Recent Billboard Liberation Front project in New York City: “

Somehow, I missed this Billboard Liberation Front improvement project that took place in New York City on September 30th. Fortunately though, BLF founder and BB pal Jack Napier updated me as to the various BLF efforts currently underway, including a planned documentary film directed by Olivier ‘Dust & Illusions‘ Bonin! As all of the BLF’s projects, this one at the corner of 38th Street and 8th Avenue is an instant classic. The BLF dramatically enhanced the Stella Artois messaging simply by removing the words ‘of beauty.’ From the BLF:

We at the BLF have been assisting fatigued advertising copywriters to strengthen their corporate messages for over thirty years. Advertising is the language of our Culture, as BLF CEO Jack Napier noted almost as many years ago. And the primary use of language is to to communicate ideas. The most efficient and direct communication of an idea comes through the most elegant use of the least amount of words to communicate that idea. It’s quite clear from the image in this Stella Artois billboard ad what the message IS. The BLF merely wishes to assist this campaign by paring down the words in order to match that message most perfectly.

‘Stella Artois, A Thing of Beauty‘ (Thanks, Jack Napier!)

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Maps: Google vs. Bing vs. Yahoo: “

Justin O’Beirne takes a close look at the most popular online map sites to try and figure out just why Google Maps is more readable. It comes down to the finest of details: Google adds white outlines to city names that are just thick enough to conceal what is behind the text, has a finely-tuned contextual hierarchy of type sizes, and a carefully selected color scheme.

As an aside, it’s intriguing how each service’s maps artistically reflect their corporate operators’ natures. Google’s is perfectly organized and functional, devoid of embellishment. Microsoft Bing’s is beautiful and overdesigned, with a subtle palette of lavender and teal. Yahoo’s looks like someone vomited a spaghetti dinner in Carrot Top’s hair.

Google Maps & Label Readability [41Latitude via DF]

Update: Wow, Tumblr has a bandwidth limit? Here’s a cached version of the site if it’s down for you.

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The Best Beards & Moustaches in the World: “

Official Wondermark beard correspondent Pat Race writes in to share this stirring highlight video his team shot at the 2009 World Beard & Moustache Championships in Anchorage, Alaska. If you would like to see three minutes of amazing beard after amazing beard after amazing moustache after amazing moustache, are you ever in luck.

He’s also got a longer video account of his and his cohorts’ trip to the WBMC up at his blog. Thanks for sharing, Pat!

#677, Much musing about Pumpkin: “

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Brick-road-laying machine: “

Tiger-Stone makes this enormous, unlikely and quite marvellous road-laying machine that semi-automatically sets down neat sets of interlocking bricks, ready to be sealed with a light dusting of sand.

The machine consists of an angled plain that workers feed with paving stones or bricks. As the electric crawler inches forward along a sand base layer, the bricks are automatically packed together by gravity. A small telescoping forklift feeds the hopper, allowing the Tiger-Stone to lay out an impressive 400 meters of road day, and the span can be adjusted up to six meters wide. Here’s a stereophonic video of the machine in action.

Amazing Brick Machine Rolls Out Roads Like Carpet

(Thanks, Mark!)

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Housecat attacks alligator: “

A tourist visiting a Florida Louisiana tourist dump caught this intense scuffle between a cat and an alligator at a swamp. To see who won, click the play button above, where arketron’s rare and excellent video can be viewed. ‘Housecat Attacks alligator‘

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Misprinted prefab houses: “

These weird, blobular forms (orignally featured in the Swiss magazine Hochparterre) are misprinted houses generated by automated prefab concrete machines: ‘Based on iconic housing shapes, these buildings were intended as prototypes for mass-customization. Yet, as things go with computerized manufacturing, there have been misplots. The cartridge was not loaded properly. The concrete was set to the wrong parameters or scale. The printer module falsely translated a data set…

These misprints are the rejects of this early process, and they are now being used as shared homes by elderly people from the former squatter scene.’

Concrete Misplots

(via BLDGBlog)

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Amazing street freestyle bicycling: “

Bike trials is a form of mountain biking where the rider attempts to go over an intense obstacle course without putting her feet on the ground. Scottish cyclist Danny MacAskill is a master at street trials. In this demo video, he rides around Scotland’s Edinburgh Castle, bunkers on the island of Inchgarvie, and a power station in the Scottish Highlands. (Thanks, Sean Ness!)

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The best scientific theories (that later turned out to be wrong): “

Science can contradict itself. And that’s OK. It’s a fundamental part of how research works. But from what I’ve seen, it’s also one of the hardest parts for the general public to understand. When an old theory dies, it’s not because scientists have lied to us and can’t be trusted. In fact, exactly the opposite. Those little deaths are casualties of the process of fumbling our way towards Truth*.

Of course, even after the pulse has stopped, the dead can be pretty interesting. Granted, I’m biased. I like dead things enough to have earned a university degree in the sort of anthropology that revolves around exactly that. But I’m not alone. A recent article at the Edge Foundation website asked a broad swath of scientists and thinkers to name their favorite long-held theory, which later turned out to be dead wrong. The responses turn up all sorts of fascinating mistakes of science history—from the supposed stupidity of birds, to the idea that certain, separate parts of the brain controlled nothing but motor and visual skills.

One of my favorites: The idea that complex, urban societies didn’t exist in Pre-Columbian Costa Rica, and other areas south of the Maya heartland. In reality, the cities were always there. I took you on a tour of one last January. It’s just that the people who lived there built with wood and thatch, rather than stone. The bulk of the structures decayed over time, and what was left was easy to miss, if you were narrowly focused on looking for giant pyramids.

What’s your favorite dead theory?

The Edge: Wrong Scientific Beliefs That Were Held for Long Periods of Time

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Glass globe doorknob is a whole-room fisheye for the other side of the door: “

Hideyuki Nakayama’s glass globe doorknob refracts the scene on the other side of the door in its depths, giving you a preview of what’s going on in the next room before you turn the knob.

A Room in the Glass Globe by Hideyuki Nakayama

(via Make!)

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