With the increased concerns of global warming lately, Canadian design agency smashLAB is raising awareness amongst graphic designers with their web project called Design Can Change. This project will provide a forum for information on how designers can waste less energy, including Green Paper Guide, a list of paper companies using less chemically treated paper. Of course the site is nicely designed, and there is an awesome slideshow that illustrates the problem in a very clear way.

As a print designer and moderate recycler, I am feeling worse and worse about the impact I have on my environment. The Design Can Change project is a great idea, and it changes your perspective a bit. I will definitely be exploring the site, and seeing what I can apply to my work to make less of an impact.

Also, PingMag has a great interview with Eric Karjaluoto from smashLAB!

This one’s for Eric, who’s a big fan of macro photography, but I thought some of the rest of you out there might enjoy it as well. There are loads of sites out in the boundless depths of the web featuring extreme closeups of wide varieties of subjects, of which insects seem to be pretty popular, but this was the first time I’d seen anyone focus on….uhm…smashed bugs. All the photos on the site linked here are of different bugs that have been hit by cars, or I guess they could be photos of cars that have been hit by bugs.

It’s all in the perspective I guess. Like how some people think this stuff is neat, while I on the other hand, think it is freaky AND neat.

[source=haha.nu]

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If you go online and compare prices before you buy one model or brand of digital cameras can help out, sometimes as much as reading articles and in-depth reviews on your digital camera of choice.

I found this on the front page of Digg, so I imagine it will be on quite a few blogs, but I have to post whenever I come across good macro photography.  And there is a fairly large Flickr set to enjoy, so I thought I would share.  It is very much another world… full of color and giant insects that will peel the flesh from your bones.  I especially enjoyed this barfing fly.  Next time a fly lands on my sandwich, I will be removing the portion of the sandwich which the fly defiled.  Eew.

The National Geographic website has a really nice interactive map depicting the human pressures on the Amazon.  One can clearly see the areas effected by mining, agricultural clearings, urbanization, logging, deforestation, and man-made fires.

What blew me away was the amount of fires over there.  I had no idea that due largely to the fires, Brazil is a leading contributer of greenhouse gasses.

[Source=Hugg]

Ever since watching a long ago episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that dealt with nano-bots, I’ve been fascinated with nano-technology. So when I came across the pictures below, they kind of blew my mind.

I’ve known that we were capable of building true micro-machines for some time now but I had no idea of the microscopically small scales that have been reached. For instance, check out the comparison of the nano-machine to a dust mite in the picture below and realize that the teeth on the gears in these images are about the same size as a red blood cell.

I’ve been thinking that true nano-technology was a thing of the distant future, but if these images tell me anything, it’s that the future is now.

Go to the site below for more info on the MEMS Technology used in the creation of these amazing tiny machines as well as their uses in the world around us.

[MEMS Technology]

An animation of the birth and death rate & CO2 emission of the world simulated in real time.  The results aren’t startling, but the execution is beautiful.

[Breathing Earth]

[Source= Information Aesthetics]

I’m sure most of you know this already, but the planet Pluto was recently downgraded from it’s full-on planet status to a “dwarf planet.”  Well, some of us aren’t ready to forget Pluto that easily, like the fine folks producing the shirt below.

We have to show solidarity in these trying times.  What next?  Will the Sun be relegated to “Happy Glowing Sky Ball” status?

     

[buy one!]

[source = crainium.net]

Sometimes nature just freaks me right out.

I see pictures of clouds like this and I think of CGI creations from a sci-fi film.  It seems that they do exist in nature, however.  Apparently they are all relatively easily explained by science, but I still can’t help getting an Independence Day vibe when I see them.  And not a cool “Bill Pulman gives the most patriotic speach a fictional (or non-fictional for that matter) president has ever given” vibe, but rather a “Holy Crap!  Alien warships are atomizing large chunks of flaming populace” vibe.

Click the link below for tons more alien destroyers posing as freaky looking clouds.

[Simple Clouds or are they?]

Very interesting article… by weighing the water in one cubic meter theoretically pulled from a cloud and then multiplying by the number of meters in the cloud, a typical cumulous cloud would weigh around 550 tons! This article uses elephants as a reference. So saying the weight of an elephant is around 6 tons… a large hurricane weighs about 40 million elephants.
[article]

There are some really nice time lapse videos of mitosis and development on this site. Really interesting stuff.

“The Microscope Imaging Station facility produces high-resolution images and time-lapse movies using research-grade microscopes. This gallery contains a range of images and movies that illustrate the diversity of what can be seen with light microscopes.” (exploratorium.edu)

Maybe I’m old-fashioned or something, but the concept of being able to take detailed photos of Earth’s geography from space just blows me away. Especially when I see images like those at the Space Imaging website. The pictures below are of the Krakatau volcano and the Denali National Park (in that order in case you were wondering). Click the link to see more pics, and wander around the site for loads of cool high-res space imagery.

[Space Imaging]

Have you ever wondered how big the Earth is in comparison to Pluto?
Or maybe wanted to see how much bigger than the Earth the Sun really is?

Me neither, but I found these images and thought it was pretty interesting. If looking at the two images below doesn’t make you feel small, then you should click through the link and see how our Sun compares to other stars like Arcturus or Pollux or if you want to feel really, really ridiculously miniscule look at the comparisons between the Sun and gas supergiants like Betelguese (Betelguese, Betelguese…couldn’t resist) or Antares.

It’s a mighty big universe out there, and apparently it’s solar system day at the monocle.

[Click to feel insignificant]
[source = www.crainium.net]

I think most of us are pretty bored with the Moon. But seeing these pictures have made the moon cool again for me. Very cool stuff.

[http://moonpans.co.uk/vr]
[source= digg]

One of the coolest things about art to me is that it can take on so many radically different forms and still be considered art. Often as you view it, you wonder what caused the artist to choose a particular medium or subject.

The work of Hajime Emoto is a fine example of the kind of art that make me wonder what prompted the artist to create it while being simultaneously amazed at the skill involved. If you go to the link below you can tour a virtual museum filled with insane creatures created by Hajime. All of the Fantastic Specimens are completely imaginary and made from bamboo, paper and modeling paste. The most interesting thing about them to me is how “possible” they look. Almost like he’s found all these creatures that really exist, but no one has ever documented before.

Warning: The navigation of the museum is in Japanese, so some frantic random clicking may be be called for.

[Museum of Fantastic Specimens]

[source = www.pinktentacle.com]

A series of deep sea creatures were unveiled at the 11th International Deep-Sea Biology Symposium, held this week in Southampton, UK. This little fella is an Annelid Worm found at a deep-sea vent.

[NewScientist Article]