Obscura IX,1 by Kwanghun Hyun, made with a Tessar lens
There's not much information at Kwanghun Hyun's webpage for his DIY cameras. Ttechnically, they aren't camera obscuras as he titled them, but who cares? They are mechanically gorgeous! http://www.kwanghun.com/kwanghun/portfolio1.html
Folder Type is a typography created by Emilio Gomariz out of 22,655 color-coded Mac file folders. And here's the kicker: no script was used - he did it all by hand, which proves that his folder-fu is much, much stronger than mine and that he's got a lot of time on his hands.
Hit play or go to Link - via happy mundane
If you [heart] birds, then Josh Coulas has the birdhouse for you! Here's Heart For Bluebirds, a wooden holed heart structure he built for a competition/fundraiser at the Toronto Botanical Gardens.
Check out the complete showcase of entries here: http://www.torontobotanicalgarden.ca/birds/?cat=22 - via MoCo loco
The Tunguska Event, a mysterious explosion over the Tunguska River in 1908, has sparked many speculations as to its cause (A meteor? A Tesla experiment gone wrong? A natural gas explosion?). But this one takes the cake for its sheer weirdness:
Dr. Yuri Labvin, president of the Tunguska Spatial Phenomenon Foundation, insists that an alien spacecraft sacrificed itself to prevent a gigantic meteor from slamming into the planet above Siberia on June 30, 1908.
Most scientists think the blast was caused by a meteorite exploding several miles above the surface. But Labvin thinks quartz slabs with strange markings found at the site are remnants of an alien control panel, which fell to the ground after the UFO slammed into the giant rock.
"We don't have any technologies that can print such kind of drawings on crystals," Labvin told the Macedonian International News Agency. "We also found ferrum silicate that can not be produced anywhere, except in space."
South Africa is apparently one really dangerous place. Case in point: ATMs there are weaponized - yep, weaponized - with pepper spray. What could go wrong? Apparently, this:
The technology uses cameras to detect people tampering with the card slots. Another machine then ejects pepper spray to stun the culprit while police response teams race to the scene.
But the mechanism backfired in one incident last week when pepper spray was inadvertently inhaled by three technicians who required treatment from paramedics.
Patrick Wadula, spokesman for the Absa bank, which is piloting the scheme, told the Mail & Guardian Online: "During a routine maintenance check at an Absa ATM in Fish Hoek, the pepper spray device was accidentally activated.
Previously on Neatorama: Anti Car Jacking Flame Thrower Car Mod
At one point in time in my graduate studies, I stopped being surprised at weird biological discoveries because, as one of my college professors said, when it comes to science, "there's an exception to every rule, including this one" (think about it for a minute).
But this discovery by Morris Schweitzer and colleagues at McGill University and Montreal's Jewish General Hospital revealed something that is mind boggling: your DNA may not be the same in different cells in your body:
Research by a group of Montreal scientists calls into question one of the most basic assumptions of human genetics: that when it comes to DNA, every cell in the body is essentially identical to every other cell.
Except for cancer, samples of diseased tissue are difficult or even impossible to take from living patients. Thus, the vast majority of genetic samples used in large-scale studies come in the form of blood. However, if it turns out that blood and tissue cells do not match genetically, these ambitious and expensive genome-wide association studies may prove to have been essentially flawed from the outset.
First it was bluefin tuna, then Playboy bunnies, then the world's wheat crop. Now the Great Barrier Reef is going to be gone in 20 years, according to marine scientist Charlie Veron:
Charlie Veron, former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, told The Times: “There is no way out, no loopholes. The Great Barrier Reef will be over within 20 years or so.”
Once carbon dioxide had hit the levels predicted for between 2030 and 2060, all coral reefs were doomed to extinction, he said. “They would be the world’s first global ecosystem to collapse. I have the backing of every coral reef scientist, every research organisation. I’ve spoken to them all. This is critical. This is reality.”
Frank Pope of The Times Online has the interview: Link
Everything's going extinct like it's going out of style! What's (or who's) next? Miley Cyrus?
From the Neatoshop: Having Great Vocab Didn't Save the Thesaurus From Extinction
Element 112 has been officially added to the Periodic Table as "copernicium," in honor of astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.
Copernicus deduced that the planets revolved around the Sun, and finally refuted the belief that the Earth was the centre of the Universe.
The team of scientists who discovered the element chose the name to honour the man who "changed our world view". [...]
"After IUPAC officially recognised our discovery, we agreed on proposing the name (because) we would like to honour an outstanding scientist," said Professor Hofmann.
Previously on Neatorama: Element 112 to be Officially Added to the Periodic Table
As you all know, I'm a big fan of Tokyoflash and their nigh-unreadable watches (unless you're a major geek and can count in binary in your sleep, of course). So it's with great pleasure for me to tell you that Tokyoflash is featuring some new watch designs from Independent (very limited quantity). They told me that these designs are some of the best they've ever seen in terms of quality and originality - and it definitely shows. These watches are gorgeous!
