So I was perusing links on moss graffiti when I came across this great masters design project called Flow, a kitchen design in which (among other things) drips from drying dishes water potted herbs, and food scrabs get composted in a little worm box. Makes me wish my kitchen had enough light for herbs. Maybe I should just start drying my dishes on my roof…. Here’s a shot of a prototype:

Via Heavy Petal, by way of The Affected Provincial’s Almanack

Colr.org is a site that simply lets you pick colors, tag them, and group them into color schemes. Such a simple idea, but so much fun! Try searching for “skin,” “cucumber,” or “whiskey.” You can also extract colors from a photo or from a website (well, website isn’t working for me). Definitely some bugs, but still fun. I can imagine a cool vis of words mapped to the visible color spectrum…

And did I mention it was made with web.py?

Sort of like Duck Amuck for Stick Figure Ninja set: Animator vs. Animated.

Thanks, 205!

Now, I’m not a hyper-crazy conspiracy-theorizing privacy nut, but does Facebook seriously think I’m going to give them my e-mail password?

Thanks, ken-ichi for originally posting about the Your Face blog.
Thanks to the artist behind this image, Damien Weighill.

link

Ahh… procrastination. Instead of doing my homework, I went to get coffee at the FSM cafe and noticed they have new boxes displaying the front pages of various international newspapers. I liked it, so I used the coffee buzz to write a little Flash app that does the same thing, similar to the displays at the Berkeley I-House Cafe.

Newspaper rotation
Standalone SWF (try full-screen mode in Flash Player)

The data comes from the Newseum.

Nikki Giovanni’s Convocation address:

We are Virginia Tech.

We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.

We are Virginia Tech.

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CISRO), Australia’s national science agency, has released a fantastic online interactive guide to fly anatomy. I love the magnifying lens, and I really love that the same body part remains highlighted as you switch between specimens, so you can see how different it looks across taxa. Metric tons of fun.

Via the LiveJournal Invertebrates Community

What happens when Central American guerillas kidnap you and torture you for months? Why, you design a garden, of course! Briton Tom Hart Dyke and hist partner were hunting orchids in the Panamanian jungle when they were ambushed, accused of being a CIA agents, held in captivity, and threatened with death. As hope diminished, Dyke began composing a garden of fancy, planting all world’s plants he would never get to find in plots he wouldn’t dig.

Then, mysteriously, the pair was released. Since then, Dyke has set to work realizing his World Garden. I heard his story as a radio broadcast on the BBC World Service, and if you can dig up the show (I couldn’t), it’s great. His attitude toward it all is so light, almost glib, it’s hilarious, and heartening. You can read all about him and his garden at BBC.

Why do people love zombies so much? I reader of Diesel Sweeties thinks that

the popularity of zombies lies in the growing disparity between the haves and the have-nots in western society, and in America in particular. Vampires are the monsters of the upper classes: aristocratic, powerful, and refined. Ghosts are the monsters of the middle class: stationary, repetetive, and jealous of privilege and their peers. Zombies are the teeming, hungry hordes of the poor and working class, locked in a cycle they cannot escape.

In light of the recent zombie marches on campus, I think this is something we need to question. Seriously, some pop culture researchers must have thought about this. And another thing, what category contains zombies, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, ninjas, and monkeys? I’m sure there is one, I just can’t name it…