I have to admit to being really impressed with the video work coming out of Amnesty’s French section in the last little while. Visceral and evocative they really bring home the struggle for human dignity that is still being fought in far too many places. So, signez.
Also, this year marks the 50th anniversary of Amnesty International . Please donate .
I’ve gushed over Information is Beautiful ’s work a few times here, and this is actually almost mind-readingly topical as I was looking for a few great novels to queue up in my reading list since it’s a little non-fiction heavy and one of my goals for the year is interspersing some good novels between the hard core stuff. I was actually looking at a Top 100 book list the other day.
National Geographic is doing a year long analysis of the world’s population and put together this fantastic animation reel on what it actually means to be a typical human being on our tiny little planet of seven billion souls. Really well done.
I know NatGeo gets a bad rap from anthropologists due to its exoticism of the Other, but I have to admit it was seminal to my childhood and sense of far off places when I was growing up. Looking forward to their series.
I totally ♥ the amazing data geekery that gets featured on Information is Beautiful and am usually blown away by just the sheer creativity of _how_some of the diagrams, so was thrilled to see a run down on the creative and draft process on their amazing Time Travel in TV and Film diagram. Wow. Respect.
Here’s the final diagram after 36 revisions if you wanted to see the meat.
I honestly thought this was a joke until it was on the CBC. And hey, how about using taxpayer-funded government resources to fundraise got your party. Remember when elected representatives used to respect democratic principles, their country and the national electorate?
I hope this gets reversed really quickly. It’s a total mockery of the institution of Canadian democracy and an abuse of the Prime Minister’s Office.
Pretty clever. Geeks are Sexy gives a nice nod to nicepeter ’s work. Slightly NSFW, but meh. Wear headphones.
Check out Abe Lincoln vs. Chuck Norris.
Oh, and there’s so much more on Nice Peter’s Youtube so be sure to check out Bieber vs. Beethoven, Hulk Hogan vs Kim Jong-Il, John Lennon vs. Bill O’Reilly and Sarah Palin vs. Lady Gaga amongst others.
It’s a shame more people don’t go to the theatre these days, because there is some freaking amazing stuff going on there as effects and media and live performance combine (I try really, really hard to go once every two months to see something in my own defence.). I soooo wish I’d seen this production because I am absolutely amazed at what they’ve done with this sword fight scene where the main hero is battling the shadows around him. Like, wow.
I’ve often said that the ability to have normal mortals put together flatpack furniture with just an allen key and a screwdriver is an engineering marvel to rival the Pyramids, but Justin Pollard, John Lloyd and Stevyn Colgan have gone one further and show how you can construct Stonehenge yourself, Ikea style . Awesome.
via Neatorama .
Alright, it is almost beyond geekery, but since I didn’t even know about this I find this development more than a bit cool .
NASA, in an experiment to test a solar sail for practical use, successfully managed to deploy and have a solar sail circle the Earth, which is an impressive and very pragmatic step forward for making this a working technology for space travel.
I don’t know why, even though we’re talking slow speeds that would accelerate these vessels towards other planets and stars (and massive sails), it really kind of fires my imagination to imagine huge solar sailing vessels in the future, tacking towards distant stars.
With NASA getting desperate enough for cash its auctioning off moon landing memorabilia, it might be a good time to remind ourselves why we strive for the stars in the first place. Cute “infographic”.
via Neatorama .