Decole sewing kit with microchipped cactus — very technocuddly
Officials at Saguaro National Park in Arizona are embedding microchips in thousands of Saguaro cacti because bootleggers, landscapers and homeowners are stealing them. The giant cacti, which can grow up to 50 feet, can sell for $1,000 on the green market. The cacti is so vital to the culture of the area around Saguaro Nation Park, that local school children have a new playground chant:
Like a pin, push it in!
Cactus in your eye!
Don’t cry!
Will be fixed
with a microchip!

We admit to being bewitched by Dubai’s manmade islands. Can you blame us, when they’re in the shape of poetic palm trees and the world? Now Time Magazine names as best invention of the year Google’s floating data centers powered completely by wind turbines and wave generators. Wonder if wearing a Mer-chan binary tee will get you a visitor’s pass to a floating data dream vacation? Or will it feel like Island of Lost Geeks? To learn their language (and understand the title of this post), check out this comic on binary counting.

That’s what park rangers are telling saguaro cacti when they embed microchips into the prickly plants. A rash of saguaro-nappings has been spreading across Arizona as landscapers steal the stately cacti and haul them away for personal use. The microchips will alert ranges whenever a cactus is one the move, and help return them to their original homes. And Mer-chan has the perfect training exercise: practice the pincushion cactus in our desert-theme sewing box.

A park ranger helps a cactus update its Facebook page

The man with a geodesic mind.

The Whitney in New York currently has an exhibit dedicated to Buckminster Fuller entitled Starting with the Universe. Bucky’s “anticipatory design science” planed each new invention 50-100 years ahead of its time. So we are just now beginning to see if he was correct, and it will be another 40 years before we know for sure. To learn more about Fuller’s geometry, see A Fuller Explanation by Amy Edmondson. The entire book has been online since 1997 … which, at the time, was future thinking. Let’s do the jitterbug!

The Supreme Court upholds an appellate ruling that District of Columbia’s 32-year-old handgun ban is unconstitutional. Read the pdf of the District of Columbia v. Heller decision — thanks, SCOTUSBlog!

In the meantime, check out Melt Guns Into Art’s photostream, where guns are repurposed into the art. We like the bike rack made with 75 semi-automatics and installed in front of San Francisco’s City Hall.

+continue reading Supreme Court Rules Against D.C. Handgun Ban+