Tertiarymatt

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In association with Bloomberg Law

While it might not be in time for this year's festivities, but it's definitely a contender as next year's centerpiece. A candelabra this ornate can hold its own on a table year-round, so don't even bother waiting until the next holiday season. Luka Pirnat, a Slovenia-based industrial designer, has taken the classic Zippo silhouette and incorporated it into a bold metal menorah.

It comes off a bit steam-punkish (and would look right at home at similarly themed coffee joint Truth Coffee), but the gold and silver accents throughout give off quite a bit of "eye candy" appeal that would mix into any home without much effort. But it's the idea of it that's more intriguing that it's decor potential.

Your cell phone is able to vibrate because there's a little motor inside that rotates a small, off-balance weight. We've all seen our phones skitter across a desk when a call comes in, some further than others, depending on what model you have. But the phone's locomotion is not directed or intended, it's just a side effect of this little device spinning inside.

What if that motion was directed, and even precisely predetermined? Independent of cell phones, researchers at Switzerland's Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control designed and built the Cubli, a 15-cm cube that can move around by means of little flywheels, motors and sensors inside of it. While a cube is not the shape you think of when you think about designing a miniature vehicle, check out what this thing can do:

I'm going to forego my usual robophobic tirade about the borderline creepiness of a cube that can move like that, and instead propose that these guys make my cell phone silently stand straight up on my desk whenever a call or text comes in.

These last week of the year is always kind of a weird duration, one that typically feels slow and fast at the same time, a stretch of five or six days that is invariably removed from the epicyclic progress of the rest of the year, demarcated by a pair of holidays. Work and school are generally put on hold in favor of family-related obligations, yet there's inevitably some project to catch up on—even it's just sleep—and before you know you it, you're back at your desk... like you never left.

Meanwhile, the beginning of the new year is both the end of a specific timeframe and an opportunity for a fresh start. Thus, we'd like to take a moment to reflect on what we've seen in the past 360-ish days or so in order to draw insight into what might be on the horizon in 2014.

We'll start with a seemingly straightforward cross-section of our content mix: the top ten most popular posts this year. Insofar as their viral appeal is predicated on broadly interesting subject matter, many of these stories are not explicitly related to industrial design per se; rather, they illustrate how the natural and manmade world has the power to surprise and delight us.

10.) How a Doctor's Five-Minute, $15 iPhone Hack Could Affect 600 Million Lives

9.) Owning Two of a Certain Object Indicates Your Kids Will Do Well in School. Can You Guess What It Is?

8.) Underwater Archaeologist Franck Goddio Finds 1,600-Year-Old City that Vanished 1,200 Years Ago

7.) A Drinking Glass That Can Prevent Sexual Assault

Core77 2013 Year in Review: Top Ten Posts · Furniture, Pt. 1 · Furniture, Pt. 2
Digital Fabrication, Pt. 1 · Digital Fabrication, Pt. 2 · Digital Fabrication, Pt. 3 · Digital Fabrication, Pt. 4
Insights from the Core77 Questionnaire · Maker Culture: The Good, the Bad and the Future · Food & Drink
Materials, Pt. 1: Wood

For the story of digital fabrication in 2013, it hasn't just been the rise of the machines; we've also seen developments in materials, processes and business.

Materialise's TPU-92A-1

For starters, Belgian digital fabrication company Materialise released TPU 92A-1, a new material for laser sintering. Durable yet elastic, the new stuff is a counterintuitive blend of flexible, durable, abrasion- and tear-resistant, and when sintered into a matrix-like form, has impressive shape memory. A certain fashion designer has taken to the material with a vengeance, but we'll get around to actual applications in the next entry.

Shapeways' Brass and Gold

On a more conventional front, Materialise competitor Shapeways brings two classic elements into their materials stable: gold and brass, now available through a combination of 3D printing, casting and old-fashioned hand polishing (and electroplating, in the case of gold). And unlike TPU 92A-1, which seems to be available only to industrial customers, anyone using Shapeways' services can order the stuff.

LAYWOO-D3 Wooden 3D Printing Filament

From Germany came LAYWOO-D3, a 3D-printing filament made from 40% recycled wood bound together by polymer. Advertised as "cherry," the stuff reportedly looks like wood, smells like wood, and can be sanded, worked and painted like wood once it's out of the printer.

Modern Meadow 3D Printed Meat

A material for 3D printing that none of you may be clamoring for is... meat. Andras Forgacs and his Modern Meadow company are seeking to produce meat-based protein for human consumption by bioengineering the stuff and having it spit out of a printer; for the sake of—I dunno, authenticity?—they'll reportedly keep the meat animal-specific, "Pig stays pig. Cow stays cow. Etc." to "ensure purity." Mmmmmmm. [retch]

Unsurprisingly, 2013 was a big year for digital fabrication, as the technology continues to trickle down into the affordable consumer category. So before we even get into what designers have done with the new technologies available to us, let's take a look at what the companies responsible for those technologies have gifted us with this year.

