Photo: Michael Rubenstein
National Geographic Traveler went to Mumbai, India, and found this beaut: a CD player topped with a modern interpretation of the Hindu elephant god Ganesha ... complete with sneakers!
Links: Mumbai Photo Gallery - Thanks Marilyn!
Here's a reminder that we really don't know much about the universe: the Hubble Space telescope found something that scientists couldn't make any sense of.
The mystery object did not behave like any known kind of supernova. It is not even in any detectable galaxy. "The shape of the light curve is inconsistent with microlensing," say the researchers. They recorded three spectra of it — and its spectrum, they write, "in addition to being inconsistent with all known supernova types, is not matched to any spectrum in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey database" of vast numbers of objects. "We suggest that the transient may be one of a new class."
Forget Banksy! The title of World's Most Badass Artist belongs to a Belgian conceptual artist named Wim Delvoye.
Wim's quite famous for his unconventional art, many of which seem innocuous at a glance but contains something unexpected upon closer inspection. Others, like Cloaca and the gothic heavy machinery laser-cut sculptures shown below are amazing technical tour-de-force pieces.
Whether these art shock you or whether you think that these are art to begin with, there's no denying that Wim's work are quite unique!
Here are some of the most intriguing art of Wim Delvoye:
Cloaca is probably Wim Delvoye's most famous art installation. In 2000, he put together a complex machinery at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp, Belgium. The machine's sole job is to simulate "digestion" and produce poo. Yep, you read that right.
Wim's Cloaca machine (cloaca is a zoological term for the posterior opening of animals) was fed meals twice a day. Then, viewers can follow the food as it makes its way through a series of glass containers (in the original set up as shown above), which represent the various stages of digestion. At the end of the tract, the machine produces feces, which are then vacuum-packed and sold in translucent boxes:
Cloaca has its own website, where you can find out more about the art project: Link | More on Cloaca at Wim's website (don't miss the Super Cloaca!)
Continuing in his obsession with poo, here are Wim's 1990 art exhibit, titled Mosaic. The artwork consists of the complex arrangement of printed ceramic tiles into symmetrical and very ornate patterns.
Only after a closer inspection would the viewers realize that on each tile are two images of the Wim's own turd!
Again with the what-is-it-really-made-from angle, here's Wim's artwork Marble Floors at the Olga Korper Gallery. If you look closely, the floor is made with ... salami slices! (Actually, just printed pictures of salami - it'll be gross in just a few days if he had made it from real sliced meats)
Links: Olga Korper Gallery [Flash, click on delvoye] | More pics on Wim's own website (under "Marble Floors")
Here's a classic Wim art piece: with just a lipstick and a bunch of hotel stationery, Wim could probably fill an art and/or psychology student's master thesis with crazy thinking about Freud, his mother, and other mumbo jumbo. Why? Well, suffice it to say that those, erhm, aren't his lip prints ...
Photo: David Edgar [wikipedia]
Photo: yw_krcf [Flickr]
Now this is awesome: a series of gothic "lace" sculpture of heavy machineries, done with laser-cut COR-TEN (or weathering) steel.
Photo: If It's Hip, It's Here
Wim is a vegetarian, but he has a pig/art farm outside of Beijing in China. He's not thinking of bacon, however - Wim has other plans for his swine: he tattoos them! (He said that the pigs have better, longer lives than those raised for food).
Here's the YouTube clip of Wim tattooing pigs:
Some of his most famous tattooed pigs:
That's Louis, the pig tattooed with ... you guessed it, Louis Vuitton logos!
"Sebastien" (2006): Tattooed pig skin by Wim Delvoye
Photo: If It's Hip, It's Here
Photo: nolnet [Flickr]
For the Reasonably Clever Brick Science LEGO vignette competition, Mortiz Nolting made this wonderful diorama of Konrad Zuse in front of his masterpiece, the world's first programmable computer, the Z3: Link - via The Brothers Brick
Here's a little bit more info about Zuse from our post: The Wonderful World of Early Computing:
In 1941, despite financial hardship and isolation from computer scientists from other Western countries, German computer pioneer Konrad Zuse created the world’s first programmable computer, the Z3, from spare telephone parts.
The Z3 uses 2,000 relays (an electric switch) and was used to design aircrafts. Zuse’s request to create an electronic successor for the machine was denied by Germany as "strategically unimportant."
Apparently not - pretty much everything under the sun can be made into randy costumes ...
Stacy of I Met a Possum blog explores some of the more, um, unusual sexy Halloween costumes around: Link [don't worry, SFW]
Evolutionists rejoice! Darwin has made a miraculous appearance in a concrete wall:
A steady stream of devoted evolutionists continued to gather in this small Tennessee town today to witness what many believe is an image of Charles Darwin—author of The Origin Of Species and founder of the modern evolutionary movement—made manifest on a concrete wall in downtown Dayton.
"I brought my baby to touch the wall, so that the power of Darwin can purify her genetic makeup of undesirable inherited traits," said Darlene Freiberg, one among a growing crowd assembled here to see the mysterious stain, which appeared last Monday on one side of the Rhea County Courthouse. The building was also the location of the famed "Scopes Monkey Trial" and is widely considered one of Darwinism's holiest sites. "Forgive me, O Charles, for ever doubting your Divine Evolution. After seeing this miracle of limestone pigmentation with my own eyes, my faith in empirical reasoning will never again be tested."
Added Freiberg, "Behold the power and glory of the scientific method!"
