Our weekly guide to what you may have missed.  

“A science fiction fantasy from the sixties with a view to the sea.” We tend to forget about the Olympics once they’re over, but the games often leave behind quite a lot. In a series of vignettes in Granta, writers living in Beijing, Athens, and elsewhere recall the changes the Olympics brought to their communities, and what remains of the spectacle. “I happen to live in the Olympic neighborhood, built twenty years ago for the games,” says Santiago Roncagliolo, from Barcelona. “This is the point where past meets present, and you wonder which is the real one. I still have no answer.”

And check out this Sociological Images post on “the life of Olympic infrastructure once all the spectators pack up and go home,” from John Pack and Gary Hustwit’s Olympic City Project. 

One thing that’s clear about post-Olympic London, however: “the gloves come off,” says Dave Zirin in Edge of Sports (thanks, ZNet). International spectacle could hardly distract many Londoners from a crumbling economy, harsh austerity, and a blossoming national security state, and London politics are about to get messy. What will the city remember 20 years from now?

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Video: The Center for Investigative Journalism takes on industrial ag in The Hidden Cost of Hamburgers, a new animated short (reposted by Civil Eats). Bottom line: beef is a big rip-off. For every ounce of beef that’s made, a pound of greenhouse gases are also produced. And that says nothing for other externalized costs, like health risks, water pollution, and mistreatment of workers, to name a few. Oh, and we’re addicted to it.

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From Colossal: Recreating Van Gogh masterpieces with colored newsprint and pieces of wood.  

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Climate change has been the forefront of a lot of people’s minds this summer, along with a lot of very difficult questions about our role in confronting crisis and adapting to change. But for Sarah Gilman, one of the biggest questions is how to deal with a loss of this magnitude. Writing in High Country News, she wonders how we “grasp the obliteration of so much we have known and loved,” as we move very quickly from world to another entirely different one. Reflecting on creative responses like Maya Lin’s “What is missing” project, Gilman’s own answer points toward the future. “Looking forward, grieving for what has been,” she says, “we must remember that loss is not new to the world, and that loss is also possibility.”

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President Obama may have put the kibosh on Keystone XL, but that didn’t stop TransCanada from trying to make it happen in smaller pieces, especially in the southern plains. But activists in Texas have no intention of letting that happen, says Forrest Wilder in The Texas Observer. Construction on the pipeline could begin very soon, which is why Tar Sands Blockade got into gear on Thursday with “a sustained campaign of civil disobedience” to block the project in East Texas. Dozens of people have signed on, marking a new chapter in what Wilder calls “one of the biggest environmental fights of our time."  

The blockade in Texas makes a powerful statement, says Bill McKibben in Think Progress (via Grist), and invokes the civil disobedience last year that eventually spurred action from Washington. What’s more, the actions come at an appropriate time, as similar protests have erupted in places like West Virginia, Montana, and the Pacific Northwest over coal exports and mining. The fight over Keystone XL united a lot of disparate groups of people last year, says McKibben, and that can happen again.  

Image by Kiko Alario Salom, licensed under Creative Commons.  

The bottled water industry has been quite busy sweet-talking consumers into disregarding the environmental impacts of their product. But in certain cities, like London and Minneapolis, their message is running up against robust campaigns to make tap water trendy.

Style is strategy across the pond, where Londoners will soon sip their city’s tap water from a “signature serving vessel” designed to rival even the prettiest packaging of bottled water, according to World Changing. Selected from a design contest as part of the city’s London on Tap campaign, the sleek carafe will be produced and sold to London restaurants, bars, and hotels as the vehicle to deliver tap water to patrons. “Though a gimmick for sure,” writes Julia Levitt for World Changing, “the contest is a smart way to bring high style and sophistication to simple tap water, which is both less expensive and less wasteful than bottled water.”

Minneapolis is also marketing its water to residents with an $180,000 campaign set to run throughout 2009. The effort is part of a “progressive citywide campaign to cut down on waste,” according to the Twin Cities Daily Planet, and will attempt to build loyalty to the tap water brand by pushing its high quality and environmental advantages.  

Image by Rickard Berggren, licensed under Creative Commons.

Scientists are trying to understand the concept of beauty using neurology, thinking that the "eye of the beholder" could be linked to a function of the brain. Writing for Seed, Moheb Costandi presents a history of scientific attempts to figure out the essence of beauty, from experiments with mescaline in the 1920s to Semir Zeki’s pioneering work in neuroaesthetics at University College London.

UCL scientists are collaborating with leaders in the arts and humanities to study the beauty in many forms, including prose and music. They’re are also examining the ways people perceive the aesthetics of architecture and other spatial relationships. In one study where scientists monitored brain activity as subjects looked at paintings, Costandi reports that “the ‘uglier’ a painting, the greater the motor cortex activity, as if the brain was preparing to escape.”

Researchers hope to learn what universal qualities, if any, the human mind assigns to beautiful things, how long-term exposure to beauty might permanently alter our neurological pathways, and how beauty affects other neurological conditions, such as depression. “An object’s beauty may not be universal,” Costandi speculates, “but the neural basis for appreciating beauty probably is.”

(Thanks, Dan.)

(Image adapted from a photo by goatling, licensed by Creative Commons.)

Treehugger reports that London is taking material efficiency into consideration in designing its stadium for the 2012 Olympic Games. The facility will be built from with as many recyclable materials as possible, including a hemp roof. The stadium will also be demountable, meaning it can be disassembled, moved, and rebuilt in a new city. It will be largely bolted together, rather than welded, and break down into pieces that can fit on cargo ships. This new philosophy of “low impact” games and reusable stadia might afford poorer countries the opportunity to host future Games. Chicago, a possible 2016 host, is also considering more reusable and versatile construction materials.

Like fish and chips, cell phones and cameras, James Bond’s Aston Martin and stinger missiles, if something works in Great Britain, it might work even better paired with something else. Zoo animals are the same way. Sure, they’re cute, but they’re often desperate-looking and covered in feces. Thermal cameras can help, turning spiders and lions into the Predator-style pictures, featured recently in the British newspaper Telegraph. The critters have a hyper-colored shimmer, and there isn’t a single visible clump of mussed hair. The pictures were taken by an amateur photographer, and can help the zoo’s staff understand how their animals regulate body temperature, but more importantly, they look really cool.

—Morgan Winters