ShopBot Tools Handibot

The runaway Kickstarter digital fabrication success of the year was the HandiBot. North-Carolina-based ShopBot Tools' unusual concept—a portable CNC mill whose man-handle-ability gives it an infinite work area footprint--was a smashing success, hitting and more than doubling its funding target within days of going live (the first 150 units have since been delivered). "We really love the idea of a highly portable and affordable little CNC," says ShopBot founder Ted Hall. "The fact that you 'take the tool to the material' creates all sorts of new options for CNC... but the real aspiration for Handibot is to break the ease-of-use barrier for CNC-style, subtractive, digital fabrication." To that end, Hall and team are working on creating an app environment for the Handibot; in the company's vision of the Handibot's future, users will download apps for specific operations they want to perform, call them up on a paired smartphone, tablet or computer, then "click 'Start' and have the tool get to work right in front of you."

Inventables Shapeoko 2

On the open-source front, Inventables launched their Shapeoko 2 CNC mill, a small-footprint (12×12×2.5) desktop machine going for $650–685 depending on configuration. Some five years in the making, the Shapeoko 2 can also be ordered in a $300 kit form for those tinkerers willing to supply the electronics, belts, pulleys, etc. and assemble it themselves.

MATAERIAL Anti-Gravity Object Modeling 3D Printer

If there's a 3D-printing version of the Handibot—which is to say, a machine independent of a build platform—it's the MATAERIAL Anti-Gravity Object Modeling 3D Printer. The machine's articulating, robotic arm extrudes material in 3D space, rather than depositing it layer-by-layer, and the thing is so radical we expect it will take a little time for designers' imagination can catch up to what the machine is capable of.

Baby river otters don’t know how to swim when they’re born! In this April 2013 video from the Oregon Zoo, meet Molalla the Baby River Otter and his mother Tilly as she gives him a few lessons.

"It might look kind of scary to a casual observer," (keeper Becca) Van Beek said. “She’ll grab Mo by the scruff of the neck and dunk him in the water. But that’s a very natural behavior. Baby otters are extremely buoyant, so Mo has built-in water wings for his swim lessons. This is how baby otters learn to swim, and it’s exactly what we’ve been hoping to see.”

Related reading: sea otter vs river otter. Then watch videos of more babies and a few more otters.

Thanks, Michael.

This T-Rex will turn its head to watch you as you move. But how?? YouTube illusionist Brusspup shares the secret with this Jerry Andrus-inspired trick. And if you want to try it out yourself, Brusspup made these green, red, and blue dinos available for download.

Next: watch more optical illusions, including the rubik’s cube illusion.

via @aatishb.

Click thru for the music times. @ep_language is so good. I think “fingertips to claws” may contain sounds from space.

Diageo

Roseisle distillery

Diageo moves in big ways, and that makes some folks uneasy. People scoffed when Diageo unveiled the massive new Roseisle distillery, for instance, fearing it would lead to the lights going out at affiliated distilleries all over Speyside.

Actually, what happened next was a $1.5 billion, five year investment program in Scotland, including a brand new distillery beside Teaninich. The numbers are big: 13 million liters per annum, sixteen copper stills, twenty new jobs, and a project cost of $76 million. Expansion projects and upgrades benefited distilling at Mortlach, Teaninich, Inchgower, Glendullan, Dailuaine, Benrinnes, Cragganmore, Glen Elgin, Glen Ord, Linkwood, and Mannochmore. The Cameronbridge facility has been revolutionized with a $163 million investment, endorsed by a site visit from the British prime minister. The company expanded the Diageo archive at Menstrie and realized improvements in their Leven packaging plant. The nearby Cluny Bond will have 46 new warehouses, each of which can store 60,000 casks.

Diageo also takes energy efficiency, water treatment, and renewable energy seriously. This investment in sustainability has added the latest green technologies to Glendullan, Dailuaine, Glenlossie, and Cameronbridge, with plans for a bio-energy plant at the new distillery in Alness. Roseisle is scaring nobody now.

Then there is Johnnie Walker. The world’s biggest Scotch whisky brand introduced Gold Label Reserve and Platinum Label into the United States, in addition to a freshly primped JW lineup in stores and Travel Retail. Odyssey tore up the rulebook on the perceived worth of blended malts. Those following the oceanic adventures of the John Walker & Sons Voyager across Pacific Asia and Europe were treated to a heady mix of glamour, celebrity, talent, and show-stopping spectacle with blended scotch as the guest of honor.

Now their single malt brands are returning to the fray. For starters, there are three new regular Talisker expressions, backed by the passionate people running the innovative new visitor experience on Skye, and there will also be more choices from Cardhu, Dufftown, and Mortlach.

The Diageo Special Releases 2013 contained some phenomenal liquids: the stunning Brora from 1977 with flavors that snapped into place with a droplet or two of water, and the beguiling, rounded flavors to be found in a glass of Convalmore 36 year old. The steep jump in some prices was in part justified as Diageo’s latest salvo on the war against flipping on the secondary market. Their attempts to snuff out the commoditization of highly sought-after limited editions may ensure that the purchasers are truly venerating the single malt whisky in the bottle. This stance extended to the festival bottlings of Lagavulin, Caol Ila, and Mortlach in 2013 from the Islay Jazz festival, Fèis Ìle, and the Spirit of Speyside festival. Bottling runs were upped into the thousands and prices were kept around £100 to prevent disappointment and curb profiteering.

