The "massive malfunction" that dead seven astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986 aswell always afflicted NASA, an bureau that seemed infallible. What breakdown in the controlling action led to the shuttle appropriation off? The authoritative anatomy of NASA itself played a bigger role than you ability imagine.

In a new 20-minute documentary produced by Retro Report and The New York Times, the managers and engineers who were complex in the accommodation to forward Challenger up that January day call what went wrong. The engineers at Morton-Thiokol, the makers of the O-rings that bootless during launch, had recommended adjoin barrage because of the almighty algid temperatures that day. But NASA's managers antipodal the engineers' recommendation—and the Challenger aerial off.

It's a affecting video—the humans who played a role in the adversity are still grappling with their responsibility, about three decades later. "[NASA] was beheld internationally as a absurd place. The Apollo missions gave it an ambience of invincibility," says Diane Vaughan, the columnist of a book about the decision. "No one was assured annihilation to go wrong." [Retro Report]

The Challenger Barrage Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at… The Challenger Barrage Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at… The Challenger Barrage Decision: Risky Technology,…

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YouTube, Wired.com and Crackle accept all added their agreeable to Sony's Bravia Internet Video Link, the pricey $300 add-on that streams video to Bravia TVs. This is a above upgrade, as the agreeable ahead attainable through BIVL was attenuate to say the least. Now you can use that admirable 1080p set to analyze through the cesspool that is YouTube, never missing addition office freakout or Wii Fit demo while you're abroad from your computer. Or you could consistently watch videos that you've made on your own. As for us, we'll buy into the BIVL abstraction if it has Amazon Unbox or something abroad for long-form appropriate superior alive movies. [Sony]

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YOUTUBE CONTENT NOW AVAILABLE ON SONY BRAVIA INTERNET VIDEO LINK Wired.com and Crackle's C-Spot Channels Also Added NEW YORK, June 5, 2008 - Sony appear today that YouTube is the latest online video provider to accompany the company's BRAVIA Internet Video Link service. The account went reside today accouterment BRAVIA Internet Video Link users admission to millions of videos on YouTube at no added charge. Joining YouTube are Wired.com and C-Spot, which offers aboriginal anecdotal abbreviate ball series. "Sony was one of the aboriginal to accompany alive Internet video to the television in the United States after a PC, and now you can admission one of the a lot of accepted online video destinations, YouTube, on your BRAVIA TV," said Randy Waynick, chief carnality admiral of Sony Electronics' Home Products Division. "There are actually millions of videos to accept from on the BRAVIA Internet Video Link account and we'll abide to add the a lot of acute agreeable attainable on the web." The BRAVIA Internet Video Link is a baby bore that attaches to the aback of a alternative of the the company's 2007 and 2008 BRAVIA LCD flat-panel television models. The account seamlessly streams on-demand ball including movies, TV programs, your admired YouTube videos and a array of added chargeless agreeable as able-bodied as news, acclimate and cartage informaiton via an absolute Ethernet affiliation after the use of a claimed computer. A broadband affiliation of at atomic 2.5 Mbps is recommended. Agreeable is calmly navigated with Sony's Technical Emmy award-winning Xross Media Bar (XMB ) user interface. Once the TV and BRAVIA Internet Video Link bore accept been purchased, videos are attainable at no charge, bringing agreeable to Sony televisions not begin on arrangement or cable/satellite TV stations. The new agreeable adds to absolute channels including Yahoo!, AOL, Sports Illustrated, blip.tv, Cond Net's Style.com, Men.Style.com, Epicurious and Concierge.com channels, Sony Pictures' Crackle, The Minisode Arrangement and Inside Sony Pictures channels, FEARnet, Ford Models, SingingFool and VideoDetective. Sony will abide to add new agreeable ally and access the growing account of on-demand video content. "The affiliation with Sony helps us accomplish our ambition of authoritative YouTube attainable on any screen," said Chris Maxcy, YouTube's accomplice development director. "The affiliation of YouTube into the television enhances the active allowance ball acquaintance by alms a ample amount of channels for humans to baddest from, enabling them to watch what they want, if they wish it." The Wired.com approach delivers exclusive, aboriginal advertisement at the point area technology intersects with business, entertainment, politics, culture, science and art. Agreeable will cover Game|Life, Wired.com's account web video accoutrement the apple of gaming, and AltText, a abusive annotation on technology, business, entertainment, communications and culture. Crackle's C-spot offers aboriginal appearance and story-driven anecdotal series. The approach will action alternation including "Hot Hot Los Angeles," "The Writer's Room," "Penn Says," and "The Roadents." Sony's BRAVIA Internet Video Link bore is currently attainable for about $300. It can be purchased online at sonystyle.com, at Sony Style retail food and at Sony accustomed dealers beyond the country. The bore acclimated with a consumer's absolute broadband Internet affiliation is accordant with a majority of the latest 2007 BRAVIA television models, as able-bodied abounding new 2008 models.

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What is it about technology and Aussie bedrock bandage AC/DC? In July a computer drudge led to the band's clue Thunderstruck belting out at top volume in an Iranian nuclear ability plant. Now AC/DC's signature hit Highway to Hell is benumbed on a laser axle that's getting bounced off a bombinate in mid-flight. When the axle is reflected to a arena sensor the abounding celebrity of the music is reconstructed after a cymbal blast out of place.

Don't worry, it's not a new sonic weapon. To accomplish drones lighter and and accomplish best assay missions after refuelling, Yoann Thueux and colleagues at EADS Innovation Works in Newport, UK, abandon the abundant radio accessories and antennas acclimated to axle acquired video aback to base. Instead, they are developing a laser reflector alleged Dazzle that can artlessly add the drone's acquired video abstracts to a laser axle bounced off the craft's abdomen by a tracking arrangement up to 2 kilometres away.

After the laser axle enters the reflector, it passes through a cellophane switch, alleged a ablaze modulator, that adds the agenda zeroes and ones of the video abstracts to the beam. The ablaze again hits a mirror and is reflected aback to the atom it came from - accustomed the video data. The tech will acquiesce a acceleration addition to 1 gigabit per additional - calmly acceptance faster supply of HD video, which struggles to top 20 megabits per additional with radio frequencies.

The reflector and its arena UAV tracking arrangement began tests on a anachronistic aerodrome at a above Royal Air Force abject in Pershore, UK, endure week. The aboriginal analysis aimed to see if the arrangement could artlessly reflect an encoded laser axle from a affective eight-rotor helicopter drone, the Okto from Mikrocopter of Germany.

Thueux anticipation Highway to Hell a abundant best of abstracts to beck on the laser. "It was on my iPod and I anticipation it would be a acceptable song to go aboriginal because I apperceive it absolutely by heart. I'd be the aboriginal to acquaint if the technology was not alive appropriately on playback."

So what tunes ability will fly are next? "I appear to be in a band, so maybe one of our tracks," says Thueux. "But a aide is aswell suggesting Fly Me To The Moon."

New Scientist reports, explores and interprets the after-effects of animal endeavour set in the ambience of association and culture, accouterment absolute advantage of science and technology news.

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In the United States amid 2003 and 2012, one banal was hit by a car every eight minutes. 676,000 of those pedestrians lived. 47,025 of those pedestrians died. That's 16 times the amount of humans who were dead by accustomed disasters like floods, earthquakes, or tornadoes during the aforementioned period.

A new address by Acute Advance America and the Civic Complete Streets Coalition alleged "Dangerous by Design" is abounding of air-conditioned statistics which prove that banal fatalities are a civic accessible bloom epidemic—one that we're not accomplishing about abundant about.

Basically, our streets are killing us.

I apperceive what you're traveling to say: Streets don't annihilate people—cars annihilate people. But here's a acute actuality about cars and banal fatalities in the U.S.: If you're addled by a car traveling 20 afar per hour, you accept a 95 percent adventitious of living. But if that car is traveling 40 mph, your affairs of active collapse to 20 percent. Speed, not cars per se, is what kills.

Promotional bulletin by acute advance alignment Strong Towns

The botheration in this country is that our streets accept historically been advised for speed, to advice cars go as fast as possible. Our streets are enabling our cars to become afterlife machines. It's why abounding cities about the apple are lowering their acceleration limits in their a lot of densely busy areas to 20 mph.

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Ultimately, a "twenty is plenty" mentality will save lives, but it's not the alone solution—nor is it achievable beyond the lath for abounding cities. What cities charge to do is acquisition their deadliest streets and redesign them for banal assurance afore one added getting is killed.

Identifying Mean Streets

How do we acquisition the affliction streets in the country? The "Dangerous by Design" address offers one method, appraisement city-limits areas with the Banal Danger Index (PDI), which measures how acceptable a banal is to get addled by a car while walking. The amount is acquired from two $.25 of data: The allotment of humans who airing to plan and the amount of banal fatalities. A top amount is bad. The civic boilerplate is 52.2.

Here are the cities with the accomplished PDIs. As you apprehend the list, you'll alpha to apprehension the things they accept in accepted (besides, well, Florida).

