Smallist

Leave it to the Dutch to take the “trash” out of “trailer”. The Deseo is an adorable camper with all sorts of space-saving features, like a fold out table for the outside, a dinette that becomes a bed, a screened-in skylight, and a bracket for fitting your motorcycle right in the middle. A modular design allows the beds to be switched from bunks to a single, or a couch. The video is worth watching for its plastic fantastic sixties soundtrack.

Via apartment therapy.

Is there anything nanotubes can’t do? Scientists are looking at the possibility of miniature “coaxial” style nanotube cables for solar power collection. Remember how plants achieve near 100% efficiency through a quantum effect? It sounds like this is similar. Via Slashdot.

See the big, beautiful, ringed planet? That’s Saturn. See the indicated speck? That’s Earth.

Elsewhere in nanotube news, Nanoexa has announced 3kw / kg energy density in a lithium ion battery. The article is short on perspective with regard to that figure (usually energy density is measured in kilowatt hours, not kilowatts), but a helpful autobloggreen reader cites their press release as claiming “50% higher energy density than existing lithium ion cells.” Not bad! Here’s the press release (pdf).

Via autobloggreen.

An 18mm long strand of carbon nanotube? I’d hate to find one of these in my salad. However, they’re electrically conductive and have a lot of tensile strength. Some day a braid of these might get us the first space elevator. Via /.

A folding, portable bbq grill. Now if only the ensuing beer-belly would fold flat. Via Neatorama.

Are you down with the TPP? When I first saw this on trendhunter, I thought maybe personalized action figure technology was ready for the masses. Unfortunately, the Tiny Pocket People look a bit more 2-d than that. Still, I can think of a few good uses for these:

• Therapy sessions
• Voodoo
• Voodoo therapy sessions
• Miniature effigy for smaller mob gatherings
• Finally getting to fly the Millenium Falcon, if only in imagination land.

If you’ve got $425 to spend, you can get yourself in real molded plastic. A few companies do it; AndGor toys even promises to work miracles, if a deceased sculptee won’t cooperate with the need photo angles. And if it’s for a wedding rather than a funeral, herobuilders has a package for you.

A professor at Columbia recommends skyscraper farms for New York city, according to this New York magazine article. Now if I were King, I’d approve this on futuristic looks alone, Dr. Despommier (and as a side note, does his name mean “apple picker”?) reasons that his design could make a large city self-sufficient, generate power, and process city waste into fuel. 150 such skyscrapers could feed all of New York City, leaving vast areas of farmland to grow into forests, which would help to stabilize the environment. The skyscraper itself would be more-or-less carbon neutral, using non-edible plant matter, processed into pellets, to generate energy. It could even recycle restaurant waste.

Scientists have created a neural simulator the size of one half a mouse brain. It runs at 1/10th the speed, but that should still be enough to read and enjoy “Who moved my Cheese?”.

I was all set to put up a picture of Pinky and the Brain, but these guys got to the joke first.

Via BoingBoing.

This was on digg yesterday, but their server was getting digged to death. 300 calorie meals, all of which look substantial, balanced, and tasty. The pictures come from MyPhotoDiet. I think it works even better if you compare the properly-sized meal with an equivalent portion of junk food, as I’ve done below. Forgive the crappiness of the photoshops below; I have to go to a buffet.