As Above So Below

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project's "Trinity" test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan's nuclear tests in May of 1998. This leaves out North Korea's two alleged nuclear tests in this past decade (the legitimacy of both of which is not 100% clear).

Each nation gets a blip and a flashing dot on the map whenever they detonate a nuclear weapon, with a running tally kept on the top and bottom bars of the screen. Hashimoto, who began the project in 2003, says that he created it with the goal of showing"the fear and folly of nuclear weapons." It starts really slow — if you want to see real action, skip ahead to 1962 or so — but the buildup becomes overwhelming.

Go Google

Love the way mainstream media in the US portrays democracy in Egypt as a bad thing. Bad bad Google. God bless America and its dream.

American Hero

I guess by now it's evident that I no longer view the United States as a leader power. It's not about the raw power. No country has invested more money in aggression and future aggressiveness than the United States. I think that will be born out in the future when the full extent of how much militarization of space is under way. 

On the Chinese dime. 

It's the loss of moral leadership that is most visible outside of the media cocoon that many US communities live within. However that's not to say I'm not a great admirer of the citizens who turn away from the malignancy of the system and in that respect Michael Reynolds the architect who creates sustainable living in New Mexico is exactly the kind of American I admire hugely for that big bold vision thing that trickles down into the lives of people and changes them for the better. This is both a great story and an informative pointer about why bureaucracy is first and foremost self preserving. Lots of good construction ideas in this. Free thinking, and rule breaking creativity. Not the prettiest of constructions but very much in harmony with the environment and the people who come together to build them.