The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that New York City has become the first major municipality to adopt the new active symbol of accessibility, which Contrarian first wrote about in September, 2011. The result of a collaboration between Sara Hendren, graduate student at the Harvard School of Design, and Brian Glenney, philosophy professor at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts, the revised icon recasts the passive, static International Symbol of Accessibility (demeaningly known as the "handicapped sign"), investing it with vigor and a sense of motion. The Chronicle reports: New York, in a move that could spark similar updates worldwide, has now agreed to use...

24 May, 2013

Highway 103 between Halifax and Bridgewater is surely the dullest drive in Nova Scotia. For the last three or four years, motorists forced to traverse its dreary confines have enjoyed momentary comic relief near the Tantallon exit, in the form of a car-sized, more-or-less cubical rock outcropping, painted as a Rubik's Cube. "A jumbled Rubik's Cube fixed in stone, really heavy stone," said West Dublin resident Peter Barss, who waxed philoshical about its deeper artistic significance: A monumental monument to confusion and frustration? A puzzle that never changes… and can never be solved? An implied order, an order that can never be realized?...

21 May, 2013

Earlier this month, the London Cyclist website published a photoessay of 10 Bike Stands I'd Like to Leave my Bike In. My favorite: This comb-style rack is a close second: There are lots of bike enthusiasts and lots of artists in both Halifax and Sydney. Why don't we take on the task of world leadership in groovy bike racks? (I'm looking at you, Victor Syperek.) H/T: Bruce Schneier  ...

21 April, 2013

If the earth were only 100 pixels wide (instead of 12,756 kms.), what would the distance to Mars look like? Two British designers, Jesse Williams and David Paliwoda, have devised a neat interactive animation to show you the answer, along with how far it is to a GPS satellite and the moon. . Don't stop here. Click on the image (or here) to see the animation for yourself. Hint:  Even at an impossible 3x the speed of light, it's a long way off. ("And we put a piece of equipment on it," my friend Jeff P. observed in wonderment.) H/T:  Flowing Data  ...

08 April, 2013

National Geographic has been publishing gorgeous photographs for 125 years, so starting a Tumblr feed seems a natural step for the dowdy journal. One of the first entries features Mabel Gardiner Hubbard Bell [See update below] inside a tetrahedral kite frame, while her husband, Alexander Graham Bell, leans in for a kiss. Doesn't it just make you wish you had known these two? Dated October 10 16, 1903, this photo surely must have been taken at Beinn Bhreagh. Click on the image to see the full-sized version. *UPDATE: It appears there is controversy about whether the woman in this photo is Mabel...

29 March, 2013

Disturbing but brilliant, I should say. Here, Lena Dunham teams up with fashion designer pal Rachel Antonoff to produce a short "nature documentary" about best friends, starring Dunham's sister, and narrated by Adam Driver.* [Video link] [For some reason, the embed code for this video resists resizing, but you can click the 'view full screen' icon at the bottom.] * No money shot warning required....

13 March, 2013

I thought I'd witnessed an impressive milestone in the annals of retail marketing Sunday when I came upon a BestBuy vending machine in Halifax's Stanfield Airport that dispenses iPads. Two hours later, in the Icelandair departure lounge at Boston's Logan Airport, Brookstone trumped BestBuy with its display of personal helicopter drones. For US$299, you can have your own Parrot AR Drone Quadricopter, equipped with two HD video cameras (one facing front and the other pointing earthward), all controlled by an app on your iPhone or iPad. Steve from the Brookstone store gave Balgovind Pande and me a demo: [Video link] Parrot claims battery life sufficient for...

28 January, 2013

If you're anything like me, your conception of the human heart comes from text book line drawings and plastic models in doctors' offices. To create a more useful, virtual model, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center used 10,000 parallel processors. The beating heart turns out to be a phenomenally complex electromechanical apparatus—wondrous, and almost spooky, to behold. The center recently released a video simulation, although based on a rabbit's heart rather than a human's. From Emily Underwood via Alexis Madrigal. Journal articles: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cnm.1494/full http://www.bsc.es/computer-applications/alya-red-cc  ...

03 January, 2013
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