1Orlando-Kissimmee, Florida244.282Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida190.133Jacksonville, Florida182.714Miami-Fort Lauderdale- Pompano Beach, Florida145.335Memphis, Tennessee (including locations of Mississippi and Arkansas)131.266Birmingham-Hoover, AL125.607Houston-Sugarland-Baytown, Texas119.648Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, Georgia119.359Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, Arizona118.6410Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord,
North Carolina-South Carolina111.74

These cities are all in the Sunbelt, a arena that saw aberrant burghal advance during the age of the automobile. They are abundantly all cities which developed about a ability of driving, without pedestrians in mind. These streets present acutely engrained architecture problems, like the abridgement of crosswalks and sidewalks, which are difficult to fix in a absolute way 50 or 60 years afterwards the fact.

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In the Boston suburb of Burlington, Massachusetts, the AMC cine amphitheater is appropriate beyond the artery … Apprehend added Read more

According to the report, a lot of fatalities in these places activity on "arterial roads"—those high-capacity anchorage that aren't absolutely freeways although sometimes they are as advanced and fast. These are a actuality of activity in newer, added sprawling communities, but they aren't the alone culprits. Change needs to appear block-by-block.

Measuring Safety

So how do we ambition the deadliest streets for change? A new apparatus alleged StreetScore, developed by MIT's Media Lab, could help.

Created as a accord amid the Macro Connections accumulation and the Camera Culture group, StreetScore measures perceived artery safety. Using a machine-learning algorithm, StreetScore can apprehend street-view images, advertence assertive textures, colors and shapes with safe features. The added of those safe appearance it spots, the college the score, with 10 getting the max. Above is its map of New York City, the safer streets are green.

As you can see with these images, the ratings assume to accessory with the appearance we'd accessory with safer streets: sidewalks, bike lanes, density. But what's important about StreetScore is that it measures perception—not, say, crashes which accept already occurred. Perception is important because that is what influences the way we drive. Not alone does a acceleration absolute change the behavior of the driver, but assertive beheld cues like trees, landscaped curbs, artery lighting, bike lanes, and the attendance of humans walking animate drivers to apathetic down.

Cities can see area basement changes charge to be implemented based on what affectionate of behavior a artery will encourage.

Google's Road Diet

Another band-aid to anticipate banal deaths that you ability be cerebration about, abnormally in ablaze of Google's advertisement endure week: Free cars. Yes, these will advice abolish the aspect of disciplinarian error—which can't appear anon enough. But free cars aswell arresting a beyond about-face in the way cars move about a city, acceptation our age-old filigree advised for human-operated cars will bound become outdated.

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Our streets will shrink.

Consider this: With self-driving cars there will aswell be two added above cultural changes: the abatement of car ownership, as added humans absolve off a claimed car for a car-sharing service—why accept a car in your barn if one can appear to you anytime?—and added able cartage flow. Our streets will no best charge to be as advanced due to both bargain aggregate and added able routing.

What self-driving cars will do is advice cities apparatus "road diets," area planners abate the amount of lanes appropriate for car travel. Streets artlessly will not charge to be as wide, absolution up added amplitude for beyond sidewalks, adequate bike lanes, and adumbration trees—all those acceptable things that accomplish our walks added pleasurable. Our streets will become safer as they become smarter.

A Ability of Fear

The final bank in aggressive banal deaths is citywide activity that enforces safer streets. Earlier this year, both New York City-limits and San Francisco appear Vision Zero plans, which aim to annihilate banal fatalities. While the affairs are different, they accept agnate intentions, including a aggregate of both bigger basement and messaging to abode added focus on safety. In New York City, the anniversary BigApps contest is adherent to bearing Vision Zero-related tech solutions, and new legislation anesthetized endure week makes it easier to authority drivers answerable for crashes.

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A Vision Zero plan should currently be on the board of every ambassador of every city-limits in the U.S. Simple changes could save the lives of hundreds of people. Yet it's not a antecedence for cities, abounding of which—even the ones with Vision Zero plans—are allotment to able down on the one abode they can ambition and alarm pedestrians: jaywalking.

Law administration is aggravating to argue walkers they should be scared of the streets, or that crashes are somehow their fault, like this abhorrent video produced by L.A.'s badge department.

"All too generally pedestrians and associates of our cycling accessible are actively afflicted or dead in collisions involving motor vehicles," says LAPD Captain John McMahon. "It's important for city Los Angeles association to apperceive that this is a close burghal ambiance which can be alarming to both cyclists and pedestrians."

Not alone does the video position L.A.'s anew active artery activity as dangerous, 39 abnormal in, the video shows a car illegally entering a bridge while humans are walking with the signal. No admiration pedestrians are in danger—no one is ticketing the cars breaking the law!

This is a acute affair about banal assurance area abounding cities accept it backwards. Cities should be focused on decriminalizing jaywalking and award means to redesign streets that acceptable and account pedestrians, not accomplish them feel like second- or third-class citizens on the artery hierarchy. In the UK, area there are no jaywalking laws, the rate of banal fatalities are far beneath than the U.S.

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How the car industry banned bridge the road How the car industry banned bridge the road How the car industry banned bridge the road

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Streets that are safer for pedestrians are safer for everyone. Redesigning a street, while not consistently bargain or easy, is the individual a lot of able way to anticipate accident of life—saving drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians. How abounding added humans accept to die afore cities yield action?

In New York City-limits this year, pedestrian deaths are on clue to exceed the amount of homicides, which is a abstract actuality to confront. Statistically, you're added acceptable to be hit by a car than a gun. Our streets accept accidentally become added baleful than something absolutely advised to kill.

Top angel by April Bertelsen, Portland Bureau of Transportation

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Winning a gold badge is one of the accomplished achievements in sports, the admirable annular brand rewards years of harder plan and confirms an athlete's cachet as the actual best. Russia is traveling to sweeten the accord a bit in the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics (no, they're not wrapping amber inside), with added medals that accept pieces of the meteorite that comatose in Russia beforehand this year will be accustomed to the gold badge winners.

A badge absolute a section of something that came from SPACE. How air-conditioned is that? The advantageous amplitude gold (or amplitude bedrock chain) will be accustomed to athletes who win an accident on February 15, 2014 (the one year ceremony of the meteor that hit Chelyabinsk). According to R-Sport, The contest that authorize will be the men's 1500 beat speedskating, the women's 1000m and men's 1500 abbreviate track, the women's cross-country skiing relay, the men's K-125 ski jump, the women's cool behemothic slalom and men's skeleton events.

Chelyabinsk Region Culture Minister Alexei Betekhtin said:

"We will duke out our medals to all the athletes who will win gold on that day, because both the meteorite bang and the Olympic Games are the all-around events”

Two chains. [R-Sport via USA Today, NY Daily News, Image Credit: Getty]

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To say my column "Why I Stalk a Adult Atramentous Woman on Twitter (And Why You Should, Too" affronted a acknowledgment would be putting it lightly.

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While actually a few humans seemed to butt the advance of the piece—"You should chase a few humans on Twitter who aren't like you"—several others got bent up on issues of race, sex, voyeurism, and the "proper" use of Twitter itself. While there were some acceptable discussions in the post's comments, others gave their yield on Twitter, their own blogs, and in a brace of instances via email. (To the getting who asked that I analysis myself into a suicide blockage center: I anticipate I'll accident weathering my abundant airy angst at home beneath the alert eye of Dr. Liquor.)

Regrets, I've had...well, one

If I accept any affliction about the piece, it's that I didn't appellation it "Why I Stalk A Adult Atramentous Christian Woman from Detroit (etc.)". It would apparently accept accent the absolute differences that fabricated this woman arresting to me added clearly. I advised it, but anticipation it was too awkward.

Moreover, it didn't accurately reflect the acumen I aboriginal chose to chase the specific getting I did. I apparent her responding to a Trending Topic busy mostly by atramentous people, so it would be fair to say I noticed her chase first. That she was acceptable searching was a abutting second. Since my ambition at the time was artlessly to chase anyone accidental who seemed to be from a altered culture—racially, socially, locationally—that was acceptable enough.

The lives of others

There's been a lot of allocution about me "othering" this woman. Frankly? Duh.

I apriorism that it is absurd not to admit any accidental getting as an "other" by default. That's how we apperceive new people, no amount how abundant you wish to conflate a axiom of Hegelian acumen with some array of discrimination.

But if my declared ambition was to pay abundant absorption to this accidental "other" to apprentice added about them—to accretion a little bit of allegiance about them as an individual—attempting to assort me with that allegation is weak.

Especially if some blunder over the aforementioned affair they're aggravating to condemn, as Ann Friedman did in her column "How to win atramentous 'friends' and access humans on the internet" if she writes, "You're apparently thinking, what's the big deal? He sounds like every added tech-writer dude on the Internet." I do accept I've just been othered.

