For those who haven’t seen this remarkable video, it’s worth a few minutes of your time. For my money, OK Go has cornered the market on innovative, low budget/high concept music videos. The above video along with that of their equally brilliant debut single are not just great examples of stretching marketing dollars as far as they can go to create a viral fascination and spark water cooler conversation. These videos also blur the line between product and packaging. What’s the real product here? The song? The video? We’re fans of the music, but the song is almost irrelevant here.
In this single shot video, the band makes a huge mess within the studio space, but it’s an irresistable example of how a good idea executed correctly can trump big production dollars and the inevitable waste those shoots create. Count us as big fans.
ambition, passion, innovation, talent, humility, mind-set- 'lessons from the half-pipe'
With the Olympics behind us, the analysis begins. What can Sochi learn from Vancouver? Has ice dancing jumped the shark entirely? Is Bob Costas turning into the little guy from Penn & Teller? Is there a crazier Olympic sport than skeleton? While we mull over these important questions, Vijay Govindarajan has already answered a terrific one- what can we all learn from Shaun White? In his piece for Harvard Business Review, Lessons From The Half-Pipe, Govindarajan writes, “when he won his well-deserved half-pipe gold in Vancouver under a blizzard of media coverage, even a sober academic like me was jumping up and down, watching the excitement on television. It strikes me now that the business and academic communities can learn powerful lessons from this young Olympian.”
The ‘Flying Tomato’ might be the star of an industry frequently associated with slackers, but Govidarajan calls White “the embodiment of the American spirit: a restless spirit that seeks to create its own destiny, not by settling for “good enough,” but by being the best ever.” Those ‘lessons from the half-pipe,’ which should inspire each of us, are:
Ambition. Successful organizations sometimes become complacent, and, over time, they decay. Remember Polaroid? Shaun didn’t rest on his laurels after he won the gold. He set himself a nearly impossible goal — a perfect score — similar to JFK’s ambition to put a “man on the moon.” When White didn’t have to, he tried a double McTwist 1260. Why is a huge ambition important? Because the thought of climbing a mountain lifts us up in a way the idea of scaling a molehill does not. Does your organization have a huge ambition?
Passion. Obviously, Shaun loves what he does. When you love your work, excellence isn’t an afterthought, it is the only thought. Is your organization passionate about its purpose?
Results. Shaun’s obsession is based on results. He invests the time to create new moves that set a new standard. Does your organization focus on results and doing what it takes to create them?
Innovation. Shaun is an entrepreneur and innovator par excellence. He constantly pushes the boundary and invents new tricks. For him, innovation isn’t a luxury, it’s a way of life. Is innovation part of your organization’s DNA?
Talent. At an early age, Shaun’s talent was recognized by one of his sponsors. He turned pro at 13, before the Olympics even had a snowboarding event. Does your organization pursue talent, attract it and nurture it?
Humility. Even while soaring high on achievement and adulation, Shaun has kept himself grounded, surrounded by family and close friends. The more humble you are, the more you know what you don’t know; you seek to learn. Is yours a learning organization?
Mind-set. This is as important as ability. Shaun exemplifies this, as evidenced in his recent backstage interview on Oprah
…Politicians and business leaders, it’s your turn. Where is America’s double McTwist 1260?
Last March, we did a post on David de Rothschild’s ambitious plans to sail a boat made entirely of plastic bottles from San Francisco to Sydney Australia. The adventure is aimed at drawing attention to plastic waste- including the Texas-sized swirling mass of plastic waste in the Pacific Ocean.
The boat, dubbed the Plastiki, is ready for its voyage. Here’s an update, via NY Times:
Topside, the layout is simple: an angular igloo provides the only shelter, with six thin bunks softened by six thin cushions. There’s a tiny galley with a sink (in which a bottle of Kombucha was sighted) and a two-burner stove. There’s a tiny desk with room for a laptop, a logbook and a G.P.S. unit. There’s — oddly — a skateboard, as well as several sailing tomes, like “The Log of the ‘Cutty Sark,’ ” by Basil Lubbock.
Power is provided by a small array of solar panels and windmills, and exercise is provided by a stationary bike. Asked how he and his five-member crew might entertain themselves for the planned three-month journey, Mr. de Rothschild said, “sunbathing.” (He later added chess, dominos and, yes, live blogging.)
