Air Quality at the Olympics

Eastern China Air Pollution
(Image courtesy of NASA, 1999)

I'm sure that any of you who've been paying attention to some of the coverage regarding the upcoming Beijing Olympics have heard of the concerns there are about air pollution. There is a very telling graph that the UN published in their 2007 'state of the environment' piece that I'm going to try and dig up and put on here in a bit. For now though, the Wall Street Journal has a very interesting page up, cataloging the Air Pollution Index maintained by the Chinese Ministry for Environmental protection. Data from 2005 to present day is there and every so often a little blip on the graph links to a photo taken that day. Suffice to say, I fear for the athletes of Beijing.

The Index

The Wall Street Journal's China Blog

There is a little widget at the top right hand side of the page that gives you the daily air pollution index score.

Beijing is in the image above, trapped under that lovely layer of pollution. The image is linked to the NASA page it came from and you can get a more detailed description of the image there.

Radiohead - House of Cards Video

So Radiohead have come out with a new video for the song 'House of Cards off In Rainbows.
They've chosen to do things a bit different as the 'video', is not really a video at all in the traditional sense. They used a LIDAR system which scans in 360 degrees to build up 3D visualizations of the surrounding areas to 'shoot' this film...then they've obviously played around with the data in post production software to jazz it up some. The end product is quite something. There is a google page dedicated to the video, explaining how it was made in much greater detail, as well as allowing you to download the data generated to make your own visualisations.

The google page.

and the video:

Bert and Ernie Keep it Real

I ran into this clip earlier today and well, I think it speaks for itself.

And now for something completely Different: Summer Movies.

I wasn't too enthused with what I'd seen advertised to come out this summer. The Dark Knight, was the one exception to those observations. Hellboy II is actually getting quite good reviews and perhaps I shouldn't expect so little as it is the work of Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth). Thankfully I can now add another film to my list of films I must see. Pineapple Express is the new film by Seth Rogen and it looks amazing.

Check out the trailer for Pineapple Express here:

Art

Michael A. Salter has constructed sculptures of robots using excess polystyrene. Their proper name is, of course, styrobots (hehehe). His sight also features a number of other installations which seem pretty interesting. Enjoy.

http://michaelasalter.com/artwork/299343.html


PS - Beck's new album 'Modern Guilt' is out Tuesday.