The South Australian Motor Accident Commission has a message to send to people who disregard the speed limit: vehicle accidents cost lives. To get this point accross, MAC brought in Emma Hack, the artist responsible for Gotye's "Somebody That I Used to Know" video, to design the "Body Crash" billboard ad.

It's a little difficult to tell, aside from that one extended arm out there to the left, but this car is actually 17 people lying on and around each other, then painted to look like a wrecked sedan. Here's a close-up:

The group of bodybuilders, athletes and acrobats were chosen for their flexibility and fatigue resistance. The whole process from design concept to assembling the models to painting the car is available in video form over at If It's Hip It's Here, along with lots of behind-the-scenes shots. Link

What is a geek? For many people the term is perjorative, but for those who embrace geekdom, being a geek simply means having a thorough knowledge of and passion for a specific topic or activity. These aren't limited to calculus and Star Wars references, as 80s movies may have kead you to believe, but those topics certainly aren't excluded here, either. And as with any personality trait, geekiness is attractive to other geeks. But what the hey does this all have to do with autism? That's what researchers Simon Baron-Cohen and Sally Wheelwright set out to solve.

In a series of studies, the pair revealed that geeky personality types were more likely to have children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. Most revealing were statistics related to the parents' occupations:

12.5 percent of fathers of children with autism were engineers, compared with only 5 percent of fathers of children without autism.

Likewise, 21.2 percent of grandfathers of children with autism had been engineers, compared with only 2.5 percent of grandfathers of children without autism. The pattern appeared on both sides of the family. Women who had a child with autism were more likely to have a father who had been an engineer—and they were more likely to have married someone whose father had been an engineer.

But Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright's research wasn't limited to the industry-specific employment of parents with autistic children; the pair also researched tendencies to data systemizing, college majors, tech-industry locations (which revealed that Silicon Valley reports a higher incidence of childhood autism) and why autism seems to be more prevalent in malesthan in females. The article by Baron-Cohen is along read, but worth it if autism and geekiness are relevant to your interests. Check out the rest on Scientific American. Link | Photo

Ladies, this is a map of our hearts. Like any old map, it's safe to assume the cartographer was operating with limited tools and resources and under the influence of societal expectations. So don't be offended that Love of Dress and Display hold such a geographical prominence, or that the Country of Eligibleness is not yet called Vast Plains of Strength, Intelligence & Awesomeness. (That amendment hadn't passed yet.) 

According to Brain Pickings, the artist was "A Lady," but I suspect she had some "constructive critique" before publication. Check out a larger version on Retronaut, with a rundown of lady-heart topography. Link

Chandler Burr is an artist. (That's him in the photo above.) A creative specialist, if you will. But you'll never see his work, or hear it on the radio, or read it on your Nook. Burr is the world's only curator of olfactory art, and he has a show(? display? exhibit? Help me out here) coming to the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York.

In The Art of Scent: 1889-2012, Burr will be introducing museum visitors to 12 highpoints in the history of fragrance, thanks to diffusion technology that releases perfume in minute puffs. But it’s still not clear how much of his audience will recognize the art form’s finer points. Holly Hotchner, MAD’s director, heads up a museum devoted to crossovers—to bridging craft and design and fine arts of every kind. But even she sees the show she supports as a gamble: “This is probably as far afield as we’ve gone, in terms of experimentation, because people aren’t used to using their noses.” Burr’s determined to change that, nostril by nostril. (He says we only smell through one at a time.)

If it seems complicated, that's because it is. For most of us, perfume smells like... well, perfume. And while different fragrances vary, there's an inherent "perfuminess" to each of them that tells your brain, "Hey, these aren't flowers." But picking apart those notes and understanding that each nuance of fragrance is a synthetic interpretation of a recognizeable smell is something Burr believes is an art, and that art has a history. He just wants the chance to show you. Er, let you smell it. 

Whether you decide to visit MAD and sniff your way through the Rennaisance, romantic and photorealistic eras of perfumery, Burr's conversation with The Daily Beast's Blake Gopnik is an interesting read, filled with Burr's revelations you'd probably never wonder about otherwise. For instance: “The scent of Coppertone is incredibly well made, is beautifully composed. Call it a work of design—call it what you will—it is a minor work of art.” See? Never crossed my mind. List

Photo: The Museum of Arts and Design

Armed with the raddest 'Murica pants this side of Napoleon Dynamite and a still-sealed VHS copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from 1990, Pause the 90s went on a mission to find out if Pizza Hut would give them a discount dating back 20 years.  

