Saturday, March 31, 2007

We truly are insignificant....


This amazing site from Nikon compares the size, to scale, of the universe all the way to the neutron. It's a beautiful site that really makes you wonder how much we'll discover during our lifetime and at the same time makes you wish you could live forever to experience new discoveries. Dam I feel small....

Universcale


via josh spear

Monday, March 26, 2007

Smaller portions at restaraunts - let's hope it works.




NYtimes has a piece on TGI Friday's experimenting with a new line of dishes called the Right Size which is essentially a 2/3 serving of the original dish at a reduced price. You immediately think "that's great that they want to help in decreasing the waist of America's fat people" but that's not the case. It seems the motivation is two fold: to differentiate TGI Fridays and to give customers more belly room for the dessert. Apparently the original size dishes were too big and people didn't usually order desserts. TGI friday's, thanks for keeping or bellies nice and large!

Will Diners Swallow This

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Shimano and Ideo Collaborate




Coasting is the name of the collaboration result of this exercise where they designed a range of bikes for Trek, Raleigh and Giant. my favorite one is a bike called lime from trek that was engineered for the casual cyclist, not the spandex bike freaks you see on 2 lb bikes. the bikes are beautifully designed with some nifty personalization options like color coordinated chain guard, hub and seat clamp. it also boasts an electronic automatic 3 speed shifting system that does all the work for you...you just have to pedal.

coasting

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Prepaid Cards Garrish Design

It's interesting to read this article from timesmag about the design of prepaid telephone cards since I worked with one of these firms and my first order of business was to clean up the design...I was fired within one month.

Fucking Ugly Cards

Monday, March 19, 2007

Are we really exposed to thousands of ad messges per day?

See for yourself.



This amazing video blacks out everything but the messages plastered on almost every surface - from ads to graffiti - it's amazing how much our brain has to process.

via psfk

Friday, March 16, 2007

Episodic Nature of thought


http://www.episodicnature.com

Monday, March 12, 2007

Are we biologically inclined to believe in God?

There's a great piece in last Sunday's times mag that discusses research that tries to identify if humans are hardwired to believe in the supernatural, ethereal and ultimately, God. It looks at it through the lens of evolution and science and is sure to stir up some debate.

Some excerpts

"Hardships of early human life favored the evolution of certain cognitive tools, among them the ability to infer the presence of organisms that might do harm, to come up with causal narratives for natural events and to recognize that other people have minds of their own with their own beliefs, desires and intentions. Psychologists call these tools, respectively, agent detection, causal reasoning and theory of mind."

"What can be made of atheists, then? If the evolutionary view of religion is true, they have to work hard at being atheists, to resist slipping into intrinsic habits of mind that make it easier to believe than not to believe. Atran says he faces an emotional and intellectual struggle to live without God in a nonatheist world, and he suspects that is where his little superstitions come from, his passing thought about crossing his fingers during turbulence or knocking on wood just in case. It is like an atavistic theism erupting when his guard is down. The comforts and consolations of belief are alluring even to him, he says, and probably will become more so as he gets closer to the end of his life. He fights it because he is a scientist and holds the values of rationalism higher than the values of spiritualism."

Darwin's God

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Culture of dichotomy

Not completely enlightening but still worth the read, timesmag has a piece on how gen nexters seem to straddle opposing viewpoints on abortion and gay marriage.

Culture Wars

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Flow - the game



This flash game has been the latest buzz on the web. it was created by jenova chen as a thesis project

play it here