Ingrid Goldbloom Bloch sees beauty in recyclables: she creates some truly awesome bustiers, garters, and underpants from recycled soda cans and hardware! When she said "trashy lingerie" who'd knew that it's truly made from trash ... oops, that's recyclables to all you enviro-nuts! ;)
We've featured a few stories about people changing their names into something outrageous, usually for protests and such, but this is the first: a teenager has changed his name into his comic book heroes!
George Garratt from Glastonbury has become Captain Fantastic Faster Than Superman Spiderman Batman Wolverine The Hulk And The Flash Combined.
The 19-year-old music student made the change "for a bit of a laugh", through a legally-recognised website.
He said: "I decided on a superheroes theme and whenever my friends offered up suggestions to me, I added them."
This is pretty cool: Behold the WhiteBoard PONG by 3D software development company ENESS of Australia. It's a regular whiteboard and regular whiteboard markers, coupled with a computer that can sense and recognize black shapes to compute how the virtual ball should behave.
That's a knitted Ash Williams from Bruce Campbell's Evil Dead series, fresh from killin' (and re-killin') Deadites. The cute figurine is made by Hannah J. Simpson of cakeyvoice, who also makes other fantastic knitted minions.
Andy Latham, 33, has hyperekplexia, a weird genetic condition that makes him go rigid when startled. He's literally scared stiff!
"Some people might jump when a firework goes off, but I'm literally scared stiff," he said.
"My whole body will seize and stiffen, causing me to fall over like a dead-weight. It can be very dangerous - one year I fell over and banged my head when a firework went off and had to go to hospital and have stitches."
Mr Latham, of Great Harwood, near Accrington, Lancs, went on: "I have the major form of Hyperekplexia, which means I have an exaggerated startle response to the unexpected.
"So many things can set me off - someone touching me from behind, clapping, dogs barking, phones ringing, people shouting, car horns, people coughing.
"But fireworks are particularly bad for me because they are so loud and sudden. I dread Bonfire Night."
An original sketch of Winnie-the-Pooh, Tigger and Piglet by E.H. Shepard has fetched $50,000 at auction:
The oval pencil sketch by E.H. Shepard, one of children's literature's most famous illustrators, shows Pooh dipping his paw into a pot of honey while sitting at a table as Piglet and Tigger look on.
Auctioneer Bonhams said the successful telephone bidder was from Germany and bought the picture for his wife, a long-time Pooh fan.
Some people are very attached to their false teeth that they're willing to fight bloody battles and even kill their loved ones for 'em.
Take the case of one Louise Deeringer, 56, of Tampa, Florida:
It all started about 11:15 p.m. Thursday in a mobile home at 6012 Broadway Ave., where Deeringer confronted Dugas about where he had put her teeth, police said.
Dugas, 49, said he didn't know where her teeth were, but Deeringer, 56, didn't believe him, police said. Dugas got angry and gave Deeringer what she told police were "flying lessons" – he tossed her up in the air and on the kitchen floor, police said.
Deeringer grabbed a kitchen knife and chased him outside, police said. She saw him re-enter through the back door and chased him down a hall, at one point saying, "You're going to tell me where my teeth are, or I'm going to kill you," police said.
Turns out, the teeth were behind the TV stand. Oops! http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/oct/31/311634/tampa-police-womans-missing-teeth-gum-relationship/
Before dinosaurs, this strange eight-armed creature ruled the Earth:
Scientists have discovered what they believe is an eight-armed creature, which colonised a large section of the world's oceans over 300 million years before the first dinosaurs emerged.
The findings represent the first comparable animal fossils from the Ediacaran Period, 635 to 541 million years ago, which appear in two drastically different preservation environments - black shale of South China and quartz rock of South Australia. [...]
The eight arms are clearly preserved in our specimens," says Zhu, adding that the arms were tubular and in close contact with each other, but not joined.
He and his colleagues believe the animal was a soft-bodied, dome-shaped organism that lived on seabeds and fed by absorbing dissolved nutrients from the ambient environment.
I, for one, welcome our extinct 8-armed overlord: Link
Chief Justice William Rehnquist loved Gilbert and Sullivan (so much so that he added yellow stripes to his robe) but his successor John Roberts, Jr. prefers crime noir.
Just check out his dissent in the Pennsylvania v. Dunlap:
"Officer Sean Devlin, Narcotics Strike Force, was working the morning shift. Undercover surveillance. The neighborhood? Tough as a three dollar steak. Devlin knew. Five years on the beat, nine months with the Strike Force. He’d made fifteen, twenty drug busts in the neighborhood.
"Devlin spotted him: a lone man on the corner. Another approached. Quick exchange of words. Cash handed over; small objects handed back. Each man then quickly on his own way. Devlin knew the guy wasn’t buying bus tokens. He radioed a description and Officer Stein picked up the buyer. Sure enough: three bags of crack in the guy’s pocket. Head downtown and book him. Just another day at the office."
Tony Mauro of The Blog of Legal Times has more on the story: Link - via On Deadline
Why settle for boring bike racks? Cities across the United States are installing artistic bike racks, some of which look too good to chain your bike on to! This one above is created by artist Tom Crimboli of Eastpointe, Michigan.
When creating streetscape such as artistic bike racks, Herndon says artists should follow "the 300-pound drunk moron rule."
"Assume a 300-pound drunk moron is going to try to bend it, climb it or do something to it, because they will," he says. "It has to be built really, really well."
Teruhiko Wakayama and colleagues at RIKEN, Japan, have successfully cloned a mouse from cells of a dead mouse that has been frozen for 16 years. Things brings up two questions: 1) When are we going to bring back the mammoth, and 2) WHO KEEPS A FROZEN MOUSE FOR 16 YEARS?!?!
Oh, and it reminds me to clean out my freezer. Who knows what's in there now ... Link (with video clip) - via Gizmodo
When asked about alternative energy, most people think of solar and wind power generators. But there are other forms, like geothermal or biomass power system.
Our pal WebEcoist explores one unique benefit of using this form of alternative energy:
Unlike solar and wind power generators, earth-based energy sources such as geothermal or biomass power systems are often completely invisible in the finished design of a building with one. However, in hidden partnership with other sustainable systems biomass and thermal energy strategies have been incorporated into the design and construction of some amazing architectural structures.
Grey NYC's Creative director Tor Myhren came up with this brilliant poster to bring into the forefront what a lot of people have been thinking of, but couldn't bring themselves to say in polite company: the issue of race in the 2008 US Presidential election.
Regardless of what you think of the candidates, I'm sure you can marvel at the photoshoppery of turning Obama and McCain into persons of another race: Link - via Miss Cellania
At a glance, we only had handful of (and not to mention, mild) political posts - so on the eve of this historic election, let me ask you this: what would you say to someone who's on the fence on either candidates? Why should I vote for Barack Obama or John McCain?
Artist and "Plushinator" Lana Crooks created these awesomely cute Octoplush collectibles ("Octoplushies?") - They're on display on her solo show Crooked Critter at A.Okay in Chicago: Link | Lana's Blog - via Super Punch
Don't miss this one from the recent Plush Monsters show at G1988 in San Francisco (more at Toycyte)