Ah, Fashion. The shows. [more inside]
posted by kathrineg on Sep 15, 2009 - 35 comments

Classic models without artifice
posted by mojohand on Aug 13, 2009 - 27 comments

A philosophy professor takes on the financial system. Or perhaps that should read - a philosophy professor's take on the financial system. Daniel Cloud, teacher of philosophy at Princeton University and a founding partner in two hedge funds, makes the case in a recent opinion piece that "... complicated explanations about derivatives, regulatory failure, and so on are beside the point. ... The truth is that ... models are most useful when they are little known or not universally believed. They progressively lose their predictive value as we all accept and begin to bet on them."
posted by woodblock100 on Apr 1, 2009 - 28 comments

6x4x2 wheel configuration with Ackermann steering and hybrid live-axle suspension. Telescoping boom. Impressive 1kg lifting capacity.

Jennifer Clark builds amazing things with lego.
posted by 7segment on Feb 17, 2009 - 13 comments

Just over sixty years ago the Reverend W. V. Awdry told his sick son a series of stories based on real life incidents with trains, which he later wrote up as the Railway Series. Now Thomas the Tank Engine and the other engines of the Isle of Sodor (somewhere between Barrow-in-Furness and the Isle of Man) are a global phenomena, with toys, books and of course the TV series - filmed using model trains on more than 70 1:32 scale 16-by-20-foot sets, and voiced by the likes of Ringo Starr and Alec Baldwin. 2008 has been a rough year for Thomas: George Carlin, who voiced the series in the US up until 1998, passed away (previously), as did David Mitton, who had written and directed over 180 episodes (and who has previously worked on the special effects for Thunderbirds). There's changes ahead for Thomas as well - this year saw the faces of the engines, which had previously been cast in silicone and attached with double sided tape, replaced by CGI faces, and from 2009 onwards Nitrogen studios in Canada will be taking over production with an entirely CGI Thomas. Meanwhile a group of British students continues the tradition of model engine-based storytelling with their YouTube based British Railway Series.
posted by Artw on Dec 21, 2008 - 74 comments

There are many good swooshing opportunities here.
posted by Brandon Blatcher on Nov 14, 2008 - 45 comments

Using ground-breaking photography techniques, revolutionary 4D scanning techniques and anatomically accurate models, Channel 4 shows us Extraordinary Animals in the Womb.
posted by chuckdarwin on Oct 22, 2008 - 8 comments

Howl's Moving Castle - in papercraft. Stop motion animation of the assembly here, flickr set of the finished product here, details on the kit here. Found via.
posted by jonson on Feb 25, 2008 - 12 comments

Was your invite to Fashion Week lost in the mail? Have no fear- you can watch video of some of your favorite designers and models at the official Mercedes Benz Fashion Week website. If you're more into schadenfreude than Sean John, check out the Zac Posen show to see Karen Elson take a tumble .
posted by ThePinkSuperhero on Feb 8, 2008 - 20 comments

What I did over Christmas vacation - a scale model of Minas Tirith during the Battle of Pelennor Fields from Tolkein's The Return of the King. In candy. (via oink) [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive on Jan 9, 2008 - 41 comments

Historically, drug laws have been a reactive response to a moral panic. Increasingly though, some governments are now seeking a more rational basis for drug policy. For the first time ever, all interested parties have been invited to get involved in the creation of the UK's next ten year drug strategy though many senior government advisors have been openly critical of some of the premises. [more inside]
posted by PeterMcDermott on Dec 29, 2007 - 57 comments

The winners of StarshipModeler.com's "Wrecks" challenge are a mixed bag, with some absolutely incredible destroyed sci-fi models, both kit-built & free modeled, and dioramas. And then others that are less impressive.
posted by jonson on Dec 13, 2007 - 22 comments

Carl Rankin builds awesome RC planes out of straws, plastic wrap, tape, and foam take-out boxes. (via)
posted by MrMoonPie on Dec 11, 2007 - 12 comments

Apocalyptic Manhattan (in An Apartment). More pictures when you scroll down.
posted by Armitage Shanks on Nov 14, 2007 - 12 comments

Photographs of the dancers, actresses, cafe-life figures and prostitutes who were the subjects of Toulouse Lautrec's paintings, including such luminaries as Sarah Bernhardt, "La Goulue" (Louise Weber; remember this?), and Jane Avril, who was the model for this last, iconic, Lautrec poster. View pages of the art matched up with photos, here, here, and here, and go to this page to rummage around in even more collections that include photos of Lautrec, his friends and family, street and location scenes, and lots of other tidbits. [Spanish language site; NUDITY]
posted by taz on Jul 5, 2007 - 10 comments

Let's build...Blarney Castle, a model building to test on an earthquake simulator, Thoreau's cabin, a stirling engine, the NYC transit system, a model bridge, Galileo spacecraft, the Mars Polar Lander, a flying Martin XB-51, Aliens universe papercraft, a train layout under your bed, a stereoscope, a flying saucer. Or we could let The Swell Maps do it: Let's Build a Car. And don't forget, "Your country needs scale model planes for the emergency."
posted by OmieWise on Mar 20, 2007 - 7 comments

