Urban Bike Culture Growing and Growing

I love this! I can't wait until cities like Dallas catch on and start providing a better platform for bike riders. Let's get over the car culture people!

This Wired article covers the urban bike phenomenom at INterbike 07 - we're past the moutain bikes and tights - it's fixie and cruiser time.

Urban Bikes

Need some of these in dallas

Streetsblog � New “Bike Boxes” Send Cyclists to the Front of the Line

Disparities b/w poor kids and rich kids

You want a great insight into the different types of worries of rich kids vs poor kids? take a look at this great video from nytimes in which they interview a series of kids from differnt income levels.

Video

JANO — the evolution revolves [GP designpartners]

this bike needs to get produced - put me down for one. this wood bike concept is the thesis of a design student. the dual bike is positioned as a city/sport hybrid for the rider who bikes to work yet still has the occasional jaunt to the bike route.

JANO — the evolution revolves [GP designpartners]

Biomega MN 03 Review

My first Biomega was the shaft driven Copenhagen - it suffered from great design, minimalistic aluminum frame and a smooth ride. Just yesterday I received the second member of the Biomega family - the slimmed down MN 03 Relampago. The MN 03 differs from the other MN models in that it has a single gear, steel front fork and bi-disc brakes.

Design: as you can see it's pretty spectacular. The frame is made from bonded super plastic aluminum - some pretty high tech stuff. The paint has the depth that is usually reserved for vehicles. The fit and finish is also top notch. It's very obvious Marc Newson designed the bike to look great with traditional bike components.

Components: the pedals that came with the bike are terrible plastic blocks that looks like they belong on walmart bikes. I threw them away and bought some cool but dangerous looking DMX V12 pedals. I'm afraid they start tearing into the soles of my shoes. Brakes are from Avid and still need some adjusting. Tires are Scarab from Vredestein and wheels from Mavic.

Ride: unfortunately I got used to starting in a low gear from riding the Copenhagen so when I first pedaled the MN it needed more effort than I thought. But it all came back very quickly and is much more fun. The ride is really solid as it feels like your riding a bike made from a single piece of steel. The geometry of the MN is also very differnt than the Copenhagen - you are stretched out a bit more and at a sharper incline which makes it feel very sporty.

For more pics go here

Read more at Biomega

Bike culture coming in strong

Ever since I started seeing bikes in design mags I knew the urban biking culture was going mainstream. Now this nice article from nytimes points to the popularity of the fixed gear bike.

Unstoppable

Source of Obesity - US Gov

Great nytimes article that looks into why higher calorie, fattier foods are cheaper and more accessible than natural healthy foods - farm bills.

You are what you grow

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

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

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

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

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

Episodic Nature of thought

http://www.episodicnature.com

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

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

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

iTunes Backup - Bandwagon

Sounds like a much needed product for those with extensive music libraries with hard to find songs.

Ride the Bandwagon

Unhappy Meals

I'm sure everyone has already read this in timesmag so I'll spare the commentary. this post is mainly for my records.

Midcentury lovliness

I happened onto a midcentury real estate site via desire to inspire with some simply amazing photos of homes in California. Some of the architectural cues are clearly represented in some of the modern prefabs from the likes of Lazor's Flatpack and Marmol Radziner. When I have the money I definitily want to build a home in this vein.

Watch me and rate me!

NYtimes has a piece on the online phenomenon where kids post videos of themselves performing incriminating acts for fame, recognition and even status. It's interesting since I'm sure kids have always been performing these acts but now techinology has enabled them to record and publish this behavior and in the process, probably provoking more extreme behavior. I think they're motivated partly because they do want the fame and recognition, even if it lies solely in ratings, but also because they want to be part of something that's much bigger than themselves and their community. It's called the world wide web for a reason.

Teenagers misbehaving, for all online to watch

When guerilla doesn't work

Times mag has an interesting article written by this regular guy who has been overwhelmed and pretty disgusted with all the guerilla marketing, urban spam as it's referred to now, in even the most unexpected places. One example is Rolodex placing ads under the bins where you place your shoes and other paraphernalia. Personally, this isn't annoying...it's mostly makes me think "why there". On the other hand, a couple months ago I encountered a Glad ambassador at the security line handing out Glad ziplock bags for your liquid products and I thought what a brilliant idea. This is truly branded utility - it's space/time relevant and very useful. I used to buy generic ziplock bags but after seeing this....I'm still buying generic bags. But at least it made me think positively of the brand.

Here, There and Everywhere

WPP - Why is a Good Insight Like a Refrigerator?

Here's a great essay on the importance of how you say it, not just what you say, when it comes to the articulation of insights.

WPP - Why is a Good Insight Like a Refrigerator?

Everyday Celebrities

NY Mag has a very insightful article, with real quotes and all, into the world of youth and their redefinition of privacy. It has profound implications on what they expect from others, including brands, given how much they expose of themselves.

Cavemans Crib

Geico has created a super neat website that allows you to explore the caveman's home. I love the juxtaposition of "archaic" and "sophisticated" and the continuation of the narratives that appear in their TV ads. This is how you extend your media dollars.

Caveman Crib

Federline and Nationwide

Now this is a super commercial - it's funny, it's sticky, great proposition delivered by a credible actor.

See it