Nike Shoe Made From Industrial Waste
Basketballer Steve Nash is the All-Star guard for the Phoenix Suns whose passion for environmental awareness forged a partnership with Nike to create the Nike Trash Talk, the first performance basketball shoe made from manufacturing waste.
Brilliant!
More on Nikebizz.
Fan Wars: Darth Vader Balloon
The idea of creating a balloon symbolizing the SW saga has been on my mind for a long time. But I was too shy to ask George Lucas (Lucasfilm) permission to do it.
More on the official site here. A load of Youtube clips here.
Write Your Memoir In Six Words
Legend has it that Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in only six words. His response? ‘For sale: baby shoes, never worn.‘ Last year, Smith Magazine re-ignited the recountre by asking their readers for their own six-word memoirs. Smith also teamed up with Twitter for a Six-Word Memoir contest in 2006 and then decided to make a book out of it which is available now.
People can also still submit Six-Word Memoirs on the Smith site here, too.
I liked ‘I photoshop people in my head‘ by Abigail Pope.
Blue Eye Colour Originated Near The Black Sea
Found this article in the Daily Telegraph today which I found in the plane flying back (from London to Amsterdam - more about that in the next post). Thought it would make a nice RSS headline.
Scientists believe they have tracked down the cause of the eye colour of all blue-eyed humans on the planet today.
“Originally, we all had brown eyes”, said Prof Hans Eiberg from the University of Copenhagen, who led the team.
Blue eye colour most likely originated from the near east area or northwest part of the Black Sea region, where the great agriculture migration to the northern part of Europe took place in the Neolithic periods about six–10,000 years ago.
“That is my best guess,” he said. “It could be the northern part of Afghanistan.”
The mutation affected a gene called OCA2 and “literally ‘turned off’ the ability to produce brown eyes”, he says.
OCA2 is involved in the production of melanin, the pigment that gives colour to hair, eyes and skin.
The mutation in the adjacent gene does not switch off the OCA gene entirely but limits its action, reducing the production of melanin in the iris of the eye – “diluting” brown eyes to blue.
If the OCA2 gene had been completely turned off, those who inherited this mutation would be without melanin in their hair, eyes or skin colour - albino.
For the study, Prof Eiberg’s team examined DNA in blue-eyed individuals in countries as diverse as Jordan, India, Denmark and Turkey.
His findings are the latest in a decade of genetic research, which began in 1996, when Prof Eiberg first implicated the OCA2 gene as being one of those responsible for eye colour.
“They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA. From this we can conclude that all blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor,” said Prof Eiberg, who reports the work in the journal Human Genetics.
Original article here, picture from here.
See You Next Year
That’s it. Another year over, a new one about to begin.
Have a lovely time and see you next year, I’m off to Iceland! (pic by hkvam)
Ultracool Wooden Racing Bicycle
Dutch Jan Gunneweg makes ‘em for 15,000 a pop.
Intriging Book Title Of The Month
While searching around for a book in the philosophy section (don’t ask) of a local bookstore today, I stumbled upon this book released by the Princeton University Press
House For Sale: $76,000,000
Venture capitalist Bill Stensrud is selling his Southern California waterfront mansion in San Diego for $76 million. It made me think of this entry I posted back in March.
Kevin Mitnick’s Business Card
Security Consultant Kevin Mitnick’s business card is a handy break-out lock picking kit. Photo taken by ProzacOD.
Check that fork
Cannondale came up with a funky idea to lose some more weight in order to try and make a lighter mtb. I saw this bike being driven downhill in a not-so-sharp magazine picture and it turned out to be the Taurine SL Team Replica:
At first I thought the magazines’ designer had been on a funny tip with Photoshop - since one half of the fork seems to be missing. But it is actually supposed to be like that. I’m not at all interested in getting this bike, perfectly happy with my current bike. Just thought it was interesting. Sort of.