Guest Thinkers — October 18, 2010

Car-Cycle Rack: Reclaiming Parking Space for Bikes

A bike-sharing programs and cycling infrastructure continue to slowly gain traction in cities, it often becomes a matter of making physical room for the two-wheel lifestyle and reclaiming urban space from the grip of concrete and cars. Bulgarian designer Ilian Milinov has an unorthodox solution: Car-Cycle Rack, car-shaped bike rack that transforms a single car parking space into 15 spots for bikes.

Part design solution, part political statement, the concept was a finalist at the IIDA 2010 global design competition and aptly reflects this year’s competition theme of “Green Heart” – a call for using design as a marriage of sustainability and civic joy.

images via designboom

Maria Popova is the editor of Brain Pickings, a curated inventory of miscellaneous interestingness. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Magazine, Design Observer and Huffington Post, and spends a shameful amount of time on Twitter.

a computer generated image of a human brain.

Thinking

The great free will debate featuring Michio Kaku and Steven Pinker

Who — or what — really controls your mind?

Building destroyed by the Halifax Explosion. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

The Past

The largest accidental explosion of all time

More than a century ago, Halifax suffered an accidental blast one-fifth the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

a collage of photos of a man with a hat and a book.

High Culture

6 great books with wildly unreliable narrators

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a group of five matches on a pink background.

The Well

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7 min

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with

Laurie Santos

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If you can identify a foreground star, the spike patterns are a dead giveaway as to whether it’s a JWST image or any other observatory.

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