Flying orbs. At first, you might think of the Tall Man and his army of flying sentinel spheres, equipped with zombie brains and a mini-arsenal of saw blades, drill bits and shooting lasers. But these flying orbs weren't conceived from the evil mind of a superhuman mortician—they were designed by Fumiyuki Sato, a researcher at the Japanese Defense Ministry's Technical Research and Development Institute—for something other than deadly deeds.
Does this man look vaguely familiar? A neighbor or former co-worker, perhaps? You might think you recognize him, but this individual is actually the face of 7 billion. Composited with endless photos taken from the world's massive population, he represents an analytically deduced median: a 28-year-old Han Chinese man. The Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing has drawn data for the past ten years to come up with this archetypal image, as well as the following stats:
CHICAGO (AP) — To some, Cabrini-Green's infamous high-rises were a symbol of urban blight — towering testaments to the failure of Chicago public housing to give safe shelter to the poorest of the poor.
How would you like to live like Tarzan, except in a sustainable, organic treehouse? Check out TED Fellow and urban designer Mitchell Joachim and his plan for homes of the future. Read the full article here.
Guerilla gardener Steve Wheen has a simple solution for urban beautification: grow mini-gardens in potholes all over the city, simultaneously transforming ugly roads AND warning motorists and cyclists of potentially dangerous potholes.
New Mexico native Amelia Coulter grew up amongst the rich creative community and natural beauty of Santa Fe. After attending SUNY Purchase as a sculpture major, Amelia settled in Brooklyn and decided to merge her love of patterns, architecture and design with her passion for food. Thus SUGARBUILT was born. Amelia seeks out the best ingredients available to create wonderful and unusual recipes. Starting with the basics of a tasty sugar cookie dough and royal icing, she transforms the classic c...
Be Still My Beating Heart, it's Heart Beet Gardening! So we all know that eating organic can be a challenge sometime to our pocket books. With tomatoes being $3 a pound some places, I often get asked how can I eat organic without breaking my bank account. One solution, grow your own! Not sure how to do that? Heart Beet Gardening is here to show you how!
Do you know your constitutional rights if stopped by the police? Washington Post recently ran an interesting article on "10 Rules", a docudrama produced by the D.C. nonprofit Flex Your Rights.
Are you hungry? One of the great things about Los Angeles is the abundance of food. I'm not just talking about restaurants. You need to get out of your car, and walk around your neighborhood. You could make a great meal just from what you find out on the streets. It's free, and most of it's organic. Just be sure to wash any dirt off of your treasure before you bite.
The human flag is one of the hardest tricks in all of gymnastics, parkour, freerunning and general playground acrobatics.
(We did not know about these, either...until we discovered these videos.) The fixed gear bike, also called a fixie, was designed for track racing in the velodrome. Working bike messengers brought them to the NYC, Tokyo, SF, London streets on account the cycles gave them far more control to maneuver the urban jungle. The Chinese acrobat peddling a bike with 18 contortionists wrapped around him, must have a fixie.
Yowsa. Mariah Carey 38, came out from a paparazzi vortex last week marrying Nick Cannon 27. She and her cougar cohorts are not ashamed to be the older woman in their relationships.
It's currently 2011, but when you fire up your game console, put your hands on the controller and play the new Dead Space 2 video game, you're warped into the future— into the year 2511— just 3 years after the events that took place in the first Dead Space. And it's sure to be a beautiful, frightening, futuristic experience.
There are a lot of fantastic video games out there. Indie Games Ichiban's bread and butter is making sure that you steer clear of the bad ones and embrace the good. But really, the biggest goal here is to help everyone have more fun. To that end, today a game is not recommended, but an event. If you like games—not just video games—but tabletop, board and even hopscotch, then PAX Prime is one of the best events you could possibly go to.
Video game makers have never had great name recognition amongst the American public. Shigeru Miyamoto, Cliff Bleszinski, and Will Wright are names most Americans can't be bothered to remember, whatever their contribution to games have been. Most people are familiar with their work, but fail to recognize them by name or appearance.
Chris Burden's latest piece is a portrait of L.A.'s hot mess of traffic, entitled Metropolis II. The artist has constructed a miniature highway system, complete with 1,200 custom-designed cars, 18 lanes, 13 toy trains and tracks, and a landscape of buildings made with wood block, tiles, Legos and Lincoln Logs. Burden tells the New York Times:
We've provided Google insiders, Google's community managers, authors, and celebrities for you to add to your circles. This week, we've discovered over 100 brilliant photographers for you to follow.
If you live in an urban environment, chances are that you've seen this: It's a program started by the FBI to prevent terrorism and general thievery in peaceful and innocent communities all around America. I myself have seen a lot of these, and my previous apartment community was part of this 'program'.
Although in recent years street art has reached a high point of public appeal many of the great artists are over shadowed by the likes of banksy and shepard fairey (who are amazing artists for sure, just not the only amazing artists out there). Some of the best urban artists have never had a gallery show or exihbit, and most have only been out of their own country once or twice. But of course, thanks to the internet and movies, i )along with many others) have been lucky enough to see the work...
