6k Gray Days

Naomi Campbell’s New House Shaped like the Eye of Horus at Inhabitat

If the world comes to an end, model Naomi Campbell and her nearest and dearest will have no trouble surviving in this 25 roomed eco-home. Designed by and a birthday gift from one of our favorite new architects Luis de Garrido, the glass domed house is completely energy and water self-sufficient and features an amazing indoor landscaped terrace. Everything about this house is a dream: its comfortable microclimate, its constant flow of air, light and heat when necessary, its superior landscaping, and of course the fact that it was built on the Isla Playa de Cleopatra in Turkey (notice the Egyptian theme.)

A Future for Drones: Automated Killing on The Washington Post

The demonstration laid the groundwork for scientific advances that would allow drones to search for a human target and then make an identification based on facial-recognition or other software. Once a match was made, a drone could launch a missile to kill the target.

(Image:Georgia Tech Research Institute. Alberto Cuadra and Peter Finn/The Washington Post. Published on September 19, 2011, 10:39 p.m)

Interview with Scott Walker on Dazed Digital

For the last couple of decades, Scott Walker’s unsettling, experimental and occasionally downright disturbing music has drawn on such diverse narrative sources as Elvis Presley’s stillborn twin brother, the films of Ingmar Bergman, and the public execution of Mussolini’s lover. For one track on his 2006 masterpiece 
The Drift, his long-suffering percussionist was even made to pummel the side of a piece of pork to get just the disquieting, meaty thud that the composer could hear in his head.

D&C: Did you feel that the 2006 documentary 30th Century Man was an accurate portrayal of yourself? As a private individual, what made you agree to be the subject of a major film?

Scott Walker: I’ve never seen it. Couldn’t bear staring at my mug for that long. I agreed because Stephan Kijak is very persuasive, and I was impressed with his previous work. Also my management kept pestering and reminding me (as if I needed reminding) that I could die at any time, and only 
a very few would have heard of me, or my work.

Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 Tweeted via John Campbell Diary on Pasthorizonspr

RBS Group Archives is using Twitter to bring a unique account of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion to life. From today, they will tweet diary entries from John Campbell, the cashier in charge of Royal Bank of Scotland during the Jacobite uprising. His diary records how he paid the rebels in gold from reserves held in Edinburgh Castle and the first tweet will be his diary entry from 14 September 1745, the day he took the bank’s valuables to the Castle in anticipation of the Jacobites arrival in the city.

Twitter Link: John of the Bank

John Campbell joined the staff of The Royal Bank of Scotland at its foundation in 1727. In 1745, he became its cashier (a post equivalent to today’s CEO). It was quite a moment to take on the top job. This was the year of the famous Jacobite rising, and his first few months as cashier saw him juggling political factions, liaising with soldiers and politicians and protecting his bank under siege conditions. At a time like this, normal public order was in turmoil, and property at risk. Rebels and authorities alike threatened extreme action, and it was hard to know which of many perils to take most seriously.

For Campbell, the events of the ‘45 culminated in a long walk up Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, waving a white flag to avoid being shot, to retrieve Bank gold from the Castle vaults. He risked life and limb for The Royal Bank of Scotland, and this diary tells his story.

Those Crazy Italians put Scientists on Trial for Earthquake Prediction at Scientific American

Six Italian scientists and one government official are set to go to trial today in Italy (Sept. 20) on charges of manslaughter for not warning the public aggressively enough of an impending earthquake that killed more than 300 people in 2009.

10 Insane Space-Saving Chinese Bike Couriers on Dornob

French photographer Alain Delorme’s Totems series is a vivid and colorful documentary of bicycle-based object transportation … and perhaps a prototype for moving (or building) in a world without codes or regulations.

Graffiti in Slovakia from Unruth

Artist I Like: The Stencil work of David Soukup

Photos from Sakhalin on Riowang Blog

The Sakhalin Island near the Far Eastern coast of Russia was inhabited until the 19th century only by its ancient natives: the Nivkhs in the north and the Ainus to the south, which also shows that, despite being an island, it had close relationship with the nearby regions: the Nivkhs wandered in from the already mentioned Amur region, where a part of them is still living (they also figure in The tales of Amur River), while the Ainus live in the neighboring Hokkaido province of Japan. The island also got its name from the Amur river – called in Manzhu Sahaliyan, Black River – as it lies opposite of the river’s mouth.