate and inspire, whilst inciting you to get off your arse and change the world.

Just Do It

What's New York's most-stolen street sign?

Sign for 'Joey Ramone Place' has been taken three times

from AP via Flaming Pablum

NEW YORK — Officials say a metal homage to the late punk legend Joey Ramone may be New York City's most-stolen street sign.

The Department of Transportation recently had the "Joey Ramone Place" sign reinstalled in lower Manhattan for the fourth time since 2003.

This time, it was raised eight feet to curb temptation. The New York Post says that puts it about 20 feet above street level.

The group's longtime drummer, Marky Ramone, thinks Joey would appreciate the most-stolen distinction. But he adds: "Now you have to be an NBA player to see it."

The sign is at the corner of Bowery and East Second Street.

DOT spokesman Seth Solomonow said Broadway, Wall Street and Love Lane signs also have attracted sign thieves.

Joey with the Beastie Boys backstage at some show circa 1985