Hasta La Ideas

Even if you don’t live in a hip neighborhood, art might be in the air. The designers behind the Kaalink pollution filter want to keep airborne carbon out of the atmosphere and back in your sketchbook. Their project, called Air-Ink, is a result of several years of research at MIT’s Media Lab, where the team investigated ways to harness and repurpose particulate matter caused by daily combustion. Even with required filters the world’s cars, stoves, and fires send out loads of extremely harmful pollutants that contribute to smog, environmental degradation, and poor health outcomes. Is it possible to reuse some of that mess before it hits the air?

After a lot of tinkering their solution was the Kaalink filter. It’s an add-on chamber that catches particulate leaving an exhaust pipe without creating dangerous back pressure. The unit catches carbon and other bits left over from incomplete combustion, the particles of which are just one or two micrometers across, and small enough to easily lodge in your lungs for nasty surprises later.

Taking the produced schmutz out of the filter, the team decided to strip out the carbon from the more harmful heavy metals, and convert it for creative use. The carbon is crushed, refined, and processed with traditional solvents to create a deep ink useful for illustration, lettering, and painting. 

The Air-Ink produced is freshly up on Kickstarter and already well over goal for a first production of markers, paints, and screen printing kits. The current campaign is offering 2mm, 15mm, 30mm and 50mm chisel and thin tip markers, as well as a 150ml screen printing ink set, with sights set on oil based paints, fabric paints, and weatherproof options in the future. 

Though the output is averaged, they estimate that going through 30ml of Air-Ink would use 45 minutes worth of pollution output. Bit vague metric, but that’s probably a bit of a gram saved from the city air and streets.

The ink and their markers are said to be safe, refillable, high-quality, and water resistant. While artists tend to have strong feelings about their material choices, they also tend to believe in creative problem solving, and these idealistic pens seem to have breathed some life into green material solutions.

Le graphiste Hongrois Réka Neszmélyi a réalisé pour le photographe Al’z Acs une magnifique carte de visite. Tout son caractère réside en revêtement métallisé dont les couleurs varient selon l’inclinaison. Sublimé par de larges bordures blanches et une élégante police signée Ádám Katyi.

Le photographe polonais Maciej Leszczynski s’est rendu à Chongqing, plus grande ville du sud-ouest de la Chine. Dans une série de clichés, il s’est focalisé que les jeux de lumières à la nuit tombante, eu coeur de la vieille ville. La lumière des néons se projetant sur les murs, les fenêtres éclairées, le tout enveloppé dans le drap du nuage de pollution, une collection d’images hors du temps.

I came across this intriguing design for a rotating small parts organizer in a 1948 issue of Popular Mechanics.

It would be nifty to see it wall-mounted, as the ad describes, though it doesn’t seem it would make much sense for it to be ceiling-mounted.

I did a quick search to see if these exist on the secondhand market, and found a photo of one in this Ithaca classified.

One thing I couldn’t figure out was how to lock it in place. These are presumably meant to hold hardware, which can be heavy, and a bin loaded up with carriage bolts is going to be a lot heavier than one loaded with wood screws and gravity would have its way. But then I found this one on eBay:

In the photo below we can see a wingnut on the end of one axis. The user presumably used this to lock it in position.

We can also see that at some point, two of the bins went missing or became damaged, and a previous owner replaced them with pine or fir dividers attached to hulls made from what looks to be veneer. (At first I thought they were sheet metal, but you can see grain.)

The 1948 ad up top indicates it’s designed for hobbyists. But this much older wooden version that I also found on eBay, dated 1882, is labeled as belonging to a hardware store.

There’s no guarantee it is, of course, but the fact that it’s patented and the organized numerical markings would indicate it was.

As for how it works, here we can see that knobs A are used to rotate it, while lever B locks it into place, presumably by registering an unseen protrusion into slots C.

