sundance

Naked News: HPV vaccine for boys, and how the oil spill is connected to weddings and abortions

• Gardasil, the popular vaccine that protects against certain strands of HPV, is now being recommended for boys.
  
  
• The Pakistani government is beginning to allow sex-change operations.
  

Phaidon gets Creamier

“Debora Muller,” by Roe Ethridge, 2008

Phaidon is hitting heavy this month with two major releases, “Take 100: The Future of Film,” which profiles 100 of the world’s most promising new directors and “Creamier.” “Creamier is the fifth book in the celebrated “Cream” series, which has served as a forecaster of contemporary art since 1998. Like its predecessors, “Creamier” showcases the 100 most exciting emerging artists chosen by the world’s top 10 curators. Each curator chooses 10 artists each as well as one key work, which are compiled in an appendix and represent the 10 most “relevant or influential” individual works in today’s art scene.

The Office blueprint

Last October, I blogged about Mark Bennett’s blueprints of fictional homes from pop culture. Similarly, the crowds at Reddit discussed this office blueprint for the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin. I like how Ryan’s desk near the men’s restroom after his demotion is noted as well.

Close encounters of the nature kind

In this video National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen shares a remarkable encounter he had with a leopard seal in Antarctica. Over the four days, this (friendly? confused?) giant leopard seal took a liking or concern to Nicklen an attempted to feed him penguins and tried to teach him how to hunt. I thought it was [...]

Magazine bookshelf

Designer Sean Miller came up with the perfect project that puts all those issues of National Geographic magazines to good use. Miller recycled about 80 copies into a functional bookshelf. The immediately recognizable yellow of the magazine adds a nice bit of color to it as well. Sean coated the magazines with a a water/starch [...]

Mars attack

MARS! from Joe Bichard and Jack Cunningham on Vimeo. Stephen Hawking set the blogosphere talking recently with his advice that instead of seeking contact, us Earthlings should do our best to avoid attracting extraterrestrials because he theorizes in a new documentary, “if aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when [...]

Shakespeare in the Park’s “The Winter’s Tale”

The Public must be feeling brave. For this summer’s annual Shakespeare in the Park the company has chosen to stage the problematic “The Winter’s Tale” and the dark, depressing and downright un-summery “The Merchant of Venice.” “Merchant” gets some help from Al Pacino, whose having another go at Shylock, a role he played opposite Jeremy Irons and Joseph Fiennes in the 2004 film of the same name. “Merchant” may not be the bawdy romp in the woods summertime audiences oftentimes prefer, but “The Winter’s Tale” somewhat makes up for the lack of Elizabethan bathroom humor.

One woman’s tale of dying to give birth

It’s reasonable to assume that, in this day and age of technological advances and common knowledge about good health, maternal mortality rates should be next to nil. But even in the United States, one of the richest countries in the world, it’s up at 13.3 deaths per 100,000 live births (in 2006), an increase from [...]

Sculpture artists compete to create recycled masterpieces

2009 Scrapfest Redux from SUCH Video on Vimeo.

Summer festival season is upon us, and towns and cities large and small are celebrating their history and culture (as well as trying to attract tourist dollars). In 2009, Lansing, Michigan’s Old Town district added a new event to its Summer solstice celebrations Festival of the Moon & Festival of the Sun: Scrapfest. For the two weeks leading up to the midsummer events, twelve teams of artists root through materials at local scrap processing and recycling company Friedland Industries, and create a sculpture from their finds.

Light painting warfare

Freddie Wong created this short yet exciting action sequence titled “Light Warfare” using stop-motion light painting. Only photons were hurt in the making of this short film, which took Wong and company a total of 13 hours over two days to shoot. Watch the behind the scenes video here. [Via]

AdSpecs, the $19 miracle

AdSpecs, the glasses that use water to improve vision

Over half a billion people in the developing world need glasses, but either don’t have access to eye care or can’t afford it, as is most often the case. And even if donors put up enough money to provide eyeglasses for everyone who needs them, there simply aren’t enough trained optometrists to handle prescriptions properly. To tackle this problem, UK physicist Joshua Silver invented a pair of self-refractive eyeglasses that enable wearer to adjust the prescription themselves in 1996. It wasn’t until Silver developed a better version in 2007 that he started to get media attention and created Global Vision 2020, a realistic plan for global distribution of his AdSpecs.

Fabric soccer balls

Klas Ernflo made these regulation-size soccer balls from wool fabrics. I was able to view some of them last year at Partners and Spade, Andy Spade’s art gallery-slash-store, and they were the classiest bespoke soccer balls that I’ve ever seen.

For rent: President Obama’s old apartment

142 West 109th Street, Apt 3E seems like a typical over-priced New York City apartment that is currently available and renting for $1,900 a month. It’s a one-bedroom on the third floor of a nondescript walk-up building as seen in the Google Street View snapshot above. Its claim to fame, however, is that President Obama [...]

