I just came across this remarkable albeit slightly depressing story, especially during this upcoming holiday celebrating coupledom, about a lonely solitary whale somewhere out there in the big blue ocean. Tracked since 1992, this whale has been cruising the Pacific ocean emitting a song and call at around 52 hertz, which does not match any known whale species.

Team members and other experts have proposed a host of explanations for the whale sounds, among them that the animal is malformed or, most likely, is a hybrid of a blue whale and another species.

Ms. Daher said that as word of the paper has spread, she has gotten a host of e-mail messages, some from whale lovers lamenting the notion of a lonely heart of the cetacean world. Some messages have come from deaf people speculating that the whale might share their disability.

Keep your hopes up, whale buddy. As we humanfolk say, “There are plenty of fish in pond.” You can listen to the 52-hertz whale call here.

[Via]

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College students just love a good competition, whether between dorm buildings, campus organizations, or rival schools. You probably remember homecoming float contests, intramural sports, and big games with the cross-state team. Since 2001, Recyclemania has tried to capture that spirit of campus competitiveness, and apply it to reducing waste at colleges and universities.

In 2001, the competition to collect recyclables involved two schools: Ohio University, and Miami University of Ohio. By last year (as I noted in a post about Recyclemania 2009), more schools participated in this event than are in the NCAA’s Division I; all together, they collected 69.4 million pounds of recyclable and compostable materials. The 2010 Recyclemania season kicked off in mid-January, and will run for ten weeks (and finish up right alongside that other behemoth of college competition, the NCAA basketball tournament). 607 schools are participating this year

While students will get into the competition, no doubt, Recyclemania also helps participating schools identify their waste footprints, and determine strategies and tactics they can use to reduce it. In fact, not all schools compete: some choose to participate in a less formal “benchmark” division. College and universities in the competitive program can aim for recognition in several categories, including largest amount of recyclables collected per capita, largest trash reduction per capita, and highest recycling rates. Last year’s winners included Cal State – San Marcos, Rutgers, Bard College, and McNeese State University (from my home town of Lake Charles, Louisiana).

Who’ll come out on top this year? You can follow the rankings over the entire Recyclemania competition period online. You can also keep an eye out for videos from participating schools… there are already a few up for this year (one’s available above).

Participating in Recyclemania, or done so in the past? Let use know what you’re doing (or what you did)…

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If you read the New York Times blog “Abstract City,” then you know him by name. If you’ve ever looked at a cover of The New Yorker you’ve probably seen his work. And if you’ve done neither then perhaps you can at least appreciate when a bathroom is clearly marked “Men” or “Women;” If you do you share a fundamental principle with designer, illustrator and art director Christoph Niemann. Like a good comedian, Neimann’s deceptively simple designs have a way of presenting common knowledge in a new and interesting way. Of course, an intuitive sense of color and composition don’t hurt.

His approach to any project is equally straightforward and nothing, not even an ornery client can get him bent out of shape. In fact, listening to him speak you wonder if this guy gets frazzled by anything. But I suppose it’s that kind of clear thinking that produces work of equal clarity. His ability to sort through complex problems and information is as envious as it is refreshing. You can see him at work in Abstract City, or in Gestalten’s new release “Data Flow 2,” which is far more stimulating than its textbook title would suggest.

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In addition to the distinction of having two first names in her full name, Lisa Courtney also holds the Guiness World Record for the largest Pokemon collection in the world with 12,113 items of Pokemon merchandise that she has accumulated over the past 13 years. She is 21 years young. I wonder if she lists this in her resume.

[Via]

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Getting ready for New York Fashion Week?

Even if you are just a casual fan of the latest threads out there, take a look at our new series, CATWALK COUNTDOWN. It brings you inside the studios of 10 leading fashion designers as they gear up for their shows and presentations at New York Fashion Week.

See how classmates Lisa Mayock and Sophie Buhai began work on their inaugural collection — on the floor of their living room. “The initial idea was that we were going to have a barbecue,” Buhai recalls. “We were going to make a bunch of clothes and just have a fashion-show kegger.” Now you can see the Vena Cava threads on every cool “It” girl around town.

Watch all the episodes of CATWALK COUNTDOWN here.

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The New York Times collected some valentines written by or to famous New Yorkers. They are quite touching and eloquent, especially the poem that E.B. White wrote to his wife, Katharine Sergeant White. A former New Yorker editor, “in a penciled notation, Katharine recognized it as a rondeau, a French lyrical poem with an unusual rhyme scheme — “and a perfect one” at that.”

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Back in high school, my classmates and I noticed that our biology teacher was doing this neat pen-spinning hand trick while she was lecturing. Afterwards, we bugged her to teach us and for the next couple of weeks, we drove everyone nuts as we tried to learn this trick. We finally succeeded and we thought we were awesome. Now that I’ve seen this video of Hong Kong kids in an extremely competitive pen spinning competition, I feel decidedly unawesome because these kids are incredible. What they are able to do with a pen will make your head spin.

This was my favorite part of the video, when the interviewer asked, “Can you write with this pen?”

“Uh, no.”

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Ever found it odd that, generally, you have to pay for recycling service? After all, the materials you place in those blue bins are commodities that your recycling service will sell. You might argue that paying people a cut of the revenues generated from the sale of such materials could work better to increase recycling rates (though, in fairness, the prices for such materials are relatively low… though they have been rising).