Hair? We got it. We fix it. We flaunt it. We film it. We report it.
posted by QIbHom on Feb 1, 2007 - 14 comments

Miniatures!
posted by nj_subgenius on Jan 1, 2007 - 17 comments

scale model cities: moscow, new york, edinburgh, shanghai, shanghai (ii), nanjing, london, london (ii), old jerusalem, sydney, san francisco, 4th century rome, singapore, havana, beijing, cincinnati, pompeii, futurama (via)
posted by jonson on Sep 20, 2006 - 42 comments

An online version of a real museum in Vista, CA. The page is a bit hokey looking, but the photos inside are worth checking out.
posted by snsranch on Sep 20, 2006 - 8 comments

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry recreated to scale using 526,000 matchsticks is the latest model being constructed over at Matchstick Marvels.
posted by jonson on Sep 15, 2006 - 16 comments

America's Next Top Picket Line Writers from America's Next Top Model have gone on strike after the Writers Guild of America West began a campaign to unionize reality TV. How many strikes do you know have their own MySpace page, Television without Pity interview, and a model "working it" on the picket line? Ironically, a previous 1988 writers' strike encouraged the current boom in reality TV, as this article argues.
posted by jonp72 on Sep 12, 2006 - 19 comments

How to Create an Aerial Panorama from Google Earth. The Digitally Distributed Environments blog, and others following their tutorial, have created Google Earth panoramas of Belgium, Moscow, Paris, New York, London and the Sydney Olympic Site. They also note Panogames, who use a similar process to create panoramas from videogame worlds. This follows their Frank Lloyd Wright architectural/videogame walkthrough demo using the Half Life 2 engine [mefi thread] following which they appear hard at work formalising a clear method for importing CAD models into Half Life 2 for architectural visualisations.
posted by nthdegx on Sep 9, 2006 - 11 comments

The Toymaker offers over 40 free paper toys and pretties you can print out (PDFs) and make yourself, as well as "Stories to be Told by Firelight" - online versions of author/illustrator Marilyn Scott Waters' children's stories and lots of other fun goodies. For people who have kids, people who know kids, people who are kids, and people who love papercraft, illustration, toys, and tales. [more...]
posted by taz on Jul 24, 2006 - 18 comments

French photographer Cedric Delsaux takes pictures of Star Wars characters (in figurine) and superimposes them onto French architecture, with interesting results.
posted by jonson on Jul 16, 2006 - 16 comments

Sports Illustrated's infamous swimsuit issue has taken to featuring naked models with the swimsuits painted directly on their shameful nakedness in recent years; for this year's entry they feature Heidi Klum in a tribute to the bathing suits of the 1940's. Full gallery online here.
posted by jonson on Feb 15, 2006 - 91 comments

World's smallest flying robots In the early 1930 's, Arthur Young, a brilliant young inventor, built and successfully demonstrated a viable, flyable helicopter model. In Oslo Peter Muren developed a totally silent and aerodynamically stable coaxial rotor flying robot.In Brussels Alexander Van de Rostyne developed a 6.9 grams helicopter with infrared 4 axis control. Very cute too .
posted by hortense on Jan 2, 2006 - 14 comments

Paper Forest is a blog devoted to making things with paper, including holiday models, the most complex paper model in the world, classic cartoon cars, and where to find a 50 MB PDF do-it-yourself Howl's Moving Castle model.
posted by Armitage Shanks on Dec 20, 2005 - 8 comments

Catapult Kits. Big or small, classic or modern, no matter their taste, you'll find something to drive everyone on your holiday shopping list ballistic. It's all fun and games (audio), but be sure to plan ahead so no one gets hurt.
posted by Gamblor on Dec 7, 2005 - 19 comments

How to Draw a Straight Line - Until 1873, virtually all mathemeticians and engineers agreed that it was impossible to build a linkage that could convert circular motion to perfectly straight motion. In that year, Lipmann Lipkin rediscovered the Peaucellier cell which had been quietly created a decade earlier. Although much simpler to build, it was predated by Pierre-Frederic Sarrus' non-planar solution. Nowadays, though, linkages can do some extremely complex things. (via)
posted by Plutor on Nov 28, 2005 - 25 comments

Peter Feigenbaum is a model train enthusiast and Yale architecture student who designed & built a more realistic urban world for his train to go through. Full photo gallery here.
posted by jonson on Oct 17, 2005 - 48 comments

Noted in the live stream from this TV station This is the "Local2 News" live tv stream (which has been pointed to in three previous MeFi threads about other news stories. Currently they've from time to time been showing storm track predictive models (which they say are their own development). I'd rather have pointers to more models than the TV station's occasional glimpses, but, this is the most varied set of storm track predictions I've seen. Anyone know where they're getting them?
posted by hank on Sep 22, 2005 - 24 comments

Artificial Anatomy
posted by Gyan on Mar 16, 2005 - 2 comments

He was the Taster's Choice model for 16 years and he never even knew it. A jury awards $15.6 million to a man whose face was used on the Taster's Choice coffee jar without his permission.
posted by braun_richard on Feb 2, 2005 - 36 comments

