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In the 40 years that humans have been traveling into space, the suits they wear have changed very little. The bulky, gas-pressurized outfits give astronauts a bubble of protection, but their significant mass and the pressure itself severely limit mobility.

Dava Newman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at MIT, wants to change that.

Newman is working on a sleek, advanced suit designed to allow superior mobility when humans eventually reach Mars or return to the moon. Her spandex and nylon BioSuit is not your grandfather's spacesuit--think more Spiderman, less John Glenn.

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John Howard started Megalomaniac Wines as a retirement project. It's a daring new venture that marks a turning point in the evolution of Niagara's hyperconservative wine industry. The implicit message: We're finally mature and confident enough not to take ourselves so seriously. At least that's Mr. Howard's megalomaniacal hope.

With names as outlandish as Eccentric Savagnin, Contrarian Sauvignon Blanc, Narcissist Riesling and SonOfaBitch Pinot Noir, it is obvious this company isn't afraid to take risks.

Mr. Howard's silent partner in the concept is Bernie Hadley-Beauregard, founder and principal of Brandever Strategy Inc., the Vancouver-based design firm known for its award-winning, and revenue-energizing, makeovers of numerous B.C. properties including Blasted Church, Laughing Stock and Dirty Laundry.

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Visit Megalomaniac Wines
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Introducing Coloroot, the world's first online color community!

Offering the world's most comprehensive and credible color knowledge exchange, Coloroot attracts color, design and business professionals who meet to discuss, access and showcase their color views, news, insights, expertise and queries.

Coloroot's extensive library and database of color articles, and its engaged community of color professionals, makes it the go-to site for supporting product, brand and environment color design and business decisions.

Visit the website
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David Pogue, the weekly personal-technology columnist for the New York Times, ditches his old cellphone for the iPhone in this sing-a-long sequel.

Watch the video
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Visit David Pogue's website
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Toronto is in the midst of a cultural renaissance with a number of large-scale cultural projects underway including the completed Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art and the ongoing transformation at the Art Gallery of Ontario. A remarkable but smaller scale endeavor is Artscape's Green Arts Barns project; an arts and environmental convergence centre for the local community.

The Green Arts Project is transforming the old TTC streetcar bars on Whychwood into a multi-use community centre. Festival space, 15 studios, 26 live-work apartments for artists, and office facilities for 12 cultural organizations will fill the 57,000 square foot building.

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Visit Artscape
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Tokyo's neon splashed, Akihabara district, or Electric Town is what sociologists are calling an urban first -- a ghetto of geeks. A subculture of social misfits obsessed with electronic role-playing games, manga comics and Japanese animation, they began gathering in Akihabara in the late 1990s, lured by the district's proliferation of electronics retailers and stores selling everything you would need to build your own computer.

Maligned and shunned by mainstream society, here they stayed, their tastes and habits transforming the district. On streets once packed with housewives or couples shopping for refrigerators and microwave ovens, hundreds of thousands of nerds -- mostly men between about 18 and 45 -- now wander through the area's multi-story comic warehouses and elaborate game arcades.

Sociologists and urban planners compare the phenomenon to ethnic and social enclaves such as New York's Chinatown or San Francisco's gay Castro district, born of a blend of discrimination and shared cultural cues. Japanese geeks are outcasts in a society known for its rigid social norms. But their culture has gone mainstream.

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The above photo depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes.

"Running the Numbers," is Von Lintel Gallery's first solo exhibit of photographic works by Chris Jordan. This series focuses on contemporary American culture through the unassailable lens of statistics.
Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on.

This project visually examines vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs.

If you happen to be in New York from June 14th to the end of July, don't miss this exhibit.

Visit Chris Jordan's site:
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Visit Von Lintel Gallery
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Swedish vodka brand Absolut has unveiled a new range called Absolut 100, with packaging and identity by Pearlfisher.

Developed for the duty free and travel retail market, the vodka's look uses a minimal, masculine color palette of semi-opaque black glass, with chrome typography contrasted with grey lettering.

The design aims to convey "strength through masculinity and exclusivity", ensuring that there is no confusion among the flavored vodkas in the market.

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Visit the Absolut Vodka site
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