But I can absolve Friedman's articulate misstep, if abandoned because it highlights actually how our allocation abbey accuracy work: Since it's absurd to apperceive the billions of individuals on this planet, it is abandoned accustomed that we array humans into ample categories. It's from categories that stereotypes, authentic or otherwise, can form.

It's not anyone's assignment to try to clean out generalizations entirely—I'd altercate that it is absurd unless one is suggesting the agronomics of a anatomy of adamant autism—but to instead to pay absorption to what makes abandoned humans unique, to accede that they allotment qualities with others in their overlapping demographic while alive appear examination them as themselves first, their "categories" second.

Every cheep you take

Which leads to addition accusation levied: that if I actually capital to get to apperceive this woman, I should accept interacted with her instead of just voyeuristically afterward her Twitter stream. That's fair—but abandoned if you assume that I in actuality capital to advise her. I didn't.

If that feels abominable and analytic to you, it's because it array of is? But it's aswell the absolute attributes of the avant-garde internet. And honestly, it seems far, far creepier if I had approved to advise her personally.

Shani O. Hilton writes on Postbourgie, "That woman he follows is not a getting to him, she's a animal in the internet zoo, and it makes me convulse to anticipate that there are added humans out there like him."

Well...yes. You've been on Twitter, haven't you, @shani_o? It's a website area humans column things they accept to affectation to the public, including—unless one has a absolute follower-to-follows arrangement or a clandestine account—several humans you don't apperceive at all who accept to pay absorption to your life, your thoughts, and whatever abroad you accept to share.

Rather than anguish that I ability be beheld as a sociopath for application Twitter actually in the way for which it was designed, I accept to instead be aflame about all the new humans and perspectives that are appropriate at my eyeballs' fingertips. But that doesn't beggarly I want—or am even able of—becoming fast accompany with every individual getting I beam (or read, or watch, or whatever) on the internet. No one actually wants that—except for abominable people.

If award a atramentous woman adult is wrong...

Some afraid responses to the section spent a lot of time amalgam adorned deconstructions of things I never in actuality said. Abounding acclimated the appellation "exoticization" afterwards I accustomed that I begin this authentic woman attractive. A few said I had a "black fetish", as if that were anathema in and of itself.

Sorry to disappoint, but I copped to annihilation of the sort. It may be a cliched, horndog affair to say, but if I accept a fetish, it's a woman fetish. There's annihilation the atomic bit "privileged" about searching at a account that someone's put online and saying, "Yup. She's hot." If you disagree you accept to acquisition the grocery checkout annual racks harrowing, let abandoned spending time about absolute animal beings. And to bung about a appellation like "privilege" because a white macho mentioned that he begin a atramentous changeable adorable is a austere abrasion of circumstance.

Race to the bottom

Then why acknowledgment her race? Because it matters. To pretend contrarily is childish, just as to assume it affairs a lot is appropriately wrongheaded.

The added adjectives acclimated to call someone, the added (potentially) authentic that description is. Use beneath descriptors and we're aback into Category Land. There's a acumen I declared her as a "sexy atramentous woman"—because it was important to me to be audacious to agenda that those were the qualities I noticed first.

I'm not adage that's a acceptable affair or a bad thing, nor that it's acutely capital to my acoustic instincts to apprehension chase and gender first. Maybe it's an actually culturally inculcated response. But to pretend that I don't apprehension chase and gender as my primary animal arrangement acceptance action seems like a big, fat lie for the account of abortive propriety.

Bust my assurance if I yield afraid accomplishments or anatomy inaccurate opinions about anyone just from a brief impression—not artlessly for labeling someone. Contrarily area does it end? Should I be abashed to apprehension gender? Sexual attractiveness? Species? It's sexy, atramentous turtles all the way down.

Would it be fair to adjudicator all atramentous humans from one woman's tweeting? No. How about all adolescent atramentous women? Of advance not. How about all adolescent atramentous Christian women from Detroit? Well, maybe a little.

The beyond your sample set, the college the likelihood of accuracy—but that doesn't stop a getting from basic account appropriate from the alpha with abandoned a individual reference.

This authentic woman was absolute accessible with her sexuality, admitting getting a Christian. It fabricated me catechism if that had to do with her race, with her bounded borough culture, or with her own associate accumulation and family. I artlessly accustomed the achievability of one or all of those things—including that the apriorism itself was out of whack, and that abounding Christians are added accessible about sex than I realized—as able-bodied as the achievability that this woman was just a abandoned outlier.

Try as I might, I can't acquisition any acumen why proposing those questions is wrong. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that that action of winnowing down theories is actually how we appear to bigger anticipate individuals and their quirks from groups.

Clumsy

"I apperceive what you're saying, but the beheading is clumsy" is assuming to be stupid. I've had that action afore if autograph about race, power, or gender issues. It boils down to, "You're fine, but you accept a amusing albatross to encode what you say so that actually abominable racist humans can't adapt it in a way that supports their beliefs." If you say so—but I'd rather just say that some of this being is mushy, that my opinions are mutable, and advance ahead.

I advised couching the column in a agglomeration of archetypal ambience about my experiences, the humans absolute agnate to the woman I followed that I apperceive personally—all the archetypal caveats. I'm animated I didn't. I ability accept been added able to get my point beyond to a added audience, but I feel like those who reacted the a lot of acerb from their preconceptions—about this "white dork", as I gave you in my abandoned clue—are the humans who would account a lot of from demography a animation and allurement why their own presumptions about me were accurate abundant to burden accusations of racism and advantage and (how cartel they!) awkward writing.

(That's right. I'm adage it's you. But we can allocution about it! You can even secretly anticipate I'm a creepy, racist, available avatar of the patriarchy. I'd just adopt you not start by calling me an apprenticed racist because I mentioned a person's race. Instead, acclaim my hair.)

On Stalking

I acclimated "stalk" ironically in an attack to flash my way accomplished accusations of just that absolute thing. "I actually stalked her!" he said, non-stalkingly. While I accept that actually annihilation on apple is off banned for a joke, I can accept how, if you abandoned apprehend the appellation of the post, you ability not get the irony. That apparently makes it an alarming banderole by "getting you to bang on this story" standards, but absolutely does set some added accurate humans on guard. Fair point to "stalk" critics.

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The boombox helped barrage an burghal anarchy of appearance and technology. In The Boombox Project, Jame Phillips looks at some of the biggest, loudest, a lot of extravagant, and D-cell hungriest shoulder-borne superradios of the day.

Size Does Matter

"My radio, accept me, I like it loud

I'm the man with a box that can bedrock the crowd"

- LL Cool J (rapper / actor)

Back in 1985 if LL Cool J appear his admission album, Radio, and the hit alone "I Can't Live After My Radio," artery adeptness in the U.S. was animate with the complete of what was colloquially termed the boombox or the ghetto blaster, depending on area you were from. The awning of LL's anthology common the bulge of his hit alone by depicting a close-up of a JVC RC-M90, one of the bigger and best-performing radio cassette players of the day. I aggregate boomboxes and accept activate a amusement adjoining on obsession, acquirements as abundant as I can about them as able-bodied as arena with them and application them in my accustomed life. I accept a claimed bent against JVC, but this is artlessly because in my adolescence JVC was the best cast accessible in my community, and I still feel a able affiliation to abounding of their products. But amuse do not misunderstand; there are abounding radios and abounding brands that are excellent.

JVC, or the Victor Company of Japan, launched itself into the carriageable radio cassette player/ recorder bazaar in the backward seventies if it appear the amazing RC-550. Dubbed "El Diablo" by the Latino community, this behemothic monobox was devilish. It had a alone 10-inch woofer, a 4-inch mid-range, and a 2-inch tweeter, abstracted bass and acute controls, and a big able handle as able-bodied as a accept strap. It had cycle confined on the abandon that continued advanced to assure the speakers, and even had shortwave bands as well. This assemblage was congenital for the streets and signaled a change in the mindset of carriageable design. Although not a stereo player, this assemblage was BIG!

JVC followed up the success of the RC-550 with addition abundant radio destined to become the archetypal archetypal for a lot of designs: the RC-M70. This radio was a stereo player, with four speakers, two 6-inch woofers, and two 2-inch horn tweeters. All the accelerate controls and buttons were on top, including a click-down music seek action and a loudness button. A abundant aural (40 watts of power), cool-looking unit, it had amazing body architecture (a JVC trait) and abundant bass acknowledgment at a time if bass abundant music, funk, and R & B were amalgamation their flavors to activate the rap / hip-hop movement. This radio aswell had a appropriate bench belt–styled click-in accept band and a appropriate backpack bag as well.

JVC was not done yet, as they alien their top of the band RC-M90, the radio that aggressive the LL Cool J song. This was it: 8-inch woofers, 3-inch tweeters, a full-logic two-motor cassette accouter (meaning computer chip–controlled as against to automated buttons), eight radio bands, a added adult LED-lit music search, and huge dimensions, 26-inch x 14-inch. This was conceivably the best-performing, loudest radio of its time. It aswell had Super ARNS (Dolby B) noise

reduction to added clarify its sound, as Dolby was all the rage. The assemblage aswell had an alternative active limited ascendancy with a 16-foot bond to accredit long-distance (somewhat anyway) abetment of the cassette deck.

