Strandbeest

Since about ten years Theo Jansen is occupied with the making of a new nature. Not pollen or seeds but plastic yellow tubes are used as the basic matierial of this new nature. He makes skeletons which are able to walk on the wind. Eventualy he wants to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives.

These things just look amazing. If you head over to the site, be sure to check out the Animaris Currens Ventosa walking video - I'm not sure if there's actually somewhere in there making the thing move, or if it is truly wind-powered, but, either way, it's a work of kinetic art.

[via ze frank]
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New Radio New Zealand website goes liveAnd it's not looking to shabby either.

Haven't had a good explore around yet (I suspect Dubber will come up with a more indepth review well before I do), but it was pleasing to see they've set up RSS feeds for their news, as well as their National Radio and Concert Radio 'highlights'.

Bring on the podcasts though...
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NZBC five minute chat with Dave DobbynChris Bell of the NZBC has an interesting and enlightening five minute chat with everyone's favourite born-again rocker, Dave Dobbyn.

Bob Dylan and Van Morrison have both said that Christianity has influenced their music for the better. Has it changed songwriting and performing in any way for you?

"Yes, when you live in the hope and eternal perspective of Christ, everything changes and often. To work in the spirit of taking care of your brothers and sisters, regardless of race or creed, and to be able to express that purity is so much better than beating up on yourself with the destructive side of rock 'n' roll. There's a worthiness that lives in that belief, and it has you with your heart laid bare and ready to take risks. My king died for me and for all men, so I have no choice but to shout His name and spread the love. It's the very making of peace that I'm interested in, and in music I have the perfect weapon."

More here...
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SpazzYou just can't make this stuff up. An American wheelchair manufacturer is now offering 'The Spazz'...

Colours 'N Motion "Spazz" offers you the style, versatility and adjustability you need in your first wheelchair. With its simple design and clean lines not only will you look good in your "Spazz" but your maneuverability will be unsurpassed.

Naturally, elsewhere in the world, where you might call someone a 'spaz' as an insult, people have been getting up in arms. From the UK's Daily Mirror...

CAMPAIGNERS for the disabled are outraged over a new wheelchair called the Spazz.

In a marketing blunder, the US makers did not appear to realise how offensive the outdated term for "spastic" is in Britain.

The £830 mobility device is advertised showing a model dressed in black PVC with the catchphrase, "You know you want it."

It even has the word "Spazz" splashed across the frame of the product.

Angry disability groups are demanding the name be changed.

Margie Woodward, spokesman for Scope, said "The term spazz is derogatory."

You know you want it.

[via A Welsh View, via J-Walk]
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SmileCity Flash Tour, annotatedA wee experiment in flash. If you've got flash installed, you can open up my commented version of the SmileCity Flash Tour here. And feel free to compare and contrast the original tour here.
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Alan MacdougallJust a quick post to help out blog buddy Alan Macdougall of half-pie.                                                                                                                              

Details here.
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The DeflatedJust the sort of story which stirs the latent eco-guerilla lurking within (from the LA Times)...

If the French marauders known as The Deflated waged their brand of urban subversion in Southern California, the mecca of the sport utility vehicle, by now they would probably have been jailed, beaten, shot or at least sued.

But five weeks after the clandestine crew of environmentalists launched a low-intensity war on SUVs in Paris, there are no casualties to report. Except, of course, for dozens of deflated gas-guzzling vehicles, said Sous-Adjudant Marrant (Sub-Warrant Officer Joker), the mysterious, masked leader of Les Dégonflés.

Marrant (unemployed after dabbling in journalism, so the article reports) is quite the budding French intellectual revolutionary...

We use the mud to say that if the owners will not take the four-wheel-drives to the countryside, we will bring the countryside to the four-wheel-drives ... We emphasize the comic, the burlesque side ... We don't slash tires, we deflate them. Air doesn't cost anything ... Our rules are to never run from the police. And always run from the owners.

Sebastian Rotella - the LA Times reporter covering the story - gets into the Parisian swing of things in this paragraph from the story, where, he describes Marrant...

...spewing smoke from a Gaulois cigarette into the haze shrouding the crowded cafe.

How, um, evocative. Marrant continues his spiel to Rotella, presumably while sipping a filthily strong short black inbetween drags from the Gaulois...

We have to get past the idea that there's always a single, identifiable villain: the president, the corporation, the chief executive. Our campaign has to be very marketing, shocking, provocative. I want to make it fashionable to be anti-4X4.

Fashionable.

Full article here | Mirror @ MueveloNYC | the Deflated blog
[Warning: Deflated blog may not be Firefox-friendly.]
[via 1gm]
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The President: Reality TVSome of David Slack's recent writing is out-onioning The Onion...

Americans are reeling this evening at the news that they have, for the last five years, been the unwitting participants in the most elaborate Reality TV show ever produced.

News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch intervened this morning to suspend the show's production, which had successfully installed a bogus President in the White House in 2001. Although the stunt had only been approved by President Gore to run for seven days, its unexpected success had emboldened the show's producers at Fox Television to extend its run fully five years longer.

Continued here...

(And nice to see The Daily Show referred to as "a popular item of viral internet humour.")
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Stewie Live To celebrate the return of the Family Guy to NZ television screens, here's a link to Stewie Live, where you can type commands in for the evil wee tyke to (hopefully) respond to.

Commands that seem to have an effect: sex ('oh god, look at me having sex with a pig, I've become my father...'), lois, meg, brian, chris, pee, jump, pick nose, barf, sleep, eat, chicken, jack in the box, ray gun, time machine, semen, wheelchair, disco, scratch, star, cheerleader, world domination, nuclear, fart, weather, doctor, come out of the closet, closet, monkey, flirt, girlfriend, play, piss, screw, masturbate, shoot everyone and torture.

Any more discoveries in the comments box please.

UPDATE: ...and: ride a bike, blow your nose, eat my shorts & kiss a girl. [Thanks Jess.]
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Doors drummer keeping it realDoors' drummer John Densmore has consistently used his power of veto within the band's hippy-era communal decision-making process to stop any Doors music from being used for advertising. It all stems from an incident back in '67, as John remembers...

...when Buick proffered $75,000 to use "Light My Fire" to hawk its new hot little offering--the Opel. As the story goes--which everyone knows who's read my autobiography or seen Oliver Stone's movie--Ray, Robby and John (that's me) OK'd it, while Jim was out of town. He came back and went nuts. And it wasn't even his song (Robby primarily having penned "LMF")! In retrospect, his calling up Buick and saying that if they aired the ad, he'd smash an Opel on television with a sledgehammer was fantastic! I guess that's one of the reasons I miss the guy.

Great stuff. Since then, and after the death of Morrisson, John has been the one to veto any attempts by the other two band members (it would seem keyboardist Ray Manzarek is particularly keen on taking some of the advertising dollars being thrown their way - Ray's got a new album out, but the way, with the Cult's Ian Astbury doing some vocals...), even if the said advertising dollars are upwards of US$15m in a campaign to help flog off the new Cadillac.

Now that is keeping it real.

[via boingboing]
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Reasons to dislike XTRA #112

XTRA's new security suite, which, according to the TV ad, gives you greater protection against virus threats, hackers and popup windows ("annoying popup man", I think he's called in the commercial) is being advertised on the NZ Herald with, yep, you guessed it, popup windows.

Nice one XTRA.

And it's not your normal run-of-the mill popup that gets plugged by the various popup killers I've got running on my install of IE - it's some nefarious flash thing that appears over the article you're trying to read. Grrr.
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I will remember the chorus for the rest of my life.Best support band story I've heard in a long time.
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