cityofmobileservices

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Mobile Disservices

The Independent has a story on the fictional mobile biological lab that served as an excuse for war:

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi "claimed to have overseen the building of a mobile biological laboratory when he sought political asylum in Germany in 1999. His lies were presented as "facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence" by Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, when making the case for war at the UN Security Council in February 2003."

"But Mr Janabi, speaking in a two-part series, Modern Spies, starting tomorrow on BBC2, says none of it was true. [...]"

"US officials "sexed up" Mr Janabi's drawings of mobile biological weapons labs to make them more presentable, admits Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, General Powell's former chief of staff. "I brought the White House team in to do the graphics," he says, adding how "intelligence was being worked to fit around the policy"."

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In the hands of City of Mobile Services student Mitch Bush, Governor's Island has become a mobile bio-engineered heart farming and fulfillment service.

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George Dolidze and Ehsaan Mesgali are experimenting with a variety of ideas for a mobile Storefront for Art and Architecture.

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A helpful resource: the public access portal to the New York City Administrative Code and the Rules of the City of New York.

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The city fights back against ice-cream jingles...

Peter Smith, writing for the Smithsonian, quotes New York City's noise code (PDF):

"Ice cream is a refreshing summer treat and ice cream trucks traveling on city streets are important summer traditions, but their repetitious jingles create a community nuisance and disrupt the lives of nearby residents. To alleviate this problem, the new noise code prohibits the playing of jingles while any type of food vending vehicle is stationary. Jingles may only be played when vehicles are in motion, traveling through neighborhoods."

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Choosing a site for a mobile gallery is fraught with challenges....

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An Activist Mobile Retreat, designed by Mobile Studio in response to Le Corbusier's Cabanon, in which "The architecture and location of the AMR and its boundaries fluctuates in response to current political activity, moving to where the action is."

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Mobile Studio, a British architecture practice, designed a portable gallery for UCL:

"The gallery is made of a series of demountable components which enables easy installation in a host of public realm venues for UCL Museum's outreach programme. The gallery is designed to display one museum artefact at a time and can accommodate up to three people." "The gallery is made of composite lightweight recycled paper honey-comb panels, which are laminated with a tiled mirror finish on the internal surfaces."

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Don Bugito, a San Francisco-based edible insect company, is raising money on Kickstarter to launch a food truck. For just a $5 pledge, you will receive the secret recipe for their Toffee Mealworm Ice-cream...

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City of Mobile Services student Chris Geist attended a Public Laboratory balloon mapping workshop with me this weekend. His Boy Scout skills came in handy as we tied lots of knots, learned how to build a stable protective housing using an Ocean Spray bottle, and then filled and launched a helium balloon with camera attached in Union Square. If it's not too windy this week, Chris will be using this rig to shoot aerial infrared vegetation analyses photos, to help map the route for his mobile seed distribution service.

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Via NPR, a sad story of rural mobile service decline: the bookmobile was all the rage as a library network extender in the 1940s, but the vans are now too expensive, at $90,000 each, to replace when they die"

"One town in northern New England just lost its bookmobile. The Cobleigh Public Library in Lyndonville, Vt., had managed to keep its van rolling until about a month ago, when it died."

"If you want to hear first-hand what it's like to go through a whole month without a single visit from the bookmobile, just ask the preschoolers at Stay and Play, a daycare center."

"'We miss the bookmobile,' one child says. "Yeah, we miss the bookmobile until it comes here," says another."

"Now that the bookmobile has broken down, librarians have to bring books in their own cars for story hour. Daycare provider Anneka Bickford says it's not as thrilling as having a big, brightly painted vehicle roll into the driveway and open the doors so the kids can browse and choose their own books."

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For Minneapolis' 2011 Nuit Blanche, Daniel Dean and Ben Moren adapted a front-loading factory bike to create a Mobile Experiential Cinema:

"The project is a roving, bicycle mounted cinematic experience that invites audience members to view a series of multi-part film segments that are screened onto the original sites where they were filmed. The project explores the paradox between a film experience and reality, while a narrative story works to blur these boundaries."

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For his first design challenge, Chris Geist constructed a brief history of the universe inside an elevator car.

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Trains in Mumbai; boats in Goa (photos by Aaron Berman).

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Mobile Services in Goa, Mumbai, Agra, and Jaipur, spotted by Aaron Berman.

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So did Omar.

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Garth went mobile service spotting in India....