Email from a friend in South Korea during the 2002 World Cup:

“The new national color of Korea is red. It used to be that red stands for communists in Korea and therefore, it’s a taboo color. We used to color communists in red in all the anti-North-Korean posters. When I was young, I even thought that communists had red faces. All of sudden, red became the color for Korean soccer, thanks to ‘Red Devil,’ the non-profit national soccer cheering association. The streets are filled with people wearing red T-shirts with ‘The Reds’ writing. I guess red is no longer a taboo.”

“GAIA is an expanding international alliance of individuals, non-governmental organization, community-based organizations, academics and others working to end the incineration of all forms of waste and to promote sustainable waste prevention and discard management practices. Since GAIA members are committed both to ending incineration and to promoting alternative safe, economical and just discard management systems, the name GAIA represents both a Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance and a Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives.”

“This is the story of brick producers and their families in Eastern Sudan, living in a context where brick production traditionally is in the hands of middle-class businessmen, who reap the main profits and pay little to the workers. [Intermediate Technology Development Group’s] project interventions gave support to a group of workers from the peri-urban village of Shambob to manage their own brick enterprise. Technological capacity-building aimed to improve brick quality, increase energy efficiency, and establish production in order to meet the demand of urban markets. The establishment of a formal co-operative assisted in small enterprise development. The significant rise in incomes, increased asset base and improved linkages with local markets and public sector bodies, has enabled the members of Shambob community to establish a primary school and improved health services. As relationships and development interventions have broadened women in the village have become co-operative members, acquired donkey carts and are now making an income from transporting and selling water.”

The Electric Shoe Company is working on capturing electrical power generated by walking feet. Quoth the BBC:

“A British team have invented a pair of walking boots which could be used to power mobile phones, personal stereos and other electrical equipment. The shoes were invented by Dr Jim Gilbert, a lecturer in engineering at Hull University, who was asked to develop an idea by Trevor Baylis, the inventor of the clockwork radio.”

Says Wired: Testing two prototypes in the desert,

“Baylis is wearing a pair of experimental boots with soles made from a piezoelectric material, which generates high voltages of electricity when compressed. A companion, John Grantham, an engineer with Texon International, is wearing boots with a tiny dynamo built into the heel. Each time the heel hits the ground, the dynamo spins, generating a small trickle of current.”

In 1998, John Brockman asked a select group of scientific thinkers, “What is the most important invention in the past two thousand years?” Find out.

The mission of the Community Mapping Assistance Project is:

“to strengthen nonprofit, philanthropic, and public service organizations by providing affordable access to computer mapping and other data visualization technologies. We launched CMAP in 1997 as a venture of the New York Public Interest Research Group Fund, Inc. (NYPIRG), New York State’s largest environmental and consumer research and advocacy organization.CMAP helps further NYPIRG’s goals of helping to inform the general public concerning topics such as consumer protection, social justice, the environment, and government reform. CMAP has provided mapping services since 1997 to more than 250 organizations, helping these groups to educate policymakers, board members, and the media; illustrate reports and outreach materials; secure funding; and provide interactive access to information about health care, the environment, transit, education, and more over the Internet.”

“The Netherlands is struggling with a vast manure surplus. Although a small country, we have an enormous livestock industry and a correspondingly huge dung mountain.” So Andreas Muller, of Droog Design, created a package for tulip bulbs is made from compressed cattle dung. “The interesting thing about this packaging is that it eats into the surplus and acts as a fertilizer at the same time.” Check out the sculpted gourds, too, on o2.org.

The aim of the Ashden Award is:

“to support a project that will provide support to a rural community in a developing country, in a way that alleviates poverty and improves the quality of life, while remaining fully responsive to existing cultural values. The project would need to provide an energy source either for income-generating or agricultural activities or for improving educational or healthcare facilities. The project should have an exemplary value, that could encourage the use of environmentally-friendly, sustainable sources of energy in similar contexts.”

Check out some winning projects.

Public Lettering: A Walk in Central London “is based on a walk by Phil Baines for his graphic design students which was then written up for the 1997 ATypI conference. The text has been updated and expanded to include other examples. This walk concentrates on larger examples of public lettering and doesn’t mention incidentals — stop—cocks, manholes, dates on buildings, builders marks, &c — of which there is much en route.”

Found via xblog.

Stegan Landsberger collects Chinese propaganda posters. From the heroic to the bizarre, his collection is extensive.

Found via Metafilter.