NPR has an amazing interactive map of our power grid—the complicated mesh of power plants and transmission lines delivering juice to your house. This picture shows new proposed lines—it looks damn sad without them:

The map gives state-by-state breakdowns of sources of electricity—98 percent of West Virginia's power comes from coal, nearly a third of New York's is nuclear—and shows where power plants are, picturing them by the size of the output. The resulting map looks like the US has smallpox.

You really need to see this. And maybe turn down your AC just a little bit.

If this video doesn't bring a tear to your eyes and makes you smile for the rest of the day, you are a cold hearted bastard. Watch it from beginning to end—you won't regret it.

This cover of Stand By Me was recorded by completely unknown artists in a street virtual studio all around the world. It all started with a base track—vocals and guitar—recorded on the streets of Santa Monica, California, by a street musician called Roger Ridley. The base track was then taken to New Orleans, Louisiana, where Grandpa Elliott—a blind singer from the French Quarter—added vocals and harmonica while listening to Ridley's base track on headphones. In the same city, Washboard Chaz's added some metal percussion to it.

And from there, it just gets rock 'n' rolling bananas: The producers took the resulting mix all through Europe, Africa, and South America, adding new tracks with multiple instruments and vocals that were assembled in the final version you are seeing in this video. All done with a simple laptop and some microphones.

Playing For Change | Song Around The World "Stand By Me" from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

Here are a few more videos:

War/No More Trouble - Song Around The World from Playing For Change on Vimeo.

Chanda Mama from Playing For Change on Vimeo.

Link Here.

The godfather of car batteries talks about the birth of the electric car. By John E. Waters, as told to Alissa Walker.

John E. Waters knows a thing or two about batteries. He’s worked in the business for the past 25 years. Now, as CEO and president of Bright Automotive, he’d like to put all that work to good use—perfecting a 100-mpg hybrid. But first, we asked him to take a trip down memory lane, to a time when he was developing and producing the battery pack for GM’s ill-fated electric baby, the EV1.

“[In the early days of the electric car], there was this sense of wanting to save the planet, of wanting to make a product that did not fail because it was so revolutionary—a paradigm shift for the consumer. And a lot of that had to do with perfecting the range of the vehicle as compared to the gasoline internal-combustion engine.

“Today, the concerns are almost identical to the comments and concerns I heard back in 1992 about the state of the art of the battery. They were specifically referring to the lead-acid-battery technology of the time. How are we going to get 100 miles of the charge out of the acid-battery pack? How is it going to be affordable? How is the warranty going to work? How do you replace them? All the same issues that you hear today.

“When we tackled the problem, within two years, we developed a battery-pack product that met the requirements. It was my job to integrate that product. It was huge—maybe five feet long and four feet wide. The battery was so large and heavy—half the weight of the vehicle—that it affected everything about the car: the dynamics of the drive, the braking and handling, the shipping, the interiors, the structure—everything.

“The battery had full impact on every component on the vehicle. And so when you saw how that component impacted the entire vehicle, you begin to analyze back to first principles: car design, and what you are really trying to do. Our goal is to move human beings from point A to point B, in some kind of device. And so the heavier the device is, the more un-aerodynamic that device is, the more energy it’s going to take to move that device. It gave me great appreciation for efficiency and taking mass out of the vehicle to improve aerodynamics and the rolling resistance of the tires. The third generation [of that early battery] will be lithium-ion-based technology, which is kind of the last frontier of energy and batteries.

“Everyone’s got an opinion on it. I can just tell you as the battery guy for the EV1, I never had a customer complaint about range. Also, customers are so preconditioned—they know how far they are going to drive their vehicle on a daily basis. Let’s face it—something like 75 to 80 percent of Americans drive fewer than 90 miles a day. This has been seen as a challenge when it really isn’t.”

Top image: Bright Automotive is launching a “secret product” late this spring. This image is a rendering of the cleaner automotive future the company envisions.

via GOOD.

Rick DeVos, an heir to the Amway fortune, has launched a new, $250,000 art prize called…the ArtPrize. This time, it won’t be the rarefied aesthetic sensibilities of art critics deciding whether that all-black canvas is the product of genius or laziness. It’ll be the good people of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

From the Detroit Free Press:

“Potentially hundreds of artists will display works in a 3-square mile area in downtown Grand Rapids—from parks and bridges to bank lobbies, small businesses and traditional venues like museums.…

Rather than rely on a jury of art experts to pick the winners, the competition will be decided by members of the public, who will vote on cell phones, online, and other digital devices. Organizers say that the $250,000 first prize will be the world’s most lucrative visual arts award in the world.”

Part of the idea of fine art (especially the modern stuff) is that it’s so complex and refined that only experts can judge it—commoners like you and I just don’t have the palate to tell good from bad. The ArtPrize completely undermines that idea.

