SCIENCE

Photo via Wired.

Superpowers for sale. Scientist Michael McAlpine, who has a Ph.D. in chemistry at Harvard, hopes to make the process or acquiring a superpower as simple as purchasing aspirin at the pharmacy. So far, he’s invented a “tattoo” for teeth that can detect cavities—not exactly the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters—although his latest project, a 3-D printed bionic ear that enables superhuman hearing, could be. Read full article in Wired.

Photo via NASA.

Democratized space. Until very recently if you wanted to perform a space science experiment, you needed a detailed proposal to make an official request to the International Space Station (ISS), and hope for approval. But, Fast Company points out, as of today thanks to Ardulab, an Arduino-based container for science experiments, that's no longer the case. No matter how silly or unprofessional your homemade experiment is, you can now send it to space within nine months for less than $5,000. Have the money and want to try? Read full article in Fast Company.

Image: National Geographic.

Researchers at the Jefferson Lab in the United States have pinned down the value of the proton's weak charge for the first time ever. The research, due to be published in Physical Review Letters in October, confirms predictions made by the Standard Model, a well-established framework for explaining how particles interact in the Universe. Read full article in Wired.

DESIGN, BUSINESS & INNOVATION

Image: Time cover via Time.

TIME magazine this week ask (and tries to answer) this question: Can Google solve death? The major feature of their print edition explains how CEO Larry Page, who spoke exclusively with TIME about the new venture, 'has transformed the search giant into a factory for moonshots'. His boldest bet yet? To extend human life. Read more in Time.

Image: Courtesy of the artists via Wired.

eMotion, a 3-D Software that is basically a physics-based animation system that uses human motion to interact with projected graphics in real time,  is described by one of his creators as "Adobe Illustrator on acid". Adrien Mondot and Claire Bardainne, are the two Paris-based artist/technologists who created the software capable of blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. Read full article in Wired.

Photo: The Procrastinator (some) Times.

How to Manage a flexible workforce, and make sure work-at-home employees keep innovating. While Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer famously announced last winter that employees needed to be in the office to be innovative, Jennifer Owens, editorial director of Working Mother magazine  with whose staff members work when and where they choose, insists that there's another way. Read full article in Fast Company.

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Photo: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP, via The New Yorker.

As Oyster, a new app is launch hoping that people are looking for a new way to get access to books. Ian Crouch in The New Yorker poises the question: What does it mean to own a book? The app, usually called "Netflix for books", currently gives users access to more than a hundred thousand titles for a monthly fee of just under ten bucks. So, would you keep buying books or would you just 'stream' them? Read full article here.

 Image: Inside Chanel screenshot via Creative Review.

Inside Chanel is an ambitious online project telling the story of the fashion house and its founder, the amazing Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel, via a series of online documentaries comprised of archive footage, photos and nice black and white graphics. Have a look at some videos and read full article in Creative Review's Blog.

Image: Stéphane Mallarmé via Wikipedia.

Poetry Isn't as Useless as a Lot of Poets Say It Is. The Atlantic posted an interesting article about a recent speech at Yale that inadvertently sums up what's wrong with the art form these days: Its gatekeepers believe poetry matters because it's poetry, not because of what it says.Read article here.

IN DOG WE TRUST

Photo: lil_theezy via Instagram.

Hello dog lover,

Hope you're having a relaxing weekend! Here are some links to explore:

Elephant's best friend. 

Orphaned Elephant and Labrador play in the water

Beautiful wrapping paper.

Pet candles: Aromatherapy for pets.

The 9/11 rescue dogs.

Great campaign. Can you see the dog?

Plus, two dogs you seriously need to follow on Instagram:

Maru Taro, the dog from the app!

Theo a.k.a lil_theezy

-

In Dog We Trust is curated by: Carola Melguizo from La Guía del Perro.

OUR WEEKLY PROCRASTINATION

Photo: The Source Family (2013) via Dazed.

Dazed and Tripping. Whenever you have a chance this month click on dazeddigital.com/tripping to take an spiritual journey watching some top documentaries of the world's most infamous cults. From the Sahara to Big Sur. Under the sea to higher than God. Good old anthropological procrastination guaranteed. Read Dazed article about this Cult Documentaries About Cults here.

Photo: Adhocracy via Lime Wharf website.

The Third Industrial Revolution is coming, and you can be part of it. 

By Marie James.

ADHOCRACY is an exhibition taking place at Lime Wharf, a new and very nice venue on Regent's canal / Victoria Park in Hackney, East London. The exhibition explores how new and democratized methods of production introduced by the Web and digital technologies - such as micro-blogging and 3D printing -  are stimulating a "cultural revolution". If most of those projects presented are still at the stage of prototypes, we leave the place understanding that it's definitely up to us to make this new ecosystem, made by and for the people, working at our own level. And they give you full of inspiration for that!

The exhibition opened Wednesday 4th September and runs until Saturday 12th October 2013. 

Hours: Tuesdays – Saturdays 11am – 8pm. 

Website: http://limewharf.org/

ADHOCRACY on in the London DesignFestival: http://www.londondesignfestival.com/events/adhocracy

This past Thursday was Jarvis Cocker 50th birthday and for a belated celebration we recommend have a look at the BBC documentary The Story of Common People, the famous 1995 Pulp's song that reached number two on the UK singles charts. The phenomenon described on the song (the Greek girl that wanted to live 'like common people') was known as slumming or "class tourism". The song was written by the band members Nick Banks, Jarvis Cocker, Candida Doyle, Steve Mackey and Russell Senior. The documentary is online, just click here.

