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.”

“The ‘Fighting Pencil,’ a group of graphic artists and poets, started as a real fighting unit during the war with Finland in 1939. Artists B. Semyonov, V. Galba and others, together with poet E. Ruzhanski, created the first poster-broadsheet for the troops at the front, targeting their satire against the enemy and its allies. Later, during the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany (World War II), more posters were made calling for defense of the Motherland, portraying heroic deeds of soldiers, inspiring courage and encouraging hatred toward the enemy. After the war, the ‘Fighting Pencil’ shifted its satire to ‘opening the boils on the body of Soviet society’ Their targets now were the vices of bureaucracy—negligence and abuse, red tape and indifference to clients, corruption and incompetence. They also addressed ‘negative phenomena’ encountered in the everyday behaviors of ordinary people, such as alcoholism, abuse at the workplace, family violence, and environmental pollution.”

Found via coudal partners.

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.

“For nearly 55 years, the Bulletin [of the Atomic Scientists] clock (a.k.a. the ‘Doomsday Clock’) has been the world’s most recognizable symbol of nuclear danger. The first representation of the clock was produced in 1947, when artist Martyl Langsdorf, the wife of a physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, was asked by magazine co-founder Hyman Goldsmith to design a cover for the June issue.... This simple design captured readers’ imaginations, evoking both the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of military attack—the countdown to zero hour.... The idea of moving the minute hand came later, in 1949, as a way to dramatize the magazine’s response to world events.”

See the current time.

“Photographs can lie. They certainly do in the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1953, the years of Joseph Stalin’s dictatorial rule. Stalin’s agents routinely arrest and kill as ‘enemies of the people’ anyone who disagrees with his politics. Communist Party workers then try to remove any trace of these people from the photographic archives, and so from the media. The Commissar Vanishes exhibition explores this censored history.”

Found via American Samizdat.

A handbag depicting New York’s September 11 terrorist attack has been slammed as insensitive by the family of an Australian victim. The $159 handbag, being sold by the Melbourne fashion chain Quick Brown Fox, is almost sold out.... Quick Brown Fox owner Tess Reeves said she had bought the bags in Beijing. “I thought they were an artistic interpretation of what is a tragic event,” she said. “They are the sort of thing high fashion would do. Thousands are being shipped to Europe every day. “It’s not necessarily a negative thing and, as with all tragedies, time heals. In time it won’t be as controversial.” See The Australian.

Found via The Guardian.