Real-time Roxby

When I was researching designer toys for a story, I came across these guys. 35-year-old craftsman Takeji Nakagawa of Nagano, Japan, makes these futuristic robots, spaceships and spacemen out of maple, walnut, cherry and teak. His Take-g Toys also makes block sets and smaller zoo animals made of ash, teak and keyaki (an elm-related Japanese tree.) Since the larger “sculptures” are sold at gallery exhibits, Nakagawa stresses that they aren’t to be played with. Just like any designer toy, its goal is to sit in your home, at your desk in a display case, and inspire you with a dose of nostalgia and modern design.

The intricate marquetry-type work is called yosegi-mokuzougan (joined wooden block construction.) The beautiful patterns in colour, grain and texture is created in the same way as parquet inlaying which my great-grandfather did with coffee table surfaces. If only he had followed Nakagawa’s lead. A 15-piece children’s blocks set costs 21,000 yen ($211 Canadian.) A set of ten small animals costs 42,000 yen ($422.) The spectacular large pieces like Huujin and Raijin, Wind Person (7 Machine) and Thunder Person (8 Machine,) stand nearly 26 inches and 16 inches respectively and can fetch up to $6000.

It’s not often that you find handmade crafts that make you smile, pull you out of your daily grind. So, today I’m starting the Roxby Relief fund. It’ll be a lot easier to save up for Wind and Thunder Persons or the smooth and spacey 9 Machine (above) than spend the tuition for carpentry school and take all those ugly math courses. Donations are welcome. In yen, please.

Labels: design, fun, toys

Gulp. Scientists make something that will eat the Earth.

If there’s one thing all 6.6 billion of us can relate to, it’s worrying. Even Buddhist monks worry (thanks to China and its Olympic clean-up program.) We have our small things – bills, the in-laws’ weekend visit, the dreaded open fly – and there are our bigger worries – Armageddon, super comets, World War III, positive pregnancy tests and more bills. You can file the Earth becoming a black hole and eating itself into your latter category.

A Spaniard and American Walter Wagner have filed court documents to stop a group of international scientists in Switzerland who are about to turn on the Large Hardron Collider (LHC,) a mean-looking 27-kilometre long particle collider which will smash protons into each other “to recreate conditions that resemble what the universe might have been like in the milliseconds after the Big Bang.” The result? Black holes.

The worry is that by creating a universe, although in miniature, black holes will be born. What does that mean for us? Any-sized black hole will consume all matter (including light) around it, meaning that the Earth could completely consume itself in a century.

"A black hole we could make at the LHC would only consume a tiny fraction of a gram of matter from Earth. There's no possibility of causing any damage to the Earth," said Robert McPherson, a University of Victoria physics professor who is working on the project.

Although McPherson assures us that any black hole will deteriorate and disappear quickly, he’s still going to make a black hole that will eat as much as it can.

It’s a pretty helpless and stark situation, a mini black hole that slowly swallows Switzerland street-by-street, bank-by-bank. Soon, Europe would be sucked into the void as we all desperately search for a space shuttle off the planet. Bills would finally be the least of our concerns, until we get the shuttle ride invoice in the mail. And I’m sure rent on Mars will be higher than anything in your current neighbourhood. Although, a black hole hangin' in orbit, PacMan-ing the Solar System, will probably depreciate whatever property you find. Cue worrying now.

Source

Labels: bills, black hole, Earth, science, space, worry