Following anorexia nervosa (under eating) and bulimia nervosa (overeating), orthorexia nervosa (healty eating) is the latest eating disorder in the book. It is characterized by a fixation on eating what the sufferer considers to be healthful food, which can ultimately lead to early death.
While anorexia is typically associated with our visual culture and its unreachable beauty ideals, orthorexia seems closely related with our information age and the easy access to facts and figures. Today so many data about health benefits of our food are available – how it was processed, prepared, etc– and food packages are routinely decorated with scientifically detailed data on their contents. We are suffering from ‘overknowledge’.
While most of us respond to the food-data-overload with an occasional dosage of self chosen ignorance – forget about the facts, grab a burger! – people suffering from orthorexia will spend just as much time and energy thinking about food as someone with bulimia or anorexia.
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BMW aggressively takes on the biomimicmarketing of Jaguar. Peculiar image of the week.
Via Infozaragoza. Related: The Naturalness of traveling with a Jeep, Facing Your Car, Steam Horse. Thanks iPeg.
An earlier post on this blog already displayed the possible future of sight using augmented contact lenses. Researchers at MIT take this second sight to a next level by creating a retinal implant that could help blind people regain much of their vision.
People receiving the implant would wear a pair of glasses with a built-in camera that wirelessly powers the implant and sends images to a micro-controller on the eye-ball. These are then processed and send to electrodes implanted below the retina.
Besides the immense value for blind people imagine the future possibilities for truly virtual and augmented reality. Always wanted infrared sight? Or would you prefer to hook it up to your Second Life account? You can also just watch a movie.
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You step out of bed. Why? Because your alarm clock tells you it is time. A quick glance at the alarm clock tells you that you are still on schedule. First you take a shower and then breakfast. The clock helps you back to reality, “So late already?”, and you think by yourself; “Tomorrow I should shower shorter…” You wanted to clean up before you leave, but decide to leave the mess where it is; all to get back on track. Also the clocks on your way to the office help you to stay on the strict time schedule. When you enter the office-building you wonder if there is still time to get a coffee. Your watch gives you the answer…as always.
Related: Office garden rebellion, Virtual money – cows, coins, credit, airtime, The Nocturnal life of diurnal birds. Picture: Freakingnews.com
Venice, Italy is sinking. To save it, Dr. Rachel Armstrong in her TED talk argues we need to outgrow architecture made of inert materials and, well, make architecture that grows itself.
Related: Modernistic vs Next Nature architecture, Growing rooms, buildings & cities, How to print a building, Superman’s House. Thanks Jan Gillesen.
You wouldn’t give it to her but Barbie is already over 50 years old. The doll made her debut at the American International Toy Fair in 1959 and has been a young girls (and gays) beauty icon for decades. Just image what Barbie would have looked like today if only she wasn’t so utterly plastic fantastic by nature. Still a pretty woman, stylish too! Peculiar image of the week (creator unknown: let us know).
Related: Beauty kit for little girls, Virtual Miss, Photoshop Beauties, Objects of desire, Real Mario, Software that ranks female beauty.
Recently were introduced, the OOMouse…
…and the Magic Mouse. Both tools are developed to browse the ones and zeros more easily.
It almost seems unfair to compare them, so I won’t. But what I would like to compare instead is both companies’ mission statements:
Open Office: Our mission statement is to create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format.
Apple: Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.
The first reads in one word: “community” (building and sharing together). The second reads: “ego” (look how good I am). Now look again at their mices.
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Sometimes next nature breaks down and things fall back on an older nature. Luckily, this guy still had a horse around. Peculiar image of the week.
Via Kottke. Related: Steam Horse, Your grand-grand-parents new media, No Signal.
Fountains are peculiar objects: We associate them with nature even though they are typically entirely artificial and man-made (unless you are living in Iceland of course).
Recently however, a fountain that wasn’t planned for emerged in California’s San Fernando Valley. An urban water pipe carrying purified recycled water, used for irrigation and industrial purpose, began leaking. The rupture sent water gushing in an immense column that towered over the roof of a nearby business.
Thousands of gallons went down the sewer before the next natural fountain was closed down more than three hours later.
Via BBC NEWS. Related: Datafountain – Money translated to water, Water shows when the heat is on. Thanks Tara.