TO DO (OR NOT TO DO) LIST

Image: Documentary screenshot via Barbican website.

The London Nobody Knows. Part of Urban Wandering: Film and the London Landscape at the Barbican, there will be a rare screening of a precious document that reveals the underside of London in 1967. As the Barbican website states, James Mason acts as our guide to covert parts of the city, showing us places which, at that time, had survived the bulldozer. Street markets, entertainers and the homeless are seen as the camera tours locations such as the Bedford Theatre in Camden Town, the men’s toilets at Holborn station and Chapel Market. I've seen fragments of this documentary and it looks amazing, definitely a must seen. More info here, and the rest of the Urban Wandering program here.

Part of Festival of Neighbourhood Festival and London Wonderground, the Southbank Center presents the London Swing Dance Society promising 'a night of scintillating jazz, cool swing, hot jive and scorching rock'n'roll. The evening kicks off with beginners and intermediate lindy hop classes from 7.45pm to 8.30pm. Features a live band, swing DJs and a vintage dance cabaret'. More info here.

Photo by Maja Daniels & Anne Hovad Fisher: Life and play (working title), Night Contact's Grant Winners via Night Contact website.

Night Contact. This Friday 27th of September Contact Editions with the support of the Arts Council England, invite us to witness a variety of indoor and outdoor projections that will pop up across a range of venues in Dalston, East London, beaming out inspiring artworks for one night only. Night Contact aims to support and promote contemporary image making in an innovative, multidisciplinary and collaborative way. Also, there will be stalls, music, food and drink. Sounds interesting right? Read more info in Night Contact's website and see you Friday at Gillette Square! 

SUNDAY (SOME) TIMES

More monos by Germán here.

Procrastinator (some) Times Sunday 15th of September Edition

EDITORIAL

Autumn is here and so are a lot of interesting and exciting activities to compensate the Summer blues such as the London Design Festival, the Urban Wandering Film and the London Landscape at the Barbican, London Fashion Week and London Film Festival. Get your umbrellas ready and don't let yourself slip under the weather. Together we can make it.

We have some cool recommendations in our To Do List both in London and Liverpool, interesting innovation and design articles; a nice J.D. Sallinger written by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker, in our Culture section; and News, concerning the end of the world and a cat that is a superstars. Maybe these two are related. Yes, definitely related.

Anyway.

Any cool stuff to recommend to your fellow procrastinators? Please share it with us. 

Have a nice Sunday and a nice read.


NEWS

Photo: Earth via The Independent.

This is an actual headline of The Independent: World's biggest brains get together to work out how to save us all from the end of the world. Yes! The end of the world is back. Not that it ever left us really. Some of the brains are: Lord Rees of Ludlow, the astronomer royal and past president of the Royal Society, who is also leading the initiative, Stephen Hawking, Cambridge philosopher Huw Price, economist Partha Dasgupta and the Harvard evolutionary geneticist George Church. Read full article in The Independent.

Photo: Google Street View screenshot via The Independent

G is for Galápagos. So, the Galapagos Islands have been mapped by Google Street View, allowing virtual explorers extraordinary access to Charles Darwin’s biological paradise and marking the 178th anniversary of the great British scientist’s ground-breaking journey of 1835. Read full article in The Independent.

Photo: Lil Bub and her “Dude” Mike Bridavsky by Ariel Zambelich via WIRED

 It's a cat's world. It might be me, but I think that (specially Internet) cats and dogs are relevant when it comes to procrastination. This time we are talking about Lil Bub, the cat that has gone from a shelter  to a massive online phenomenon. According to Wired this weird looking cat has '200,000-plus Instagram followers, millions of YouTube views, her own documentary, a book deal, a web TV show, and (if all goes well) an animatronic version of herself'. I like Grumpy Cat better. But apparently that's just me. If you want to know more about Lil Bub, read the full article in Wired.

SCIENCE

Photo via Spacetoday.org

Little Spacecraft That Could. On Thursday, scientists declared the Voyager spacecraft had become the first man-made object to exit the solar system, a breathtaking achievement that NASA could only fantasize about back when it was launched in 1977. Since its launch Voyager 1 has traveled over 11.7 billion miles, that is equivalent to traveling to the moon and back almost 25,000 times. Read more about it in The Independent.

Illustration: What is the 'god' particle? By Jordin Isip. Via Brainpickings.

Maria Popova of Brain Pickings proudly recommends the book: The Where, they Why and the How: 75 Artists Illustrate Wondrous Mysteries of Science, one of those amazing intersection of art and science. The guys behind Also Online "invited some of today’s most celebrated artists to create scientific illustrations and charts to accompany short essays about the most fascinating unanswered questions on the minds of contemporary scientists across biology, astrophysics, chemistry, quantum mechanics, anthropology, and more". More info and a short video in Brain Pickings.


Looking for a Plan B. Alok Jha, The Guardian's scientific correspondent writes about some of the measures that should be taken by world leaders if the rise in carbon emissions is not curbed within a couple of decade. Launching mirrors into space, triggering algal blooms in the oceans and seeding clouds are among experimental "Plan B" schemes. This is what astronomer royal Lord Rees calls: hacking the planet's climate through geoengineering. Read more in The Guardian.