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The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History.

A bill is being drafted in New Zealand, that if enacted will ban smoking anywhere in New Zealand. The bill would also make it illegal to produce or sell tobacco.

MP Hone Harawira, who is drafting the private member’s bill, said it was “not about trying to penalise the poor addicts who are smoking cigarettes”.
“But the tobacco companies can go to hell. We will no longer sacrifice our generations so you can make profits.”

Smoking and NZ
* 25 per cent of New Zealanders smoke.
* Nearly 50 per cent of Maori smoke.
* About 5000 people a year die from smoking-related diseases.
* $1.2 billion is paid from taxes on tobacco.

Read the article in The New Zealand Herald

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If you believe Bill O'Reilly and Fox News, that is. They've been fond of claiming that that very liberal European nation's experiment with tolerance and personal freedom is a complete failure, that the Netherlands is collapsing in anarchy. So an Amsterdam resident made a short clip documenting cultural armageddon.

That was beautiful, an extremely effective rebuttal. If the Netherlands is in decay, the comparison of the statistics between that country and the US must mean that Bill O'Reilly really despises America.

Now I want to move to Amsterdam.

Italian architect David Fisher is building his first skyscraper, the Dynamic Tower, and it happens to be one of the most ambitious construction plans since the Pyramid of Khufu. Every floor of the 80-story self-powered building rotates according to voice command, and nearly the entire structure of the $700 million building is pre-fabbed. I caught up with the architect in New York, and he blew my mind again and again.

Fisher was inspired to design the Dynamic Tower during a visit to a friend's top-floor Midtown Manhattan apartment. "I had a view of the Hudson River and East River at the same time, it was beautiful and I wanted to make that feeling accessible to more people." He loves the idea of seeing the sun rise and set in the same room, and considers the building to be four-dimensional. "Time is always changing the shape of the building," he told me.

The rotation takes up to 3 hours (so you're not always spilling your coffee), and gets power from photovoltaic solar cells and 79 wind turbines, one located between each floor. The system is meant to create enough energy to power to the entire tower and still have juice to spare for some surrounding buildings. According to Fisher, two of these $700 million futuristic scrapers are planned so far, one each in Dubai and Moscow. They will be built using a truly radical technique.

Construction on the Dynamic Tower will be unlike anything that preceded it. The only part of the tower built on site will be the skinny center core. It is strong enough to hold the floors in place, and will contain the building's elevators, which transport people and cars right to their door. Each floor will be made piece by piece in a factory in Italy—a throwback to Fisher's previous life in prefabricated bathroom design—and placed onto the core using a lift system. With this method, each story is completed in about six days. By comparison, traditional ground-up methods can take six weeks per floor.

Groundbreaking for Dynamic Towers in Dubai and Moscow is expected to happen in the fall, with construction reaching completion by the end of 2010. If you're game—and very, very loaded—you can sign up now for a villa or office space. The going rate is $3000/sq foot. [Dynamic Architecture]

The Boston Globe's website has a great infographic that covers just about all the basics of energy-restoring naps—when to take them, how long to doze for, how to set up a good nap environment, and much more. It's a little low-resolution for printing, so anybody who can find a scan of the original feature would be a hero to those of us with a need for some mind-clearing shut-eye now and again. Update: Michael S. shrewdly points us to illustrator Javier Zarracina's Globe portfolio page, where nap.jpg can be opened for a slightly clearer view.

Screw voluteering to lie down for 90 days for NASA: the National Space Society is offering a job as a Space Ambassador, with taking a ride into space as part of the duties. Yes— this is the kind of job you dreamed of when you were a kid, but you'd also have to "inspire the astronauts, space scientists and extraterrestrial entrepreneurs of the future." Made possible by a Virgin Galactic donation, the program's open to anyone, anywhere. What are you waiting for? Head on over to the website and fill in the form to register your interest, spaceman. I've already filled it in. [Wired Science]