While JVC fabricated some abundant boomboxes, they were absolutely not alone. Panasonic, Sharp, Fisher, Aiwa, and Toshiba aswell fabricated admired contributions both stylistically and technologically as these carriageable players abounding the market.

In agreement of architecture innovation, one needs to attending no added than the Panasonic RX-7200, a admirable single-decked, logic-controlled amateur that boasted both a stylistic alternative (the upside down architecture whereby the radio tuner was amid forth the basal allocation of the unit) and a abstruse addition (a agenda tuner for the radio with a blooming LED readout). Sized amid the M70 and the M90, it aswell had wood-paneled abandon and could be purchased with a analogous almanac angle that the 7200 could be army on to actualize an ceaseless copse panel-this was not a radio for the streets, but a radio for a chic abstraction or library, a admirable aggregate of top technology and amoebic warmth.

Aiwa appear several admirable units, but conceivably the best one was the CS-880. Medium-sized (22-inch long), it had its alone cassette accouter advance up in the left-hand corner, and in the average had a 7-inch acquiescent radiator advised to enhance the complete advancing from the accompanying 5-inch woofers and 2-inch tweeters. The Aiwa had an amazing band deck: This assemblage boasted wow and agitate on par with high-end home cassette players, which resulted in amazingly bright sound. Abundant body quality, elegant, bunched design, and amazing sonic performance, Aiwa fabricated a name for themselves as smaller, high-quality players. This was afresh a assemblage that seemed added at home in a home; carriageable yes, but not for the street.

Getting aback to the street, we accept to awning one of the bigger and a lot of acclaimed radios of the aboriginal eighties, the Conion C-100F from Coney-Onkyo. This was a beast! Thirty-one inches continued and 16-inches tall, it had all the artery cred one could imagine, as able-bodied as some architecture innovations. It had two cassette decks, but instead of authoritative them tandem, they were ample on top of anniversary added with the top accouter a accumbent aperture for the band to accelerate in through a spring-loaded door. It had three pairs of speakers, two 8-inch woofers, two 4-inch mid-ranges, and two 2-inch tweeters-a abounding ambit of complete production. With two analog VU meters, and LED meters as well, it was advised not just to bolt eyes, but to authority them hostage! As if this were not enough, in case its size, loudness, and analgesic "bling" looks overcame your morals, it had an abundantly loud motion-alarm affection that, if set, went off if anyone confused the radio. Despite the political barbarism of the term, this was a ghetto blaster, a able archetype of its time, and was featured in several films, including Beat Artery and Breakin'. Fisher aswell got into the game, but a bit late. Their addition was the massive PH-492, over 30 inches continued and 15 inches tall. This assemblage had two actual cogent innovations: One, it had advertisement speakers so they could be placed added afar to get accurate stereophonic sound. The speakers had alone cases so they could bell with bigger acoustics, accepting their own cabinets. The added important affection that Fisher brought to the industry was a 5-band blaster to added clarify complete to the alone taste. With an EQ, it about had a pre-amp and amid speakers, so the Fishers were great-sounding, large, abundant units that reeked of quality.

Fisher aswell fabricated a actual abnormal assemblage alleged the SK-300, a cassette accouter with advertisement speakers and a disposable synthesizer keyboard! You could acclimatize all aspects of your synth sound- pitch, tone, and breadth of notes. You could change the complete so it could challenge about any apparatus as well. You could aswell use the onboard beats to accommodate a accomplishments while you play the keyboard over top, and almanac the accomplished adjustment application the cassette deck! Added companies fabricated keyboard synthesizers as well. Not surprisingly, Casio fabricated the KX-101, and Sharp fabricated the GF-990 with a bifold accouter and a pop-out "music processor."

Sharp was afresh a baton in both architecture and addition with the VZ-2000, a massive, heavy, altered amateur that had a alone cassette deck, radio, and a dual-stylus beeline tracking turntable. This assemblage accustomed one to play BOTH abandon of the almanac after axis the almanac over, about an auto about-face feature, but with a record! Sharp aswell had the acclaimed GF-777, a behemothic 4-inch-woofer and 2-inch-tweeter monster with accompanying decks in the top larboard bend and disposable apostle grilles.

The added addition was that the capital woofers had alone bass controls as able-bodied as a accepted bass ascendancy and a loudness button. The GF-9696 was a admirable beholder that had alone bass controls as well, but aswell had angle ascendancy to acclimatize for altered tapes.

Toshiba aswell produced a monster actual agnate to the GF-777 alleged the WX-1 Bombeat RT-S983. This assemblage had a actual abnormal agreement for advertisement speakers, bifold decks, woofers, tweeters, and acquiescent radiators agnate to the one in the Aiwa. This is conceivably the heaviest radio in existence, aswell with angle ascendancy and a bass booster system, abundant looks, and a abundant name: Bombeat! Toshiba afresh showed their addition with addition model, the RT-S933, which had one of the a lot of cogent abstruse and architecture innovations: a congenital wireless limited ascendancy that ejected from the assemblage with the advance of a button.

Other companies aswell advised in, and conceivably the a lot of acclaimed boombox of its time was fabricated so by administrator Spike Lee. Do the Right Affair was a seminal blur about the baking alembic of chase issues in the U.S. embodied by the apple of Bed-Stuy, a Brooklyn neighborhood. The article that sparked the anarchism on the hottest day of the summer was the behemothic boombox acceptance to Radio Raheem. He strutted the streets, acquisition all those he met with his ultimate weapon-a aggregate button. The radio he acclimated to annihilate all comers was a Promax J-1 Super Jumbo, a monster with a ten-band EQ and three pairs of speakers including 8-inch woofers. In reality, the cheaper body superior of this radio was beneath than impressive, but its atramentous case and crazy ablaze affectation absolutely won it credibility for style.

As carriageable radio tastes changed, so did their design. JVC was aback in the driver's bench with the multipiece PC, or carriageable component, systems. The PC-5 disconnected into 5 pieces with a abstracted radio, band deck, and amplifier. This radio was answer by the Harlem Globetrotters. JVC followed up with addition superb "executive" basic system, the PC-55/550. These units were portable, but in achievement they were meant to be afar and acclimated at home as top superior mini stereos. The PC-55/550 had abounding appropriate features: Dolby B and C, a five-band EQ, speakers with bowl woofers, board apostle cases for bigger superior sound, and, a lot of innovatively, an aflame LCD console affectation that showed the abounding functions and options of the unit. Although anytime so hardly bass-shy, this multicomponent assemblage articulate admirable for all sorts of music, and had one of the best band decks anytime complete in a portable.

When you accede the eighties and carriageable radio culture, I apprehend how altered the apple is today. The apple of administration music in parks and on city-limits streets now resides in cyberspace as we allotment in anonymity online. The boombox that apparent this change from accessible music "broadcasting" to clandestine burning was the JVC PC-100, a mini assemblage with a advertisement headset. Now you could allotment your music in the accessible sphere, or accumulate it clandestine by ejecting the cassette accouter and active headphones into it. In abounding means it is the antecedent of the Walkman of today, the able MP3 player: the iPod. Indeed, all the radios I accept mentioned actuality were congenital with the adeptness to bung a carriageable media amateur into them, so you can calmly bung your iPod into these radios and mix the agenda age with the amore of alternation addition and sound. Today, if you anticipate that the iPhone is the best affair to appear to music and advice ever, bethink that twenty-five years ago arena your music was a accessible phenomenon. We accursed our admired jams and drowned out the competition, or went to a affair and rocked it with a few tapes, a big radio, and maybe even decks acquainted into it. That was how we injected the accessible apple with music and soul, aback in the day.

Lyle Owerko is a columnist and filmmaker with a assorted agenda of audience that awning above brands, corporations and animal rights groups. Known for his acumen and ability of burghal movements, his aimlessly crafted beheld images accept activate an enduring abode in the dictionary of pop adeptness and journalism. In a morning that will break with him forever, Lyle photographed the angel that appeared on the awning of the Times Magazine September 11, 2001 issue. His accepted projects seek to arch indigenous borders in a address that abstracts cultural groups for the advancement of the animal condition. Lyle was aloft in Calgary, Canada, advised at the Pratt Institute in New York and currently resides in TriBeca with his adherent Shaundra and their dog Luna.

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The city-limits of Kiruna, Sweden, is sinking—the adamant mines below it are authoritative the arena collapse. So, over the next two decades, its 20,000 association will be relocated, forth with their homes, offices, stores, and schools, to another, aboriginal city-limits about two afar to the east.

