Check it out here.

“We’re tired of the way the media portrays us as either abusive, career-driven, slovenly, or one of the myriad of other male stereotypes,” one married man complains to Dr. Helen Smith. She sympathizes.

"Akira" debuted as a manga strip twenty-six years ago, running for eight years in the Japanese magazine Young (It's been reprinted twice in the US, by Marvel Comics in the '90s, and Dark Horse in the beginning of this decade). The plot centers around Shotaro Kaneda, leader of motorcycle gang The Capsules, his psychic one-time best friend and now enemy, Tetsuo Shima, and eponymous character Akira, a cryogenically-frozen child whose destruction of Tokyo decades earlier started World War III and precipitated the creation of the hypermodern metropolis Neo-Tokyo.

From BBC News:

A material that is able to self-repair even when it is sliced in two has been invented by French researchers.

The as-yet-unnamed material - a form of artificial rubber - is made from vegetable oil and a component of urine.

This could have a huge impact commercially. I can think of three or four products that would benefit from this right off the top of my head: Tires (no more worrying about that pesky nail you just ran over), shoe soles (or hell, even whole shoes [no more resoling your shoes or worrying about you soles flapping around in the breeze]), the list goes on.

This marvel of technology has potential (was that a bit over the top?).

More here.

Where's the future we were promised we should have had by now, like fish bowl swimming pools, flying cars, and mining on the moon.

In the 1930s scientists were trying to come up with anti-gravity and flying cars-- now it's more than 50 years later and we're still waiting on hoverpads and personal air vehicles.

As a matter of fact, the only two things that were predicted by futurists that we actually got are the electronic home library, and robot warehouses where the bots fetch your orders. Sometimes futurism is more hopeful than predictive.

One such futurist was Arthur Radebaugh, who was also an illustrator who came up with many of the "world of tomorrow!" style ads that you'd see gracing the inside pages of magazines like Motor, Esquire, Fortune and Advertising Agency throughout the 1930s. He even coined the term "imagineering" back in 1947.

Here's an online exhibit of Radebaugh's art at the Palace of Culture called "The Future We Were Promised, where you'll see art like the picture above.

There might be some of you out there wondering why this blog keeps changing and rearranging.

The short answer (and the long answer for that fact) is that I'm not 100% satisfied with my blog layout.
I'm trying to make this the best blog I can. Hopefully it won't be much longer before I am truly satisfied.

So, I apologize for the "mess" and thank you for your patience.

Another excellent entry by our friends over at Wicked Theory.

From the Wicked Theory site:

We here at the Wicked Theory Institute have spent the last several months compiling endless data, crunching unfathomable number strings, charting numerous alternate realities and scouring this new fangled Instanet, to bring you a shockingly new, regular feature. We call it: The Big Bad List. No set number of entries (because this ain't Worldwide Pants), listed in no particular order (because "random is the new black") and mostly comprising our personal favorites (because we're narcissists).

A cartoon from the 50s that thinks it can predict the future...




Where the hell are the flying cars and super skyscrapers that they promised us?

The short film organization Future Shorts has launched its short film channel on Joost, the new free online television platform.

From FilmThreat.com:

Future Shorts is one of the world’s leading and most innovative short film labels. Since its inception in 2003 it has revolutionised the way in which short film is exhibited and distributed. The Future Shorts festival now operates in 25 countries and gives filmmakers the largest platform available to have their work seen around the world