unterbahn
card catalogue
Jul 20
Jul 18
Information technology for the masses
A line of toys which allow for situational awareness at low cost. Can be used for home security or to manage/enable nonviolent protest. Electronics for civil disobedience can help defend civil liberties in an opressive political regime.
“ Meanwhile, instead of tankers, how about dirigibles retrofitted with solar panels? During the rainy season, they graze along the canopies of the Amazon, soaking up fresh tropical water. Enterprising landscape architects on an eco-tour of the rainforest will record their mesmerizing whirs of rotating blades — the eco-soundtrack of New Nature — and then sell the DVDs on eBay or at a farmer’s market.
Jul 15
David Macaulay’s “Through Rome by blimp”
Jul 10
Jul 05
Design for tabular data display. Book of the Dead, columns 67-71, chapters 97-102. Circa 350-250 BCE.
“The ancient Egyptians believed that the deceased journeyed to the Hereafter aboard a ferryboat, or aboard the solar bark of Ra. These chapters include prayers to these boats, prayers to summon the ferryboats, and spells for protecting the solar bark of Ra against its enemies. In column 69 the deceased is provided with the names of the different parts of the boat since each part asked the deceased to tell it its name.”
Map in comic-strip format, Valley of the Kings, 1480-1070 BCE
Jul 04
Google Trends for “solar power”, “wind power”, “nuclear power”
Jul 02
SEM image of an insect (spider mite) on a polysilicon MEMS gear-train, from Sandia Corporation
“ Since humans depend on their microbiome for various essential services, including digestion, a person should really be considered a superorganism, microbiologists assert, consisting of his or her own cells and those of all the commensal bacteria. The bacterial cells also outnumber human cells by 10 to 1, meaning that if cells could vote, people would be a minority in their own body.