Philadelphia-based Recyclebank was founded on this concept. While the company doesn’t actually pay people for recycling, it offers a rewards program similar to airline miles or credit card points. The idea’s caught on: since a 2004 pilot launch the company’s home town, Recyclebank now operates in nine states and the UK.

While this is a great concept for getting more people to recycle, it’s also focused on the last element of the mantra “reduce, reuse, recycle”… and that catchy maxim also represents a hierarchy. Recyclebank is now teaming up with online auction and sales site extraordinaire eBay to move up the chain, as it were, and offer rewards for reuse. eBay’s Green Team director Amy Skoczlas Cole thinks the partnership makes perfect sense:

“Thousands of eBay sellers have built successful businesses by recycling, re-using and re-selling products that already exist and may otherwise have ended up in landfills. Our relationship with RecycleBank offers an innovative way to encourage and reward green-conscious consumers who are looking for more sustainable ways to shop.”

eBay’s even commissioned research to examine the lighter environmental impact of purchasing used goods. According to the findings,

• Choosing a new-to-you blender saves 95% of the CO2 needed to produce a new one
• Selecting a refurbished smart phone saves the energy equivalent of driving 186 miles
• Choosing a classic, previously loved watch saves the energy equivalent of 39 days of refrigerator use

The partnership with Recyclebank seems to serve mainly to get people to join eBay’s Green Team: you earn 50 Recyclebank points for doing that. It will be interesting to see if this program broadens out more to offer rewards for buying used… seems like a logical next step, and a great incentive. The points can be used for Recyclebank-affiliated merchants, for eBay discounts, or even for donations to the Recyclebank Green Schools Program.

Seems like the beginning of a fruitful partnership… we’ll be interested to see where this goes. Are you a Recyclebank user, or an eBay junkie? Think rewarding people to reuse or recycle makes a lot of sense? Let us know what you think…

Image credit: eBay Green Team site

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45-Second Version (Yay!):

One-Minute Version (Boo!):

MOST ROMANTIC: Google’s “Parisian Love”
Who knew Google even had to advertise? Maybe they don’t; maybe they just can. And this simple yet elegant and emotionally powerful ad, which follows a love story via Google searches, only confirms why they are such a force to be reckoned with: they get what people want (in more ways than one).

MOST SEXIST: Dodge Charger’s “Man’s Last Stand”
Bridgestone’s “Your Tires or Your Life” came close to capturing this award (for it’s lame old joke that has a douchebag handing over his wife to a marauding band of scary-looking male outlaws in order to save his car’s beloved tires), but Dodge clinched it with their spot featuring a range of dead-behind-the-eyes husbands/boyfriends who have been beaten down by doing such emasculating and soul-crushing (read: considerate) tasks as putting the seat down and putting dirty underwear in the hamper and listening to their partners’ opinions — the horror, the horror! Well, because these brave yet broken men do all these selfless things, there is one thing they can — nay, will — be selfish about: the kind of car they drive. Gag.

FUNNIEST: CareerBuilder.com’s “Casual Friday”
And you thought your work environment was bad.

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Before the play begins the director walks on stage and explains a few things about the production to the audience. But because you’ve been prepped to expect that  “You’re Welcome: A cycle of bad plays,” the latest from the inimitable foursome at The Debate Society, will, no doubt, involve a few bad play gags, you go along with it. But then, after the director leaves the stage and comes back again and again to tell you just a few more specifics, like the fact that the play we’re about to see involves an imaginary door, a retractable knife and is bound to be very funny but the actors are professionals and our laughter won’t disturb them, you realize that this, the director’s back and forth, is the play. Which of course we already know since in the opening titles we were told that Play #1 is “The Director Ruins the Play.”

“A cycle of bad plays” can sort of be taken literally. It’s a series of short plays that riff off common pitfalls of “serious theatre,” which include everything from bad direction, bad writing and awesomely bad musical numbers, but in the hands of The Debate Society, the production itself is anything but bad. In one “playlet,” high school students perform the kind of awkwardly executed drunk driving PSA you might very well see at a school assembly, while “We Got a Fog Machine” features several smaller plays gone wrong after the fog machine breaks and a stage hand resorts to just saying “fog” whenever fog is supposed to appear. In a particularly fabulous string of bad dialogue, a woman reads from her diary: “July 31st. A fox came up to the car like a trained house pet. Lou said I’m the good kind of woman.” It’s the perfect parody of that brand of supposedly psychologically layered and revealing dialogue that is ultimately meaningless, stagey and downright bad.

The whole set up: the silly opening titles that get sillier with every screen, the way one short play transitions into the next and the meta-ness of the production itself immediately calls to mind Monty Python. Like the Python chaps, The Debate Society knows how to walk the line between high and low art, and they do it in such a way that even though you’re watching a mermaid with a gigantic dollar sign dance around the stage to cheesy Mexi-pop, it’s obvious the scene was written by a group of bright, highly imaginative and profoundly unique artists. While “You’re Welcome” is not as dramatic as some of The Debate Society’s other work, it still retains the same cleverness, the same precision of storytelling and the same astute observations of the weirdness of normal human behavior.

“You’re Welcome: A cycle of bad plays” at The Brick Theatre in Williamsburg, Brooklyn until February 27, 2010. Tickets $18.

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