David Lidsky's Blog, page 4601

I'm a Mac, I'm a PC, I Fuel Atrocities in the Congo

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Tantalum, a refractory metal, is an exceedingly rare mineral, mostly mined in Australia. It's used in the creation of tantalum capacitors, an extremely reliable sort of capacitor, which means you can find it in many of the most high-profile electronic devices, including those from Apple and Intel. Though the majority of the world's tantalum mining takes place in Australia, the Congo is, according to the Enough Project, home to about a fifth of the world's known tantalum...

Wanted: A Bike Basket Perfect for Eames Freaks

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If you're a design geek--or if you've got any Eames-era bent wood in your house--this bike basket is for you. It's designed by Faris Elmasu, a 25-year-old based in San Francisco.

The nylon straps do away with ugly bungee cords--and the nylon is strong enough to hold a six-pack of beer. (But what about two six
packs? C'mon, Faris!). The bent-wood is five layers thick, made with vacuum forming. (It actually looks a lot like the Eames-designed leg splint we love so much.)

Currently the...

GE Boosts Ecomagination Initiative With an Extra $10 Billion

GE has a whole lot faith in its ecomagination initiative. So much faith, in fact, that the company is pumping $10 billion into the project's R&D over the next 5 years--effectively doubling its investment from the past 5 years. The reason is simple: ecomagination is a cash cow, generating $70 billion in revenue since its inception in 2005. With the world's attention turned toward clean technology, that number will almost certainly grow.

Ecomagination encompasses a broad set of projects. GE...

Pakistan Dials Its Islamic Net Censorship Up to 11, Shutters Yahoo and Bing

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Pakistan's just made a move that's not going to qualify it for any "friendly world citizen" awards: Its government's said it'll be filtering scores more Web sites for anti-Islamic content. Facebook, YouTube, and Wikipedia were just the start.

The Ministry of Information Technology gave the order today to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to begin monitoring and filtering many more Web sites suspected of playing host to anti-Islamic or merely blasphemous content. On the list: Google...

BP Begins Fighting Oil Spill With Kevin Costner's Oil-Separating Centrifuges

BP has been toying with the idea of using actor Kevin Costner's Ocean Therapy technology to clean up the Gulf oil disaster for the past month. Once we got over the Waterworld jokes, we realized that the centrifuge-like device is actually fairly useful--it sits on a barge, sucks in dirty water, separates the oil, and deposits the clean water back into the ocean. BP ordered 32 of Costner's centrifuges last week, and apparently, the oil giant has already started using them. Check out the video...

Why Are Tarball-Filled Florida Beaches Still Open?

The BP oil disaster has finally caught up with Florida, as evidenced by this video of a child with tarballs stuck to her feet on Destin Beach. Florida has already begun to close dangerous areas--Pensacola Beach reportedly became the first oil disaster casualty yesterday when it closed due to pools of black sludge in the sands (the Pensacola News Journal reports that the beach is now open). But while the state recently implemented a swimming and fishing ban stretching through 33 miles of the...

A Gym on Steroids, Designed by MVRDV and ADEPT

It's a fitness center but also a theater, a health spa, an exhibition space, a study hall, a place to eat, and a Zen center.

The Dutch architects MVRDV have never designed a normal building in their life. A towering pig farm, yes. A shotgun in New Orleans that looked, rather tastelessly, like it had collapsed in a storm, sure. So leave it to them to turn a fitness center into muscle-sprouting circus.

The House of Culture and Movement is a gym on steroids. Designed with ADEPT Architects for...

Bizarrchitecture: An Aquarium That's Also a Giant Pile of Pebbles

It's an aquarium!

The Georgian port of Batumi has more rocks than anyone knows what to do with. So what have Henning Larsen Architects decided to build? Even bigger rocks! With dolphins inside!

This pile of cartoonishly big pebbles is an aquarium that looks more like Fred and Wilma's two-car garage. It won a design competition recently to replace an old aquarium in the former Soviet republic's main port city, and it'll house a dolphinarium and a zoo.

Henning Larsen was inspired by rocks that...

Giant Model in Spy Tech-Powered Billboard Plucks, Chucks Times Square Visitors [Video]

Interactive billboards take a step forward today in Times Square.

It's a tall feat for an advertiser to stand out in Times Square, which is swathed in giant plasma-screen billboards. But today, a taste of what billboards might become is being unveiled--and the billboard reaches out and grabs the crowd, thanks to technology borrowed from high-tech spy cameras. [vimeo 12855619:]

Designed by interactive agency Space150 for Forever 21, the billboard features a model walking in front of an image...

A Dancing, Shifting Architecture Installation Opens in Queens

A profile of SO-IL, the lean, mean firm behind the P.S.1 courtyard installation, this summer's hottest architecture project.

Pole Dance, a giant installation in the courtyard of MoMA P.S. 1 in Queens opens this weekend, June 27, and the following weekend, it'll become the splashy backdrop for the museum's legendary series of open-air dance parties.

For the firm that desgined it, SO-IL, it presents a shot at the big time--an attention grabbing stage for a tiny firm that operates lean and...