Saturday, April 23, 2011

The Sperm Bike in Copenhagen


Just when you thought you had seen everything in the Copenhagen bicycle culture, the Sperm Bullitt appears on the cycle tracks of the city.

Yes. The Sperm Bullitt. This is brilliant. If you're cycling around Copenhagen, keep your eyes peeled for this bike.

Nordisk Cryobank (European Sperm Bank)is one of Europe's leading sperm banks and the company was looking at environmentally-friendly alternatives to how they could transport their sperm samples to the fertility clinics around Greater Copenhagen.

The company's CEO, Peter Bower, says, 'The first idea was how we could deliver to the fertility clinics in a C02-friendly way. Shortly afterwards followed the idea of a custom-designed bike with a cooling system. Now, six months later, we can cycle around the city on our sperm cell bike.'


The text on the side reads Become a Sperm Donor in Danish.

The bike is more than just a rolling billboard for the company aimed at increasing awareness of the need for donors to help childless children around the world. Inside the head of the giant sperm cell is a cooler compartment designed so that the metal containers with sperm donations can fit snugly inside and be kept cold.

CEO Peter Bower rides the bike himself around town and he is constantly stopped by curious passersby who want to take photos of it or ask questions about the unique design.

'We're always looking for new donors so it's a fine bonus that the Sperm Cell Bike gets peoples attention.', says Peter Bower.

The Sperm Bike is, like the company's sperm donations, a Danish product and constructed around the Danish Bullitt cargo bike from Larry vs Harry.

Producing the Sperm Bike was no easy task. It was constructed by the Danish company 10 Tons - who specialise in zoological and botanical models as well as paleontologic reconstructions, including full-size whales and dinosaurs.

With the tail, the bike is 2.9 metres long and fully-loaded with... um... sperm... it weighs 50 kg. About the same as my cargo bike with two kids and a bag of groceries.

Here are some photos that Copenhagenize took of the Sperm Bike last month:
Sperm Bullitt 05 Sperm Bullitt 07 Sperm Bullitt Sperm Bullitt 02 Sperm Bullitt 03
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Infographic: Mac Users Are Liberal, Vegetarian, City-Dwellers

Hunch.com offers a great visual snapshot of Mac users and their PC counterparts over on the site’s blog Thursday. The personalized recommendation engine collected data from its users to paint a picture of the average Mac and PC person, and at least a good portion of the results are pretty much in keeping with prevailing stereotypes.


The infographic takes users who responded to the question “Are You a Mac Person or a PC Person?” and cross-references those responses with the answers from other questions taken from the question pool the site uses to inform its intelligent recommendations engine. Some key highlights:



  • Mac users are more likely to be young liberals who live in cities

  • Mac users are bigger partiers than PC users

  • Mac users are more likely to see themselves as unique, but also to see others as alike

  • PC users watch a lot of Leno, while Mac users like critical hits like Friday Night Lights


Here’s the full infographic (click for a larger version). Let us know how you feel about the results. Speaking for myself, they hit the nail on the head.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Gorgeous photographs of Golden Ray migration

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In 2008, amateur photographer Sandra Critelli captured these stunning images of a mass migration of Golden Rays while looking for whale sharks off the coast of Mexico. She said, “It was an unreal image, very difficult to describe. The surface of the water was covered by warm and different shades of gold and looked like a bed of autumn leaves gently moved by the wind.”



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