Almost unbelievably, the manager wasawesome enough to honor a coupon that expired in 1991. It was probably the sunglasses that won her over. Link - via GuySpeed

Sweden has a few claims to fame that the U.S. simply can't compete with, namely Ikea, the Nobel Prize, and a historical avoidance of war. (Oh, and meatballs. Mmm.) But now it can add "emergency trash imports" to the list, because the country is running dangerously low on household and industrial waste. 

According to the country's Waste Management site, two million tons of waste is converted to heat and electricity each year, with only 4% of the nation's trash ending up in landfills. But it's not enough: 

Due to its efficiency in converting waste to renewable energy, Sweden has recently begun importing around 800,000 tons of trash annually from other countries.

Norway is now paying Sweden to take its garbage. Swedish sights are also set on Bulgaria, Romania and Italy as future trash exporters, as Catarina Ostlund, a senior advisor for the country's environmental protection agency, told PRI. Those countries rely heavily on landfills – a highly inefficient and environmentally degrading system.

Compare this to the United States, which recycles about 34% of the 250 million tons of trash generated per year. The majority of the rest is landfilled. 

I don't know about you guys, but I have plenty of trash I could sell to Sweden. Give me a call; I'll pull my bin back from the curb.

Link | UN Photo/Evan Schneider

Ransom Riggs has an unusual hobby: he collects old photographs of people he doesn't know. But it's not necessarily about the snapshots themselves — the interesting part is what's written on the backs. Riggs explains:

When you’re looking through bins of thousands of random, unsorted photos, every hundredth one or so will have some writing on it. It’s generally just identifying information (“me and Jerry at the Grand Canyon, 1947″), but every once in a while I'll find a something surprising, emotional, candid, hilarious, heartbreaking -- a few words that bring the picture to life in a profound new way, transforming a blurry black-and-white snapshot of people who seem a million miles and a million years away into an intensely personal sliver of experience that anyone can relate to. It becomes something not just to look at, but to listen to.

(YouTube link)

The following photos are excerpted from Talking Pictures, which is on sale today.

From the chapter "Clowning Around," which is 100% tomfoolery:

This one's from "Love and Marriage" -- in this case the subject has neither:

I don't always feel old, but when I do it's because of posts like this one. The Atari 2600 — that boxy little guy that changed the way an entire generation defined the word "play" — is 35 years old this week. There are no words.

For the under-25 set/Martian cave-dwellers, the Atari 2600 debuted in 1977 as the Atari VCS, for Video Computer System. It was the first wide-selling home gaming system and the one that popularized microchip processing (like the kind later used in pretty much anything more complicated than Hungry Hungry Hippos). The Atari 2600 was inducted to the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2007 and voted the second-most important gaming console of all time by IGN. (It was defeated by the relentless popularity of the original NES and those damned Mario Brothers.)

We had the wood-veneered model in our house in the 80s, and at least five of the top ten best-selling games. My favorite (Snoopy and the Red Baron) didn't make the cut, but Space Invaders, my next choice, clocked in at number five. Now let's play the "Can You Guess #1?" Game. Let us know how you did. Link

You know Anastasiya Shpagina (right), Ukraine's Anime Girl, and likewise, you're probably also aware of Valeria Lukyanova (left), who calls herself Real Barbie. (If not, here's a brief primer: They look like this all the time.)

Because this universe is sometimes injust and bad things do happen, the two met up for a photoshoot. The uncanny valley has never been deeper.

First we have newcomer, 19 year-old Anastasiya Shpagina, who’s industrial strength make-up job transforms her into three dimensional warm blooded anime girl.  In the other corner we have 21 year-old Valeria Lukyanova, who surprised the world with her appearance of a “Real Barbie Doll” which is rumored to be the result of extensive plastic surgery.

Though you'd imagine the two were vying for some sort of Creepiest Ukranian Human Alive award, they seemed to hit it off, reportedly sharing makeup tips and dressing up as one another. 

There are plenty more pictures of both ladies(?) over at RocketNews, if you're into that or just can't seem to look away. Link

American moms have long been notorious for the old "TV rots your brain" argument. (Mine is guilty, anyway.) But obviously moms don't know about the ways TV can really change the world. In Russia, for example, a TV show was largely responsible for electing a president:

As Russians were gearing up to go to the polls in July 1996, Boris Yeltsin was nervous about his job. The weather gave him additional reason to panic. With the sun shining and the temperatures pleasant, Yeltsin fretted that his city-dwelling supporters would decamp to their dachas, or country cottages, instead of staying home and voting. Russia’s president needed a way to keep his base from traveling.