As Sweden's northernmost city, just central the Chill Circle, Kiruna is actual abundant a aggregation town: abounding of the city's association are active by the government-owned mining association Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara AB (LKAB). In 2004, LKAB appear that mining operations would could cause accident to assertive barrio on the bend of town, which would appropriately charge to be relocated. Anon the mine's plan acquired so that the absolute city-limits would charge to move. LKAB has committed over $600 actor to the activity already and will acceptable absorb millions added than that.

Moving a city-limits due to mining accident is acutely not a altered scenario. But in Kiruna's case, the city-limits acted quickly, axis its bearings into a all-around architectonics antagonism which resulted in some acutely abstracted account for its future. The acceptable proposal, alleged Kiruna 4 Ever, was created by White Arkitekter AB, and the groundbreaking for the new city-limits centermost begins this month.

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Gizmodo talked with Åsa Bjerndell, one of the firm's partners, about how they plan to not alone move the city, but to body a added livable, acceptable one.

Kiruna in January 2014. Photo by beefortytwo; Kiruna's church, which was congenital in 1912 and is the better lath architectonics in the country, is getting confused section by piece. Photo by Tim Rawle

How is the accident from the mines to the city-limits apparent in accustomed life? Can you see sinkholes and barrio sagging?

Yes, you can absolutely see sinkholes. There are aswell some homes that accept been abandoned and added will accept to leave soon. A big allotment of the absolute city-limits centermost will be gone in a brace of years. The alternation base is gone and a new acting one has been installed. The city-limits anteroom is next to be evacuated—a new one is planned as one allotment of the aboriginal footfall in the affective of the city-limits center.

What are some of the better means the new boondocks will advance aloft the old town?

The appearance of the new city-limits will be a compact, burghal anatomy in the all-inclusive chill landscape. For abounding of its citizenry this is one of the big attractions of Kiruna. You get the account and amusing and cultural offerings of a city-limits accumulated with the recreational possibilities of the landscape.

The old boondocks does not accomplish the a lot of of this duality. It is too advance out to bear the appropriate body and aswell isolates the city-limits centermost from nature. This will be adapted by "fingers of nature" advancing all the way into the affection of the new city.

"Fingers of nature" will acquiesce the city-limits to abound east to west while introducing these north-south areas which affix the city-limits with the surrounding accustomed landscape. This will be done with a zoning activity that includes canning areas and alfresco amusement uses

Moving people's homes sounds like a huge affecting challenge. What was the a lot of important affair you had to do to accumulate the city's ability and activity intact?

You are right—it is a lot of absolutely an affecting challenge! "Kiruna 4 Ever," our adage for the antagonism entry, is all about that. If there is annihilation that defines a city, it's the humans who reside and plan there. The systems of amusing and bread-and-butter ties are what binds Kiruna, and if there is annihilation to be moved, it is these access and relationships. If we are traveling to allocution about auspiciously affective a city, we accept to accomplish abiding that the move strengthens absolute relations and helps actualize new ones in the process.

So your angle in actuality goes above the concrete architectonics of barrio and streets.

It's all about regaining assurance so that humans cartel to advance energy, time, and money in Kiruna. They charge to assurance to Kiruna will be a absurd abode to reside in the future. "Kiruna 4 Ever" is about that feeling. Advice and altered levels of accord are acute so Kiruna association feel involved. In the achievement access we proposed three altered types of arrange to accomplish this.

The Kiruna Dialogue is about the a lot of basal means to get advice out to anyone and accord them the befalling to accommodate acknowledgment and suggestions. We proposed to use the already absolute academic and breezy networks in Kiruna—sporting clubs, day-care centers, libraries, churches, and so on—so that the advice will appear to the inhabitants; they will not accept to go searching for it.

The new city-limits centermost will cover the new city-limits anteroom advised by Henning Larsen Architects and gathering places for residents; the Kiruna Portal will be a abode to recycle and accost elements from the town's old structures

The Kiruna Portal is a concrete and basic affair abode for absolute and new residents, the business association and acreage owners. Here, there will be an centralized branch that recycles the architectonics abstracts from the demolition. The accumulation from this is aswell emotional—old memories can be preserved and become allotment of the new. The reclaim of assets from the old boondocks through the Kiruna Portal, holds new possibilities for the architectonics as able-bodied as a acceptable way of administration attainable assets in an abandoned region.

Finally, the Kiruna Biennale is an all-embracing biennial accident area Kiruna will allotment their adventures and allure added cities in agnate situations. We anticipate that altitude change and added challenges will force added communities to move in altered ways, and that there will be a charge to appear calm and apprentice from anniversary added on a all-around scale. The Biennale will aswell be a city-limits anniversary for the citizenry and will be a way to authorize new locations of the city-limits as the boondocks gradually morphs eastward, abroad from the mine.

All three of these contest accomplish the move become a aggregate experience—the accomplished boondocks is involved, and they are still a actual important allotment of the strategies now that the antagonism access is been formed into official planning abstracts and timetables.

The city-limits will about-face forth an east-west artery in the centermost that builds aloft the absolute burghal fabric, abacus a cable car and bales railway access

Not abounding cities get a adventitious to alpha over and actual what was amiss with their burghal design. I can about see Kiruna acceptable a abode for burghal planners all over the apple to appointment and see what you've done. Are you cerebration that added cities ability be able to apprentice from you?

Sure! I anticipate that what is important in our appearance is to accept the absolute situation: the landscape, the climate, the culture, and aswell the political and amusing starting points. This is because the redesigning and alteration of a city-limits centermost is a activity and not a project. A city-limits centermost has to abide and activity from day one, and both the aboriginal footfall and the eyes for the longtime aftereffect is important to body trust. The planning accoutrement and strategies accept be adjustable to be able to acclimate to alien challenges and possibilities in the future.

A new alteration base will accept alternation access to adjacent communities as able-bodied as a gondola; a added dense, walkable burghal centermost in the new Kiruna will cover a active arcade street

What is the activity like for the association who reside there? Are they accommodated to the actuality that this is something that needs to happen, or is there still some altercation and protest?

What Kiruna association now about wish is action. Uncertainty and assertive insecurities exist, but the movement of the city-limits is advised necessary. Discussions are mostly focused on is how it should be done. Not so abundant about how it will be, not afterwards the competition. Maybe there will be added discussions now that the new development plan is getting presented.

Maybe the a lot of absorbing allotment of this is not the engineering itself, but the way you've been able to argue 20,000 humans to accede to it!

You charge the citizenry on lath because they are the ones who are traveling to ample the new city-limits centermost with life. If they do not accept in it and if they do not feel arrive and empowered to yield allotment in the change, it will not succeed. You can alone plan so abundant afterwards that. The activity of the city-limits has to yield over to accomplish the spaces advance and develop—that is the alone advantage for a acceptable development.

Check out added photos of Kiruna here

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In the years afterwards Apple War II, a lot of of Europe was devastated, both physically and financially. From this arid reality, one country began bearing bright, technicolor textiles, including a book which bolstered its economy, created civic pride, and concluded up acceptable one of the a lot of beloved and apparent patterns in the world.

The postwar angle was abnormally dim for the tiny nation of Finland. The country had in fact fought three wars: one adjoin Germans and two adjoin the Soviet Union, which resulted in ceding some of their land, including two of their ports, to the U.S.S.R. In the spirit of rebuilding the country economically, association capital to buy local—not an simple assignment as the accomplishment bang had not yet accomplished the Scandinavian country and a lot of humans still fabricated their livings from farming.

As a Finland-based aggregation that brought industrialization to the nation with a bold, future-forward mission, a tiny bolt aggregation alleged Marimekko launched at the exact appropriate time. Marimekko in fact began its activity as Printex, a bolt and oilcloth aggregation bought by Armi Ratia and her bedmate Viljo. Ratia noticed that a lot of of the bolt orders at the time were destined for draperies and tablecloths, so she anticipation that she could aggrandize the band with vibrant, au courant prints which could aswell be acclimated to accomplish clothing.

The aboriginal Marimekko appearance show, in 1951

Ratia began recruiting Finnish artists and bolt designers, such as Maija Isola and Vuokko Nurmesniemi, to actualize patterns that became accepted for their abstruse shapes and ablaze colors.

A appearance appearance captivated in May of 1951 at a Helsinki restaurant hosted the admission of her band Marimekko, which translated to "Mary's dress" in Finnish. The dresses were a hit, and the aboriginal Marimekko retail abundance opened the afterward year. Ratia reportedly typed the chat on an Olivetti typewriter to actualize the logo.

A photoshoot for the awning of Life, 1965

The bolt was awash at food by the backyard (on bolts branded with the designer's name, year, and "Finland"), but Ratia aswell connected to tap designers to actualize accouterment lines. This acquired into a abrupt abandonment from the added structured dresses of the 1950s. The pieces were free-form and comfortable, in a way that ushered in the spirited, amenable fashions of the '60s.

The aboriginal Unikko colorway, advised in 1964

This new attending became an about anti-depressive decree to advice the country appear from beneath the bits of war: Marimekko was authentic day-brightening, mood-altering happiness. But none of the patterns would become as accepted as Unikko ("poppy"), which debuted in 1964.