Certainly, for Andrew Keen and other critics who say the mob rule of new media is destroying culture, this must just represent another crumbling piliar of our civilization. But it will be fascinating to see how the public’s tastes differ from those of the aesthetes, and it’ll probably inspire more public interest in art.

In celebration of Earth Day, NASA presents images of Earth captured by cameras aboard the International Space Station. Traveling at an approximate speed of 17,500 miles per hour, the space station orbits Earth every 90 minutes from an altitude of approximately 220 miles, and can be seen from Earth with the naked eye. Its crew experiences 16 sunrises and sunsets each day.

Obscura Digital, the company behind the light show at Youtube's Symphony last week, has has used their propriety software to control a giant HD light show spread across multiple, synchronized 20k resolution projectors for a Mcafee ad. To get the image to look seamless, the software calculates distance and angle and surface shape of the building, compensating brightness, picture shift, and other variables. This sort of thing would normally take months to plan, but they set up this example in a matter of days, because their gear controllers are very flexible. Here are examples of their other work, including the iGoogle launch in NYC, which used almost 20 projectors, and the youtube symphony.

"Earth Day may fall later this week, but as far as former NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell and other UFO enthusiasts are concerned, the real story is happening elsewhere.

Mitchell, who was part of the 1971 Apollo 14 moon mission, asserted Monday that extraterrestrial life exists, and that the truth is being concealed by the U.S. and other governments."

Link to CNN Article.

Who is Mark Twain? from Flash Rosenberg on Vimeo.

Julia from HarperCollins UK sez, "We're publishing a book of previously unpublished pieces by Mark Twain called WHO IS MARK TWAIN? (UK, US) and Flash Rosenberg illustrated a section read by John Lithgow."

Who is Mark Twain, Harper Studio

Buy Who is Mark Twain?, UK

Buy Who is Mark Twain?, US

Machines that Almost Fall Over from Michael Kontopoulos on Vimeo.

Michael Kontopoulos made these wooden sculptures that hit themselves with a hammer and almost tip over. He calls it "a system of sculptures that is constantly on the brink of collapse. My intention was to capture and sustain the exact moment of impending catastrophe and endlessly repeat it."

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon. The following speech, revealed in 1999, was prepared by Nixon's then speechwriter, William Safire, to be used in the event of a disaster that would maroon the astronauts on the moon:

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man's search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind."

Link.

A guy named Danny MacAskill does some absolutely amazing hybrid street/trials biking in Edinburgh. Make sure you catch the treeride backflip at 3:06. Actually, just watch the whole thing.

Here is a great Infograph showing how much longer we will have various materials at different rates of consumption. Check out the full size over at New Scientist.

Great little interview of Jon Gertner, a New York Times Magazine writer. The world is now spending billions of dollars investigating the causes of climate change. Scientists are quickly putting together physical and biological experiments and projects, hoping for solutions and models that will show us how to slow warming and save the planet. But there's another body of work underway that's focused on the human brain. This research argues that climate change policy and solutions for global warming won't be worth much until we know how to influence the individual decisions that cause global warming.

This is a mesmerizing flash site. It makes me want to buy a Benz that much more. One of the best interactive sites I have seen.

Timescapes Timelapse: Learning to Fly from Tom @ Timescapes on Vimeo.

Pink Floyd's Learning to Fly may help this video but it is still incredibly mesmerizing. It was captured with a Canon 5D Mark II during winter and sprint 2009. You must get the 1080p video from here.

Bruno from Paul on Vimeo.

The video above is the first act of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra’s performance at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday, April 15. After selecting 96 musicians from more than 3,000 videos submitted to YouTube from around the world, the debut exemplifies how the Internet has revolutionized the way artists communicate with fans, and with each other.

Prior to the performance, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas told the audience:

“We’re meeting a lot of different worlds: the real time world, the online world and the experience of getting acquainted. For us it’s been something between a classical music summit conference and scout jamboree combined with speed dating.”

Hit the link to check out Moby's new music video. I have never really been a big fan of Moby, but this video makes me interested in his new album. You just have to love David Lynch. See for yourself.

Animal lover Steve Leonard explains the secret behind the spectacular footage of birds of prey in flight used in this short video. Take a flight with a Golden Eagle in Scotland with the help of the ultra lightweight animal camera. Great short video from BBC wildlife show Animal Camera. Link

Russian WW2 veteran is reunited with his tank, which has since been refashioned into a monument.

I think he has it down.

This is a great photo set with some of the best photos I have ever seen of the Aurora Borealis. The site also includes info on each photo and some description about how this occurs.

On of the greatest and most original stop motion videos I have seen in a while. My mind got a little blown.

Samuel Cockedey’s gorgeous “remanence : variance” was shot over the course of a year from different locations around Tokyo. I recommended clicking HD for this one.

Does this remind you of anyone? Almost the identical performance as Juquin Pheonix.

Link Here for HD Quality.

The Voca People is an international vocal theater performance that combines vocal sounds and an acapella singing with the art of modern beat-box. All vocals – no instruments.