His solution: a cunning use of soap opera. No show was more popular in Russia than the Brazilian morality soap Tropikanka, which regularly drew 25 million viewers to the state-owned network ORT. With the election looming, ORT made a surprise announcement: The show’s finale would air as a special triple episode on election day between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m.

More amazing was the fact that the scheme actually worked. Because most dachas didn’t have televisions, viewers stayed in the city, glued to their sets. When the episode ended, it was too late to trek out of town, but voters still had time to get to the polling station. Yeltsin’s soap opera strategy helped him prevail by more than 10 million votes. Meanwhile, The Young and the Restless can’t even sway a lousy Senate race.

This is just one of the 25 Most Powerful TV Shows of the Last 25 Years, as selected by Mental Floss. Check out the rest, including the shows that rewired kids' brains and boosted the national pregnancy rate. Link

Let this be the weirdest thing you see all weekend (please). This Universal Newsreel from 1933 introduces farmer Cecil H. Dill, whose Stupid Human Trick is Letterman-worthy stupid: he performs Yankee Doodle by squeaking his hands together. Even weirder than hand farts, if you can believe it, is the way Dill looks as he tells his story: Wide-eyed, intense, and really, really proud of his show today. Link -via

 Wolf, Robert Jefferson Travis Pond

When scrap-metal sculptor Robert Jefferson Travis Pond starts on a new piece, the end result isn't really the focus. 

Half of what I do is collecting materials. I look for objects with significance and meaning, objects that have connections to us as individuals and as a whole. The scraps I use are a part of our human history.

Then, he takes those parts and builds incredible animals out of them, like the wolf above (my favorite) and the koi below. The pieces are fairly large, and presumably heavy, but neither of those things detracts from the impression of motion Pond's work expresses. Strong lines, graceful curves, and interesting details make Pond's work unique.

Koi, Robert Jefferson Travis Pond

And much like the finished sculptures' inspiration, the process of piecing them together is completely organic.

For me, the question is never where to start; it is always when to stop. It is a constant look beyond the object, beyond the form, to what is next. Each circumstance, or in this case, each piece, spontaneously connects to the next.

Owl, Robert Jefferson Travis Pond

The result is a dynamic and thoughtful rendering of a creature, built out of pieces of our own history. Just amazing. And there are plenty more where these few came from. The Steel Pond Studios site has tons of images of Pond's sharks, tigers, roosters, and even a pocket phoenix. He also makes furniture and wall hangings. Link -via Unconsumption

Fleeting Dragonfly; Mark Oliver

What's a Litter Bug? According to artist Mark Oliver, this:

Arthropod sub-species of the Insecta class.
A creature whose instinctual and physical qualities have adapted so uniquely to the modern urban environment that it has rendered itself, by nature of camouflage, virtually invisible in it’s normal habitat.

When seen in isolation ‘Litter Bugs’ appear to be composed of everyday ‘found’ objects.

I don't think I would call these steampunk (though Flavorwire does, and they probably know more about that than I do), the mixed-media sculptures are incredibly intricate. I especially love the teensy little clock face used here as the dragonfly's head. Check out the full swarm of Litter Bugs on Mark Oliver's site. Link -via Flavorwire

I don't know the first thing about Japanese art (or magazines, for that matter), but I know I'm really digging these vintage covers from 1910-1950. (The one featured above is from 1924. It's like a Matisse-Tim Burton mashup.)

There seems to be just a touch of art nouveau happening in some of these, like the one just above from 1930, but apart from that it appears Japan had its own thing going on in the early 20th-century, and it's a thing you might enjoy. 50 Watts has at least 23 more for your perusal, as well as links to other resources. Link

From left to right: Bicellaria grandis, section of cow's hoof, long section of fossilized coral, water scorpion (Nepa cinerea)

19th-century naturalists packaged specimen slides — cross-sections or small, whole organisms pressed between glass slides — in much the same way they packaged everything else: ornamentally. 

As microscopes and lenses became more sophisticated, and glass slides gained popularity in Victorian England, commercial glass slide mounters began to emerge in order to meet the demand of amateur naturalists. Many of the commercial slide makers began attaching decorative lithographed wrappers to the glass, often fixed with small handwritten identification tags and monogrammed trademark labels. Individual slide mounter's work became very recognizable over time, and have retained considerable value when found in near original condition. 

These examples above, taken from A Cabinet of Curiosities, are just a tiny example of the wide array of surviving pieces. Letterology has a great brief history and more images, or you can check out the full catalogue if you have a few hours to get lost in the Internet. Link