Puck

A new bike wheel from the folks at MIT turns a regular bike into a hydrib e-bike. Called the Copenhagen Wheel, it was unveiled at COP15 on Dec. 15.

Smart, responsive and elegant, the Copenhagen Wheel is a new emblem for urban mobility. It transforms ordinary bicycles quickly into hybrid e-bikes that also function as mobile sensing units. The Copenhagen Wheel allows you to capture the energy dissipated while cycling and braking and save it for when you need a bit of a boost. It also maps pollution levels, traffic congestion, and road conditions in real-time.

Controlled through your smart phone, the Copenhagen Wheel becomes a natural extension of your everyday life. You can use your phone to unlock and lock your bike, change gears and select how much the motor assists you. As you cycle, the wheel’s sensing unit is also capturing your effort level and information about your surroundings, including road conditions, carbon monoxide, NOx, noise, ambient temperature and relative humidity. Access this data through your phone or the web and use it to plan healthier bike routes, to achieve your exercise goals or to meet up with friends on the go. You can also share your data with friends, or with your city – anonymously if you wish – thereby contributing to a fine-grained database of environmental information from which we can all benefit.

How freekin cool is that? Want me one!

I suppose, like me, you’re one of the 7 billion minus 1.3 million who have so far managed to miss this.

Diego Stocco took grafted bits of a violin, a viola and a cello to a double bass and came up with an awesome mutant monster.

I came up with a quadruple-neck experimental “something” that I thought to call Experibass. To play it I used cello and double bass bows, a little device I built with fishing line and hose clamps, a paintbrush, a fork, spoons, a kick drum pedal and a drum stick. I hope you’ll like it!

Diego Stocco – Experibass from Diego Stocco on Vimeo.

A hike to and adventures upon Mystic Beach. Located about 60 km west of Victoria on Vancouver Island, the adventurers want to know, Why is it mystic? And then they stumble upon cetacean prophets and are illuminated.

Bonnie Bassler asks, How can bacteria do anything? They’re so small, seemingly reclusive, how can they accomplish the good stuff they do not to mention the evil things, like make you sick? They talk to each other, that’s how. You think you’re human — and you are, Bassler says; at least 1 percent. The rest of you is bacteria. Check out this cool TED talk to find out more.

The Eclecton saga continues. We learn how Wand Baneesh’s father got rich by teaching his circus performers to fly. Wand feels trapped by the marriage arranged for her to the witless Deem. If Wand thinks marriage is hard, though, wait until she’s actually married to the guy!

More marvelous recycling sculpture by Jayme Jacobson and witty writing by Ken O’Donnel.

And in case you missed chapter one, it’s here around here someplace.

My friend Jayme Jacobson is an amazing artist who has just illustrated a story by Ken O’Donnel. The story involves Eclectons, an invention of Jayme’s – characters made from recycled paper and plastic, stuff you’d normally not give a second thought. In Jayme’s hands, tough, junk gets a second life. Ken and Jayme have entered the story they created, “Birth of a Rebel,” in Slideshare’s “Tell a Story Contest.” Frankly, their work is far and away the best thing there, and it’d be great if they won the contest. But you be the judge. Check out “Birth of a Rebel” for yourself.

Damn, I love my iPhone, even though I barely use it to make or receive phone calls. One of the coolest things ever is Bebot, a powerful musical synthesizer for iPhone. Yeah, the iPhone is a musical instrument (and not just a synth – check out the Ocarina app, and consider making your next home recording using Gigbaby, a awesome 4-track recorder that’ll set you back, oh, a couple bucks).

Bebot is crazy, but don’t take my word for it. Check out this video from keyboard wiz Jordan Rudess.

“Impossible figures” are visual illusions that take advantage of the brain’s perceptual reasoning skills in order to form geometrical relationships that can’t actually exist in nature. As Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde explain in this article in Scientific American,

The artist M.C. Escher, for instance, depicted reversible staircases and perpetually flowing streams, whereas mathematical physicist Roger Penrose drew his famously impossible triangle and visual scientist Dejan  Todorović created an Elusive Arch that won him Third Prize of the 2005 Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest…. Several contemporary sculptors recently have taken up the challenge of creating impossible art. That is, they are interested in shaping real-world 3-D objects that nevertheless appear to be impossible. Unlike classic monuments – think of the Lincoln monument – which can be perceived by either sight or touch, impossible sculptures can only be interpreted (or misinterpreted, as the case may be) by the visual mind.

There’s a very cool slideshow that goes along with this article which explains how vantage point is exploited by sculptors in order to trick the brain into perceiving impossible figures in three dimensions.

Nisi Shawl’s Filter House has just been named one of the “best books of the year” by Publishers Weekly:

Shawl’s exquisitely rendered debut collection weaves threads of folklore, religion, family and the search for a cohesive self through a panorama of race, magic and the body.

Yes. Here’s my review of Filter House. Here’s an article in the WSU student newspaper about Nisi’s reading at BookPeople of Moscow.