SCULPTURE OR DESIGN?
This beautifully strange object might be classified as both, for it is fully functional, and it does evoke a futuristic, otherworldly sense for the viewer.
As a hybrid-electric two-seater, three wheeled transport, the Aptera can cruise freeways at 80mph and get an estimated 300 miles per gallon. The plug-in version gets 100 miles per charge. Both have a drag co-efficiency of 0.15 which enables this ‘earthbound bird’ to flow through the air. Yet even though Aptera seems to mean ‘wingless bird’, it does sport gullwing doors and its cast ‘egg’ shape is re-enforced with steel beams. Passengers are protected by standard air bags and air-conditioning and heat. In California it is permitted to drive in the fast lane without passengers, a sight certain to grab attention of the bumper-to-bumber crowd.
Aptera’s design team is led by Steve Fambro of Southern California and his vision is currently in production. Pricing for the Aptera begins at $25,000 and it is eligible for the current rebates. Reserve your own “2e” for $500 (refundable).
I imagine this piece of art would look just as stunning in your driveway as on city streets or Jay Leno’s garage (check out his endorsement).
GO SOLAR (and wind)! It is a matter of national security! I am not impressed with the auto industry’s new ‘economy’ standards. More than 50 years ago my family and I were driving cars which got 30 or more mpg (VW and Morris Minor) … we’ve simply been dragging our feet, letting the cheap oil (and a huge military expense) dictate our foreign policy as if nothing would ever change … but things have changed and even 50 mpg cars are behind the times!
May 30th, 2009
Sexy “Venus” may be oldest figurine yet discovered
LONDON (Reuters) – A sexually suggestive Venus figurine with oversized breasts and thighs dates back at least 35,000 years and shows ancient humans had sex on their minds, researchers said on Wednesday.The 60-millimetre-long figurine may be the oldest piece of its kind yet discovered and suggests Palaeolithic art was far more complex than many had thought, Nicholas Conard of Tubingen University in Germany wrote in the journal Nature.
Radiocarbon dating indicates the figure excavated from an archaeological dig in southern Germany, near the Danube valley, was at least 35,000 years old, the researchers said.
“The discovery predates the well-known Venuses from the Gravettian culture by at least 5,000 years and radically changes our views of the context and meaning of the earliest Palaeolithic art,” Conard wrote.
“Before this discovery … female imagery was entirely unknown.”
The figurine’s enlarged breasts, bloated belly and thighs also make clear that sexual symbolism was alive and well tens of thousand of years ago, Paul Mellars of the University of Cambridge, wrote in a commentary.
“The feature of the newly discovered figure that will undoubtedly command most attention is its explicitly, almost aggressively, sexual nature, focused on the sexual characteristics of the female form,” he wrote.
“Whichever way one views these representations, it is clear that the sexually symbolic dimension in European (and indeed worldwide) art has a long ancestry in the evolution of our species.”
(Reporting by Michael Kahn; Editing by Julie Steenhuysen)
May 13th, 2009
Artis Laine’s sculpture of Sojourner Truth was unveiled yesterday in the U.S. Capitol, the first black female to be so honored. After more than two centuries, millions of Americans say, “It is about time!” See the rest of the story in
Estimated number of jobs created by a single payer universal health program - 2 million
I am a proud Sunshine Patriot! Join the movement! GO SOLAR! It is a matter of national security!
Happy 44th anniversary to us!
April 29th, 2009
Worried about foreign attacks on our electric grid?
It is happening all too often, according to our Homeland Security experts. Why not become a SUNSHINE PATRIOT and provide your own power? Go Solar and wind. It is a matter of national security.
And you will save big bucks, too. Over the past 30 years I estimate savings of $58,000 dollars by installing Photo-voltaic panels, charge controllers, battery banks, inverters, refrigerator, washer, TV and entertainment center, computers, air conditioners (I do live in the desert) for a total of $12,000. It sounds like a lot of money but
compared to the $65,000 the power company wanted to charge me for the privilege of paying them $150 a month for the rest of my life, it is not much. Total estimated saving over 30 years - more than $100,000! And I did not even cash in on the many government rebates.
