eardrumbuzz radio weblog

Sat, 14 May 2005 16:58:41 GMT

Rebuffing Bush, 132 Mayors Embrace Kyoto Rules.
Greg Nickels of Seattle and 131 other likeminded mayors have joined a bipartisan coalition to fight global warming on the local level. By By ELI SANDERS. [NYT > National]

Thu, 24 Mar 2005 18:55:10 GMT

Rock'em Sock'em Robots. The Marvin Glass toy cartoons never end at Bedazzled! This time, Spike has made available the commercial for Rock'em Sock'em Robots. A great commercial for a great toy.
Link [Boing Boing]

Sun, 06 Mar 2005 21:05:49 GMT

Honda Numo Hybrid Scooter.

I want a scooter. There, I've said it. New York might be one of the more scooter-friendly cities in the US, but I'm still going to look like Grimace doing a hand-stand from behind. Still, if Honda ever decides to commercialize this Numo gasoline/electric hybrid prototype, I would stoically face down the jeers and stares of smaller New Yorkers, as I'd use the money I'd save in gas to purchase grenades.

Prototype: Honda Hybrid Scooter [TreeHugger]

[Gizmodo]

Wed, 02 Mar 2005 20:23:27 GMT

The Couch Potato Tormentor.

You remember the TV-B-Gone, don’t you? Anonymously turn off any TV, just like that? Well, we didn’t think you could get a product much more amazing and enjoyable (and simultaneously obnoxious) than that, but the Couch Potato Tormentor may very well take the cake. Instead of just turning your TV off, it randomly changes the channel, or screws with the CD or DVD currently playing, or whatever. The best part is that you don’t even have to be there—once it’s programmed you can just leave it lying nearby and the Couch Potato Tormentor will just mess with your TV at random intervals.

[Engadget]

Tue, 14 Dec 2004 23:34:04 GMT

Idle hands.
Mark Slouka wrote an amazing essay for the November issue of Harper's Magazine called "Quitting The Paint Factory: On the Virtues of Idleness." It's about the beauty of doing nothing, and the fight against those who would deny us one of life's greatest pleasures:

Idleness is not just a psychological necessity, requisite to the construction of a complete human being; it constitutes as well a kind of political space, a space as necessary to the workings of an actual democracy as, say, a free press. How does it do this? By allowing us time to figure out who we are, and what we believe; by allowing us time to consider what is unjust, and what we might do about it. By giving the inner life (in whose precincts we are most ourselves) its due. Which is precisely what makes idleness dangerous. All manner of things can grow out of that fallow soil. Not for nothing did our mothers grow suspicious when we had "too much time on our hands." They knew we might be up to something. And not for nothing did we whisper to each other, when we were up to something, "Quick, look busy."

Mother knew instinctively what the keepers of the castles have always known: that trouble – the kind that might threaten the symmetry of a well-ordered garden – needs time to take root. Take away the time, therefore, and you choke off the problem before it begins. Obedience reigns, the plow stays in the furrow; things proceed as they must. Which raises an uncomfortable question: Could the Church of Work – which today has Americans aspiring to sleep deprivation the way they once aspired to a personal knowledge of God – be, at base, an anti-democratic force? Well, yes. James Russell Lowell, that nineteenth-century workhorse, summed it all up quite neatly: "There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business."

[Boing Boing]

Thu, 02 Dec 2004 18:47:42 GMT

Burton / R.E.D. Audio HiFi Helmet.

Burton’s new snowboarding helmet with a built in audio system and an ear clip design that lets those bass notes boom right where you’ll feel’em might be one of the best ways you can find to spend $150 bucks. A mute button and an emergency-disconnect plug means you could also wear this baby in the real world, like on your bicycle, and still hear what bums were shouting at you.
[Cool Hunting]