There was oleic acid in my breakfast! Should I rush to the hospital?
Probably not. Graphic designer and chemistry teacher James Kennedy warns against what he calls "chemophobia"--the fear of harmless if not beneficial chemicals. A lot of the ingredients in completely natural, healthy foods sound frightening.
Kennedy created ingredient lists for several other foods, including passion fruit, blueberries and chicken eggs. You can view them here.
-via Marginal Revolution
Maja Wronska, an architecture student Poland, paints striking watercolor images of cities around the world. I especially like the depiction of Brussels, which shows a nice contrast between sharp forms at the top with vague ones at the bottom offset by the bright red umbrellas.
In an interview about her work, Wronska described how her architectural studies inspired her art:
My drawings are strictly connected with the architecture so, for sure, architecture is my inspiration. I started to draw ‘seriously’ during the drawing course on my studies. It was the way I spent my weekends and evenings at high school. When I started to study I gave drawing a miss. Then I realized that I had missed it very much.
Idyllic scenes abound in this series of photographs by Elena Shumilova, which consists of portraits of her two boys Yaroslav and Vanya, and the animals they love on their family farm in Russia.
Elena took up photography in 2012 in order to document her boys as they were growing up, and the amazingly close relationship they have with the animals on the farm. The warmth of the natural lighting and the wonderfully lush environment that surrounds them makes each pic feel like a private glimpse into the moment a mystical bond is formed between child and critter.
Elena obviously puts a lot of love into her works, and it will be a delight to see which captured moments of her rustic life she chooses to share with the world through her photography in the coming years.
Via 22 Words
Photographer Jeremy Cowart did a photo shoot of the cast of the TV series The Haves and Have Nots. One of the stars of the Oprah Winfrey Network show is John Schneider, who you remember from The Dukes of Hazzard. After a pleasant session shooting all the cast members, Schneider asked if Cowart could do a few additional pictures. I don't want to give the story away, but it's short and touching and well worth reading at Cowert's blog. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Jeremy Cowert)
Baby Hazel lies down for a nap with her cat. The cat, obviously the maternal type, believes Hazel needs a bath first. "Sit still, large kitten, I haven't cleaned all of your head yet. My goodness, you'd think I'm the only one around here who ever licks the hooman child." -via Daily Picks and Flicks
It's common for daycare businesses to learn about the interests and habits of children who enroll. One daycare manager gave a friend of redditor JesadBellic this form to fill out when he enrolled his daughter, Emma, in the school.
Emma is 11 months old.
So some of these questions are probably not relevant to a child of that age. You can see a larger view of the responses here.
-via Glenn Reynolds
A man takes his toddler daughter to visit his identical twin brother for the first time. She knows what Daddy looks like and sounds like, but now there's suddenly two of them! She has no trouble going to her uncle, but keeps looking back and forth at both guys in adorable confusion. -via Viral Viral Videos
"You'll catch your death of cold!" Grandma says when you show up with just a sweater on in the winter. So you once again explain to her that you aren't allowed to wear a coat in class because of security rules and there's no place to put one where it won't be stolen. But does cold weather make you sick? No. And yes. AsapSCIENCE explains the nuts and bolts of winter weather and colds and flu.
Put another way, cold weather makes me sick. Sick at heart when I have to venture out to start the car early. And sick to my stomach when I think of the heating bills. And I think it might affect my arthritis a bit, too. -via Geeks Are Sexy
A stash of exposed but undeveloped film was found at an old supply depot in Antarctica. The depot had been built by the doomed Terre Nova expedition (1910-1913) and then restocked by the Ross Sea Party with supplies for Ernest Shackleton's 1914-1917 expedition, which never collected them. It is believed that the negatives were left by the Ross Sea Party, who were stranded when their ship blew out to sea in a blizzard. The 22 negatives have been carefully developed, and came out pretty clear, considering they've been frozen into a block of ice for a century! -via the Presurfer
(Image credit: The Antarctic Heritage Trust New Zealand)
Broadcast news is full of opportunities for anchor related errors, whether they misread the teleprompter, say something because they don’t realize the cameras are rolling, or have their on location report interrupted by a drunken idiot or some guy flashing his full moon.
It’s a wonder news broadcasts make it on the air at all, and when things inevitably do go wrong the internet is waiting to share these bloopers with the world. Here’s a compilation of the best news bloopers of 2013, which range from silly to ribald, honest mistakes to people acting downright dumb. (NSFW due to language)
Via Super Punch
We all know the dance sequence from the TV special A Charlie Brown Christmas. After all, it's been aired every year since 1965! And the song, "Linus and Lucy" by Vince Guaraldi, became the theme for every Peanuts special that followed.
Mashable took a dance crew out in the streets of New York City to perform a flashmob version of the dance exactly as Schroeder, Linus, Snoopy, and the rest of the Peanuts gang did it. Lucky passers-by were delighted! And those of us, like myself, who never experience such unexpected entertainment, get to see it on video. -via Viral Viral Videos
People who enjoy viewing works of art rarely think about the person who created the pieces they’re enjoying, much less the workspace utilized by the artist during the creation process, but sculptor/model maker Joe Fig thought it was about time somebody let us see what life is like inside the artist’s studio.
Joe created a series of miniature dioramas which depict various artists, from Jackson Pollock to Henri Matisse to Joe Fig himself, working away in their tiny little studios creating those iconic works of art we all know and love. And while the scenes are small in scale the details are large as life, and full of whimsical additions that make each scene feel like a voyeuristic peek into the lives of these iconic artists.
Via Juxtapoz
The average Wall Street worker slips straight from their world of stock quotes and ticker tape to their comfortable home without paying any mind to the slums and underworld elements that surround their brokerage house or trading floor.
Chris Arnade, on the other hand, saw a chance to document humanity in the raw when he left work each day, shooting photos of New York City’s underworld that are both moving and a bit unnerving. This is street life at its core- prostitution, drug abuse, homelessness and rampant mental illness.
His pictures dare you to look away, yet force the viewer to realize that ignoring the problem won't make it go away. Chris is hoping that spreading awareness will shed light on the problems facing modern urban society, New York in particular, and he’s creating some incredibly powerful street photography at the same time.
Via Beautiful/Decay
All the Latin I know I learned from crossword puzzles. And the crossword puzzle will be 100 years old this coming Saturday! The first such puzzle was called a "word-cross," it is published in the New York World on December 21, 1913. By the 1920s, solving crossword puzzles was so popular that publishers couldn't print them fast enough. Suddenly, the average person's vocabulary went up. And psychologists argued about whether the fad was beneficial or damaging.
A Columbia University psychologist, for example, said that crossword puzzles satisfied 45 fundamental desires of the human species; Chicago’s health commissioner endorsed crosswords as a means of calming the nerves. But there was debate: The chairman of Maryland’s Board of Mental Hygiene worried that the puzzles “might easily unbalance a nervous mind” and even lead to psychosis. The New York Times derided crosswords as “a primitive sort of mental exercise,” and the Times of London ran an editorial about the fad headlined, “An Enslaved America.”
It might be telling that while flagpole sitting and the Charleston flourished in the '20s and then died away, people still do crossword puzzles every day. Read the history of the puzzle, and why it's so appealing, at Smithsonian's Past Imperfect blog. -via Digg
(Image credit: Flickr user Brian Aydemir)
Remember the animated video WIND? It happens in real life, too! Winds from winter storm Ivar affected shoppers in downtown Aalesund, Norway. It's pretty bad when bearded Viking police have to escort you across the street to keep from getting blown completely away!
-via reddit