The hulls’ bottles help absorb many blows from passing waves, but they also deprive the Plastiki of a certain new-boat smell, Mr. de Rothschild said.
“If you were on another boat, it smells of fuel and it smells of that horrible fiberglass and all those other things,” he said. “This doesn’t.”
The medal winners in Vancouver are being presented upcycled medals. Coined by authors of Cradle To Cradle, ‘upcycling’- though it does sound a little like an Olympic sport- refers to the practice of taking something that is disposable and transforming it into something of greater use and value.
Cast out of materials salvaged from old circuit boards, the medals are designed by Canadian artists Corrine Hunt and Omer Arbel. The medals have been etched with a design that evokes the undulating shape of Vancouver’s landscape.
Here in Vermont, we’re proud of our athletes at the Winter Games. So is Ben & Jerry’s, announcing yesterday that Gold Medalist (and Vermonter) Hannah Kearney will have her own flavor (following the likes of Jerry Garcia and Stephen Colbert). A spokesman for the company suggested it might be called “Kearney’s Java Jolt Bolt & Cookies.”
In his recent piece for The Atlantic, Joshua Green suggests that The Grateful Dead just may be the fathers of modern social networks. Say what? Well, hang on, he might be onto something. Last year, the band donated its copious archive—“four decades’ worth of commercial recordings and videotapes, press clippings, stage sets, business records, and a mountain of correspondence encompassing everything from elaborately decorated fan letters to a thank-you note for a fund-raising performance handwritten on White House stationery by President Barack Obama“—to the University of California at Santa Cruz. As ethnomusicologists, sociologists, historians and literary scholars prepare to dig in, Green argues “the biggest beneficiaries may prove to be business scholars and management theorists, who are discovering that the Dead were visionary geniuses in the way they created ‘customer value,’ promoted social networking, and did strategic business planning.”
The music industry has always been about excesses. The myth of rock stardom is built upon the license to do whatever you want, consume whatever you want, wear whatever you want. Cameron Crowe nailed it in Almost Famous, especially when Billy Crudup’s Russell yells “I am a golden god!” from a rooftop. While social consciousness has always been part of the fabric of music (think Pete Seeger, Dylan, Springsteen, Bono), it’s really mostly about the sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll.
So it’s refreshing to see some of pop music’s biggest stars come together for The Green Music Group, a coalition of musicians, so-called “industry leaders” and fans that aims to make the music industry green from the inside out.
Founded by environmental nonprofit Reverb, the group is a coalition of Founding Artists (Dave Matthews, Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raiit, Sheryl Crow, Maroon 5, Jack Johnson, The Roots and others), music venues, record labels, publishing groups and non-profit partners that “has officially come together to green the music community.” According to the Green Music Group Web site, actions will include:
1. Creating an engaging online community of musicians, music industry leaders, and music fans all committed to addressing our greatest environmental concerns.
2. Facilitating large-scale greening of the music community through touring, venue, and label standards, resource development, green grants mentoring, and viral video and public service campaigns.
3. Providing environmental nonprofits with a megaphone for their cause, allowing them to expand their reach and support base.
4. Creating a sustainable green music guild to support and inform the efforts of the music community and position leaders in the music industry as voices for change, working to shine a light on the most pressing environmental issues of our time.
Green Music Group is the first organization to harness the collective power of the entire music community to affect millions of individual actions, bringing about measurable global environmental change. Green Music Group is not simply green in name – we are committed to a sustainable future both on and off-stage.
Let’s take a moment to recognize the Super Bowl champs. We at LTT, like 106.5 million others- the largest TV audience in U.S. history- enjoyed watching the Saints and Colts last Sunday. But before quarterback Drew Brees out-dueled Peyton Manning, he joined the crew of TV’s “Sport Science” to test the science behind his remarkable passing accuracy. At almost 71% completion average, Brees leads the NFL in quarterback accuracy, but how would he fare against, say, Olympic archers? And what makes his passes so dead on? And how can science provide those answers?
Check out the video above for the full demonstration.
