Adrienne Crezo's Blog Posts

The 25 Coolest College Labs



If you want white tiled floors and cleanrooms, these are not the labs you're looking for. PopSci has ranked their choices for the 25 most awesome college labs, and the diversity and locations might surprise you. From the experimental mine for demolitions students (who learn to "blow things up extremely well") at the Missouri University of Science and Technology to the geophysics program at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory--where students wake up before dawn to hike to the top of one of the world's most active volcanoes--these awesome hands-on programs put your five credit hours of making Punnet squares to shame. Featured careers include game design, rainforest biology, oceanography, brewery and alien-hunting. http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-08/you-call-college

Image: U.S. Geological Survey/Hawaiian Volcano Observatory

Disney Princesses as Vogue Cover Models



Dante Tyler‘s mock-up Vogue covers featuring Disney Princesses as glamazonian models is at first funny ("Thingamabobs? She's got 20"), then a bit unsettling. With Pocahontas as a fierce Beyonce look-alike and Belle staring smoky-eyed from behind her top five novel recommendations, you have to wonder how far removed the marketing plans for Vogue and Disney really are from one another. Link -via Flavorwire

via Design You Trust

Ulric Collette's Genetic Portraits



Here's an interesting project. Quebecois artist Ulric Collette (shown above, with his cousin Justine) explores the facial similarity of relatives by mashing their faces together into one portrait. The Genetic Portraits series was featured in My Modern Met, who snagged an interview with Collette. There are a lot of great results--some look like a normal person (when the relatives are close in appearance) and some can be kind of crazy. Link -via Laughing Squid

Fine Art from Tiny Drawings



Tokyo artists Sagaki Keita creates fine art from hundreds of tiny drawings, like this rendition of the "Great Wave off Kanagawa." The smaller drawings are sometimes silly or sinister, but each is balanced perfectly in light and dark to create the overall image. Keita doesn't only reproduce  famous works, though his Mona Lisa is spot-on--he has a full gallery of original works all created in the same manner. Link - via WebUrbanist

The Bizarre Plan to Turn Hitler into a Woman

There were a lot of plans in place for taking Hitler down (Captain America's punch to the face notwithstanding) that never quite panned out. Among them, an inventive and elaborate scheme to turn the Fuhrer into a woman:
Cardiff University professor Brian Ford says he uncovered the plan while reviewing recently declassified documents for his new book, Secret Weapons: Technology, Science, And The Race To Win World War II.

British spies figured that if they could lace Hitler's food with estrogen, over time he would become less cruel and aggressive, Ford says. The idea was to "feminize" Hitler, and make him behave more like his sister, Paula, a "mild-mannered secretary." The Brits were encouraged by then-recent research into the effects of sex hormones in therapy. "There were agents who would be able to get it into his food," Ford says, as quoted by The Telegraph. "It would have been entirely possible."

No one ever put the plan into action, probably because it was crazy--just like some others highlighted in this article over on The Week. Link

I Am Maru, the Book

Maru, the Scottish fold YouTube star who lives with his human, mugumogu, in Japan, is getting his own book. Published by HarperCollins, I am Maru promises a little insight to the cat's "low-key" lifestyle.
"This…cat may be an internet sensation, but he knows how to keep his celebrity status from going to his fluffy head…mostly…See all his favorite hiding places—trash cans, cupboards, cereal boxes…if it’s cozy, he’s there—meet his treasured toys, and learn what it means to wield just the right amount of cat-titude."

I am Maru will be available August 23, 2011, but if you can't wait until then, his blog of the same name updates frequently.

Link

Bottle Cap Nautilus Sculpture



Virginia art student Ryan Lytle created Nautilus, the awesome 3D sculpture shown above, from bottle caps, lots of wire, some keys, a gas mask lens and other recycled materials. Lytle calls the process of wrapping and weaving wire into art "cathartic" and says the changeable nature of the medium, added to the aging process of exposed metal, reminds him "of the progression of life." More photos of Nautilus are available on his Flickr. http://api.viglink.com/api/click?format=go&key=9b4efad421c8b103b2c94b796db973b0&loc=http%3A%2F%2Flaughingsquid.com%2Fnautilus-made-from-bottle-caps-other-recycled-objects%2F%3Futm_source%3Dfeedburner%26utm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_campaign%3DFeed%253A%2Blaughingsquid%2B%2528Laughing%2BSquid%2529&subId=92048b9c48b85c53826b01449a625085&v=1&libid=1313347086677&out=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Fryanlytle%2F5878329697%2F&title=Nautilus%20Made%20From%20Bottle%20Caps%20%26%20Other%20Recycled%20Objects&txt=Nautilus&jsonp=vglnk_jsonp_13133480909631

via Laughing Squid

Space Invaders Cross-Stitch Sampler



This is definitely not your grandmother's alphabet sampler. If your interest in old-school gaming overlaps with an appreciation for needlecraft, then this may be your new favorite thing. The Space Invaders sampler measures about 7.8? (h) x 6? (w), and was handmade by Knitforvictory, and is available over on Etsy for $25 (USD). Link

via Technabob

Where Children Sleep

[caption id="attachment_51297" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="9-year-old Jamie shares a top-floor apartment on New York's Fifth Avenue with his parents and three siblings. The family's two other homes are in Spain and the Hamptons."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_51298" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="14-year-old Prena is a domestic worker in Nepal and lives in a cell-like room in the attic of the house where she works in Katmandu."][/caption]