Link - Thanks Paul Cooper! (Y'know, it's time we run a Tokyoflash Treasure Hunt again on Neatorama, don't you guys think?)
Rapleaf, a company that specializes in analyzing trends in social media, has an interesting study on the popularity of four artists, namely The Beatles, Elvis, Madonna, and Michael Jackson, across major social networks. They randomly sampled 1.1 million fans, and found some surprising results (the study was done 2 weeks before Michael Jackson's death, which explains some things):
* The Beatles’ dominating popularity online — The Beatles’ online celebrity may be bolstered by both their music’s enduring appeal and the success of their recent compilation album 1 released in 2000, which has become one of the best-selling albums of this decade with over 31 million in worldwide sales. While all the artists in this study are period icons, The Beatles’ prominence on social media may suggest their ability to better transcend generations, which is in part evidenced by them having the second-youngest fans.
* Michael Jackson’s lack of internet prominence — This is particularly bewildering given Michael Jackson’s younger - and presumably more tech- and social media-savvy - fans and his status as one of the most influential entertainers and musicians to ever take center stage. His 1982 album Thriller remains the best-selling album of all time with over 100 million sales worldwide (more than twice the second best-selling album).
http://blog.rapleaf.com/rapleaf-study-popularity-and-fan-demographics-of-michael-jackson-the-beatles-elvis-and-madonna-across-social-media/ - Thanks Michael Hsu!
Why do dogs bark so much? Evolutionary biologist Kathryn Lord thinks the answer has got something to do with trash dumps and scaring away intruders:
“What we’re saying is that the domestic dog does not have an intentional message in mind, such as, ‘I want to play’ or ‘the house is on fire,’” explains Lord.
Rather, she and colleagues say barking is the auditory signal associated with an evolved behavior known as mobbing, a cooperative anti-predator response usually initiated by one individual who notices an approaching intruder. A dog barks because she feels an internal conflict?an urge to run plus a strong urge to stand her ground and defend pups, for example. When the group joins in, the barks intimidate the intruder, who often flees.
“We think dogs bark due to this internal conflict and mobbing behavior, but domestic dogs bark more because they are put, and put themselves into, conflicting situations more often,” she says.
Needless to say, dog lovers who think that their pets are communicating with think, of course, that she is barking up the wrong tree: Link
Auroras or the Northern Lights are in my bucket list - I know that they are caused by the collision of solar wind with the Earth's magnetic field but I can't help to feel that these phenomenons are but a small display of how majestic Mother Nature can be.
Anyway, until I can haul my lazy butt to the (very far and very cold) polar region, these fantastic photos of auroras by Dennis C. Anderson of Night Trax Photography have got to suffice. They're some of the most beautiful photos I've ever seen.
This one to the left, titled A Colorful Dawn, was taken back in 2003 in Homer, Alaska. Check out the entire gallery here (not to be missed!): Link (you can buy prints there, too)
Exactly like its name advertises, Badass of the Week is a website dedicated to spotlighting badasses and their associated badasseries. I'm particularly fond of this entry for Blenda (and the Women of Smaland).
The King of Sweden returned from his campaign to find that Blenda and her girlfriends triumphantly standing on top of a massive heaping pile of dead Vikings, and was so pumped up about the whole thing that he granted the women of Smaland a bunch of totally awesome political and social rights that had been previously unavailable to them. From that point on, all daughters had the right to inherit property, money and land equally with their brothers, and were allowed to wear military-style garments around town and at their weddings. They were also given the prestigious right to wear the Royal Coat of Arms on their clothing – a tradition that has lasted to this day. Blenda is still recognized as a national hero in Sweden.
And that, my friends, is a pretty badass way to fight for women's rights.
If there's a lesson here, it's this: don't ever mess with Viking women. Ever.
You may say that modern art is silly, but some may prove to be downright dangerous in this post 9/11 world. Take the Bunny Project, an performance art by Conny Blom where he goes around town putting together a suspicious looking object shaped like a bomb. A carrot bomb, to be precies:
Performance commissioned by Kalmar Museum of Art, Sweden. During the inauguration of the new art museum in Kalmar a suspicious individual sneaked around the premises mounting sculptures made of carrots, alarm clocks, red and blue cables, metal wire and tape. On direct orders from the Swedish secret police the performance was stopped since the Culture Minister refused to give her inaugural speech if it were to continue. The speech , as it later turned out, was about how art must be allowed to be free and provocative.
Think that websites and blogs are so laden with ads? Well, the virtual page is nothing compared to the physical space when it comes to ads - take Times Square, for instance. Back in 2007, David Friedman of Ironic Sans blog decided to take a photo of every single ad in Times Square. It took him 20 minutes, and he came up with 183 ads total.
Link [Flickr] | David's post: Every ad in Times Square
Lest you think that this ad business is a recent invention, check out this photo of Times Square back at the turn of the century:
Photo via The Dust Congress
