This tennis ball-size orb knows what you are thinking. Most of the time it will guess what you have in mind after asking you twenty yes/no questions. It is eerily… Read the rest of the article: This small intelligent orb guesses what object you are thinking of in 20 questions

Most of the really great construction sets are rectangular in shape, or they obey rigid angles. Lego, Kapla Blocks, Kinnex, or Zomeworks are fabulous kits that foster open-ended creativity. But… Read the rest of the article: Build curvy, complicated, organic structures with ZOOB

Set is a simple card game in a class by itself. You get a deck of cards with colored symbols. These are laid out, face up. To play the game… Read the rest of the article: Set – a pattern recognition competition

The genius of these Stream Machine water cannons is their simplicity. A single moving part — a big fat piston with handle grip — squeezes a wide stream of water… Read the rest of the article: Stream Machine water cannon – high pressure fun

The trouble with most optical equipment is that it won’t get used unless it is out of the case, opened up, and powered on. But if it is opened and… Read the rest of the article: Brock Magiscope is a rugged microscope for everyday use

Do-it-yourself neon. This thin electroluminescent wire (el-wire) glows very brightly. You can bend it easily and tie it to anything. It produces essentially no heat. Best of all it runs… Read the rest of the article: Fun with el-wire – flexible portable DIY neon

As you can see from these photographs I took in 1976, the medieval town is delicate. Not all has been destroyed, and I am sure the Nepalis will rebuild as they have in the past. Still, the earthquake shook more than just buildings.

I’m a big fan of the nature artist Andy Goldsworthy. In his art he only uses found natural materials: leaves, twigs, flowers, icicles, dirt. From these natural bits he builds… Read the rest of the article: Artist Andy Goldsworthy builds amazing arrangements from leaves, twigs, flowers, icicles and dirt

Earth is My Witness is a classic coffee table book. Huge, weighty, colorful, and visually pleasing to almost everyone.

There is no way around it. Habibi is a strange graphic novel. Not strange as in surreal, or ugly, or weird, but strange as in stranger, different. It is beautifully… Read the rest of the article: Habibi, a strange, beautiful graphic novel

Roz Chast draws a comic about her parents getting old and dying. Sometimes her account is funny, sometimes it’s poignant; always it’s memorable, even though her parent’s life and death… Read the rest of the article: Cartoonist Roz Chast talks about death and dying

Shanghai Blink. No words, no captions, no white space. Only an intense barrage of images from modern Shanghai, in endless variation.

When comics in newspapers (“funnies”) were first invented in the 1900s, a thousand crazy ideas were tried in every local newspaper in the country. Most of these local attempts at… Read the rest of the article: Art Out of Time – Strange and now-forgotten cartoonists

One of my favorite books for reference and inspiration remains the two-volume visual feast entitled African Ceremonies. But it is huge and expensive. Faces of Africa is smaller one-volume digest… Read the rest of the article: Images of nearly extinct tribal dress, customs and celebrations in Africa

Without question, Hiroshige: One Hundred Famous Views of Edo is the bookiest book I own. It is a museum-quality artifact, which in a few more years will cease to be… Read the rest of the article: A work of art that reproduces 100 woodblock prints of Edo by artist Hiroshige

Sacred Journey: The Ganges to the Himalayas is the trippiest travel photo book I have ever seen, and I’ve seen them all. David Howard took a spiritual trip to India… Read the rest of the article: Sacred Journey – The trippiest travel photo book you will ever see

The Atlas of Cities does not graph the usual geographic shapes of cities, but tries to diagram the many other dimensions within cities around the world. Taking example from many… Read the rest of the article: Atlas of Cities – Dissecting the anatomy of cities from around the world

Kevin Kelly searches for maximum vibrancy in Tokyo

I never tire of the conceptual trick of applying the metaphor of a map onto something non-geographical.

If you can photograph the architecture of the original builders in the animal kingdom with the same professional clarity and precision used to photograph human architecture, you’ll see that the… Read the rest of the article: Magnificent structures built by architects from the animal kingdom