Innovation is by definition a step forward- new technologies, new ways of doing, seeing, thinking and so on. But sometimes a creative re-imagining of something old makes us love taking a step back. Exhibit A, Il-Gu Cha’s ‘Trace of Time‘ clock- part clock, part zen work of art. The clock [shown in the above video and pictured left] is made primarily of glass and functions like a dynamic, deadline-conscious dry-erase board. The earlier iteration (as seen in the video) was made of laminated white board. Il-Gu Cha explains (in slightly broken english),
This clock’s basic function is not only to tell the time but also so the user can make a note on the face of the clock. A hand of the clock erase the written messages automatically by using the eraser which is behind the hand. The analog clock shows remaining time to the appointed time more intuitively compared to a digital clock. That is one of the reason why the analog clock exists until today although the digital clock advents.
A few facts you might find interesting: the Earth’s population has doubled since the mid 1970s. Though the rate of population growth has almost halved since its peak (2.2%) in 1963, it still averaged a robust 220,988 new Earthlings every day in 2009. China and India account for nearly 40% of the world’s population- compare that to the U.S. which is about 4.5%, and Europe about 12%. Nearly a third of the world’s population is under the age of fifteen. Projections differ greatly, but some experts predict that we’ll hover between 9 and 10 billion by mid century.
In what Thomas Friedman calls an increasingly hot, crowded and flat world, population and innovation are closely linked. Where will 21st century’s world-changing innovation come from? And in what form? Some predict that nations will matter less than cities, regional hegemony far less than global collaboration. Ideas now travel at the speed of light, and access to information and technology grows by leaps and bounds.
As the human population heads toward nine billion and simultaneously becomes ever more interlaced via mobility, commerce and communication links, the potential to shape the human journey — for better or worse — through the sharing of ideas and experiences has never been greater. (My own sense is that the upside will dominate.) FromDarwin through Havel, there’s been a vision of breaking down tribal and other barriers and enveloping the planet in what some have called noosphere.
While some old tools for disseminating information, the nightly newscast and morning front page, are suffering, it’s clear that the thirst for community and communication is stronger than ever.
But language remains a barrier to having a truly global conversation, or perhaps I should cast that in the past tense now.
As some of you certainly already know, and I’ve just learned, that future is already sketched out, in the form of Skype Translate, MeGlobe and similar experiments in instantly translated text chats.
We’ve heard from a few people who thought we took a cheap shot at Bill Gates by claiming that, as long as Steve Jobs is at the helm of Apple, Gates is destined to be the George Harrison of tech innovation. Of course, how can we question the genius of a man who has so clearly changed the world? And, by the way, continues to do so through his philanthropy. In fact, it may be for his efforts to reduce poverty and increase access to healthcare and technology throughout the world that Gates will ultimately make the biggest difference. So, we’re not down on Gates- but how much influence does he continue to have on the ways in which Microsoft develops and rolls out product? Again, his role now seems to be as a billionaire philanthropist difference maker. And in that role, he has no equal (other than his collaborator Warren Buffett, who has given more than $30 billion to Gates’s foundation).
So, it was in that role, as influencer, that Bill Gates recently wrote on his blog that we need “innovation, not just insulation” in order to reduce CO2 to manageable levels. Small-scale tweaks to the system might get us to 30% CO2 reduction by 2020, but the long-term goal of 80% reduction by 2050 may be impossible without large-scale innovation, significant changes in the way we use energy, the types of energy we use, and the technologies we use for energy conversion.
Gates writes, “because 2020 is too soon for innovation to be completed and widely deployed, behavior change and efficiency still matter” the goal should be large-scale innovation and legislation that focuses on 2050. “Innovation in transportation and electricity will be the key factor,” he says. “I hear a lot of climate change experts focus totally on 2020 or talk about how great it is that there is so much low hanging fruit that will make a difference. This mostly focuses on saving a little bit of energy, which by itself is simply not enough.” Gates warns that “the danger is people will think they just need to do a little bit and things will be fine.”
We tend to focus on new ideas and how they might shape our tomorrow. But from time to time we draw inspiration from companies that are making old ideas work in a new, global economy. We spotted an interesting piece in the Burlington Free Press [click here to watch our interview with its whip smart publisher, Brad Robertson from last year] on one such company, Cabot Hosiery Mills. Makers of Darn Tough socks, the company is the last sock manufacturer remaining in New England, once a stronghold of the garment industry. As Matt Sutkowski writes for the BFP, “once upon a time, maybe 100 years ago, New England was dotted with hosiery companies. Gradually, they all went to the southern U.S., and then overseas with the rest of the Northeast garment industry as labor costs became prohibitive.”