Kenyan-born, English-raised, Venice-based documentary photographer James Mollison's photographs of children and their sleeping arrangements highlights the shocking disparity between the living conditions of children from all over the world. From Fifth Avenue to Katmandu, Mollison's book, Where Children Sleep, was written and designed as an empathy tool for 9-to-13-year-olds to better understand the lives of other children around the world. Link

Run for Your Lives: the Zombie 5K

If you love zombies and running (I'm looking at you, Stacy Conradt), you'll love this: marathon through the woods while being actively chased by volunteer zombies. If that's your thing (and I think for a lot of you it might be), then you need to be in Baltimore this October.
This Baltimore event is called Run For Your Lives, which sounds about right. Runners will wear flags (which represent life) while jumping and leaping over obstacles throughout a 5K course (unless you get lost, that is) while zombies chase them down and try to rip off their "life." If you cross the finish line without any remaining flags, you're dead (and ineligible for the prizes at the end of the race). Don't want to run? Don't worry! You can sign up just to partake in the fun afterparty and live music fiesta after the race!

This event is in Baltimore on October 22. You can get more info and sign up on the Run for Your Lives website and watch the promo video on YouTube. I think multiple cities should organize their own zombie 5K events so we can have that long-awaited zombie apocalypse.

Link

Life-Sized LEGO Animals



At the Bronx Zoo, now through September 30, you can visit life-sized LEGO recreations of some of your favorite animals. The animals-in-brick are part of the Great Summer Zoofari, a Lego Wildlife Expedition which aims to shed some light on "the challenges faced by wildlife due to habitat loss and other threats to their survival."  My favorite part is that they're offering PDF guides to building your own Lego frog or fish. Click through for the gallery. Link

via DVICE

The Giant Rat with Poison-Filled Hair

At around 14 inches in length, the giant African crested rat is big, but not really dangerous-looking. Though researchers knew that the rodent was deadly, no one knew exactly how. But recently,  they've discovered the secret of the animal's bizarre defense system -- hollow hairs filled with poison. Using the bark of the Acokanthera schimperi, which humans use in poison darts, the rat makes use of its highly speciailized fur to ward off larger animals bent on eating it.
To figure out the rat's secret, [Oxford University study researcher Jonathan] Kingdon and his colleagues observed the rats in the wild and ran lab tests on a line of hairs that run along its back and seemed to have a unique structure. They also tested the chemicals in the hairs' poisons alongside that of the bark of the Acokanthera schimperi, which the rats are known to chew.

They found that to make its poison fur, the rat — which averages about 14 inches (36 cm) long — chews the bark of the A. schimperi and licks itself to store the resulting poisonous spit in specially adapted hairs. This behavior is hardwired into the animal's brain, similar to nitpicking behavior of birds or self-bathing of cats, the researchers suspect.

"What is quite clear in this animal is that it is hardwired to find the poison, it is hardwired to chew it and it is hardwired to apply it to the small area of hairs," Kingdon said. The animals apply the poisonous spit only to the specialized hairs on a small strip along its back. When threatened, the rat arches its back and uses specially adapted muscles to slick back its hair and expose the strip of poison.

Poison from this tree bark has been used by hunters to take down large prey, like elephants, for thousands of years. "Evolution has mimicked something that hunters do," Kingdon said. "It [the crested rat] is borrowing from the plant just as the hunters are borrowing from the very same plant."

The hairs themselves are specially structured to absorb the poison, Kingdon found. Their outer layer is full of large holes, like a pasta strainer, and the inside is full of straight fibers that wick up liquids. "There is no other hair that is known to science that is remotely structured like these hairs," Kingdon said.

It is unknown why the rat doesn't die from chewing the poison, though it could be resistant somehow. "The rats should drop dead every time they chew this stuff but they are not," Kingdon said. "We don't have the slightest idea how that could be done."

Learning more about how this poison works could even help human medicine, since it acts by inducing heart attacks. A related chemical, called digitoxin, has been used for decades as a treatment for heart failure.

The study was published Aug. 2 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Link

Famous People Who Disappeared



We all know about Jimmy Hoffa, who "vanished so quickly and so thoroughly that his vanishing would eventually become something of a punch line," and Amelia Earhart, whose remains were maybe found, but there's a longish list of famous people who have disappeared in a snap. LIFE has a great round up, from master Baroque painter Carravaggio to the crew of the USS Cyclops. Link

Photo by Getty Images

Literary Circles of Influence



You could probably guess that Shakespeare had some sort of creative influence on Jane Austen, but this handy infographic from Longshot magazine carries it a bit further, linking Tolstoy to Jim Morrison and Lord Byron to JJ Abrams. I find the Tolstoy to Muhammad Ali connections especially interesting.

http://two.longshotmag.com/contents via Flavorwire via Lapham's Quarterly

Animals Face to Face



Meet the Sulawesi black-crested macaca (Macaca nigra). If his expression is any kind of clue, photographer Stefano Unterthiner's surprise shot is probably not appreciated. (Incidentally, I make that exact face any time someone takes my picture, so sharing this here probably isn't helping Mr. Macaca feel better about himself. Assuming he is a "he" of course.)

This is just one of several "Animals Face to Face" photographs by Unterthiner; check out the rest on Colt + Rane. Link | via mentalfloss

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Profile for Adrienne Crezo

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