Friday Finds 7.10.09

Jordan: Share Some Candy

Such good scrolling here on Share Some Candy! This site is chock full of tasty inspiration and sweet treats for the eyes, including cool design (like the illustration by Betony May above), architecture, art, furniture, and lots more. Many sites round up neat web finds, but this one is really well curated and a true visual feast. Add it to your Google reader!

Aaron: Japanese eManhole Covers

Vintage Americana, particularly when it comes to clothes; the packaging of everyday objects; and all forms of cosplay—there's already a formidable list of things the Japanese are far better at than we, though let's add another to it: manhole covers. This week I was mesmerized by a post on The David Report on the strange and beautiful Japanese practice of deftly decorating their manhole covers. Call it useful graffiti or one more chance to beautify your urban space, but either way walking the streets would be just a tick more enticing if we followed suit.

Aaron: Dinner Party Download

Though I was down in LA last week, the Southern California public radio scene is--for this San Franciscan, anyway--largely a web-based affair. But instead of prattling on about "Morning Becomes Eclectic" I'll rhapsodize about my new favorite show, "The Dinner Party Download." Hosts Brendan and Rico are sharp guys whose bi-weekly dose of wit, wisdom and their take on the arts, food, ideas and timely ephemera should be de rigeur listening. I tuned in, via iTunes, for their recent interview with Alain de Botton, whose book The Architecture of Happiness I read earlier this year. In this episode de Botton discusses his newest book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work and we get a history lesson on perhaps the most American of poems: Casey at the Bat. Design figures into the show from time to time--like this episode, featuring a spot on restaurant design--but as a kind of zeitgeist barometer, "The Dinner Party Download" can't be beat. Great show, funny guys, fifteen minutes of smart.

Tiffany: Solar-Powered Green Pod by Penny Farthings

As someone who recently returned from a semester in Copenhagen happily bicycling to class every morning, any news of bicycle initiatives in car-dominated countries makes me giddy with happiness. I first heard about Green Pod this week, which is a multi-use bike parking station developed in Australia and outfitted with changing rooms, showers, lockers, and room for ten bikes—all in the space of one car's parking spot. (One of the most discouraging issues about bike-commuting is the 'getting sweaty' excuse.) Personally, I am planning to start biking to Dwell next week, and as a consistently ranked top ten cycling city in the world, San Francisco might want to take some cues from Penny Farthings! via TreeHugger.

Amanda: Sophie Gerrard's E-Wasteland Photo Essay

London–based photographer Sophie Gerrard's sobering—yet oddly lovely—collection of images depict India's growing electronic waste situation. Each year, tons and tons of old cell phones, computer moniters, cameras, and batteries are illegally shipped to developing countries for "recycling". Once there, the dumped equipment is submerged in hydrochloric acid in order to harvest the valuable metals inside. Gerrard's haunting photographs of rickety wire piles, towers of discarded parts, and the murky chemical pools that collect on the streets poignantly underscore an increasingly toxic problem. via Boing Boing.