In a recent Twitter exchange with a fan, William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk on Star Trek, hinted that he's a fan of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
The literal meaning of “dinosaur” is “terrible lizard.” And these dinosaurs in the latest video from Joel Veitch, Alex Mallinson, and David Shute of Rathergood are certainly terrible. The species are all dinosaurs that really existed, but if they are anything those portrayed in this video, they would never have survived as long as they did. The lizards might be terrible, but the animation is rather good. -via b3ta
Only one in about 3,000 calico cats are male. You knew that, but the explanation of how sex and cat fur color are so intertwined is a new one for me. The explanation starts with a refresher on X and Y chromosomes. Females have two X, and males have an X and a Y. In cats, the X chromosome determines fur color. Unless that color is white. A cat with two X chromosomes (female) only uses one of them, while the other will go dormant.
The important thing here is that the same X-chromosome does not inactivate for each cell. One cell may shut off the X-chromosome from the mother while leaving the chromosome from the father. That cell then creates more cells, each of which will use the father’s X-chromosome to determine the fur color. Likewise, another cell may silence the X-chromosome from the father and instead use the chromosome from the mother.
So, for instance, if the female offspring receives the chromosome for black fur from both of its parents, she will have black fur. In the case of calico cats, the same process occurs. However, the offspring receives the chromosome for, for instance, black fur from one parent and orange fur from the other. One cell inactivates the chromosome for black fur resulting in orange fur. Other cells use the chromosome for black fur instead. In both cases, these cells are replicated and the inactivated chromosome will always stay inactive. Those two colors then combine on the cat’s fur to create the orange and black patches of fur. If the cat only has these two colors, it is known as a tortoiseshell cat.
But what about white? That’s a different story, because white cat fur isn’t dependent on sex chromosomes. Any cat can have white fur, or patches of white fur. And then there are the rare male calico cats. Read how that happens in the full post at Today I Found Out.
No, this isn't a picture of some kind of horrible environmental disaster, nor is it Photoshop. In fact, this photo of a "bloodfall" portrays Antarctica in its pristine, natural state. It's a result of a water source low in oxygen and high in iron that has a whole colony of microbes that survive on the iron and sulfur in the water.
Antarctica is also a great place to look for meteorites as they don't get covered with dirt or mixed in with other rocks -and, best of all, they contrast with the ice cover on the world's coldest continent.
In each piece, there's a full story. You could easily write a page of dialogue from each one.
Tobbe Malm, a blacksmith and photographer in Oslo, Norway, calls his series Bolt Poetry. He reshapes nails and screws into forms that are strikingly reminiscent of human beings. They're simple, yet filled with dramatic tension.
All of the nails have a history, too. Malm found them at an old farm in Bergslagen, Sweden. Pulled from the wood, they share their stories.
Philip Ross is an artist who works in fungus. As a result of his studies and experiments, he's been table to grow large fungi into useful objects. He's even turned fungi into durable bricks that can be used for construction. Ross proposes that we look at fungi as a renewable source of materials for everyday life.
To demonstrate this, Ross has been building functional pieces of furniture using fungi. The magazine Make reports:
Mushrooms, Ross says, are a “self-extinguishing organic material” that can be used to create habitats for humans on Earth or even in space. He is currently working on a prototype, envisioning a demonstration building on the San Francisco waterfront to show how mushrooms can be used as building materials.
“When we’re done with it, we can just push [the building] into the bay,” Ross says. “Mushrooms change the politics and aesthetics of pollution.”
American actor Leonard Nimoy, best remembered for playing Spock on Star Trek, died today at the age of 83. He passed away in his home in Los Angeles as a result of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
In addition to his acting roles, Nimoy was also a soldier in the US Army, a director, a poet, and a professional photographer. The New York Times has more on his extraordinary life:
In 2002, having illustrated his books of poetry with his photographs, Mr. Nimoy published “Shekhina,” a book devoted to photography with a Jewish theme, that of the feminine aspect of God. His black-and-white photographs of nude and seminude women struck some Orthodox Jewish leaders as heretical, but Mr. Nimoy asserted that his work was consistent with the teaching of the kabbalah.