Diageo is about whisky on a global stage. New innovations have bolstered their prospects across the Atlantic; Crown Royal Maple and Bulleit Bourbon 10 year old hit the ground running. Bourbon lovers will be intrigued to try the new Orphan Barrel whiskeys and Blade & Bow bourbon. Internationally, a pivotal moment was marked when Diageo gained control of India’s United Spirits Ltd. The prize was not Whyte & MacKay especially, rather the flourishing opportunities in accessing potential drinkers in the Indian subcontinent.

Sure, Diageo is huge, and their size makes some people nervous. But big moves require a big company. Substantial investment, a world-beating vision for future growth, and harnessing their guardianship of brand history to reach out to consumers have helped our Distiller of the Year deliver an incredible portfolio of whiskies to suit all pockets and preferences. — Jonny McCormick

photo credit: Keith Hunter Photography

The post Whisky Advocate Award: Distiller of the Year appeared first on Whisky Advocate.

critique

learning and media 

It's been a while since I've seen any good urazawa, that being a Japanese word that loosely translates to a secret trick or shortcut to doing something, and commonly means something like "household tips" or life hacks. Urazawa are kind of a counterpoint to product design in that they're about solving problems, but through the user's behavior rather than refining the form of something. As we saw in Lisa Katayama's book on the subject, they can be something as simple as using newspapers to clean windows (to leave them streak-free) or as involved as boiling spinach to get coffee stains out of a carpet.

Soon to be obsolete?

Whether you drive a Ferrari or a Fiesta, your car has windshield wipers. And they operate on the same principle as they have for over a hundred years: A piece of rubber on an arm is dragged across glass to squeegee it clean.

British supercar manufacturer McLaren is moving away from that antiquated system, looking to technology for a better solution. As McLaren Chief Designer Frank Stephenson told the UK's Sunday Times, "I asked [a military source] why you don't see wipers on some aircraft on when they are coming in at very low levels for landing... I was told that it's not a coating on the surface but a high frequency electronic system that never fails and is constantly active. Nothing will attach to the windscreen."

Following that revelation, Stephenson has cooked something up that will reportedly be on McLaren's 2015 models. Unfortunately he's not saying exactly what it is, only that it will replace wipers altogether. The article speculates that:

It is expected to use high-frequency sound waves similar to those used by dentists for removing plaque from teeth and by doctors for scanning unborn babies. By in effect creating a force field, water, insects, mud and other debris will be repelled from the screen.

The Daily Mail claims that "The system... once perfected could be produced for the mass market for as little as £10." I'm not sure how they know that since no one knows what the system really is, but if they're right and this feature goes mass-market, there are at least two bodies this is really going to piss off: 1.) Bosch, which has the largest windshield wiper factory in the world and produces some 350,000 blades per day; and 2.) Those jerks who canvass parking lots with commercial flyers.

Run The Jewels - Killer Mike and El-P - FULL ALBUM (by veganxbones)

Death - Politicians In My Eyes (1974/2009) [HQ] (by jspamx)

Just watched the documentary (A Band Called Death). Super amazing band.

I’ve spent my entire life within ten miles of this river. I navigate through a full quarter of the country by the direction of this river. I will spend half of 2014 thousands of miles from it, for work and for life. It’s a river that forgives us for that, because for millennia it’s done nothing but spit shabby Englishmen out into the world. River salt in our blood.

Happy Solstice, Merry Xmas and Happy New Year. Stay well and stay alive, and I’ll see you on the other side.

— W

UPDATED 10:05 p.m. Saturday.  Judge Shelby has scheduled a hearing for Monday morning on the state’s stay motion.

UPDATED 7:46 a.m. Saturday.  State officials began their effort to postpone this decision by filing a motion in the district court Friday evening.  It can be read here. Among other arguments, it noted that other courts have ruled against same-sex marriage.  State officials also have asked the Tenth Circuit for a delay of Judge Shelby’s decision while he considers the stay motion.  That motion in the court of appeals is here.

 UPDATED 6:55 p.m. Friday.  The Utah attorney general announced plans to seek a postponement of the ruling pending an appeal to the Tenth Circuit.  A press release is here.  FURTHER UPDATE: The state’s appeal to the Tenth Circuit has now been docketed as 13-4178, Kitchen v. Herbert.

———–

Directly applying the Supreme Court’s decision striking down the federal Defense of Marriage Act to a state’s ban on same-sex marriage, a federal judge in Salt Lake City ruled Friday that Utah’s voter-approved state constitutional amendment violates the federal Constitution.

“The Constitution protects the choice of one’s partner for all citizens, regardless of their sexual identity,” U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby ruled in a fifty-three-page opinion.  He was the second federal judge to nullify a ban imposed by a state’s voters at the ballot box; the first such ruling nullified California’s “Proposition 8″ — a ruling that the Supreme Court left intact in June but without a direct ruling on it.