Cabot Hosiery’s operations are essentially a three-legged stool. One leg is the original part of the business, making socks for retailers such as L.L. Bean. Another leg is the Darn Tough line of socks, which are durable, colorful footwear mostly geared toward sports enthusiasts. The third leg is socks for the military. The company has a roughly $10 million, four-year contract with the U.S. military to manufacture socks for troops, mostly the Army.
The recession has not harmed Cabot Hosiery, Marc Cabot said. “When the economy gets tough, our inner selves need to feel good,” he said. “Accessories always do better in tough economic times.” So people buy socks, rather than more expensive purchases, to make themselves feel good. “Instead of buying a $2,000 suit, they buy $15 socks,” he said, adding a person can make an old suit look new with a fresh tie and socks.
How is the internet changing the way you think? That’s this year’s question from Edge, a nonprofit foundation, modern-day salon and informal gathering of “some of the most interesting minds in the world.” The essays, from a range of contributors (college professors, technology analysts, scientists, artists and creative thinkers), are reliably thought-provoking. Will this access to information, our capacity for sharing, the relentless barrage of new ways to plug in…lead to a new age of Enlightenment or, as some suggest, a cultural Dark Ages?
One notable response is a piece by Clay Shirky, Social & Technology Network Topology Researcher and Professor at NYU’s Graduate School of Interactive Telecommunications. In ‘The Shock of Inclusion,’ Shirky writes, “The Internet has been in majority use in the developed world for less than a decade, but we can already see some characteristic advantages (dramatically improved access to information, very large scale collaborations) and disadvantages (interrupt-driven thought, endless distractions.) It’s tempting to try to adjudicate the relative value of the network on the way we think by deciding whether access to Wikipedia outweighs access to tentacle porn or the other way around.”
Circumnavigating the Earth in a hot-air balloon was just an opening act. For his next feat, to begin the new decade, adventurer Bertrand Piccard is motivated by what seems impossible. In this presentation from TED, Piccard (the second coolest Piccard I can think of) shares his own plans to do what many say can’t be done -to fly around the world, nonstop, in a solar-powered aircraft.
Seventh Generation, maker of household and personal-care products and a leader in corporate responsibility and sustainable business practices, has partnered with a leading global provider of educational services to individuals, schools and businesses, Kaplan EduNeering, to launch their new Sustainability Institute. The Kaplan EduNeering/Seventh Generation Sustainability Institute will provide business and governmental managers, employees, subcontractors and supply chain partners with best practices and specialized training in the development and implementation of sustainability initiatives.
“There is now compelling evidence that sustainable companies enjoy a competitive advantage over organizations that continue to embrace an exclusive focus on short term profits,” said Jeffrey Hollender, Executive Chairman of Seventh Generation. “That business paradigm is now seen as counterproductive, not only for society and the natural world but also for company stakeholders. Organizations are beginning to understand that responsible corporate behavior has become a business imperative and that it will only become increasingly more important in the future.”
Although recent studies confirm the belief among business professionals that environmental, social and governance activities create shareholder value and increase consumer loyalty, a study by MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group reports that only 30% of firms are implementing sustainability practices.
The Kaplan EduNeering/Seventh Generation Sustainability Institute provides:
• An online library of courses, including Sustainability 101, Sustainable Supply Chain and Greenhouse Gas Management. Each of these modules addresses one of the essential business practices in an effective sustainability program. The Sustainability Institute courses are also a good primer for companies seeking distribution with Wal-Mart and that must adhere to Wal-Mart’s Sustainability Index. Kaplan EduNeering is a pioneer in online learning and has developed more than 4,000 custom courses and learning exercises for its clients and a library of 550 standardized compliance and regulatory courses.
• Ten video modules for ongoing sustainability learning, with topics ranging from “Developing a Sustainability Mindset” to “Be Transparent.” The video series includes five modules centered on sustainable business practices. Each of these modules addresses one of the essential business practices in an effective sustainability program. The videos feature Jeffrey Hollender, Seventh Generation’s co-founder and current Executive Chairman. As the company’s Inspired Protagonist, Jeffrey has advised Fortune 500 companies and authored best-selling books including How to Make the World a Better Place: A Guide for Doing Good and What Matters Most - How a small group of pioneers are teaching social responsibility to big business - and why big business is listening. Jeffrey’s newest book, The Responsibility Revolution, is scheduled for publication in March 2010.
