David Lidsky's Blog, page 3337
February 11, 2014
Dizzying Photos Chronicle The Construction Of The Original SF Bay Bridge
Photos by Peter Stackpole capture the beauty--and the danger--of the Bay Bridge at the height of the Depression-era public works project.
During the summer of 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, workers broke ground on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, a massive public works project decades in the making. Throughout the three-year construction process, Peter Stackpole, a San Francisco-born photographer, documented the rise of the bridge, scaling unfinished frame and highlighting the workers who undertook the dangerous task of building it.
Family Portraits 2.0: Get Your Whole Family Immortalized In 3-D Figurine Form
3-D printing technology adds a new dimension on the long history of family portraiture. Don't worry, the result will still be totally awkward.
Family portraits have evolved over the centuries. from paintings (for the wealthy) to black and white photos to Instagram family selfies today. But in at least one way, they've stayed the same: portraits are usually flat, unmoving images. Not so with the 3-D printed figurines created by DoubleMe3d, a full-body 3-D scan and print studio in the Netherlands that can create 10 to 17 cm high models of you, your family, your friends, and anyone else you want commemorated in figurine form.
February 10, 2014
This Zany Newsman Is The Stephen Colbert Of Bitcoin
With a goofy hat and goggles, MadBitcoins delivers cryptocurrency news in a daily six-minute digest.
The world of Bitcoin is growing and traditional media can't make heads or tails of it. But Bitcoin's value continues to rise and new cryptocurrencies join the fold every day. A community of enthusiast bloggers, podcasters, and YouTube channels have emerged to tell Bitcoin's story--and the Mad Hatter of Bitcoin wants to make your education as zany as possible.
How Big Are Phones Going To Get Before We All Need Hand Surgery?
The six-inch LG G Flex has us wondering: Who wants a phone that's wider than an In-N-Out Double Double burger?
The LG G Flex is the first widely available phone with a curved, flexible display. While this unique six-inch screen is eye-catching, it's more of a bar trick than a feature. The thing that really stands out about the Flex? The phone is huge.
Coming Soon To The UAE: Delivery Drones That Scan Your Eyeballs
The United Arab Emirates announced plans to utilize quad-copters to deliver packages, which it hopes to roll out before the end of the year.
We haven't heard much from Amazon since CEO Jeff Bezos announced back in December that the retailer had ambitious plans to eventually roll out a fleet of drones to deliver your packages. But if the idea of having whirly-bladed quad-copters bringing you that Doctor Who box set you ordered in a haze at 4 a.m. last Friday night sounds a little farfetched, there's at least one place drone delivery could soon become a reality: the United Arab Emirates.
The Architecture Of Spying
Artist Trevor Paglen shoots aerial photographs of three of the largest U.S. intelligence agencies.
Even as as new information continues to emerge about the National Security Agency's activities collecting metadata on citizens' phone and online activities, much U.S. intelligence remains shrouded in secrecy. Including what the agencies that watch us look like.
Photo Essay: The Biker Chicks Of Marrakesh
Photographer Hassan Hajjaj documents the culture of Moroccan women bikers in eye-popping color.
You've probably never seen a biker gang quite like this. In photographer Hassan Hajjaj's latest series, "Kesh Angels," the lady motorcyclists of Marrakesh, Morocco wear polka-dot abaya and Nike-branded djellaba, posing on their bikes against brightly-painted walls. The juxtaposition of traditional Islamic dress with biker-tough posturing and Western branding upends stereotypes of Muslim women as anti-modern and ultra-conservative. They have a superhero quality on these motorcycles, mugging and posing like urban Power Rangers.
How Fat Albert Helped Change Cartoons Forever
For decades, black cartoon characters were mostly reduced to racist caricatures. A new exhibition shows how all that changed with a 1970s cartoon revolution.
Fat Albert, Schoolhouse Rock, The Harlem Globetrotters: with their retro animation styles, these 1970s cartoons seem dated now, but in their time, they were groundbreaking. Before the 1960s, black characters in cartoons were uniformly reduced to racist caricatures--the more than 600 cartoon shorts featuring black characters from 1900 to 1960 were basically animated minstrel shows. But with the Civil Rights Movement came Saturday morning cartoons that featured black animated characters in a more positive light.
Flappy Bird's Demise Has Gamers And Developers Scrambling To Fill The Void
And an iPhone with the game on it is currently going for $100,000 on eBay. RIP?
RIP, Flappy Bird. We hardly knew thee. The beloved/loathed smartphone game about pixelated birds that look like fish crashed and burned at the height of its popularity, leaving behind a void filled only with Game Over screens and unmet potential. You will be missed.
This Crazy Brick Structure Is Grown From Mushrooms, And Can Keep Itself Cool All Summer
Made from organic material that can be turned into fertilizer, this installation will show off a radical, zero-waste building technology that could help chill down sweltering city streets.
This summer, a new kind of building will sprout amid New York City's garden of glass and steel. Using bricks biologically engineered to grow themselves from plant waste and fungal cells, David Benjamin's Hy-Fi will rise as a giant circular tower that creates a cool micro-climate for pedestrians in searing city heat. Bet you've never seen a brownstone do that before.
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