If Judge Shelby’s ruling withstands an appeal, it would make Utah the eighteenth state where same-sex marriages are allowed, and the seventh in which equal marriage rights were established by a court ruling.

While the Supreme Court in the case of United States v. Windsor explicitly avoided ruling on whether a state ban on same-sex marriage was valid, the Salt Lake City judge interpreted the decision to mean precisely that.  The important “federalism concerns,” about a state’s control of marriage rights, “are insufficient to save a state-law prohibition that denies the [three couples suing in this case] their rights to due process and equal protection of the law.”

Along the way toward his ultimate conclusion, Judge Shelby ruled that the issue of state authority to outlaw same-sex marriage is no longer controlled by a one-line 1972 Supreme Court decision in a Minnesota case, Baker v. Nelson.  Opponents of same-sex marriage have often relied on that ruling, which said simply that such a ban did not raise a “substantial federal question.”

The Utah judge said a summary ruling like that from the Supreme Court is no longer binding on lower courts, “when doctrinal developments indicate otherwise.”  He said that there have been several such developments, citing several decisions on gender equality and on equal rights for homosexuals.

While some other courts have found that the Baker precedent still determines the issue, Judge Shelby said that all of those rulings had been issued before the Supreme Court ruled in the Windsor case last June.  In that decision, the Court found that the Defense of Marriage Act’s provision that all federal benefits keyed to marriage were limited to opposite-sex marriages violated already-married gay and lesbian couples’ right to equality.

Although the Windsor decision did not answer the issue before him, Judge Shelby wrote that “its reasoning is nevertheless highly relevant and is therefore a significant doctrinal development.”  The Supreme Court, he noted, foresaw that its decision in that case would lead to a number of lawsuits raising the very issue of a state’s authority to ban same-sex marriage.

In the wake of the Windsor decision, “there is no longer any doubt that the issue currently before the court in this lawsuit presents a substantial federal question,” the Utah jurist said.

His ruling struck down a state constitutional amendment, adopted by Utah voters in 2004 and taking effect on January 1, 2005 (“Amendment 3″), declaring that “marriage consists only of the legal union between a man and a woman.”  Judge Shelby also nullified two state laws saying in essence the same thing — one passed in 1977, the other in 2004.

His order explicitly barred the state from enforcing any of those three enactments.

The judge’s conclusion rested on both a finding that the ban violated same-sex couples’ right to liberty under the Due Process Clause, and a finding that it violated their rights to equality under the Equal Protection Clause.

The ruling rejected the state’s argument that the couples were seeking the creation of a new right to marry a person of the same sex.  What is at issue, Judge Shelby said, was whether there is an equal right of a fundamental character to enter into marriage that cannot be denied on the basis of sexual identity.  The right was the right to marry equally, the judge said.

He rejected all of the arguments that the state had put forth in its effort to justify the ban.

The judge made no mention of any delay in enforcing his ruling, but presumably the state would be free to seek to delay it if it wished to appeal to the Tenth Circuit.

In association with Bloomberg Law

Having dreamt of a mystery girl with raven locks and alluring eyes, Ethan Wate awakes amidst his collection of banned books and gets ready for the first day of his junior year of high school. He settles in his seat, only to discover that there is a new girl in town and she happens to be the mystery girl of his dreams. His classmates treat this girl, named Lena Duchannes, with hostility and snide whispers about her odd family. As the gossiping reaches a crescendo, suddenly each and every window spontaneously shatters.

“Not having read the book, I had no idea what to expect.”

So begins Beautiful Creatures, an enchanting supernatural romance. Chances are you’ve never heard of Beautiful Creatures. I certainly hadn’t. The film opened last February without significant advertising or promotion from Warner Bros. I don’t recall any TV ads or even one-sheets on the subway walls. Warner Bros. obviously figured that Beautiful Creatures would sell itself since it was based upon a popular series of young adult novels by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. Forgetting about that segment who never read the book has become an alarming trend in Hollywood these days.

Opening at midnight on Valentine’s Day, Beautiful Creatures was largely ignored by criticsand audiences. Even fans of the book stayed away. In July, Beautiful Creatures was very quietly released on home video. While perusing the vast DVD shelves of the Queens Public Library one hot August day, I came across Beautiful Creatures. The cast piqued my interest: it includes Oscar-winners Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson, Oscar nominee Viola Davis and the always good Emmy Rossum. The premise also sounded intriguing. I grabbed the disc and proceeded to checkout.

Hoping for a decent enough flick, I popped the disc into the player and settled back. By the half-hour mark, I was pleasantly surprised. By the one hour mark, I was hooked. When it ended, I was wondering aloud just how this masterpiece was so completely overlooked. Beautiful Creatures is one of a very lousy film year’s few great films. Ignore the wags that dismiss this as nothing more than Twilight rehashed. Beautiful Creatures has everything Twilight lacks: good storytelling, solid filmmaking, great acting, emotional depth and sizzling chemistry amongst the leads.