Many of you watch the Green Channel and see all of these Hollywood celebs showing off their multi-million arrays and wind machines. You have also seen the rooftop investments many forward looking businesses and government office buildings have installed. Truly impressive. You can do it, too! Start slowly, like we did if you have too, but start!
Plug-in electric cars are coming off the lines now, too. And congratulations to that new Florida city, Sunshine City, going up in Lee County!!! The largest solar array in the world to serve 45,000 people with power for their homes, businesses and cars!
Join up now in the Sunshine Uprising! Shine some light on our future! Become a SUNSHINE PATRIOT! Go solar! It is a matter of national security. Copy the logo, join the future and spread the word!
April 11th, 2009
Art Review | Jenny Holzer
Sounding the Alarm, in Words and Light
Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
Jenny Holzer: Protect Protect, including “Red Yellow Looming,” and other Holzer works from the past 15 years, is at the Whitney Museum of American Art through May 31. More Photos >
Published: March 12, 2009
Basically, Jenny Holzer has spent the last three decades pelting us with unsettling and increasingly relevant portents of things to come.
In tones alternately poetic or oracular, inflamed or numb, Big-Brotherly or tender, Ms. Holzer’s terse snippets of prose have warned of evolving threats to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. She has tracked the inner thoughts of bereft lovers or shellshocked survivors and articulated the baser instincts unleashed by social chaos.
To do this, she has turned various user-friendly, pop-culture modes of public address into early warning systems, including posters, T-shirts, billboards, broadsheets, plaques, giant projections and incised marble benches. Electronic LED signs are her best-known, most spectacular method; they also reflect the military-commercial-entertainment complex that, bit by bit, her art exposes.
Sounding the alarm at the Ides of March - more …
March 14th, 2009
Any day is just fine for promoting women and children. Their contribution, especially in the arts and music has been the hallmark of every great culture since the beginning of the agricultural revolution. Today that contribution extends to science, medicine and beyond. Let’s make today special, but also link it to Mother’s Day and Earth Day and as many others as we can. Society honors men and patriarchal religious principles almost every day of the year, ignoring the fact that without women’s creative force, none of us would exist.
Balance in our understanding of culture is sadly lacking in many parts of the world. Balance, Buddhists say, is the key to understanding life.
IWD is a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future. In some countries like China, Russia, Vietnam and Bulgaria, IWD is a national holiday. The first IWD was run in 1911.
read more …
March 8th, 2009
"A Visual Verse"
February 27th, 2009
Judith Hoffberg (1934-2009)
January 29th, 2009
“Language matters because whoever controls the words controls the conversation, because whoever controls the conversation controls the outcome, because whoever frames the debate has already won it; because telling the truth has become harder and harder to achieve in an America drowning in Orwellian Newspeak.” Erica Jong Seducing the Demon
January 29th, 2009
Prolific US author John Updike dead at 76
41 mins ago AFP/File – Pulitzer Prize-winning author
NEW YORK (AFP) – Prolific Pulitzer Prize-winning US novelist John Updike, whose books and short stories chronicled small-town American life, has died at age 76, his publisher Knopf said.
“It is with great sadness that I report that John Updike died this morning at the age of 76, after a battle with lung cancer,” Knopf publicity director Nicholas Latimer said in a statement.
Over a career spanning more than half a century, Updike published at least a dozen short story collections and 25 novels.
His most famous books were in the Rabbit series, including “Rabbit, Run” and “Rabbit Redux.” He also wrote hundreds of short stories, poetry, literary criticism and reviews in The New Yorker magazine.
“He was one of our greatest writers and he will be sorely missed,” Latimer said.
The Washington-based Academy of Achievement described Updike as “one of America’s premier men of letters.”
Updike recounted how a sickly childhood on a farm in Pennsylvania prepared him for a cerebral life.
“He suffered from psoriasis and a stammer, ailments that set him apart from his peers. He found solace in writing, and won a scholarship to Harvard,” the Academy of Achievement noted.
Updike went on to edit the famous Lampoon humor magazine at Harvard and then published a poem and fiction in the New Yorker soon after graduating.
“My mother had dreams of being a writer and I used to see her type in the front room. The front room is also where I would go when I was sick so I would sit there and watch her,” Updike said.
January 27th, 2009
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