• An online toolkit called the Sustainability Communication CoachSM (SCC), which includes articles, brochures, mini-training modules, case studies and other resources to develop and sustain an ongoing, enterprise-wide sustainability communications program. The SCC is modeled after Kaplan EduNeering’s widely used Ethics Communication CoachSM, which now includes 2,000 tools and celebrates its ten-year anniversary in 2009.
• Optional services, including sustainability consulting, through Seventh Generation’s professional staff and an exam prep package for the LEEDv3 (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). A Green Associate certificate awarded by the Green Building Council can be provided by Kaplan AE Education.
The holiday season always provides ad agencies and design firms a chance to exhibit their irreverent side. Creativity- if you don’t read it, bookmark now!- has collected some of the best ‘Christmas cards’ from the creative community. Our favorite is the above music video from SF-based Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. Other highlights from their list include Droga5, from Down Under, putting junior creative Baldrick in charge of writing his first creative brief, the agency’s Christmas card. Like an advent calendar, Baldrick posts a new idea each day until the 25th and solicits feedback from all. Also, London’s Lean Mean Fighting Machine sent a virtual radio including a playlist from staff members, and a slightly cringe-inducing parody of “Do They Know It’s Christmas Time” about social media.
Two years ago, Craven, a high school science teacher, shot an online video he dubbed “The Most Terrifying Video You’ll Ever See” offered as “a suggestion for how to cut through the shouting match and draw your own conclusion in the debate, without needing to decide which side to believe.” In two years, the video has been watched nearly 8,000,000 times, spawned 7 hours of follow-up videos, led to an offer for his own TV show (which he declined) and a book (which has been hailed as a ‘must read’ by the likes of Bill McKibben, Gen Anthony Zinni and others).
Watch for yourself, and let us know if you think Craven has a bulletproof approach. But more interesting, perhaps, is whether this “little YouTube video that could” might help shape the conversation.
Unnerved by the sight of post-Christmas trees heading en masse to the wood chipper, Scott Martin, Los Angeles-based landscape architect, saw a business opportunity and a chance to make Christmas a little greener. As Jennifer Steinhauer explains in her NY Times piece- Business Delivers Christmas Trees For Rent- Martin’s “new business is delivering live, potted Christmas trees that are taken away once the toys have been unwrapped and, possibly, already broken, and the New Year’s confetti has been swept away.”
Rentable Christmas trees is not an entirely new concept, especially in eco-minded cities (Portland, Oregon, for one), but, as Martin tells Steinhauer, the idea is a perfect match for Los Angeles, “where Christmas trees have’an image issue,’ and escaping a drive through traffic with a tree strapped to a car roof is especially welcome.”
To rent a tree, a customer visits his Web site, www.livingchristmas.com, picks out a tree from among several varieties and then awaits delivery. Delivery days are determined by geography, to save time and gas. Prices range from $50, for a two-to-three-foot number, up to $185 for something considerably bigger. While two weeks is the recommended length of stay for a live tree in a house, Mr. Martin lets his customers keep them for three weeks.
The tree is then picked up to join its evergreen cousins; they will summer together on industrial properties where Mr. Martin rents space for pennies on the dollar to house his inventory. People who want the same tree next year ask for the tree to be tagged with their name, so it might return next December, taller.
Extra-credit groovy points: The delivery trucks run on biodiesel; the trees are cared for by adults with disabilities; the drivers will pick up donations for Goodwill and used wrapping paper for recycling; and his Web site also sells eco-friendly, fair trade ornaments.
It’s that time of year again- when “Top lists” and “Best Picks” start popping up. We actually like sifting through those things, but we’ll forgive you for having “List” overload. One list we do recommend is the NY Times annual “Year In Ideas” list. The Times Magazines looks back on the past year for the most compelling ideas. For a recap of 2008, check our post from this time last year.
The Times presents the list “from A to Z, the most clever, important, silly and just plain weird innovations we carried back from all corners of the thinking world.”