From the satirical website The Onion (yeah, it's fiction. No emails, please!): Link - via Locust & Honey
Previously on Neatorama: August 2006: a Busy Month for Religious SightingsMen, if your wives are pregnant, here is a handy list of things NOT to say:
16 “Sure you’ll get your figure back — we’ll just search 1995 where you left it.”
15 “Keys are on the fridge, honey. I’ll see you at the hospital at half-time.”
14 “Sure, the doctor said you’re eating for two - but he didn’t mean two Orcas.”
13 “Honey — Come show the guys your Brando impression!”
12 “Roseanne, what have you done with my wife?!”
Miss Cellania has the rest: Link
Are you an attractive woman, between the ages of 18 and 26, and can cook and clean? Paul Eley, a 30-year-old finance guy in an investment company, has a proposal for you:
I am looking for a new flatmate as my old one has now left. Could you pass this on to anyone you might think would be interested.
I don't need any rent from any potential flatmate, so it will be rent free. The only thing they would pay for is their own food.
I am looking for a girl flatmate between 18 years old and 26 years old. Preferably someone who is very tidy and reasonable nice to look at.
Instead of paying rent I would expect them to do the following.
Clean the whole apartment once a week. Clean the kitchen every day and keep it tidy.
Do some of my washing and ironing. Occasionally cook for me on a week day if I am working late (nothing difficult something like sausages and mash).
It would not be a permanent arrangement because if I had a serious permanent girlfriend they would have to move out.
I would give them one month's notice so they had time to find somewhere else.
If you know anyone who would be interested let me know and I will meet them to see if I can get on with them.
(Photo: SWNS)
Joe Stainaker's trained dog saved him when he had a seizure ... by calling 911!
Buddy when the dog was 8 weeks old through the help of Paws With a Cause, an assistance animal adoption service.
Stalnaker said trained the animal to recognize when he is having a seizure and respond by grabbing the phone and bringing it to him.
"He doesn't actually sit there and dial 911, but whenever he picks up the phone, one of his teeth inevitably hits the number, and if it's held down for more than three seconds, it dials the police department," Stalnaker said.
http://www.kpho.com/news/17467640/detail.html?taf=pho#- - Thanks Tiffany!
Lawrence Noble, the artist who sculpted the famous bronze Yoda Fountain in Presidio (where Lucasfilm has an office), San Francisco, has just created the Darth Vader bronze sculpture.
If you got $18,000, you too can have a 4 ft tall, 150 lb Sith Lord in bronze for your living room:
The inspiration for this Vader bronze, which was modeled after the Dark Lord's appearance in The Empire Strikes Back, ironically came from a source usually associated with the Star Wars prequels -- the planet Coruscant. "For me, the idea was to do the kind of statue we would see in honor and tribute to Lord Vader on the planet of Coruscant," says Noble. "So if you were walking around the city on Coruscant and saw a statue of Darth Vader, it would hopefully be something along the lines of what we produced."
Link - via GeekAlerts
Photo: Diane Bondareff / Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the horror film Child's Play, a horde of Chuckys (Chuckies?) took over Times Square in New York City. http://galleries.thelondonpaper.com/chucky-childs-play-20-birthday-times-square/1 - via J-Walk Blog
I have no sympathy for drug dealers, but still - this is a strange story. Joseph A. Shepard, 53, is in jail for drug-related charges.
His attorney told him that his case is making its way in federal court so he should sit tight and wait. So wait, he did - for two years in jail ... meanwhile, his lawyer, the prosecutor, and everybody forgot all about him:
Shepard, 53, is a man the system forgot, apparently ignored by his own attorney — and the prosecutor and judge — as days ticked by in a municipal lockup where he was confined to a cell 23 hours a day.
Shepard was surprised when a reporter broke the news at the Jennings jail Wednesday night that his case had been forgotten. It was more than a month after prosecutors took steps to move the case forward, though he still had not been told about it by his lawyer.
"Good. That's what I've been hoping for — something like that," he said. "I kind of figured that, after two years of nothing happening."
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/9F383B4342A46DDC862574B50014E785?OpenDocument - via Look At This
I'm sure you've seen the iconic Obama poster by Shepard Fairey. What you probably didn't know is that it was inspired by a similar poster a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
David Friedman of Ironic Sans has it: Link - via Laughing Squid
Photographer Thomas Kalak specializes in photographing odd and unusual things. When he went to Bangkok, Thailand, he was taken by how (literally) wired the city is. Here's his gallery of "Bangkok Wires" at Polar Inertia Journal:
Bangkok, totally wired. Cable clutter everywhere. Like electric monsters they hang over the junction. Sometimes like art-installations close to the sidewalk. Easy to reach out and touch for kids.
But this special picture is as vanishing as the shown technology at the beginning of the new millennium. It will disapear soon.
As so many things in Bangkok, wires are another symbol for this chaotic city. It seems to be unsystematic and dysfunctional. But as the traffic, always close to the collapse, it works, somehow.
In everyday Bangkok, western ideas of order and system have no place at all. What happens here is instead very much dominated by ordinary people and a philosophy of relaxed co-existence which permits seemingly irreconcilable contradictions. Everywhere, one finds a good-natured willingness to take life as it is, with all of its tensions and scurrilous variety, and enjoy it as well!
More on Thomas Kalak: Official Website | Weird Bangkok Objects at Things Magazine | The curious art of found technology at Kevin Kelly's Street Use blog (don't miss the home-made brake lights!)