By that time Isola had abutting the aggregation as arch bolt designer. The adventure is that Isola created the architecture out of beef afterwards Ratia declared that Marimekko would never accept a floral print.

It would end up acceptable a signature arrangement for the company, all-over throughout Finland, and one of the a lot of acclaimed patterns in the world.

Traveling the apple for inspiration, Isola generally begin her muses in the fields and forests of the accustomed world. Abounding of her prints were created by bulging leaves and branches on to a awning and photographing the shapes, abacus added hand-painted elements on behemothic abundance of cardboard at absolute size.

Isola went on to architecture 500 prints for Marimekko, many of which accept been re-released in contempo years. Unikko was aboriginal accessible in red, blush and black, but bound broadcast to a array of added colorways, and can be begin fabricated into aggregate from bedding to battery curtains.

Marimekko bound become a calling agenda for Finnish appearance all over the world. In 1957, Giorgio Armani arrive Ratia to sell her clothes at an Italian administration store, advertisement Marimekko to an all-embracing audience. The cast was brought to the U.S. by artist Ben Thompson, who awash accouterment and accouterments at his popular Architecture Research (D/R) stores.

In December of 1960, Jacqueline Kennedy was featured on the awning of Sports Illustrated, which hit the stands just afterwards her husband's acknowledged presidential acclamation campaign. She wore a red sleeveless Marimekko dress she purchased at D/R, and had reportedly bought six more.

That was absolutely all the aggregation absolutely bare to become a delinquent success in the U.S. Retail food opened actuality and in several added cities about the world.

A Marimekko retail abundance today

Even with the common momentum, as Marimekko's dresses and fabrics were featured on the covers of magazines like Life, Elle and Vogue, the aggregation was bedeviled by internal struggles and top assembly costs.

Then Ratia died in 1979, just as Marimekko was about to face its greatest challenge. In the 1980s, as the Cold War ended, Finland suffered a banking crisis that lasted into the 1990s. As one of the alone non-Eastern Bloc countries to allotment a bound with the U.S.S.R., they had benefitted from a appropriate barter acceding with the country. As the U.S.S.R. collapsed, and the country now accepted as Russia began importing from added countries, Finland's abridgement faltered.

Marimekko was bought by a ample amassed which couldn't about-face about its troubles. Ratia's brood approved to rally, but Marimekko was brought to the border of bankruptcy. Until it was, by abounding accounts, rescued by ad exec Kirsti Paakkanen, who took over operations in 1991.

Partnerships cover Unikko licensing deals with Converse and Manolo Blahnik

By bringing in adolescent designers and repositioning the company, Marimekko now has partnerships with Crate & Barrel, H&M, Converse, and Manolo Blahnik that advice to bear the prints to the next generation. Accouterment and fabrics were featured on Sex and the City. (I accept Carrie Bradshaw, in her own way, was like the Jackie-O of her day.)

Paakkanen boring handed over a revitalized aggregation to broker Mika Ihamuotila in 2008.

Unikko umbrellas alfresco the New York City flagship in 2011

In 2010 Marimekko opened a flagship abundance in New York City, and today counts over 125 food and accountant retailers. In 2012 the cast debuted its collections at Tokyo Appearance Week for the aboriginal time. A amusing arrangement alleged Marimekko Village was launched, which appears to address anon to the Pinterest crowd. The aggregation is currently in the bosom of reorganizing afresh and searching for a new international artistic director.

Marimekko was able to accompany Finland's talents in foreground of a civic audience, accepting all-around acceptance for the tiny Nordic population. But it aswell created a absolute faculty of pride aural the country itself: Marimekko helped to adhesive Finland's cachet as a design-savvy culture, forth with added companies like Artek and Iittala. The cast continues to breeding and advance Finnish artists beyond a advanced ambit of products, confined as a amicableness agent of sorts, with a mission that Ratia already alleged "a cultural abnormality allegorical the superior of living."

In account of Unikko's 50th birthday, Marimekko is rolling out a new alternation of products including some new blush combinations. A bisected aeon later, it looks as beginning and abreast as it did arising from Isola's paintbrush.

Although not anybody knows the history abaft the arrangement they ability accept aboriginal encountered on an aunt's backpack or a girlfriend's pillowcase, Unikko endures as one of the best-known patterns on earth. And for those who apprentice its origins, the affiliation becomes unforgettable.

Marimekko put Finland on the map, with an enduring ablaze red blossom.

All images address Marimekko, except Isola: Scandinavian Architecture Museum; Sports Illustrated: Helsinki.ru; Activity annual spread: Cathy of California/Marimekko

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Last night, Gizmodo got a bastard blink at the new SimCity: Cities of Tomorrow amplification backpack due out next month. The agitative visuals of the relaunch were covered widely, anon authoritative a bold as simple to altercate for its many frustrations as for its architecture advances, and we were appropriately agog to apprentice how Cities of Tomorrow amplification would abide or abandon from the contempo refresh.

There was a lot to see—a absolutely amazing bulk of new content—and an about impossibly close web of accessory advice to yield in. They've been alive on the amplification backpack aback the re-release, aback in February, and, creatively speaking, it shows.

Clustered about an Alienware laptop in a auberge suite, sitting adjoin a ample bottle window overlooking a blurred backward afternoon lit by neon lights in Times Square, we watched as Stone Librande, the game's designer, took us through a demo. High-rise "megatowers" acceleration from the agenda ether as we abstruse added about how it all came calm and if some of the technical hurdles of the relaunch had been fixed.

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Pitched about the abstraction that this would yield abode 50 years in the future, the anecdotal claiming was to absorb into the bold whatever new technologies would assume adapted for that bound time horizon. Think claimed arcade drones, not UFOs.

So, as a cityscape goes, it's all recognizable, from MagLev busline systems and a "skybridge" akin amid barrio to, of course, the city's exoskeletal megastructures looming over the blow of the citizenry like watchtowers.

And that's area some aberrant political overtones edge in; Librande explained to us that the bold advisedly has something of a moral bind congenital into the activity of the city-limits itself. This was the angle of the ControlNet: an NSA-like (Librande fabricated the comparison) brain arrangement of the 1% (again, Librande's analogy), fabricated up primarily of advantageous IT workers flush abundant to build, manage, and pay for the abstruse networks that in fact run the city.

Continuing to bung out analogies—he remarked several times how abounding scifi films and banana books the architecture aggregation watched and read—he compared it to the contempo Neill Blomkamp blur Elysium, area the flush reside in cocooned safety, in fact aloft the fray. Librande wants that to be uncomfortable, he said, to appearance players the allurement of designing a city-limits alone for the affluent, with both carrots and sticks for abstraction an unequal-opportunity city-limits for the elite, causing players to accomplish real, moral decisions in the administering of their cities.

You can even accessible a ControlNet sub-menu and see all of the properties—the sites, buildings, and pieces of infrastructure—owned and operated by them, and, as a mayor, you accept the ability to align things so that you ability abash ControlNet from ambience up boutique in your city... but, of course, this aswell agency accident all your white collar abstruse workers, and, in a sense, accident your city's architectural future.

The bold is ultimately a account of two cities: one a aboriginal aloof apple abounding of bright architecture and carpets of green, its architecture crowned with high-tech abuse scrubbers, the added a dingy, sprawling, bartering dystopia adherent to the affairs and affairs of a abstruse actuality alleged "Omega." But they are two abandon of the aforementioned burghal coin.

First, there is a aflame city-limits that revolves about “the Academy,” a analysis hub area aloof workers advance next-generation technologies for the surrounding city. It’s Silicon Valley meets Singapore: abundant "mega-towers" that accommodate aggregate a flush approaching ancestors would anytime need, including apartments, malls, schools, restaurants, and even nuclear admixture reactors that ability the accomplished shebang (whole architecture can be abounding with admixture reactors, Librande explained, and act as ammunition beef for the surrounding city).

In amid them, skybridges congenital application graphene nanotubes (developed at the Academy, of course) affix communities; beneath them, maglev trains and advanced accessible parks affix the Academy itself (which looks a lot like Moshe Safdie's ArtScience Museum in Singapore) to the superstructures. It’s simple to brainstorm Elon Musk on his way to plan here.

Each architecture in the audience was called by the game's designers in a berserk affair of christening, Librande explained, and they acknowledge their identities if you hover over them: The Promethean, the Skyclops, even one cheekily called Blade Running Shoes.

OmegaCo, on the surface, couldn’t be added different.

It’s a sprawling, blur noir city-limits of industry adherent to the affairs and affairs of Omega, a substance, Librande explained, they advisedly larboard undefined: their adaptation of Unobtainium. Citizens badly wish it, admitting its adverse aftereffect on the environment. The corybantic bartering pace, the animated holographic billboards, and the abuse accomplish this added like Kowloon City-limits beyond with post-War London: High-rises belted with 3D advertisements, facades covered in grime, and adipose brownfields.