On the list this year, and starting from the top, is the advertisement that watches you, designed by the Hamburg-based firm Jung von Matt (which bills itself as being in the business of “attention warfare”). The ad, for Amnesty International, uses face-tracking software with a working range of about 16 feet to modify the ad and react to passersby. A Potsdam company called Vis-à-pix created the technology and says the technology has been improved. “New posters can even identify the sex of onlookers. Consider a poster created for the service counters of the rental-car company Sixt: when a man gets close, he is tempted with an image of a limousine; if the customer is a woman, she sees, instead, a spunky Cabriolet.”
Another idea that made the list, the Hourglass Surfboard, a new take the classic longboard whose shape has changed little since surfing was invented by the ancient Hawaiians. But Swedish designer Thomas Meyerhoffer has introduced a new design, with a corseted waist and a narrow tail, with a bottom that is more deeply contoured than a typical board. All that curvaceousness is meant to lend the maneuverability of the shortboard, typically ridden by skilled surfers, to the more stable longboard. For more on the board and NY Times “Year In Ideas,” click here.
It’s nice to be reminded that we’re smarter than we know. In the above clip, from this year’s World Science Festival, Bobby McFerrin demonstrates an unexpected shared understanding of music theory. The pentatonic scale, he shows, is something we know, even if it’s not something we know we know. The demonstration shows the audience can recreate the scale even when the exercise goes beyond the explained instructions.
What other knowledge do we have lurking in our subconscious that might be worth exposing?
The presentation was part of the “Notes & Neurons: In Search of the Common Chorus” event which took place on June 12, 2009.
Much of what we do at Love Tomorrow Today is fixated on this tenuous and irrepressible marriage between science and design. Can we make something better? Better for convenience? Better for the planet? The art of improving the things around us relies on this back and forth between scientists and artists. In the above clip, MOMA design curator Paola Antonelli provides a fascinating preview of her museum’s latest show “Design and the Elastic Mind” and explains that this relationship is a vital as ever.
Antonelli begins by explaining this concept of the ‘elastic mind,’ one that can process a multitude of ideas. She sets up this divide between the elasticity of the modern (multi-tasking) mind on one side and the malaise of the mind resistant to change (her father, as an example, who refuses to embrace the internet).
The advent of “nano technology,” she suggests, has strengthened this link between science and art. Conceptual technology and nano physics has brought scientists into the realm of designers, and vice versa, and that collaboration is yielding some remarkable results- some of which she references in the 17 minute presentation.
Information Design, as an example, presents data in such a way that the aesthetic of science is visible. The term has come to be used specifically for graphic design displaying information effectively, rather than just attractively or for artistic expression. Another example, so-called ‘Existenzmaximum,’ sees design and technology working together to change the way we perceive reality. Consider, she explains, how you can be in a crowded subway, but thanks to the design and functionality of your iPod, you can virtually experience a sort of isolation, almost enjoying your own physical space.
A fascinating look at the connectivity of science and design. For more, visit TED.
We’ve been loving the newly launched 20,000 Songs blog, started by musician/teacher/writer Jeff Symonds last week. Over the last year, Symonds has been whittling his massive music collection down to the essentials, trying to build the perfect iPod. He went through every album he owned (at 750 Gigs worth of mp3s, quite a collection), every “Top” list he could read and revisited albums he hadn’t heard or had summarily rejected. The result? The definitive music collection, 20,000 songs he thinks everyone should hear.
He explains, “I’m pretty confident that I’ve given just about every major or minor band a considered listen” and “very carefully loaded and edited down a 160GB iPod with every single song I’ve ever liked. This project is the result. I’m going to let fate (or at least iPod shuffle) guide me as I lead you through my list of the very best music released in the last 100 years. Consider this blog a series of letters from one music lover to another– you gotta hear this stuff.”
With only a week’s worth of entries so far, we can already tell this will be a journey worth taking. Symonds blends an encyclopedic (Rain Main-esque) knowledge of music, hilarious personal anecdotes and the context that only a musician can provide, all to great effect.
What has this got to do with anything? Nothing, but we love it!
This does not look safe. But it’s green (or greenish), and, if you’re looking for a crotch rocket that says “I’m on the cutting edge and I love the environment,” this “motorUnicycle” has your name on it!