Unexplained death in a nutshell. In the 1930’s International Harvester heiress Frances Glessner Lee built one-inch-to-one foot scale models of violent crimes.
posted by arse_hat on Jan 26, 2005 - 15 comments

Space 1999 models. War of the Worlds, Flash Gordon, Alien and more. Welcome to the art of Martin Bower.
posted by srboisvert on Jul 15, 2004 - 13 comments

Supermodel Personals. "Nervous short girl into fantasy novels and The Simpsons seeks quiet, sensitive guy to while away the hours with me in my library of cocaine." (NSFW)
posted by PrinceValium on Apr 28, 2004 - 24 comments

Old River Bill really knows inland workboats. Besides exercising his novel system of punctuation, Bill makes model tugboats and is a part of an avid community of workboat modelers. You can find out everything you ever wanted to know about how real work is done on rivers on how the hell we move 100's of thousands of tons of crap around the country every day.
posted by badstone on Jan 6, 2004 - 5 comments

Aids in Africa - you know the facts right? Well perhaps not, what you know are the predictions of a Computer Model. Rian Malan in today's Spectator highlights how alarmingly inaccurate such models are proving. Paul Henman illustrates how common it is to build political assumptions into a model and then hide them under layers of complexity and apparent objectivity. Think global warming. How do we challenge the models that increasingly determine our opinions and priorities?
posted by grahamwell on Dec 12, 2003 - 15 comments

Did anyone else make the mistake of ordering the worst pay-per-view ever? No, not The House of 1000 Corpses, but ten admittedly beautiful women wearing huge headgear and attempting (with little success) to pound the crap out of each other. It sounds better than it actually was -- trust me!
posted by johnnydark on Oct 11, 2003 - 16 comments

Digital retouching of models. (via kottke)
posted by gwint on Aug 9, 2003 - 56 comments

They’re a little like Operation. Today students can practice all sorts of skills on surgical models like TraumaMan®, the Hillway Man, or Geri, the Geriatric, who comes complete with wrinkles. There’s spinal surgery, gall bladder surgery, ultrasound/amniocentesis, suturing, and casualty kits. Some of them give me the I’m-a-silly-git giggles and naming a company Limbs & Things doesn't help. There’s the head with all sorts of things wrong with it, including “Extraneous Lumps”. The toe with refills is pretty nifty, but disturbingly life-like. There are strap-ons and table-top models.(Possibly NSFW) Some could make interesting conversation pieces.(Also poss. NSFW)
In addition, Somso, maker of the “dial-a-prostate” model above, also makes interesting non-interactive models like this fandex of a head, a larynx with tongue, or a fingertip. They also have neat models of animals, fungi, and flowers.
posted by lobakgo on Jul 23, 2003 - 7 comments

Twiggy, Queen of Mod "As the first teenager to become a supermodel, her impact was instant and international.".
posted by konolia on Feb 6, 2003 - 9 comments

The post-industrial model is not an assembly line, but an assembly swarm. So shopping means you're just the front end of the machine, eh?
posted by DenOfSizer on Aug 16, 2002 - 5 comments

Supermodels Are Lonelier Than You Think! (tabloidesque nudity). Combining two of the best things in the world, blogs and beautiful women. This Paris based weblog gives news of the fashion industry along with the occasional inside scoop. Never thought I'd care about the fashion industry but I've been following this for some time now.
posted by geoff. on Jul 2, 2002 - 10 comments

The new Abercrombie Quarterly is another publicity stunt and boy is it working. The new one is entitled "XXX" and has less than "Playboy-core" pictures of models in various states of undress. Apparently our children are being so corrupted by a shrink wrapped magazine that you need an ID proving your adult status to purchase that Lt. Governor's are spending tax dollars building campaigns against an organization conducting legal business. What's next? More (work unsafe) publications showing naked people with items to advertise?
posted by McBain on Apr 29, 2002 - 62 comments

Enduring Freedom: The action figures Hong Kong hobbyists collect action figures with an intensity that in Japan would be labled Otaku-like. These action figures are more than toys, they are miniature replicas of real and modern weapons. Now you can buy your Covert CIA Agent Jones action figure and direct Long Range Airstrikes at home.
posted by AsiaInsider on Feb 8, 2002 - 5 comments

Not just another pretty face... The wonderous wit and wisdom of the world's supermodels.
posted by Samizdata on Jan 3, 2002 - 56 comments

A model commits suicide the other night but what's really tragic about this is this is what is considered "plus sized" these days. Aren't the days of 80lb, heroin-chic models over?
posted by mathowie on Jul 25, 2001 - 81 comments

The Florida publisher of ChildSuperModels.Com, Jessi the Kid, Tiffany Teen Model and other creepy child-model sites also publishes Home From School and other explicit porn sites with older models. "Please treat my daughter with respect," Jessi's mom asks on her about page. Are parents knowingly consenting to this?
posted by rcade on Jul 16, 2001 - 78 comments