Arthur Ganson's TED Talk

I've seen Arthur Ganson's work on a PBS art show, a few years back, but the focus was more on his early work. For his TED talk, Ganson shows some pieces that are just incredible! The exploding chair is mesmerizing and the "Machine Dancing With Chair" is truly sublime. He himself is kind of boring.

Model of Paris Made from Junk

The Sun has a slide show of the work of Gerard Brion, who for the last 15 years, has been carefully modeling the landmarks of Paris from soup tins and other household trash. His garden in the South of France has become a tourist attraction because of it.

Toyota Surround Air Bag System

Gizmodo has some information on a new air bag design that essentially envelopes the riders in cushioned safety. There are even exterior components to protect hapless pedestrians. Like the air bag system for motorcyclists, I posted before, this gets us one step closer to my vision of lightweight plastic cars.

Air Ray: The Blimp With Wings

Back in May, I posted a video of the Festo Air Jelly. Here is their latest, and more elegant, creation. A mechanical, helium filled balloon, shaped like a manta ray. It's beautiful to watch.

Trash Art

Artists Tim Nobel and Sue Webster have created silhouettes by piling up pieces of trash and junk in front of a lamp. It's an interesting take on the dimensionality of art.

Architect Secretly Builds Puzzles Into NY Apartment

The New York Times has an article about an amazing feat of design. Designer Eric Clough was hired to design a Park Avenue apartment, and was basically left to his own devices. What he provided the clients was an incredible home filled with secret panels, compartments, puzzles, and an overall quest that was meant to be discovered and deciphered.

Inner City Snail

Blogger "Slinkachu" is a London artist who, using tiny plastic people from train models, creates wonderfully unique and funny streetscapes. This latest installment examines public transport. Make sure to check out his other work. Wonderful stuff!

1890 Tiffany & Company Bicycle

As long as I'm on luxury vehicles, here's a silver mounted fixed gear bicycle with carved ivory handlebar grips. Only a handful were made. Lillian Russell supposedly had one. This one is being auctioned off in June.

L'helicoptre par Hermes

yatzer.com has a nice posting of a luxury helicopter created by Eurocopter and Hermes of France. It's as you'd imagine; sublimely decadent. What's really interesting, are the engineering modifications that were made based on aesthetic demands. Talk about pushing the envelope.

The Something Store!

The Something Store is a website where you pay $10 and they will send you "something". I absolutely love this idea. I think it should be a new rule, amongst my family and friends, that any and all future gifts exchanged, are purchased from this site!

A New Concept for Home Fireplaces

"Palinka Fires are furnishings with fire for contemporary lifestyle". They use a biofuel called Fanola which they claim is a product of "plant origin" and only release water vapor and CO2 when burned. It's an innovative idea.

The Day There Was No News

On Flickr, there is this short video compilation of network news footage. Only, it's just the footage before a break; when the anchors must sit silently, shuffling papers, and looking back and forth at each other. What is that all about?! Anyway, it's eerie.

Fractal 23 Cabinet

Artist Takeshi Miyakawa is very inventive in his furniture design. I really love this Fractal 23 cabinet. His other pieces are really nice too including the Cam chair.

Hubcap Creatures

Ptolemy creates these lovely creatures from old automobile hubcaps. Not only is the quality of the art top notch, but they should win prizes for creative recycling.

Bread Tray is For The Birds

d-Vision is a company that designs some interesting product concepts, including this bread board which saves the crumbs in a collecting tray, that you can then share with our feathered friends via it's matching bird feeder.

Dancing Pipe Cleaner

David Bessler has created a wonderfully amusing web toy. First, choose your music from one of the seven selections, then, by using your keyboard, "animate" the pipe cleaner figure. Silly but fun.

Piel: Paperless Book on Architecture

Piel, or "skin", is a non printed book available for viewing on a web browser. Loaded with amazing projects and information. There are even links to Google maps so you can discover relationships of projects to each other and their places in the world. 

Blog About Optical Illusions

Arthur Shapiro has a blog where he discusses the science of optical illusions and the importance that has for researchers who study visual perception. Some illusions are quite jarring. Not for epileptics!

Award Winning Invention: MimicCreme!

MimicCreme is a dairy free, soy free, gluten free, 100% vegan and kosher creme substitute. It's made from cashew nuts, and according to the testimonials of restaurant chefs on their site, it's nearly indistinguishable from real cream. Comes in plain, sweetened, and sugar-free sweetened. Yum!

Isabella Rossellini's Bug Sex Videos

The Sundance Channel has finally released "Green Porno"; a collection of short films in which Isabella Rossellini describes what it would be like to be various insects, then demonstrates their mating habits. I love her!

The Most Beautiful Spiral Staircases

Oobject, the blog of superlative lists, has assembled images of some beautiful and amazing spiral staircases.

Zürich Chamber Orchestra | Roller Coaster

A beautiful integration of music and animation.

Another San Francisco City Scape

The Asian Art Museum has an exhibition of artist Zhan Wang who assembled this skyline of San Francisco out of stainless steel pots and pans. His stainless steel river stones are nice too.

Beautiful HiRes Panorama of San Francisco

Hi-Def SF has this nice nighttime panoramic image of San Francisco. Zoom in and explore

The Festo Airjelly

Engadget has posted of couple of videos of the Festo Airjelly. What is that, you ask? A marvelous, enchanting thing that sort of floats, and sort of swims. A truly elegant design.