From BPG Motors, the Uno, part Segway, part high performance motorcycle, has two wheels side by side, rather than front and back. From the mind of Ben Gulak, designer/founder of BPG Motors and a student at MIT, the Uno weighs about 120 lbs and runs for about 2.5 hours on an electric motor. Gulak has won numerous science and design awards in his native Canada, and the Uno was selected by Popular Science Magazine as one of the Top 10 Inventions for 2008, appearing on the cover in June 2008. The same year, Gulak was named as one of Canada’s “Top 20 Under 20.”
Gulak says he designed the Uno after a 2006 trip to China with his father on a business trip. When he saw the incredible pollution in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, much of it produced by smoky two-stroke scooters and motorcycles, he knew that electrics would make ideal substitutes—if they were cool. There, of course, have been electric motorcycles and scooters before (some of which we’ve profiled on this site), but this may be the most interesting.
Time again to give thanks- should there really only be one day set aside for that?- and we’re certainly grateful for the tremendous feedback we’ve received since launching Love Tomorrow Today. As always, we invite you to let us know about programs and people making a difference or tips to incorporating simple change into our daily lives.
Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving! This weekend, remember to reduce, recycle, reuse and…relax! Don’t forget, eating leftovers (delicious, food coma-inducing leftovers) is good for the planet!
John Cusack has been in some good movies. Grosse Pointe Blank, High Fidelity, Better Off Dead, Being John Malkovich, all very solid. He’s also been in some real clunkers (Pushing Tin anyone?). His new movie 2012, based on the purported ancient Maya prediction that the world will end on December 21, 2012, just opened and seems to have hit a nerve.
When it comes to the environment, pessimism abounds, and worst case scenarios are often described to ward off indifference and inaction. The National Geographic Channel has specialized in the ‘life after mankind’ sort of shows that depict those outcomes in entertaining (and frightening) ways. But what about this Mayan myth of the apocalypse? And does anyone care about the new John Cusack movie?
The answer to the second question is, apparently, lots of people. 2012 had the biggest box office opening of the year, despite the fact that the film seems to be a melding of the director’s previous movies (The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day). What does it say that so many people are drawn in by 2 hrs and 38 mins about the end of the world? Is it the wall to wall special effects- which look like popcorn spectacular at its popcorniest? Or could it be that people are genuinely sensitive to the planet in decline?
Getting back to the question about the actual myth…, could the world really meet its end in 2012—”drowned in apocalyptic floods, walloped by a secret planet, seared by an angry sun, or thrown overboard by speeding continents?” The good people at the National Geographic Channel are helping debunk the myth.
They went to people like David Morrison, senior scientist with the NASA Astrobiology Institute, for answers. People are “genuinely frightened,” says Morrison. “I’ve had two teenagers who were considering killing themselves, because they didn’t want to be around when the world ends,” he said. “Two women in the last two weeks said they were contemplating killing their children and themselves so they wouldn’t have to suffer through the end of the world.”
Ok, these people are crazy. Just putting it out there.
With the help of scientists like Morrison, NatGeo explains away six of the predicted 2012 cataclysms.
Let’s face it, there’s no good reason to be nostalgic about tape cassettes. It’s like being nostalgic for “life before cell phones.” Nice to contemplate, of course, especially as we wrestle with our gadget addiction, but we’re just better off now. Certainly, without cassettes. I seem to remember always needing a pencil around, to help me uncoil a twisted tape spool. And when one technology becomes obsolete, the question remains as to what to do with the massive Bon Jovi tape collection you own and yet, somehow, can’t fully explain.
We enjoyed finding this creative re-use of old audio cassette tapes- the Sonic Fabric neckties, a limited-edition project from designers Alyce Santoro and Julio cesar. Sonic Fabric is woven from 50% recorded audio cassette tape and 50% colored thread the fabric is actually audible if you run a tape head over it! Check out this video, from alyceobvious, which features a massive antique loom at the small new england textile mill where the ties are woven.
As Santoro explains, “the idea behind the tie is that the wearer becomes a beacon for other-dimensional, intangible, subtle forces of good…much in the manner of a superhero.” You had me at “other-dimensional.”
We think it’s an interesting re-purposing of a medium that would otherwise be tossed.
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Highlighting innovative ideas, profiling difference makers and reflecting on the issues that will shape our tomorrow, we provide daily fodder for creative minds. We seek to aggregate inspiration and fuel a lively conversation.