“We really feel for these young lovers and their mysterious plight into the supernatural.”

Not having read the book, I had no idea what to expect. The film starts out as what I like to call the Teen-in-a-Small-Town tale. It proceeds pleasantly enough until that moment when the windows shatter. Having startled us with such a startling development, writer/director Richard LaGravenese begins to reel us in. We discover that Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert) is a descendant of an awfully strange family who are considered black sheep at best. Seems ordinary, doesn’t it? Then we get the twist: Lena’s family is a group of mysterious beings called casters. These casters have a unique quirk: the ability to affect weather, time and space, and create odd illusions, among other things.

LaGravenese’s script continues to add more layers to this most intriguing tale. There is a maturation process each Caster goes through on the 16th birthday: they embrace Dark (evil) or light (good). Lena is 15 and 3/4. Her family is split between both factions and each side has their reasons for Lena to gravitate towards darkness or light. After brief acrimony at the beginning, Ethan and Lena find themselves falling deeply in love, much to the chagrin of all involved.

The rest of the movie I’ll leave you to discover as part of the fun is discovering the neat surprises in store. I’ll admit a certain prejudice against these adaptations of popular youth novel franchises. For every Harry Potter that is a roaring success, there are dozens of turkeys that leave me wondering what the fuss was about. Twilight was one; Mortal Instruments is another. Perhaps it helped not knowing anything about The Caster Chronicles, the series of books from which Beautiful Creatures emerged. I was able to approach this movie completely devoid of expectations and any residual fan buzz that tends to follow these franchises.

The smartest decision Warner Bros. made was to hire Richard LaGravenese to write and direct. Not only is he one of the best screenwriters around, his three directorial efforts to date (Living Out Loud, Freedom Writers, PS I Love You) were all excellent films. Beautiful Creatures is his best film to date. He wrote a script that remained faithful to the flavor of the novel without alienating those unfamiliar with it. He eschews an orgy of CGI in favor of more modest visual effects and old-fashioned filmmaking. He gets strong performances from cast members famous and unknown while maintaining a brisk pace and viewer interest.

LaGravenese’s script never steers wrong. He employs flashbacks, but unlike Man of Steel, where they often felt out-of-place, LaGravenese provides plenty of set-up and payoff. His script has a firm beginning, middle and end, which is a lot less common than you might think lately. He retains enough of the novel to make a satisfying adaptation and his few changes are inspired. Most importantly, LaGravenese emphasizes the emotional depth of these characters. Granted, that depth was in the original novel, but a lesser filmmaker would have paid mere lip service to such feeling while ratcheting up the sex. We really feel for these young lovers and their mysterious plight into the supernatural. This movie is about actual romance, not candlelit sex.

From left to right: Emma Thompson, Jeremy Irons, Viola Davis

Allegedly Warner Bros. wanted big stars to play the star-crossed lovers, but LaGravenese managed to convince the studio to take a chance on two unknowns: Alden Ehrenreich and Alice Englert. LaGravenese hit the jackpot: not only could both act really well, but they have sizzling chemistry together. I’ve seen dozens of screen romances that fall flat due to a lack of screen chemistry. Ehrenreich and Englert practically melt the screen during the most passionate scenes in the film.Best of all, they are young enough to authentically play teenagers: Ehrenreich was 22 and Englert 17 during production last year.

LaGravenese surrounds them with a great cast of reliable actors: Jeremy Irons as Lena’s uncle, Emma Thompson as a nosy neighbor with a secret, Viola Davis as the town librarian, Eileen Atkins as Lena’s grandmother, Margo Martindale as Lena’s eccentric aunt and Emmy Rossum as Lena’s estranged sister. This is a gallery of rich performances given by actors who seldom do any wrong in the movies. If you want to see what great ensemble acting is all about, Beautiful Creatures is a strong example.

Beautiful Creatures is going to finish high on my list of the year’s best films. This is a five star movie that got a one-star treatment from the studio. They deserve a big fat lump of coal in their stocking. Do yourself a favor and rent Beautiful Creatures. Free yourself from the expectations such youth novels tend to engender. Soak in the acting and the storytelling. You will not go wrong. I don’t often throw out the word masterpiece, but Beautiful Creatures is that increasingly rare creature.

BBC News explores the art of “eyebombing” in Copenhagen with eyebombing.com founders Kim Nielsen and Peter Dam.

In the archives: Andy Knowlton’s drunken poets and more street art.

via Tinybop.

What is the Interview Project? David Lynch describes it as “a 20,000-mile road trip over 70 days across and back the United States” where “people have been found and interviewed,” and if you watch the videos this trip produced, you’re “going to meet hundreds of people,” all different, found “by driving along the roads, going into bars, going into different locations, and there they were. The people told their story. It’s so fascinating to look and listen to people.” This all comes straight from the Interview Project’s Lynch-starring introductory video above. As for its actual 121 video episodes, those come directed by Lynch’s son Austin and his collaborator Jason S. And what elements of the U.S. population have they curated? Let’s just say you wouldn’t hear these voices in the mainstream media — and probably not even on This American Life. ”Today we’re meeting Jeremie,” Lynch père tells us in his opener to the Interview Project episode below. “The team found Jeremie in a restaurant in Hammond, Louisiana.”