I do wonder what it held. It seems obvious they were fasteners, with the first number indicating the fastener’s length; you’ll notice the first number for each bin corresponds with the distance between the dividers (i.e. the dividers get further apart from the “1 1/2” row to the “1 3/4” row and so on).

I figured the second number indicated the screw size number that we use today to indicate diameters (i.e. a #8 screw is 0.164″ in diameter, a #10 screw is 0.19″ in diameter and so on). So that the section saying “1 3/4 – 9″ would contain #9 screws that were 1 3/4” long.

However, something didn’t sit right here so I looked it up. While the case is clearly branded “1882,” ASME—the American Society of Mechanical Engineers—didn’t standardize screw dimensions until 1907, some 25 years after this case was patented. (Prior to that manufacturers used whatever dimensions they found convenient.) I suppose it’s possible that the designers of this case just happened to be using the dimensions and numbering convention that ASME eventually adopted.

Anyways, here’s the funny part. I spotted another of these cases on LiveAuctioneers.com:

It sold for $500 back in March of 2016. The one on the eBay listing above is currently selling for a whopping $6,400. 

Then I realized, by comparing the photos: They’re the exact same case.

I understand that the person who bought it for $500 had to pay for shipping and perhaps his/her own travel, but man, what a racket! That’s almost a 1,300% markup!

Quand le musée d’Histoire Naturel US ouvre les portes de ses coulisses au photographe Chip Clark, c’est une véritable caverne d’Ali Baba que l’artiste découvre. Ces collections impressionnantes ne sont pas sans rappeler la partie immergée de l’iceberg qui le constitue en réalité à plus de 90%. Des clichés qui dévoilent les ressources gigantesques et cachées dont dispose le musée.

The Department of Vertebrate Zoology’s wet collections of fish specimens preserved in alcohol, located at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History.

Botanical collections are displayed at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. Botany staff present are Dr. David Bruce Lellinger (left, front), Carol Kellof (right, middle), and Rusty Russell (left, back).

Mice from the Department of Vertebrate Zoology’s mammals collections are displayed at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History.

A presentation of entomology specimens arranged within one aisle of the Entomology Department compactor collection cabinets at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. Designed to illustrate the size and scope of the Entomology collection. May 9, 2006. Featured researchers: Dr. David Furth, Collections Manager; Dr. Ted Schultz, Research Entomologist; Dr. Jonathan Coddington, Senior Scientist; Patricia Gentili-Poole, Museum Technician.

Anthropological collections are displayed in Pod 1 at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Support Center in Suitland, Maryland.

The Botany Department Herbarium at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, displaying algae specimens, including coraline algae, wet specimens and the usual herbarium sheets. Featured researchers: Dr. James Norris (right, front), his research assistant Bob Sims (left, front), and associate researcher, Katie Norris (left, back).

Birds collections from the Department of Vertebrate Zoology are displayed at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. In the foreground is Roxie Laybourne, a feather identification expert.

Anthropological collections on display in Pod 4 (designed to house oversized objects) at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Support Center (MSC), located in Suitland, Maryland. Anthropology collections staff present. Panoramic image #7 of 7 at 26mm focal length.

A view of one part of the Paleontology collection in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Musuem of Natural History, arranged by the addition of representative specimens from other parts of the three floors of fossils in the East Wing. Staff: Dr. Scott Wing, Chairman of the Department of Paleontology.

An assortment of mineral specimens from the Department of Mineral Sciences’ collections are displayed in the storage vault known as the « Blue Room, » at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. Mineral Sciences staff present are (left) Paul Pohwat, Collections Manager of Minerals, and (right) Russell Feather, Collections Manager of Gems.

Collections from the Department of Invertebrate Zoology are displayed at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. Invertebrate Zoology Staff present: Paul Greenhall, Robert Hershler, Ellen Strong, Jerry Harasewych, and Linda Cole.

Whale skeletons from the Department of Vertebrate Zoology’s marine mammals collections are displayed in storage at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Support Center (MSC), located in Suitland, Maryland.