Bionic Woman: Christina Aguilera

I find it funny that while a Christina Aguilera backlash occurs across the county, fueled by the venom of Perez Hilton, that I am seeing the singer’s talent much more clearly. A few months ago had you mentioned Xtina and Gaga in the same sentence I would have most definitely opined on the subject. Gaga was the clear star. The new winner. The heir apparent to Madonna. She was smarter in her pop references than Xtina, she could actually sing, Ms. Spears, and she was not created by a record company. She created her own looks. And songs. And hooks.

World Cup trophy

As the crescendo towards the World Cup builds, the National Geographic blog shared an anecdote about the world’s arguably most coveted trophy. The 18-karat-gold statue (below) has been kept mostly under lock and key at an undisclosed location since its predecessor, the Jules Rimet trophy, was stashed under a bed during World War II, held [...]

Michael Jordan’s Hitler Mustache, Part 2

The stink over “The Hanes” (see previous post) continues to waft in the air, Jordan.  Ashton Kutcher  was aghast on Kimmel. Even old pal Charles Barkely got into the act,  dialing out  a full court beat down that extended well beyond Dwayne Wade and his usual fave five.  But beyond the celebrity backlash, Johnny Mainstreet [...]

FULL FRONTAL FASHION highlights

Think of this as your FULL FRONTAL FASHION cliff notes. No flip-flops at the opera, black is your best friend, and regardless of the heat, bras and underwear are still a must. Even though she won’t say these things to your face, Lynn Yaeger has no problem dishing out her summer fashion advice HERE. Size [...]

The Bechdel Test*

Thanks in large part to a video made last December by Anita Sarkeesian of FeministFrequency.com that’s been making the rounds recently on the Internet, more of the world knows about the Bechdel Test.* Back in 1985, Alison Bechdel’s comic “Dykes to Watch Out For” mentioned “The Rule,” one character’s three simple requirements for whether or [...]

Adhesive soccer tape

Martí Guixé designed this adhesive tape that can be crumpled up into a soccer ball. A hat tip to Full Frontal Fashion blogger Ashley Simko for posting this on her personal blog last year. I thought it relevant to share with you in light of the World Cup AND the fact that it’s moving-to-new-apartment season [...]

Green tech finds

Is the iPhone 4 green? That, and other questions answered, in this week’s green tech finds. Prize-winning biomimicry: Technology Academy Finland has awarded its biannual Millennium Technology Prize to Swiss scientist Michael Grätzel for his development of the dye sensitized solar cell, a cheaper alternative to photovoltaics that mimics photosynthesis. See the video above for details. (via [...]

Devin and Glenn get married

Devin & Glenn – watch more funny videos Gays are normal people. We fall in love. We have passionate sex. We settle down. We tire of one another. Yes, it happens to us too, people. In the above film, featuring Justin Long (The Mac guy) and Mike White, the couple do what many couples do: [...]

The evolution of the World Cup soccer ball

The evolution of the soccer ball.

‘The Fix:’ Dirty Energy’s Undue Influence on American Political Life

The glove-covered hands of Dan Howells, deputy campaign director with Greenpeace, are coated with a layer of oil after he dipped them in oil floating on the surface in the Gulf of Mexico following the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill near Grand Isle, Louisiana, June 10, 2010. AFP PHOTO / Saul LOEB (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

Like most Americans, I am horrified by the unending catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. Even with the latest containment cap in place, oil is likely to hemorrhage from BP’s ruptured well until August or beyond.

As I try to convey in my new video, “The Fix,” I am appalled by what this spill is doing to Gulf fishermen, families, communities and wildlife. But I am also disgusted by what it reveals about the oil industry’s role in American political life.

With their deep pockets, oil companies have purchased loose safety regulations, slack oversight and support from key lawmakers. Last year alone, the industry spent a $168 million on lobbying — $16 million of which came from BP. The blowout on the Deepwater Horizon is a symptom of this undue influence.

It is time for the collusion to stop. As long as it continues, Americans will pay the price in the form of devastated ecosystems and a fossil fuel addiction that benefits oil companies, not ordinary citizens.

Tetris everywhere

From the online photo collection “Tetris Tetris Everywhere” The official Flickr blog highlighted this cool photo gallery “Tetris Tetris Everywhere” curated by user L Plate big cheese of photographs of accidental instances of Tetris-like pieces and juxtapositions found in the real world. While I was a student at Brown University, a group of classmates in [...]

Design Spotlight: Bi-King

Sung Kug Kim is a product designer whose latest creation, the antler-shaped handlebars called Bi-King, is still a work in progress but it’s already getting major play. Sponsored by the British European Design Group, Kim’s antlers are destined to be a cult favorite among selective bike riders everywhere. But, for Kim, antlers aren’t just restricted to bikes; they can just as easily hang on the wall and hold everything from your coat to your bike itself. Crafted from a combination of woods and metals, these beauties ought not to be left parked outside overnight, and Kim’s thought of that too.