From the corner of a hotel bed, young Jeremie, who looks at first like a Mormon missionary on casual day, describes his little-known town as “about 45 minutes from Baton Rouge and about fifteen hours from New Orleans.” He then recounts the impressive number of lifestyles he’s lived so far: in the military, on the streets, “the drug scene,” “the nature scene.” He then gets into the reasons behind his taste for one-night stands and orgies. In the episode below, the team meets Traci, a motel manager in Marfa, Texas, who tells them under the moonlight of her victory over alcoholism, her first encounter with her lifelong best friend, and her once-recurring dreams of a faceless man with a goatee. At an auction in Bellville, Wisconsin, they find Robin, who discusses his attempts to start a massage-and-healing cooperative, only to have them thwarted by the prevailing notion that “This is the Midwest. It’s not going to happen here.” The Interview Project has gathered small-town America’s personal stories of tragedy, triumph, and all those rich experiences in-between. “It’s something that’s human,” to quote David Lynch again, “and you can’t stay away from it.” And at three or four minutes apiece, you certainly can’t watch just one.

Related Content:

David Lynch Talks About His 99 Favorite Photographs at Paris Photo 2012

David Lynch Presents the History of Surrealist Film (1987)

David Lynch Teaches You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Surrealist Video

Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, literature, and aesthetics. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Facebook page.

David Lynch Presents the Interview Project: 121 Mini-Documentaries About Life in America is a post from: Open Culture. You can follow Open Culture by signing up for our Daily Email. That is the most reliable and convenient option. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus.

The Philosophy section of our big Free Online Courses collection just went through another update, and it now features 100 courses. Enough to give you a soup-to-nuts introduction to a timeless discipline. You can start with one of several introductory courses.

• Philosophy for Beginners – iTunes – Web Video – Marianne Talbot, Oxford
  
• Critical Reasoning for Beginners - iTunes Video – iTunes Audio – Web Video – Oxford
• A Romp through Ethics for Complete Beginners - iTunes Video – Web Video – Oxford
• Introduction to Political Philosophy – YouTube – iTunes – Web Video - Steven B. Smith, Yale
• The Art of Living - Web Video – Stanford
• The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps - Multiple Formats– Peter Adamson, King’s College London

Then, once you’ve found your footing, you can head off in some amazing directions. As we mentioned many moons ago, you can access courses and lectures by modern day legends – Michel Foucault, Bertrand Russell, John Searle, Walter Kaufmann, Leo Strauss, Hubert Dreyfus and Michael Sandel. Then you can sit back and let them introduce you to the thinking of Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Hobbes, Hegel, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Kant, Nietzsche, Sartre and the rest of the gang. The courses listed here are generally available via YouTube, iTunes, or the web.

Explore our collection of 800 Free Courses Online to find topics in many other disciplines — History, Literature, Physics, Computer Science and beyond. As we like to say, it’s the most valuable single page on the web.

Don’t miss anything from Open Culture. Sign up for our Daily Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send quality culture your way, every day.

Related Content:

Michel Foucault: Free Lectures on Truth, Discourse & The Self

Take First-Class Philosophy Lectures Anywhere with Free Oxford Podcasts

Walter Kaufmann’s Lectures on Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

The History of Philosophy, from 600 B.C.E. to 1935, Visualized in Two Massive, 44-Foot High Diagrams

Leo Strauss: 15 Political Philosophy Courses Online

Download 100 Free Philosophy Courses and Start Living the Examined Life is a post from: Open Culture. You can follow Open Culture by signing up for our Daily Email. That is the most reliable and convenient option. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus.

With three wheels, pneumatic motors, and driven by a joystick, this ladybug of a car is compelling for both its unusual form and its power source: compressed air. The AIRPod was developed as a sustainable, zero-emission solution for urban commuting, airport vehicles, messenger services, and more. Initially conceived of in 1991 and promised for production since 2000, the car is finally expected to be on sale for around 7,000 euros sometime in 2014. Via Core77:

One tank lasts over 125 miles (200 km) and takes only two minutes to fill up again at an average price of just one euro per fill.

Bonus: the eco-friendly engine technology can be built into boats, backup generators, farm machines, and more.

In the archives, more cars and more sustainability videos, including these two jaw-dropping favorites: an air-powered LEGO car, behind-the-scenes at the Tesla factory and the Moser Lamp.

surprise you’re in rural atlantic canada

My article, “LDI: The Mystery Distillery,” was published in the Winter 2011 issue of Whisky Advocate. It was a hard story to write because no one involved with the former Seagram-owned plant in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, would talk about it. Not a word, on the record or off.

A few facts about the place were known, but by 2011 it wasn’t even possible to determine exactly who owned it. Available public records simply showed the owner as Lawrenceburg Distillers Indiana, LLC.