Instead of architecture burnished monuments to technology, mayors in OmegaCo are allotment of a austere arrangement to retrofit their cities and abetment in the assembly of their cryptic fuel. As the operation expands, the city-limits changes with it: Old barrio are retrofit application “bolt-ons” to the absolute facade, which transform normal-looking structures into Brutalist monuments, covered in neon fins and windowless metal louvres, like something out of Dredd. Even the residential homes transform beneath the spell of Omega: A agronomical home ability al of a sudden sprout an antenna, again a affected addition, until, soon, the accomplished structural carapace looks like a affected aluminum jellybean.

It’s simple to see Omega as an affinity for real-world forces: Technology, capitalism, pop culture, even a biologic like Soma, as declared in Brave New World. As Librande explains, the designers carefully larboard it ambiguous. “We asked ourselves, ‘what are the issues and systems that wish to accomplish humans see?'" he says. That can be as simple as area carrion goes or as circuitous as what motivates humans to pollute. The accomplished point is to accord users a glimpse of the systems that ascendancy our world.

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“There’s no chat box that anytime ancestor up and says, ‘this is what you should be activity appropriate now. This is the bulletin we’re aggravating to forward you,’” Librande adds. “But we achievement that it wakes you up just abundant that you ability go and investigate on your own.” After all, OmegaCo and the Academy aren’t in fact so different. They’re the angel and devil on every city’s accepted shoulder: The drive to become a anchorage of next-generation apple-pie technology, and the charge to activation bread-and-butter development on a accessory level.

So what are some added tricks and tips? You can body bridges and tunnels now, laying down anchorage that can be toggled vertically, watching them couch down through hillsides to anatomy tunnels or arc hardly up over the area to anatomy the outlines of bridges afore snapping into place. Sewage, a arrangement that was acutely absent from SimCity until the relaunch in February, gets a acceptable accord added absorption here. You can even toggle over into an x-ray appearance that shows rust-colored decay gurgling from anniversary building, through a coil of pipes, to the carrion plant.

There’s no curtailment of authentic ball in the amplification pack, as well, which makes sense—plenty of what we brainstorm about the approaching is based on film, and the bold (and Librande himself) references aggregate from Logan's Run and The Hunger Games to what seemed to be Librande's admired example, Futurama. Users can even toggle amid Instagram-style “filters” that accord their cities a angry tonality. For instance, there’s a amber filter, as able-bodied as a albino advantage that paints the city-limits in dreamy, Beach Boys-style pastels.

One filter, according to Librande, was aggressive by Sin City: It filters your city-limits in high-contrast atramentous and whites, with ancestor of red befuddled in for drama. It candidly looked appealing awesome.

Librande is acutely agog about the akin of detail—and he should be, because it's remarkable—but he cautioned several times adjoin alleviative the bold too seriously, as something that ability serve as a absolute burghal planning apparatus or as something that should be mistaken for a mathematically authentic archetypal of the avant-garde metropolis. It's just a game, he insisted, although somewhat hesitantly.

But, he added, animated slightly, he does achievement that the all-embracing re-design of the game—forcing players to design, or, at the actual least, to consider, area their baptize comes from, area the debris goes, area the sewers aback up or breeze out to sea—will get humans cerebration about the airy systems currently at plan all about them, the constellations of basement anchored abaft the scenes of accustomed activity that we, all too often, yield for granted. And, if accepting players to brainstorm their own city-limits aural a astute time-horizon—50 years in the future—is addition artistic apparatus for alarming humans to amend their cities, again all the better.

The amplification backpack will be accessible November 12, 2013—and we'll be watching not alone for amateur acknowledgment but to see if the abstruse problems that bedeviled the February re-release accept been answered.

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Graphic artist William Drenttel died on Saturday, a able artistic who played abounding roles: a Mad Men-era ad man, a design industry legend, an advocate for amusing change. But as the architect of Design Observer, the affecting architecture blog launched 10 years ago, Bill assuredly adapted the way we allocution about design.

For abundant of his 40-year career, Bill ran the architecture close Winterhouse, with his wife and accomplice Jessica Helfand, which was housed in a awkward avant-garde home in rural Connecticut. (Before that, Bill headed the close Drenttel Doyle Partners; the appearance David Clennon played on thirtysomething was aggressive by and called afterwards him. No joke.) Autograph was consistently axial to their practice, from alive with audience like The New Yorker to publishing their own journals. But they aswell sensed an arising charge to fix something defective in architecture culture: a bigger way for designers to altercate and advertise the issues of the day.

When Bill started Design Observer in 2003 with Jessica, artist Michael Bierut, and analyzer Rick Poynor, I was a apprentice architecture biographer athirst for new ideas. Design Observer was something actually new: A architecture advertisement that could acquisition the "design" in anything, from small boondocks association meetings to Stanley Kubrick films, affective amid academic-quality account and pop ability annotation with absurd deftness. I voraciously advised the website and stalked its writers—they consistently managed to broadcast the big names—as I launched my own career. Bill became a friend, collaborator, and best of so abounding designers and writers, including myself.

Drenttel and Helfand were awarded the AIGA Medal in 2013

Bill had a agog journalistic instinct, and abundant of the accent and agreeable of the advertisement was acknowledgment to his own beat prowess. It was Bill, for example, who intuited the industry-wide focus on socially focused architecture and launched the site's Change Observer initiative, acceptable a Rockefeller Foundation admission to focus on belief about amusing impact. This ablaze move accustomed Design Observer to play a role in amplifying and implementing game-changing account for society.

Architecture Observer inarguably afflicted the way we as a architecture association wrote about and discussed architecture with anniversary other, but there was an even bigger impact. The website had a articulation that was actually attainable and absorbing to non-designers, who fabricated it a circadian stop in their RSS feeds (and, eventually, Twitter streams). It wasn't a accompaniment that, just as Design Observer was hitting its stride, we started to see anniversary architecture issues of business magazines, an added cultural articulacy about architecture and designers, and a massive advancement in the superior of architecture journalism.

In fact, every architecture advertisement I've accounting for in the endure decade owes a huge debt to Design Observer for assuming us there was a altered way of accomplishing things, abnormally at a time if book publications were aggravating to acquisition their footing. For an absolute bearing of adolescent architecture writers aggravating to agreement with forms alfresco of "traditional" publications, Design Observer was the model. Our careers would artlessly not accept been accessible if Bill's vision—and his enthusiasm—had not paved the way.

It was such a appropriate moment as so abounding writers brought their choir online—a aureate age for architecture writing. But Design Observer consistently nailed it. They were the best, the top, the angelic grail.

From a single-column website, Architecture Observer grew into a media empire

So if Bill beatific me an email allurement me to address something for Design Observer eight years ago, I appealing abundant broiled from shock. By the time I pulled myself aback into my armchair I accomplished I knew just the adventure to write: I capital to do an analysis of Scientology's architectural canning efforts in Hollywood, including entering the aerial alcazar called the Celebrity Centre. Bill aboveboard encouraged the a lot of destructive aspects of my angle, and he was right: The post lit up the blogosphere. I'd never had an editor so absorbed in what happened after the adventure was published. Bill beatific me emails every day with updates on animadversion threads, clairvoyant emails, and advantage of my adventure on added blogs.

Bill was aswell a accoutrement in my writing, aboriginal at UnBeige, area I wrote about architecture account and gossip, and in belief for publications like GOOD and Fast Company. He was the absolute subject: He was alarming acute and he admired to activity up debate, yet he had this absurd faculty of amusement about it all. If he would forward me emails with abbreviate requests to awning their assorted projects, he would generally proudly forward me links to places area humans were autograph negatively about Design Observer pieces. He admired the criticism, the chatter, and the controversy, but, a lot of of all, he admired the community.

Over the accomplished decade, I got to apperceive Bill alone in that bizarre, yet acutely accurate way that I got to apperceive my added "design friends"—first in the animadversion sections on blog posts, afresh through the belief I'd address about them, and sometimes, eventually, if we'd see anniversary added in being at events, as we marched through the appointment centers and auberge confined of accidental cities about the world.

Steve Heller, Tina Roth Eisenberg, Alissa Walker, Allan Chochinov, Drenttel, and Khoi Vinh on a 2007 console in Denver about architecture blogging. Photo by Liz Danzico

Seeing Bill was consistently the highlight of these trips. In the aboriginal years of Design Observer, the editors became acclaimed for throwing parties at the AIGA conferences (that generally outshone the official AIGA events). They'd hire out added aggressive spaces—a basement bar in Boston, a alveolate bistro in Denver, an absolute amphitheater in Memphis—ask designers to DJ, and watch the night deliquesce into a giddy, bathed celebration.

These contest were all Bill. He'd be at the door, the appreciative host, affable abstract adolescent designers who couldn't actually absolutely accept that a architect of Design Observer was there to accost them, in the flesh. But for Bill, this was all in the name of architecture real-life camaraderie, something that was appealing abundant exceptional of in our online world. He capital to actualize a abode for the readers and commenters to accommodated anniversary added in being and put a face to the personalities abaft the site.

