Mother Nature never gets any beauty rest, and neither do the scientists studying her creations. Labs hum in the middle of the night, often unassisted by human hands at even the most ungodly hours. Noah Kalina’s “Labs At Night” photo series from Seed Magazine shows the beauty that is created when science meets silence.

Freebording: not quite skateboarding and not exactly snowboarding. With a totally unique rider-driven design, Freebord gives you the look of a street deck and the feeling of carving a mountain. Using four outer wheels to simulate a snowboard edge and 360° rotating wheels in the middle of the board to initiate slides in any direction, the feeling (so we hear) is just like bombing down a mountain.

Recently they amped up their site with three fresh designs — Elite, Haze, and Riot — all fitted with new lighter trucks for better agility. Gripped and made from 7-ply Canadian Maple, the decks are light enough for tricks but strong enough to support any height or weight. Now go shred.

We just got word from Star Electric Eighty Eight that the X-Rated Romps collection of tees with hand-drawn prints by Frenchie Datrumpf just dropped on their site. As usual, they look nothing short of excellent. The story goes that Datrumpf used to punch in at his job at a jail (we’re dying to know more, but that’s all they’ll give) in France, and considering the images are inspired from actual newspaper photos, I imagine there must have been lots of reading time while on the clock. SEEE’s also got cotton rags with the same prints that look almost too good to use.

Photographers can sometimes try to hard to imbue their photos meaning. Not Phillip Toledano. Though he has previously produced series on a number of different subjects — phone sex, video gamers, the Arctic — his latest is a very personal photographic journey. After his mother passed away, Toledano began to take photos of his 97-year-old father with dementia, to keep, as he writes, “a record of my father, and of our relationship.” In his collection, “Days With My Father”, the images are powerful without being self-conscious, and the brief statements he writes next to some give us a glimpse into the deep character of the man he is capturing on film. It’s all the more heart-wrenching because you can see that man slipping away.

The winner of Typophile’s 2008 T-shirt Battle hails from from Ahmedabad, India. The font aficionado put together an appealing design entitled “Light, Regular, Bold, Bold Italic”, which consists of a sequence of sans-serif letter I’s in each stroke weight. As a slick, understated, asymmetrical design rather than an explicit reference to typography, “Light, Regular, Bold, Bold Italic” stands apart from previous battle winners with an extra touch of class. Pick it up soon, this one’s only available until August 15th.