In the past, Scott Blake made composite portraits of people using barcodes. Now he's getting with the times and using QR codes instead. Pictured above is a portrait of radio show host Amy Goodman. Each one links to segments from her show over the past nine years.

http://illusion.scene360.com/art/17770/bar-code-madness/ via Dude Craft | Artist's Website | Photo: Scott Blake

Although it lacks the refinement of a Geo Metro, a 1970 Oldsmobile Toronado station wagon isn't a bad foundation for a limousine. This was one of several dozen built during the defunct custom car builder Miller-Meteor, a company perhaps best known for making the Ghostbusters' Ecto-1. It recently sold on eBay for $3,000. The seller pushed it as a tool for picking up women, and it's obviously well-designed for that purpose. Right, ladies?

Link via Jalopnik

The helicopter has really changed the way that many things are done since it was invented. Traditionally, the helicopter has a rotor or two up top and a tail rotor. The upside to the design is that it can take off and land vertically. The downside is that a rotorcraft isn't as fast as fixed wing aircraft. Eurocopter has announced that its X3 Hybrid combining rotors with propellers has hit a speed much higher than normal helicopters are capable of. The X3 hit speeds of 232 knots or 430 km/h in testing. This will be a fantastic aircraft for rescue mission where speed is critical.

Cats are cool and all, but I have yet to see a cat that I would want playing my iPad. If your cat is the pampered sort that has everything, it may be time to get your feline its own iPad or Android tablet. Friskies has a line of games for the tablets just for cats. You can see the cats in all their gaming glory in the video above. link

Just because Armageddon is happening Saturday as foretold by Family
Radio Worldwide's Harold Camping doesn't mean you have to give up the
love of your pets. One group is offering services to take care of your
furry loved ones while you are in Heaven. You can make arrangements to
have your pet cared for at the link.

You've committed your life to Jesus. You know you're saved.  But when
the Rapture comes what's to become of your loving pets who are left
behind? Eternal Earth-Bound Pets takes that burden off your mind.

http://eternal-earthbound-pets.com/Home_Page.html

The Bible says in Matthew 24:36 "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." That never stopped people from trying to predict when the world will end. Smithsonian has a list of ten predicted apocalypses from ancient times to 2009 (when this list was first published).

An Assyrian clay tablet dating to around 2800 B.C. bears the inscription: “Our Earth is degenerate in these later days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching.”

The world hasn't changed much since then; everyone still wants to write a book. Link

There are some words in foreign languages that just don’t have a direct translation to English. Here now is a list of twenty of them. Your failure to learn them will give me plenty of schadenfreude.

When linguists refer to “untranslatable” words, the idea is not that a word cannot somehow be explained in another language, but that part of the essence of the word is lost as it crosses from one language to another. This often is due to different social and cultural contexts that have shaped how the word is used.

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The Hubble Space Telescope has brought us some truly amazing images of the universe. To appreciate these vast objects check out the gallery at the link.   Who knows what unimaginable mysteries they truly hold?

The just-turned-21 Hubble Space Telescope has spent its entire life taking photographs of such enormous, otherworldly things that words stop working. And the events in its photographs happened so long ago, notions of time stop working too.

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Hard to believe that some of these photos are over 130 years old. This post features a collection of interesting photography from the 1880’s of London. Some of the photos give a sense of everyday dwellings that people at the time lived in while others show the amazing architecture of the city at the time.

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I’m someone who can barely make a credible smiley face with a pencil. So seeing these amazing three dimensional drawings done in pencil are truly mind blowing. See the link for the full gallery of drawings by the young artist Fredo.

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Barak Hardley decided to draw all the presidents. Some he drew more than once, some are actually sculpture, but these are not your everyday presidential portraits. He drew Jimmy Carter as a vampire, Richard Nixon as Mr. Potato Head (the view from the rear is even more interesting), and Warren G. Harding as a samurai warrior. See all the illustrations at 50yearplan. http://50yearplan.com/?cat=9 -via Everlasting Blort

One way mammals are different from most animals is their large brains, in relation to the rest of the body. A new study says that the larger brains were developed for the sense of smell. CT scans of 190-million-year-old mammal fossils indicate that much of the the brain growth was in the area dedicated to the sense of smell.

"We studied the outside features of these fossils for years," said Tim Rowe, professor in the Jackson School of Geosciences and director of the Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin, and lead author of the new study. "But until now, studying the brains meant destroying the fossils. With CT technology, we can have our cake and eat it, too."

According to the study, other factors leading to larger brains in early mammals included greater tactile sensitivity and enhanced motor coordination. Fossils of some of the earliest mammals, such as Hadrocodium, bore full coats of fur, explaining the need for enhanced tactile sensitivity.

Researchers scanned a dozen early mammal fossil and more than 200 current species over ten years for this study. Link -via Geeks Are Sexy

(Image credit: Matt Colbert)

Clive Thompson gave in and chatted with “babygurl01475,” who had been trying to engage him for a couple of days. He spoke of technological philosophy while "she" tried to get his credit card number. Apparently, babygurl01475 was bored to death. Link -via Boing Boing

Sheng Xianhui of Kunming, China went into a hospital to have gall stones removed. A week after surgery, his wife noticed a tattoo on his rear end. Sheng claims that the staff at Yunnan Stone Disease Hospital tattooed his backside with characters meaning “stone disease” while he was in surgery.

The hospital has now called police to try to evict Sheng - but he has welcomed the police involvement and asked them to investigate.

"I'm not leaving," he said. "I'm worried that if I go out for even half an hour, the hospital will claim I had the tattoo done outside.

"But even if I wanted a tattoo, I wouldn't want those characters and I wouldn't want it on that part of my body."

The hospital staff blames the marks on a possible allergic reaction. Link -via Dave Barry

(YouTube link)

A gamer breaks out his handy spare joystick to save the world from an alien invasion of pixels! -via BB Spot