Between when the story was written and when it went to press, LDI was sold. In the nick of time, we were able to update the piece to report the sale. “In late October,” we wrote, “MGP Ingredients Inc., a major food grade ethanol (i.e., vodka) producer, announced that it is buying LDI for $15 million.”

What we did not know then was that the new ownership would be as open as the previous had been secretive. We recently spoke with Dave Dykstra, MGP vice president for sales and marketing; and Don Coffey, vice president for research and development, about the company’s plans for the Indiana plant.

David Dykstra

Dykstra began by explaining the facility’s historical footprint as the maker of Seagram’s Gin (now owned by Pernod-Ricard) and Seagram’s Seven Crown American Blended Whiskey (now owned by Diageo). Both brands are in the value segment and though large, both have been moribund recently. Now they are growing again.

In addition to that business, MGP believes there is a need for a bulk producer that won’t compete with brand companies, globally. This applies to their whole product mix: vodka, gin, and whiskey.

“We see a huge need for it,” says Dykstra. “Most companies like dealing with us because we’re not their competitor.” They have grown the business in the 18 months since they bought it, picking up many new customers.

Although MGP is best known as a grain neutral spirits producer, the Lawrenceburg acquisition marks their return to the whiskey business. McCormick, a historic distillery in Weston, Missouri, was owned by MGP from the 1950s until 1999. MGP also made whiskey at its distillery in Pekin, Illinois, until 1993.

With its new whiskey program, MGP is aiming for 50% to 60% of its whiskey business to come from contract distilling (in which the customer buys the whiskey when it is distilled and pays an annual fee for maturation), with the rest coming from bulk or ‘spot’ sales (in which the customer buys and takes immediate delivery of aged whiskey).

“Our focus is on the European and Asian markets for growth,” says Dykstra. “And we’re focusing on the private label business.”

One early change they made was expanding their whiskey offerings. They now make five bourbon recipes, three rye recipes, and one each for corn, wheat, and malt. No other major American distillery makes that many different recipes…and they are working on more.

Coffey explained that, with so many different mash bills in play, they have decided to use one yeast for all whiskey products.

Don Coffey

“We’re freezing that as a variable,” says Coffey. But when it comes to maturation, variety is once again the rule. “We used seven different barrels for the new mash bills,” says Coffey, “different toasts and chars, to create different sub-species of bourbon and other whiskeys.” The idea is that producers will be able to buy distinctive whiskeys from MGP, whiskeys that are uniquely their own.

“We have eight novel bourbons going now, with four more cued up,” says Coffey. “The standard is the 21% rye recipe, but we will offer a variety of small grains: oats, quinoa, whatever the customer wants. We’ll study how the small grain changes the bourbon’s character, as compared to the standard.”

Since mixtures of one or more straight bourbons are still considered straight bourbon, not a blend, the possibilities are endless.

MGP intends to be most innovative and consistent supplier of distilled spirits.

“What customers value from us are consistency and reliability, the ability to replicate success,” says Coffey. ”We want to be the customer’s research and development team.” It is their intention to supply liquid, not packaged products, as they have no bottling facility. It was sold separately to Proximo Spirits. Many of MGP’s customers are bottler-rectifiers and they don’t want to compete with their customers.

Going forward, they expect to upgrade many of the distillery’s systems and will expand capacity as needed. They’ve sold most of the aged inventory made under the former owners but the warehouses are filling up again.

As a large, fulltime, non-brand producer that values creativity and innovation, MGP of Indiana adds a welcome new dimension to the American whiskey landscape.

The post More From Inside MGP appeared first on Whisky Advocate.

Photos by Fred Minnick

Buffalo Trace is well-known as an innovator. They’ve won awards for it, they’ve seen plenty of ink (and pixels) for it, and they even sell the results of this innovation as their Experimental Collection; selected barrels from a reported 1,500+ variations aging in various warehouses. Distillery president Mark Brown has likened the multi-decade experimental project to a car company’s Formula 1 racing program: technical innovation to improve the general process and product.

But up until now, the experiments have focused on recipe (different grains and proportions), barrel (type of oak, size, seasoning, entry proof, and the whole Single Oak project), and things that are easily changed one or two or five barrels at a time. The E.H. Taylor microdistillery is able to feed that kind of experimentation with very small batches of different distillate. But now things move into a new arena with the christening of Warehouse X, a building expressly designed to test the effects of environment on aging. (Buffalo Trace has always designated their warehouses with single letters; the sequencing of “X” for this experimental warehouse was happily fortuitous.)

The idea for Warehouse X started years ago, literally with a sketch on the back of a napkin, a conversation between Mark Brown and former warehouse manager Ronnie Eddins. “If it hadn’t been for Ronnie Eddins,” Brown said in tribute, “there wouldn’t have been the energy for the Experimental Collection. I was intrigued by his ideas for warehouse experimentation. All the research on aging has been done to get rid of it. What about getting more out of it? Why not a glass roof, bigger windows, or smaller ones?”

