March 14 to 20, 2005 < Prev PostPermalinkNext Post >A nice quote from the Molokai land flap mentioned last week: "The controversy is hard to explain from the Western perspective that land is something to be bought, owned and sold to make profit... [the] Hawaiian perspective is that land is to be cared for so it will care for the people. Land is not a commodity." If you could learn only one thing about Hawaiian culture and its relationship to the rest of the world, that is probably all you need to know:
Did you know that Hawaiian is the sole growing indigenous language in the U.S.? Still, there are only about 8,000 Hawaiian-language speakers right now:
![](cache/6f78f86ae7e4cfa97f3b0a43a74b87fb0b892272.jpg) Only in Hawaii - people made corned beef sushi with green rice for St. Patrick's day. I think it should be a symbol of world unity or something. Note that this type of sushi (musubi) is usually made with spam, and is quite tasty when done right:
![](cache/2c07b6abe816aa7968729d1504c45c7012772d85.jpg) The first modern robotic shoe changes shape to match the terrain you're running on:
![](cache/d46b7d01f3aca6d36dc2cdd0dab6794ea78f2fec.jpg) James Dyson's new vacuum cleaner's called "The Ball" - instead of pushing it back and forth, you roll it around:
A tiny HDTV tuner on a USB stick:
![](cache/0f1abcca6f2f50b0982c7adb93f1e7505e7a5d25.jpg) The 4GB hard-drive camcorder:
The first RFID reader/writer in SD card format:
New technology allows the paralyzed to move and communicate by thinking:
![](cache/8896de774dacef5d642fac73b8274321fb3596fe.jpg) Samsung launches monitors for the color blind. Why doesn't every LCD monitor have these features?
![](cache/e9df932c9694b8cd24a384b3766f94658e36ad76.jpg) Another hydrogen fuel-cell bike prototype:
For Web developers: a new interactive way of making forms that submit automatically (this example doesn't work in Safari though):
Towards tolerance - "Under armed guard, a woman broke with more than a thousand years of Islamic tradition to lead men and women in a prayer service yesterday in Manhattan": Towards fundamentalism - "IMAX theaters Reject Science Shows under Religious Pressure":
For the first time, people can visualize the characters in most of the written languages of the world at once:
![](cache/cb7dbccd308fb27fb6266823492a99da55ae5f76.jpg) More and more young kids want cell phones these days: Here's the Firefly cell phone for kids:
![](cache/df3dff2abef6c48233ac7117514c97de88ab3d40.jpg) TV shows for modern kids - this children's show features music by a hip roster of post-punk acts. Fugazi's Ian McKaye sings about vowels in this rockin' video:
Here's the story of Simlish, the fictional language of the very popular video game "The Sims", and the people behind it: Some songs sung in Simlish are being groomed for mainstream radio play in English, like this one:
So far over 10 million creations are under the Creative Commons license, the sensible alternative to traditional copyright restrictions:
![](cache/d038ca46fd1530be6d22172ff859d0715a5352d6.jpg) Here's a nice summary of how your hard drive works:
"India vs America: Let the battle begin!" Hey America - India isn't going to take the same kind of economic smackdown you gave Japan not so long ago:
![](cache/196f01ce4dc04bd2ee1460fca9e97554c4f642b6.jpg) How fast can mistakes travel in this digital age? Thanks to a transcriptionist's typo, a 1962 nuclear test blast called "Project Sedan" was renamed "Project Sudan", causing an international incident the day after:
![](cache/e806c54ad403aa86955fc427cc1551d8b46de68e.jpg) Using the BlueSniper rifle, hackers were able to extract information from PDAs and cell phones from people in the U.S. Bank building in L.A. from over a mile away:
![](cache/c66759c868bfcee7b55013207cce1e312ee6b59b.jpg) A planned device allegedly "destroys" RFID tags:
![](cache/1b8d57875553c0790106ecffb538839be7a6d1a8.jpg) "Mount Kilimanjaro Photo Wake-Up Call for Action Against Global Warming" - in case you needed visual proof: Here's a few more before and during pictures of other places from the BBC:
![](cache/8c2772c9b6d8bc45f45881615c147b12e5d90301.jpg) And here's photos of all those wildflowers that have been blooming in Death Valley lately: And the story behind the "rare wildflower display":
![](cache/023608abcfd79936a1115566908bc3489ad18f98.jpg) "Mercury Pollution, Autism Link Found - U.S. Study":
Could trapped frozen natural gas under the sea be a solution to the world's energy problems?
Breast-enhancing bubble gum is popular in Japan these days:
Take a break to read the underrated poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, "the German language's greatest poet of the 20th century". His unique style of writing translates exceptionally well:
Cropless circles, made on sand:
![](cache/50de4dcf4859d67389c39f7591b2de1b434f3b14.jpg) Beautiful aquatic creatures made from hubcaps:
Shiny handmade aluminum guitars:
![](cache/a4bfc4d23470a543d165571a5cc29e232364a84e.jpg) Latte art:
![](cache/440a257126a21b1fd0a8b3f3713724893c92ec1e.jpg) Use this magnetic paint to make any surface sensitive to magnetism. No idea if it's eco-friendly though:
![](cache/2e7dc7f258d40266fd4b5f1c43eff697bf3695db.jpg) Peep surgery - this one's a classic, still funny, and just in time for Easter:
The Flickr postcard browser:
![](cache/4032e83598dd5cb17d7d9ed2e856024f709f959b.jpg) Merge 50 photos of any given topic, and you get artful atmospheric pictures of concepts:
This photographer is doing a booming business capturing 144 megapixel photos - they're so sharp that a picture of an entire building can be used to inspect cracks:
![](cache/edf17ac0afb9487fe9aa8dd903a8165e0377dd27.jpg) Some artists are slicing up billboards, recombining them into new images:
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