He was the aboriginal one and the endure one on the ball floor. Always.

I was advantageous abundant to absorb a few canicule with Bill this summer at one of those architecture contest in a accidental city-limits as we advised the Sappi Account That Matter awards. He was honest about his one-year attempt with cancer—ever-direct, I anticipate the aboriginal affair he said to me was "Did you apprehend I accept academician cancer?"—and he got annoyed easily. But he hadn't actually slowed down. He was still so Bill: The blink in his eye, that abandoned wit, and a lot of importantly, his address to appoint in a agitation about which projects should accept grants (debates which he appealing abundant consistently won).

My baby acquaintance and adolescent architecture biographer Allan Chochinov wrote this about Bill Saturday at Core77: "When you formed with Bill it was consistently appearance time—and he aggressive humans about him to do their actual best. That may complete like a cliché, but it was one of his architecture superpowers. His bar was high. And he played for keeps."

This could not be added true, and it's apparently how every being acquainted who formed with him. Bill accomplished me to avert my ideas, to accomplish it personal, to acquaint a adventure that sparked altercation (even if it ability be an abhorred sentiment), and—maybe a lot of importantly—to accept a hell of a lot of fun accomplishing it.

Seven years ago, on this actual day, I was alive with Bill on addition Design Observer story, about the "War is Over (If You Want It)" campaign, which had originated as John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Christmas card. I bethink the aback and alternating over email as I listened to the song afresh and afresh on my laptop—"So this is Christmas, and what accept you done?"—seated in foreground of my parents' Christmas tree, while Bill aerated the section into shape, blame me to accomplish it better. Now if I apprehend the song anniversary year, it's a affect I always accessory with Bill and his great advance of acceptable ideas, but a lot of of all, his assurance to get it actually right—to accomplish a aberration with words.

I'll absence him so actual much, but his spirit is actual abundant present in aggregate I write.

Top image: Drenttel with his wife and accomplice Jessica Helfand. Photo by Bojan Velikonja via AIGA

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Google revealed a lot at Google I/O: a ablaze book at a acceptable price, a sci-fi home amphitheater orb, actively adult search, and Jelly Beans. It aswell appear an abashing abridgement of animal understanding.

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Day one of Google's developer caricature brought us a few things we were assured like the… Apprehend added Read more

We've had aloofness apropos before, but could it be more? Could it be that Google just doesn't get absolute people?

Google's Broken Promise: The End of "Don't Be Evil" Google's Broken Promise: The End of "Don't Be Evil" Google's Broken Promise: The End of "Don&

In a aloofness action shift, Google appear today that it will activate tracking users universally… Apprehend added Read more

The keynote articulate one affected blaring alarm afterwards another: Glass, the wearable computer; Google Now, a smartphone arrangement that provides intricately tailored activity information; the Nexus Q, a social media streamer; and a adorned new way to bandy parties with Google+. But beneath anniversary of these feats of technology you could see a hollow, lurching aberancy that makes you wonder: Who will use any of this getting besides the actors in Google's promo videos?

Everything new from Google is prima facie fantastic, and served with the best intentions. Google is a caked company, sure, but it's abounding with geniuses who ambition to accomplish your activity easier through technology. Nobody's faulting their ambition, or analytic its motives. But we accept to wonder: Are these new things meant for approved people, or the data-obsessed, grace-deficient Silicon Valley alarmist vanguard? As abundant as we ambition it weren't so, the acknowledgment seems a accomplished hell of a lot like the latter. That the aggregation amenable for Android is still architecture for robots. In anniversary case, Google has counterbalanced on aureate fingers a product—clearly with a lot of time, thought, and money abaft it—that just doesn't assume to accord with the way we in fact reside our lives. There isn't any abridgement of accomplishment or addition here, but rather a broad abstract amid the way abstracts geeks and the blow of us see the world.

Consider the Nexus Q. It's a beautifully machined object, with pulsating lights, a face that's both affected and friendly, and the apparent ambition of authoritative it easier to accept to music and watch movies with friends. Who could argue that? Alone some array of monster! But attending at the way Google envisions us application it: you go to your friend's house, bang her Q with your Nexus (reread that book a few times) for NFC access, again sit on the couch demography turns alive media to the home theater. Uhhh.

This is a aberrant crop on the decades-old convenance of sitting about alert to and searching at things. Is it acquisition the accomplished point? Q asks us to beam and contemplate software, to be anytime acquainted of our phones and tablets, and to cull ourselves out of amusement for the aforementioned of interaction. Blech to all of that—don't humans just ambition to bandy on a playlist or Pandora and accept a drink? Injecting so abounding menus, no amount how alluringly advised and modern, amid your accompany and the things you like, seems absolute antisocial. It's ambiguous a lot of humans will buy or use the Q because it just doesn't complete like any fun unless you're an Android engineer.

The aforementioned affinity exhaustion threatens the blow of Google's reveals. Glass is abundantly neat, in that it takes cine scenes and alive imaginations accepted to all of us and makes them a absolute affair out of artificial and metal. Aboriginal getting videos are a absolutely air-conditioned idea. But Google thinks that we're all accessible to airing about cutting the things. Which, you know, we aren't. Not anybody is a somewhat aberrant abstracts adjudicator billionaire, too affluent and absent in a apple of behemothic account to affliction how he looks walking about all day. Are you? This presents not just a bound in technology, but in culture.

For abounding of us, a computer that's in fact sitting on our face for every alive moment sounds absolutely socially alienating. Say what you ambition about the punctures smartphones accept delivered to accustomed interaction, but at atomic those things go aback to our purses and pockets if they're not getting used. But Glass is there to stay, acceptable a allotment of your face, and axis you into a baby-scaring cyborg. Unless anybody in the apple gets a brace and accompanying agrees this is no best weird, what functionality is account getting the guy with the robo-face? While we attempt to brainstorm Google Glasses accommodated with accustomed life, Google isn't afraid it—normal activity isn't an issue. The catechism is, should we acclaim their affected boldness, or wince at afflictive expectations?

Google's authoritative agnate declarations about the way our lives should be with its new software, too. Nobody absolutely uses Google+, and this week's flagship addition—a new way to adapt and allotment parties—makes it harder to accept that'll change. The new Google+ will be just as ardent and kindly-intentioned as it's anytime been, advised to allotment moments and thoughts and insights with people you care about. If alone it formed that way. Instead, Google+'s "party mode" is as acutely abhorrent as it sounds, and bizarrely against to the absolute point of a party. Where's the altruism in that?

Facebook's accident invites ability be bare, but that's fine—we just ambition to advertisement the advice and get the chat out. A agency to an end (fun). We don't ambition to absorb time disturbing over which GIF of a sparkler or acceptable cobbler to forward to our arid Google+ circles so that our guests can in about-face upload photos of the jumpoff in absolute time, accouterment some bastardized action center amid affair and panopticon. We don't charge realtime visuals of a affair or BBQ. Our amusing lives don't charge analytics. The humans at our contest should never be equaled or baffled by the avant-garde software that got them there—but Google risks putting an internet Alliance on the aforementioned even as adulatory an IRL hangout. We normals don't ambition software that brings us into a amphitheater about LCD screens as a affair climaxes; we ambition to be about anniversary other, right? Google should be authoritative things that facilitate this, not some affected allure arrangement added circuitous than in fact planning a party. It's abundant to accomplish you a little uncomfortable

Same accord with Google Now, which is incredible, but analogously wince-inducing. It's apparently the best adaptable seek anytime seen—and abiding beats the shirt off Siri—but what happens if that awe and lustre rubs off? Google told us Android's seek would be arch because it would apperceive aggregate about our lives—where we eat, area we live, area we work, consistently afterward our moves and tastes in adjustment to accommodate intricate answers if we charge them. But the accomplished accord presumes we're adequate getting followed and memorized like that. To Google, it's a non-grievance. Who would anytime care? Why would you about-face down a computer that knows the data of your claimed life, and can adumbrate the next one?

Google ability be addled by its own smarts. It's an honest to god braintrust, abounding with humans who ambition to accomplish the future. But here's the affair about the future: it should accomplish the way we reside our lives better, not behest the way we reside our lives. It's unintentional—the aggregation absolutely thinks Google+ is air-conditioned cool. And maybe it is, to the engineers abaft it. But for those of us who aren't data-crazed boy geniuses, it's a banal imposition.

Precision and ability shouldn't supplant personality in the things we use, and if there's an befalling to get added information, we shouldn't blitz to say yes. But Google's agog to say yes for us all: even if it makes us feel funny, or lonely. Even if it could accept the adverse of the advised effect. The idol of technology and the marvels it could crop building over us, cutting a computer on its face, absolution a buzz adumbrate its lunch, and sitting in the bend of a affair searching at pictures of added humans accepting fun. Google's authoritative affluence of absorbing things—but are they absorbing things that anyone in fact wants?

We've accomplished out to Google for animadversion and will amend with any responses.

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