Talking about South Africa... Die Antwoord!

Unfortunately I do not know a lot about South Africa, the next soccer world cup will be there, I know that District 9 was shot there (awesome movie!). That's pretty much all I know, until browsing Reddit I stumbled upon something rare and refreshing: Die Antword. Who or what is? It's a trio of Zef-Rap from Cape Town who define their product as a fusion of many cultures in one. They are Ninja (lead vocal), Yo-Landi Vi$$er and DJ Hi-tek, their style is something that you can rarely see because the way their rhymes are is in a total different English.

Yo Landi Vi$$y on the left and Ninja on the right

Lead singer Ninja has a solid hip-hop background that goes back several years, this including his changing persona throughout his professional career. Ninja is a troubled character and violent figure, his performances are key to the role as in 2009 they all came together under one band and officially formed Die Antwoord which means "The answer" (in Afrkaans language).

From left to right: Dj Hi-tek, Yo Landi Vi$$y and Ninja

The band is scheduled for an European tour in April 2010 touching base in France, Belgium , UK and the Netherland; also a US tour will fall in the same year. A small but thick fan-base is developing outside Africa, the most famous song "Enter the Ninja" between 2009 and 2010 received the viral effect with the very original video  that presents the band. Zef is a very loose translation of being a "Redneck", and you can see some similarities in the way the trio is dressed and the slang used in their lyrics which sometimes reminds us of the southern US states.

Their fashion is a blend of white-trash with glam along with a sprinkle of hip-hop, especially the blings with heavy golden chains strapped on their neck with even bigger dices ornaments. They are nasty and they look menacing, they are weired like their sound and lyrics, but they are something fresh because they come as raw as they are with little or no fancy wardrobe like big mansions on the background or cheesy Lamborghini interiors.


Enter the Ninja

Jou ma se Poes in 'n fishpaste jar

Verner Panton and the next-gen designer with 'Visiona2'

When in the 60s the world saw a radical rethinking and reshape it came in all aspects of life, from ideas to art, from music, to politics. Colors ans shapes back then were the blueprints of today. What was important in those days was the self expression of the minds in delivering anything different from the previous ideas; from square black and white to sinuous curves made of multi colors.

Verner Panton was the man who took a ride on that wave that changed the world forever and shaped things in a way other didn't that quickly. Panton was born in Denmark in 1926 and pursuit architectural design in Copenhagen where he graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Art in 1951. His work experiences where quite a turmoil as he was described to be an "enfant terrible", a rebel that couldn't cope with the rules and for this he eventually opened his own design office.

Plastic was his major material as it was the choice of that era and out of that many fantasies took place, Panton is considered one of the most influential designer of the 20th century.

During the 60s Panton elaborated something so wild that the world took notice, here above an installation names Visiona 2 made on board a cruise ship in 1970.

Panton in the 70s posing along with his creation

Here below Panton's famous S chair design

Here the designer is laying comfortably in his home with his family.

One of Panton's latest photos.

Space travel, how to go beyond the Moon

It was too long time ago that mankind did something extremely bold, so extreme that it managed to stop wars and bring everyone together for one single humanitarian moment. The man on the Moon on 21st July 1969. But what happened to the hype and the glory of exploring space? War and military budget had top priorities for the country that set foot on our satellite. The US slowly and silently stepped back from what could have been now the century of space colonization. The last 40 years have been doomed with more war and global instabilities that lead to major setbacks and cuts in NASA resources, especially precious funds that were essential to the Moon race in the 60s.

Since then we hopelessly thought man would go back to the Moon or even set foot on Mars, but we are still waiting for that as Unites States' President Obama announced an alt on the space program for budget reasons. I guess bailing out faulty and criminal banks has an higher priority than science and culture for the whole humanity.

Maybe we could already have built the next generation of spaceships to reach other planets in our solar system, plans and projects have been around for decades to improve the space exploration with advanced crafts. Some of them found minor application, but the list isn't short.

Starting from the ION Drive to fuel manned and unmanned missions so we can establish long hauls to other planets to probe them with artificial satellites orbiting constantly and providing us with informations. The ION Drive is built on purpose for space travel because it can provide constant acceleration working on the principle of electrically charged atoms. The probe Deep Space 1 uses this drive and proved also its amazing efficiency beyond estimates. Unfortunately it can't be used to replace conventional rockets that lift off from Earth because of their low thrust. This engine is much fitted for space travel.

Another possible solution are the solar sails that use solar winds to accelerate up to 90 km per second. They can be used for launching probes towards other stars to study them and to map with more accuracy other solar systems. The sails cannot provide a fast and sudden acceleration at the beginning, however they accelerate constantly to speed 10 times the Shuttle. Japanese tests were successful in 2004 depleting the sails of an experimental craft while in orbit.