His religious upbringing also influenced the characterization of Spock. The character’s split-fingered salute, he often explained, had been his idea: He based it on the kohanic blessing, a manual approximation of the Hebrew letter shin, which is the first letter in Shaddai, one of the Hebrew names for God.
“To this day, I sense Vulcan speech patterns, Vulcan social attitudes and even Vulcan patterns of logic and emotional suppression in my behavior,” Mr. Nimoy wrote years after the original series ended.
But that wasn’t such a bad thing, he discovered. “Given the choice,” he wrote, “if I had to be someone else, I would be Spock.”
Nimoy was active on Twitter. This was his final tweet:
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP
I make things. This is a practice that I have maintained over the past few years. I like the idea of being a maker--a person who learns new skills by creating objects. In the past, I have made a deacon's bench for my children, a bookcase, a small cabinet with drawers and doors that replaced an old end table, and a hanging My Little Pony cupboard. Each project concept intentionally required that I learn new skills. As a result, I've become a reasonably good carpenter.
In the past 2 years, I have also deliberately embraced and nourished my own geeky interests, recovering so many of the joys of my lost youth. Among them is collecting and reading the entire run of my favorite comic book franchise, Ninja High School.
This project was my most daunting yet. Since each one of my projects must be functional in some way, I decided to build a lamp. This required that I learn electrical wiring, which I found confusing and non-intuitive. Thankfully, my father, who is brilliant in all things technical, very patiently taught me the rudiments of electrical wiring.
When construction began on the most famous tower in Pisa, Italy in 1173, no one planned for it to lean over. But the soft ground yielded under the weight of the stone bell tower. It now rests at a 4⁰ angle.
The iconic monument is instantly recognizable. So marketers have made good use of the form to package and sell products, such as this lipstick container designed by Louis Nichilo in 1950 and a liqueur bottle that may get a bit too tipsy. You can find a roundup of some inventive uses of this form for product packaging at Beach Packaging Design.
Someone in Tampa, Florida hit Bart the cat with a car. He was lying, apparently lifeless, in a pool of his own blood in the road when his owner, Ellis Hutson, found him. Hutson dug a hole and buried Bart. He and his family mourned the loss of Bart.
But Bart wasn't done yet. He had unfinished business.
5 days after he had been buried, Bart returned home, hungry, bloody, and dehydrated. Bart lost an eye, has deep lacerations, and a broken jaw. But he's alive.
How is Bart still alive? Hutson's neighbor, Dusty Albritton, has no idea:
“I saw him with my own eyes. I know he was dead. He was cold and stiff,” Albritton told ABC News. […]
“Now my kids believe their cat will also rise from the dead," she said with a chuckle. "But I told them I don't think so."
When she discovered the resurrected Bart, she said he acted “like he’s in no pain whatsoever.”
Matt Glendinning, the head of Moses Brown School in Providence, Rhode Island, made the decision to close school for the big snow event. But he had to dress the announcement up a bit in the song his students have been singing for over a year now. Oh yeah, you know he had this video ready months ago, but it’s still funny. -via Time
Redditor Xnipek recently posted a photo of a friend who built a way cool snow tauntaunand decided to see how he rides. Giddy up! (Here's hoping the guy doesn't cut him open and get inside— he'll be even colder than when he's sitting on top!) -Via Laughing Squid
Vincent Van Gogh is known for his unfortunate decision about his ear. It's hard to imagine Charlie Chaplin without the little tramp's cane. Patrik Svensson, a Swedish artist with a gift for precisely expressing himself through minimal illustrations, has recently been composing portraits of famous people with only their names and tiny, often subtle figures. You find more in his Instagram feed.
Two German designers, Sascha Urban and Dorothea Wirwall, developed this chair. They call it the “Loungebarrow.” It’s a wheelbarrow with a plywood cover. A comfortable padded chair and laptop computer desk fold out. I can imagine it serving as portable seating in a creative agency’s meeting space.
We always like a little comedy with our classical music (see here and here and here). The German quartet Salut Salon gives us just that, with a performance in which every player tries to one-up the next to a ridiculous degree. They don’t drop a note anywhere along the way, as they play Antonio Vivaldi's "Summer" upside-down and backwards. All through this, I was waiting for someone to get poked in the eye with a bow, a la The Three Stooges. This is just a tad more civilized than that! -via Viral Viral Videos