Earlier this month, the U.S. Army agreed to drop quite a big chunk of change ($461m to be exact) on 423 M1117 Guardian Armored Security Vehicles (ASV), made by Textron Systems.
Is game play king? Or was it that graphics is king? or maybe the story? Arghhh... well, regardless from which school of thought you come from, Tera online has bet most of their chips on game play.
Perhaps one of the greatest embodiments of urban exploration lies in a disturbing and volatile mental health facility in Massachusetts, and its story starts with...
In a previous article where I suggested 104 photographers to follow on Google+, I received a lot of criticism because over 90% of the listed photographers were men. While women are currently not a majority on Google+, they are a definite presence, and they are active. Today, I highlight the best female photographers I've found on Google+ so far. This time I'm taking a slightly different approach. Since the best way to get to know photographers is through their work, I've included one photo fo...
Defined by Urban Dictionary, Nerdtastic: Something generally not cool, but to a nerd it's freakin' fantastic. Below, a collection of WonderHowTo's top 10 favorite, utterly nerdtastic Halloween costume tutorials. The clock's ticking, so if you don't have your costume yet, peruse below and get started!
Up On the Roof: Urban Rooftop Farming and The Brooklyn Grange So sometimes something inspires me so much that it makes me want to run to the rooftop of my eastside L.A. apartment and shout out at the top of my lungs "LOOK AT THIS, THIS IS AMAZING!". The Brooklyn Grange is one of those kinds of things.
Have you ever seen Whose Line Is It Anyway? Many people enjoy watching this show, where they can see people do comedy off the top of their heads. There's no prior thought involved and it can be a lot of fun to participate in.
If you're between the ages of 20 and 40, then video arcades probably hold a special place in your heart. Whether you all but lived in one (me), wished you could, or detested those with a liking for them, there's no denying that arcades were a ubiquitous part of American culture. They were everywhere, from big chains to little mom-and-pops, housing better systems than gamers had at home and with all the best games and newest titles.
Remember the firestorm SCRABBLE Trickster caused nine months ago? SCRABBLE enthusiasts across the world were outraged when Mattel created a game that would allow proper nouns to be acceptable words of play. Essentially, it was a dumbed down, youth-friendly version of the classic game they've all come to love. Luckily, it was just a spinoff game—not a replacement. The same can't be said of the new edition of Collins Official SCRABBLE Words.
The very basic building block of street art is the tag. Although most people find them ugly, i just think that every artist needs to start somewhere, for street artists, its the tag. Firstly the tag is basicly writing your name, or whatever name you use for your art on a wall in a simple style. (although some tags can be quite complicated) The first step of a good tag is the marker that you will use to write it with. Tags can be sharp and clean, drippy and messy, thick, thin, simple or very e...
China is a hot mess of traffic and is stereotyped for spawning some of the craziest drivers in the world. The traffic jams are known to be so bad, drivers have been gridlocked for 9 straight days.
Most bamboo in the United States is running bamboo, because nearly all cold hardy bamboo is the running or invasive type. The tropical bamboos are mostly "clumpers" and stay in a nice, tight clump. Running bamboos spread far and wide and can be very invasive. I grow many kinds of running bamboos and over the past 20 years I've had to learn how to control it's spread.
There are many impressive accomplishments in Minecraft, too many to name in fact. Sprawling builds, complex machines, and massive servers are the hallmark of Minecraft and things keep getting bigger and better. No one doubts the epic scale Minecraft has reached, but every once in a while something grand comes along that sets a new benchmark in awesomeness. By far the most recent step in this long line of big ideas was an innovation pushed forward by YouTube user Kimundi2. The premise of this ...
Graffiti is a great way of getting your message out to the masses. The earliest known graffiti dates back to 30,000 years ago and used the traditional apply-paint-to-wall technique. Though our paint now comes in cans and not from scavenged berries, the actual graffiti process hasn't really evolved from those first cave paintings.
The agents of empire do not always arrive with warning. When you are besieged, surrounded, and infiltrated, imagination is often your best weapon against the oppressors. If all you have at hand is some duct tape and a disposable camera, fear not, you have the makings of a powerful taser!
This week's 6-part series on Making Art on Your iOS Device comes to a close today with our last segment: a collection of useful apps for touring museums, galleries and street art. The apps below cover some of the world's greatest art meccas, so read on if you're planning an upcoming trip, if you live in one of the destinations listed below, or if you simply want to see what a faraway museum has to offer—from the comfort of your couch.
The last few months of WikiLeaks controversy has surely peaked your interest, but when viewing the WikiLeaks site, finding what you want is quite a hard task.
Are you having problems because the game was released a long time ago and the more experienced players are better than you? Then you should be very excited to find out that I will be giving you some general tips & tricks about the different classes that I have learned the hard way.
In our media-enriched world, past and present, SCRABBLE has made a name for itself, whether deliberately, subconsciously, or influentially. You may have a read a book that had the popular word game within a chapter, watched a movie that showed your favorite characters bringing out the SCRABBLE board, or even listened to a rap about this word or that word. SCRABBLE is everywhere, even if you don't realize it.