In the 50s and 60s the Unites States started the Orion project in order to build a nuclear powered vessel based on the fission principle. This involves the ship to be pushed by a series of nuclear detonations using its energy to propel it forward to destination. Conventional solid rockets can transport the craft off orbit into a safe distance to start the reactor, but having a manned mission on this type of project can seriously be harmful due to the lethal radiations; this is why NASA thinks it's better to use nuclear fuel for expeditions without any human being on board. The other side of the theory is based instead on nuclear fusion, the same process that happens inside the stars, weaving its engine power millions of time greater than the Space Shuttle. The only problem is that the perfect combustible is very scarce on planet Earth, Helium 3 has been detected in large quantities on our Moon, that's why going back on it can represent a major jump towards new technologies that will open new frontiers of science.

If the destination for humanity it to send people toward our nearest star Alpha Centauri, then the anti-matter ticket is what we need. The process that fuels this hypothetical spaceship is based on the theory of matter colliding against its counterpart, the anti-matter. This is the main principle where the vessels of the television series Start Trek are based upon. It can give us a tremendous amount of energy that will shorted our trips to destinations giving the possibility to astronauts to arrive in reasonable times, this means that not only we can travel withing minutes between our planets, but we can actually reach and set foot on other planets in other solar systems with the purpose of colonizing them to expand our civilization.

Another brilliant idea to move people and material from the surface of a planet into space it the construction of the space elevator that can reach the level of a geostationary orbit. An elevator riding on a cable guide made of carbon nano-tubes will improve its performance and reduce extra weights as well as increasing the resistance of the structure. The purpose of this invention is to use a simple idea to provide space station in orbit the resources needed and the replacement crew that periodically changes. Imagine the space elevator being built on Earth, on the Moon and on Mars to facilitate space travel and avoiding the use of costly space crafts like the former shuttle and the Russian capsule Soyuz. Mining operations will be facilitated to the point of creating a space commerce beyond our planet.

Future city

In less than a century our cities will see a radical reshape that will change the way we live. The concept of living, with the increase of population, is going to diversify from what it is today, from urban landscapes to transportation. The change that we will see first is probably the height of buildings: skyscrapers will be higher and higher setting new standards. Already we can see that engineering has been pushing its boundaries with new landmarks all over the world, but the future can't be about records among builders or countries, it must be about sustainability and ecology.

Our increasing population number is requiring more and more resources that are continuously becoming scarce and very expensive. Traditional fossil fuels are not the answer to our problem, they are polluting elements that are  increasingly deteriorating our health with higher and higher percentages of tumors reported each year by the W.H.O. (World Health Organization). These cases are directly linked to urban pollution, especially in developed countries.

The future must consider a better planned urbanistic design that will allow a better flow of traffic, and cars will also need to follow a major reshape using green fuel like hydrogen or batteries. There are several proposal made in the past to avoid overcrowding and urban sprawling, in a recent post we talked about Arcology by Italian architect Paolo Soleri, where in its projects and models he foresees cities that are self sufficient and do not quired outside resourcing to continue, their space is developed vertically in one big structure, rather than an horizontal and space consuming expansion. This involves food production inside the habitat or nearby enough to cut useless transportation from abroad.  

Green is they key feature that can resolve the issue of high CO2 level in downtown areas, the increased number of trees and plants in crucial trafficked zones will clean the air from pollution while the transition to hydrogen and electric cars is being made. This requires that the percentage of plants and grass that is commonly confined into public parks it to be opened to any surface. Grass roofs are a solution that can be applied to any building starting now, imagine if half the skyscrapers' roof of each downtown city is to be made of grass and plants; air quality would improve so much.

Bigger cities means bigger transportation requirements to sustain the population and their needs to freely move around, that's why it is required that the public transportation system updates its concept into a more efficient grid of movements. The future city will most likely have more than one level with streets and public walkways crossing at many levels of buildings because the normal grid that we know today will disappear into a more efficient one. We can't exclude the possibility to have vertical public transportation like big elevators that can carry 20, 30 or even more people to higher floors, terraces and public bridges that cross each building reducing cars, traffic jams and people's stress.

The Canadian city of Calgary in the Alberta province has already started to reshape the urbanistic concept for people walking around downtown. With the project named +15, the skywalk runs throughout the the city core for a length of 16km (10 miles), it is the longest of its kind in the world. 

Other massive city projects involve mega-structures being built where the amount of people living can be from 200.000 to 750.000 people, living in a portion of space than the actual conditions. Here below a drawing of the Zigurat Pyramid proposed in Dubai. 

Japan too has proposed a steel pyramid to be built in the Tokyo bay area to resolve the problem of increasing population and shortage of buildable land. The real problem with these futuristic projects it the quantity of materials needed for the construction, as well as the amount of workforce needed that will determine the time from when the structure is started to when it's finished. The Japanese pyramid is a possible project taken into consideration by the the government of Japan, but the quantity of steel needed has been predicted to be too high for currents production and stock. In fact if the construction is to be started today, Japan will outsource its entire steel capacity with the necessity of major purchase from other countries that will make the project's price soar without any prediction.