Links posted in February 2009
February 28, 2009
Gobekli Tepe: Do these mysterious stones mark the site of the Garden of Eden? [Via]
A photographic survey
of London's remaining professional darkrooms.
Several of the darkrooms featured have since closed down. Others will surely follow. (The darkroom with the slogan pinned to the wall, 'I want to stay here forever', was dismantled shortly after I photographed it and is now being converted into luxury apartments.)
In a post-natural world, can the machine elves recreate nature?
Nature and unreality interpenetrate in the nano-macro-engineering projects depicted in Michael Shaw's art. Enjoy!
[more inside]
February 27, 2009
Fantastic Museum Specimens [more inside]
Jiuzhaigou: China's Mystic Waters.
Immorality a Lot Like Rotten Food: Evidence for the Oral Origins of Moral Disgust.
February 26, 2009
Get clean coal clean! (NEW Air Freshener). A new PSA directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. [Via]
The Sopranos, Sex and The City, The Wire, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Six Feet Under, Rome, Band Of Brothers… All have raised the creative bar for all forms of popular entertainment, showing that television at its best can equal the artistic merit of the greatest movies and works of literature.
Glasses filter: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/02/photogalleries/fish-transparent-head-barreleye-picture/
February 25, 2009
No Room Service, Just Snacks and Shit and other ridiculous rap lyrics.
February 24, 2009
Lawmaker proposes fixing California's budget crisis... by legalizing pot and taxing it. [more inside]
Juiced? How the firms that process and market orange juice manufacture [pdf] the taste-illusion of freshness.
February 23, 2009
Never Mind the Pussycat 'This exhibit focuses on a brief period of Lear’s youth. Beginning when he was still an adolescent, until he was twenty-five, Edward Lear worked as a natural history illustrator. During this period, he created some of the most extraordinary images of birds ever made.' [more inside]
Urban Repair Squad They say city is broke. We fix. No charge.
Lost: the cake. So maybe I'm one of the few who can't stop watching Lost. And I have this fondness for Hurley. Turns out he has a blog. And also that they recently filmed their 100th episode, so celebrated with a cake by TV's Ace of Cakes. The details are amazing.
February 22, 2009
The Largest Collection of Horse Graffiti EVAR!!!
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If you like horse art, you'll probably faint from horse art overload.
If you like graffiti art, you'll probably faint from graffiti art overload.
If you like this post, let me know!
BlueHorse: I'm ALL about the horses!
via: The Equinest = one GREAT equine website. Thanks, Paige!
February 21, 2009
Josh Freese, ex-drummer from Nine Inch Nails, is selling his new album. Plus some extras, for a price. While $7 buys you the digital download, $50 will get you the album plus a phone call from Freese, and for only $75,000 Freese will join your band for a month. For real or just for jokes?
Giovanni Sollima - Sogno ad Occhi Aperti (Daydream)
February 20, 2009
Go ahead, fall for the squeeee one more time!
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SLYT
Big magnets are not your friend. Via the the Dan's Data blog. Ouch! (Warning - somewhat graphic images of a mushed finger tip). Have the zooborn post on standby.
Cardboard food Sculptures by Patianne Stevenson.
Book Cover Archive Great collection of interesting and beautiful book cover designs. On a similar note, check out these terrific redesigns of the Harry Potter series in classic Penguin style (also Lemony Snicket and The Spiderwick Chronicles).
Inflatable Russian tanks Scroll down to the middle for the inflatable Russian missile launcher.
February 19, 2009
Prawo Jazdy Ireland's worst driver? Or not. An embarrassing moment for the Guards.
The semantics of tribe.
A founder of AIM (the American Indian Movement) believes that the divisions of tribe SHOULDN'T be dissolved. So when President Obama said the opposite, did he really place himself with the other presidents and the 'buffalo soldiers' who fought the tribes? Or was it just an unfortunate selection of words?
[more inside]
February 18, 2009
Art by Thomas Doyle.
The pieces’ radically reduced scales evoke feelings of omnipotence—as well as the visceral sensation of unbidden memory recall. Hovering above the glass, the viewer approaches these worlds as an all-seeing eye, looking down upon landscapes that dwarf and threaten the figures within.
Conversely, the private intensity of moments rendered in such a small scale draws the viewer in, allowing for the intimacy one might feel peering into a museum display case or dollhouse. Though surrounded by chaos, hazard, and longing, the figures’ faces betray little emotion, inviting viewers to lose themselves in these crucibles—and in the jumble of feelings and memories they elicit.
Young Quanzhi Ye's dream.
In 1996, a 7-year-old boy in China bent over the eyepiece of a small telescope and saw something that would change his life--a comet of flamboyant beauty, bright and puffy with an active tail. At first he thought he himself had discovered it, but no, he learned, two men named "Hale" and "Bopp" had beat him to it. Mastering his disappointment, young Quanzhi Ye resolved to find his own comet one day.
And one day, he did.
[more inside]
February 17, 2009
Travis, a 14 year-old 200-pound pet chimpanzee, rips the face off of a 55 year-old woman.