North side of Warehouse X

But warehouses aren’t cheap, not even small experimental warehouses, so the idea slumbered for years, until a tornado tore off the back of Warehouse C in 2006. For six months, until repairs could be made, the barrels aged in the open; no wall, no roof. The whiskey was eventually bottled as E.H. Taylor “Warehouse C Tornado Surviving Bourbon.” It was, as Brown admits, a bit of a stunt, some fun.

“But the whiskey was great!” he hooted. “The whole debate on warehouse experimentation resurfaced.” Master distiller Harlen Wheatley got a $250,000 budget to design and build a small warehouse with four different bays and a “patio.”

It turned out to cost more like a million dollars when everything was said and done. One bay will age whiskey in total darkness, one will cycle in temperature (on varying schedules), one will be subject to changes in humidity (“Humidity’s a mystery,” Brown said), and the fourth will be affected by changes in airflow. The patio will try to replicate the effects of the tornado; open-air aging.

Brown thinks sunlight on the barrels may be the key, though the thought worries him, in a humorous way. “We’ll look like a bunch of chimpanzees if all we needed to age the perfect bourbon was a field full of barrels and a guard tower,” he said with a grin…a wry grin.

Of course, the question is…”the key” to what? When Buffalo Trace embarked on this project some years ago (officially; Ronnie Eddins had been running it off the books for years!), there was talk of the “holy grail,” the “perfect bourbon.” Like bourbon, we’re all older, more mature, and more mellow now (and maybe a bit woody, too), and talk of the “perfect bourbon” makes us edgy. Who’s to say what is the perfect bourbon?

Indeed, Brown agreed, and easily acknowledged that different people have clearly different ideas about it. The purpose of the experimental program is to learn what will create different character in bourbons so that the process can be more readily controlled and optimized for flavor, and sometimes very different flavor. After we’d seen the warehouse, we sat down to taste whiskeys that had been aged in Mongolian oak (incredibly smooth and fruity at only 5 years old, but at about $1,000 a barrel, don’t expect a lot of it), four and six grain bourbons, and a shockingly different — peppery, sweet mint, explosively spicy — 1 year old whiskey that Brown and Wheatley mostly grinned about without saying much, other than that it was “bourbon.”

It was clear that this project is not about changing Buffalo Trace, or Elmer T. Lee, or the Antique Collection. “We’ve thought a lot about the project on a technical level,” Brown said. “We didn’t think about retailing it.” However, he did say that there are some Experimental Collection projects that will go commercial, and allowed that the portfolio had room for “one more brand.”

Brown also emphasized that while innovation looked to the future, the distillery’s recent recognition as a National Historical Landmark (there were new banners up all over the grounds) looks to the past. The process of approval brought out even more about the site’s history, which goes back over 200 years (older than most Scotch whisky distilleries).

Mark Brown and Harlen Wheatley

“This is a crusade for us,” he said. “We feel we have a custodial role; we have to get this distillery intact to the next generation.” Despite some low points, Buffalo Trace has survived, and as we walked around the distillery, it’s clear that it is thriving, stronger than ever. There are plans for expansion, something I never would have guessed would be needed when I first toured here in the 1990s.

But innovation, like the Experimental Collection and Warehouse X, begets success, especially when linked to the independence that’s characterized Buffalo Trace. Don’t expect the desire to investigate the art of bourbon manufacture and aging to change here any time soon.

The post Buffalo Trace’s Experimental Funhouse: Warehouse X appeared first on Whisky Advocate.

Few Spirits Rye, 46.5%, $60

Reviewing craft-distilled American whiskeys is still a matter of degrees, especially when the craft distillers venture into the stylistic territory staked out so strongly by the established traditional distillers. The benchmarks of bourbon and rye are well-known, and to openly declare your competition with them is to invite direct comparison. I call it the “Evan Williams Test”: is this craft whiskey good enough that I’d buy a bottle of it instead of yet another $14 bottle of the reliably well-made Evan Williams Black? Only the very best craft whiskeys can stand up to that.

By that test, Few Spirits Rye is clearly in the top tier of current craft whiskeys.

Although it’s young, the whiskey is well-made and clean in character, not funky and flawed, which still counts for a lot these days. As I said in my review (an 89 score), “Straightforward rye crisps out of the glass in no-nonsense style; dry grain, sweet grass, and light but insistent anise almost wholly drown out the barrel character.” It’s backed up on the palate, where you’ll get more rye, some tarragon and dry mint spice, and then some oak in the warming finish.

That light barrel character is hardly surprising in a young rye, and we’re not going to see much but young whiskey out of craft distillers for a while yet. So high marks to Few Spirits for making a very good young rye, one I’ve been using as a benchmark ever since I tasted it. — Lew Bryson

Tomorrow, the American Whiskey of the Year will be announced.

The post Whisky Advocate Award: Craft Whiskey of the Year appeared first on Whisky Advocate.

funnypageszine:

This comic was made for Cards Against Humanity's 12 Days of Holiday Bullshit by Anthony Clark. 

First it was a power-generating rocking chair, followed by heady indoor cloud concept. Now, Zürich-based Micasa Lab has introduced No More Woof—a device that translate's animals thoughts in words.

No, this isn't some kind of weird sci-fi film. See for yourself: