One does not just capture a sailboat crossing in front of a sunrise. It takes luck and timing. And that’s just what Juan Antonio Sendra had two weeks ago when he was at the Mediterranean Sea.
Additionally, by a lucky coincidence, the background Sun itself appears unusual -- it looks like the Greek letter Omega (Ω). In reality, the Sun remained its circular self -- the Omega illusion was created by sunlight refracting through warm air just above the water.
From a man boxing with a fly, to two airport baggage handlers clashing against each other, to a jerk pissing on the elevator buttons (and then paying the consequences), Ozzy Man Reviews delivers to us a compilation of the good, the bad, and the ugly stuff documented on CCTV.
This is Roll Bottom, a desk design by Ian Stell. The metal secretary desk cover slides down and forms the seat. I'm not sure if it's practical, but it's pretty. You could give it to a coworker that you dislike.
At Neatorama, a lot of interesting books cross our desks. We like to think publishers send specific books to us to review because they think those books are neat. Clearly they know that we know a thing or two about neato things. At least, we at Neatorama, like to think we know a thing or two about neato things.
Recently we were sent a copy of Cursed Object by J.W. Ocker. J.W. Ocker is an award winning travel writer, novelist, and blogger. While we don’t know J.W. personally, we hope that he is also a nice guy. What we can, however, confirm is that he wrote a rather captivating book about cursed objects. You know what I am talking about. I am referring to those things that people think are inherently evil or that were made evil by a hex or a spell.
The Cursed Objects book is broken into 7 bite-sized, and fun to read, sections. The sections are essentially based on where those cursed objects are found. For example, in section III you will find cursed objects that were found in attics. These are the seemingly great garage sale finds that later turn out to be evil. Later sections of the book delve into cursed objects that are actually found in larger cursed object collections of paranormal or occult museums and displayed for a paying audience.
Each section of the book is further broken down into the story of a specific object. This is where J.W. delves into the history and explores the scientific evidence of a specific object. There is something really magical about this type of book organization. It means that you can read the whole book from cover to cover. It also means, however, that you can skip through and read first about those objects that truly fascinate you. For instance, if you are really drawn to creepydoll stories you might find yourself skipping ahead to page 173 to read about Annabelle The Doll and The Warren Collection.
With Fall here and Halloween coming Cursed Objects is a great spooky fireside read. Whether you believe in cursed objects, or not, there is something fun about delving into the history of the paranormal this time of year. So grab your comfy blanket, a cup of hot cider, and a copy of Cursed Objects and get ready for a fun and slightly unsettling adventure.
Spoon & Tamago describes several ways in which public parks in Tokyo have been carefully prepared to convert into emergency shelters in the event of a natural disaster, such as an earthquake. Among the features are pagoda shelters that are sized for tent covers, manholes that give access to the sewer system for portable toilets, and solar powered lights that direct people to shelters during power outages.
I'm especially impressed with the simple but clever addition of wood burning cook stoves to park benches. You can see two such designs above.
Pokémon is one of the most beloved franchises out there. Fans love creating and seeing new reinterpretations of the pocket monsters in any shape or form. Artist DobieDraws created an index of the first generation of Pokemon in the style of illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages. Basically, it’s like a medieval Pokedex! The 32-page booklet depicts these cute beasts medieval style, and the descriptions for each Pokemon is in written in classical Latin and in distinguished calligraphy, as CBR details:
All writing appears in distinguished calligraphy, and the pages have an aged effect to complete the illusion.
Although each Pokémon shown in the preview images is recognizable, the art appears to reflect painstaking research on medieval art, with visual references to different creatures that might have appeared in real manuscripts. Gyarados plays the part of a classic sea serpent, while Mewtwo's supreme power is represented with a Christ-like halo.
The description of the item reads, "Codex Pokemonus is a 32-page Pokemon illuminated manuscript, featuring illustrations of the original Generation 1 Pokemon in the style of illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages."
Please wear a face mask when you go outside! Remember that it’s for your own safety. If you’re tired of wearing the same surgical masks, and would like to put on a flashy and stylish face mask when you go outside, Today is Art Day has released reversible masks that have famous artworks on them! Each face mask has two complementary designs that can spice up your wardrobe:
Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was more than a skillful painter; she was also a beloved style icon whose face is synonymous with women empowerment. So, it only makes sense that two of her greatest masterpieces would make for a gorgeous face mask. Wear The Two Fridas side one day, and the Self-Portrait With Monkeys side the next. It's sure to make you a star wherever you go.
Everyone loves Van Gogh. His exquisite Post-Impressionist paintings are world-renowned for their vivid color and expressive brushstrokes. The Starry Night and Almond Blossom Reversible Mask celebrates two of the Dutch master's most iconic works. On one side is a rendition of the captivating swirls of The Starry Night, and the other features the tender Almond Blossom. Simply place the reversible mask over the lower half of your face and use the black adjustable straps to find the perfect fit.
The next time someone tells you that they have something fireproof at their home, correct them and say that it is not really fireproof. Rather, it is only “fire resistant”, as everything containing carbon could combust and catch fire when hot enough.
But what makes a material “fireproof”? Bill Carroll, an adjunct professor at Indiana University Bloomington, explains to us the chemicals that make a material resistant to fire, over at Live Science.
Ursula Graham Bower went to visit her brother in India in 1937. While there, the British citizen fell in love with the indigenous Naga people of northern India, and went to live among them. By 1942, the Japanese were making incursions into the area, and the British government which had mostly ignored the Naga now needed their help.
The British turned to Bower, asking her to use her Naga connections to monitor Japanese troop movement and rescue downed Allied pilots. Bower went further and mustered a 150 man strong guerrilla force who liked the imperialists who mostly ignored them more than the imperialists pressing the Naga into brutal forced labor. Armed primarily with old muskets, they mainly aided refugees escaping Burma, but also harassed Japanese troops to the point where a bounty was placed on the head of a woman with no formal military training leading male warriors who typically frowned on women in the war workplace.
In 1944 the Japanese suffered a backbreaking defeat at Kohima, a battle won with the help of Naga intelligence, and retreated. Bower pivoted to teaching Allied troops jungle survival skills and, in doing so, even found the husband her mother had been hoping for, marrying a British officer in a Naga wedding ceremony.
Read how Bower rose to the occasion, and three other stories from World War II you've never heard before, including Germany's worst defeat by the Soviets, an Italian fascist who became a Spanish diplomat to aid escaping Jews, and a strangely successful Nazi escape artist at Cracked.
Brainstorming sessions are designed to be a way for people to throw out ideas, no matter how outlandish, in the hopes that some kernel within them can be adapted and modified into something useful. When it came to ideas on how to win World War II, those brainstorming sessions could get out of hand, and ideas that lacked the devil's advocacy could actually go into production. One such idea from Ed Salinger of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) proposed to harness the concept of kitsune, the folklore of shapeshifting trickster foxes, to scare the Japanese with a literal portent of doom. The whole idea rested on the assumption that Japanese people of the 1940s were superstitious and gullible enough to fall for it.
When it came to the question of how to create fake kitsune, the OSS dreamt up a gaggle of ideas. First, OSS personnel fashioned fox-shaped balloons to fly over Japanese villages and scare the citizens below. They also asked a whistle company to create an instrument that simulated fox sounds. In a memo to the OSS Planning Staff, Salinger said, “These whistles can be used in combat and a sufficient number of these should create an eerie sound of the kind calculated to meet the Japanese superstition.” In addition to the balloons and whistles, the OSS hired another company to create artificial fox odors. Salinger thought that Japanese citizens would somehow recognize this scent—just as he thought that they would recognize a rare fox sound—and cower in fear. But despite Salinger’s best efforts, the balloons, whistles, and odors were abandoned as impractical before being deployed. Instead, the OSS reverted to Salinger’s original plan: Catch live foxes in China and Australia, spray-paint them with glowing paint, and release them throughout Japanese villages.
Lito has been living all of his life with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). He knew that he had to search for a medium with which he could channel his abnormally high levels of concentration, focus, and obsessiveness. And it seems that the 34-year-old artist found that outlet through the Japanese art of kirie (which means “cut paper”).
Earlier this year in January he began experimenting, not with paper, but with leaves.
When he was walking near his home in Brazil, Igor Venâncio noticed some kids gathered in the street. Upon checking what the commotion was all about, he saw that the kids gathered around a tiny baby marmoset (a type of monkey native to the region), who lay helpless on the ground. The next thing he noticed was the baby’s worried mom, who watched from a branch overhead.
Suspecting that the baby’s mother was hesitant to retrieve her because of the crowd, Venâncio asked the children to give her space. But still, Mom seemed reluctant to approach.
So, Venâncio decided to arrange the reunion himself.
“Acting on instinct, I took the baby to her parent,” Venâncio told The Dodo. “A car or a cat could have passed by, and maybe it wouldn’t have been a happy ending.”
Paw prints and bird tracks that have been carved in concrete are some of the cute little things that you will see in your life. These prints can be found in roads, sidewalks, and in construction sites. For Carl Mehling, however, they are more than cute; these are moments in time that were immortalized as the concrete dried.
When [he] was a second-grader in Queens, his mom walked him to school past a leaf in the sidewalk. “I regarded it as a fossil, and was scheming about getting a hammer and busting it out,” he says. Now, Mehling is a senior museum specialist in paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York—and he’s still obsessed with the world around his shoes. When he’s in the field looking for fossils, or in the woods hunting for mushrooms, he says, “my eyes are always slammed against the ground.” He started zeroing in on concrete prints a decade or so ago, when a friend was looking to incorporate some into the endpapers of a book. That “flipped my switch,” Mehling says. “I just never stopped.”
A 3D facial reconstruction of an Egyptian boy was revealed by European researchers. The boy was estimated to have been mummified during the first century A.D., and the digital reconstruction resembles a lifelike portrait of the deceased that was buried along with his remains. These “mummy portraits” that were used for comparison to the reconstruction was a popular practice among certain strata of Roman Egyptian society, as the Smithsonian details:
Compared with the ancient funerary artwork, the modern reconstruction shows “considerable similarities”—albeit with one notable exception, as the team notes in the journal PLOS One.
Analysis of the skeleton’s bones and teeth suggests the boy was roughly 3 to 4 years old at the time of his death. But the researchers point out that “on a subjective level, the portrait appears slightly ‘older,’” likely due to its lithe depiction of the child’s nose and mouth.
This more mature representation “may have been the results of an artistic convention of that time,” lead author Andreas Nerlich, a pathologist at the Academic Clinic Munich-Bogenhausen in Germany, tells Live Science.
Similarities between the boy’s portrait and the digital reconstruction may help answer a question that has lingered since British archaeologist W.M. Flinders Petrie discovered a trove of mummy portraits in Egypt’s Fayum region in the late 1880s: Who do the artworks represent?
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, the house where the Banks family lived was made available to rent out through Airbnb. Will Smith took the opportunity to go visit it himself, and he took along DJ Jazzy Jeff (Jeff Townes), too. The house is set up to appeal specifically to Fresh Prince fans, but it was a nostalgic trip, too. They are eventually joined by other cast members, with the notable exception of Uncle Phil (the late James Avery). You may as well watch the tour, since the actual Airbnb listing is booked for the foreseeable future. -via Digg