The mystery of the mastodon pipes.
February 16, 2009
Red Devils fan sees red over marriage red card caused by Reds' scottish red herring. A married Manchester United supporter drove 400 miles for what he thought was going to be an affair with a woman he had chatted to on the internet - only to discover it was a hoax set up by two Liverpool fans he had met on holiday.
February 15, 2009
February 14, 2009
Searching for fun love in different places
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Just hearts
Muck about Cupid
Make your own romance
[more inside]
Brain & behaviour of dinosaurs. [Via]
February 13, 2009
The Uninvisible Art of Amazing Urban Camouflage.
February 12, 2009
Today is a special day. Two centuries ago, today, a pair of babies were born. One, screaming to life in a one-room log cabin in Kentucky, became the Great Emancipator. The other, born under a doctor's care, in red brick house in Shropshire became the greatest biologist who ever lived. Happy Darwin/Lincoln Day everybody!
In July 2008, these two Jack Russell terriers were surrendered to the Auckland NZSPCA, morbidly obese due to poor diet and lack of exercise. This is the blog documenting their tremendous weight loss. [more inside]
Tolerance for all can be found in Islam. Let's hope that the seeds of peace grow, and that our other traditions can grow the same. [more inside]
The Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women presents the The Pink Chaddi Campaign. "Indians outraged at an attack on women for drinking in a bar have gathered together to send a provocative gift of underwear to right-wing activists." [Via]
February 11, 2009
Devolve me! What would you have looked like as an early human?
Melted bricks (they would only be 'molten' if still liquid, right?) [more inside]
In New Procedure, Artificial Arm Listens to Brain. [Via]
February 10, 2009
5 Dials:
: a literary magazine published by Hamish Hamilton in pdf form (they prefer you to print it).
We’re hoping Five Dials will be a repository for the new, a chance to focus on ideas that might not work elsewhere, a place to witness writers testing new muscles, producing essays, extracts and unexplainables.
Gorilla reality show starring gorillas in Prague zoo has become very popular in Czech Republic and may soon be coming to you monkeys living in Australia, Taiwan, USA and UK. Marketing spinoffs include childrens stories about the drugs, booze and sex-filled lives of the Prague gorillas, popular among the children of Cameroon, where gorillas are native. The gorillas even lead parallel lives in Second Life.
February 09, 2009
The Pre-Raph Pack is a nice site based around Birmingham's large collection of pre-Raphaelites, with details of artists, techniques, and the Brotherhood.
February 08, 2009
Heaven. Been to church today?
After a record breaking day in Victoria, Australia, at least 26 people are dead, with more expected to be found. The state premier fought back tears at a press conference, as fires and heat have disrupted travel across Victoria.
February 07, 2009
February 06, 2009
We are becoming a new species, we are becoming Homo Evolutis. "At TED 2009, Juan Enriquez talked about the new human species emerging before our eyes. Thanks to an array of biological advances and our growing aptitude in robotics, we now find ourselves in the early days of the deliberate creation of what he called a new species." [Via]
WHAT DON'T YOU F*CKING UNDERSTAND?? [more inside]
February 05, 2009
Curious I'm-not-a-hacker George. Help me access sites that don't want me to access them... In an non-creepy kind of way. [more inside] [more inside]
Neat commercial, where millimeters matter
New Microsoft bug debuts at Bill Gates TED Talk
Mirrorshards: 100-word stories, a new story every day. [more inside]
February 04, 2009
Titanoboa - thirteen metres, one tonne, largest snake ever. 'Titanic' boa fossils provide clues to past tropical climate.
Cornify! And to think I never knew I needed it...
February 03, 2009
What are the Benefits of Mind Uploading? [Via]
Finding Esther In 1926, Emma Alice Smith, aged 16, cycled off from her home in Waldron, East Sussex, England, headed for the railway station. She was never seen again. Eighty-three years later, a fictionalized account of her disappearance has been made into a film by the local dramatics society The Waldron Community Players - which has led the police to reopen her case as a possible murder investigation.
World's First Garbage Truck Powered by Garbage A town in Britain has recently demonstrated its new "'leccy vehicle" - an electric garbage truck that is fueled by the garbage it collects.
So anyway, one photographer sent a daguerreotype of the Obama inauguration along to another photographer whose wife then found the first photographer in a Gigapan picture also taken at the inauguration. Since the daguerreotype process was announced in 1839 and GigaPan was spun off in 2008 (and was itself the result of R&D deployed as part of the Mars Rover mission) that puts nearly 170 years between the two. Which is, I dunno, kinda neat really.
Fifty years ago today, February 3rd 1959 a small plane carrying musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson from a stop in Clear Lake Iowa to another show in Moorehead Minnesota on their Winter Dance Tour (pics from a show in Green Bay Wisconsin) crashed in a snowstorm, killing all three musicians as well as the 21 year old pilot. This was not the "day the music died"- three great talents died, their music never will.
February 01, 2009
Indian project one-ups OLPC with ten dollar laptop The laptop was developed by students at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and will be distributed as part of the National Mission on Education. [more inside]
