This week is Hemp History Week. Hemp has been considered to be one of the most versatile plants known to man, and is a rapidly growing source of biomass, which produces strong fibers. [more inside]
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth on May 6, 2011 - 17 comments

Please enjoy one of collage artist Lewis Klahr's haptic, romantic meditations on materiality and mortality, False Aging, and a look at his process.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur on Aug 23, 2010 - 2 comments

Nona Hendryx (wiki) founding member of Labelle went on to a solo career that included working with The Talking Heads, Material, and Laurie Anderson. Her album Nona (produced by Laswell) featured the club hit Transformation which still sounds 20 years ahead of its time even though it was recorded in 1983. Here she is rocking the house live at the Apollo with Why Should I Cry and making your spirit soar with Winds of Change [warning: one or more of these videos may contain a keytar]
posted by vronsky on Jan 27, 2008 - 13 comments

MATSYS Based on the idea that architecture can be understood as a material body with its own intrinsic and extrinsic forces relating to form, growth, and behavior, the studio investigates methodologies of performative integration through geometric and material differentiation.

B_Complex, N_Table, Endless Ocean, Endless Sky (more), P_Wall. more.
posted by klangklangston on Jan 18, 2008 - 6 comments

Zigzag Zombie.

As part of the recent Dutch Design Week, students were instructed to produce an original typeset using thin, flat material (metal strips, tape, toilet paper, etc.) and then "pick one location, and create a large scale zigzag lettering and make passersby hallucinate."
posted by Terminal Verbosity on Nov 12, 2007 - 15 comments

Mesterinde Karen Larsdatter.
posted by hama7 on Jul 28, 2007 - 22 comments

The Scottish Qualifications Authority has recently produced a new qualification on blogging [PDF] and used a wiki to produce teaching and learning material. Wikis look well-suited to this purpose. Could this be the future of curriculum development?
posted by bobbyelliott on Feb 9, 2006 - 6 comments

Is this a library or a Borders? A Denver Post writer laments the availability of CDs, DVDs, and not so intellectually stimulating reading material at the Schlessman Family Branch Library (part of the Denver Public Library system), and calls into the question the library's purpose. Should libraries give the people what they want, if what they want is an Ashlee Simpson CD?
posted by schoolgirl report on Jan 8, 2005 - 121 comments

"Weapons of Mass Destruction", you say? Question: If Iraq is the vicious rat and North Korea the furious pygmy of WMD threats, where is the 800 pound gorilla? Answer - "...law enforcement officials worldwide have seized 40 kilograms of Russian-origin uranium and plutonium since 1991. Stanford researchers have also estimated that only 30 to 40 percent of the nuclear material stolen from facilities in Russia and other territories in the former Soviet Union are ever recovered by authorities." the collapse of the Soviet Union left vast stores of Nuclear weapons and weapons grade plutonium and uranium, and stocks of chemical and biological warfare agents lying about at dangerously underfunded facillities scattered through the vast expanse of the ex-Soviet realm. "Russian stockpiles of weapons and materials are the most likely source for terrorists attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction", said US Senator Richard Lugar, Republican chairman of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee. An international effort to destroy these stores of ex-Soviet WMD's is currently funded at a tiny fraction of the estimated cost of a possible US invasion and occupation of Iraq. (more inside)
posted by troutfishing on Mar 16, 2003 - 10 comments