Sadly, this is not a functional mecha. That's a pity, because it would be awesome to drive around town in a Spider Bug. Web Urbanist has a roundup of fifteen Spider Bugs around the world erected by various artists. This particular one is outside a Jehovah's Witnesses kingdom hall in Oklahoma.
Sometimes, tapping your fingers in bored frustration doesn't really seem to make time more forward at a faster clip. This hand-cranked automaton by Etsy seller automatonman will probably help. Link -via Technabob
This fossilized Polycotylus latippinus, a carnivorous marine reptile that lived 78 million years ago, contains a smaller, less developed skeleton inside of her. Scientists are therefore speculating that this creature did not lay eggs like other dinosaurs, but gave birth to live young. If true, then this dinosaur may have exhibited maternal care behavior similar to modern marine mammals, such as dolphins. This fossil is on public display at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, so if you live in that area, you can get a close look for yourself.
Link -via reddit | Photo: Natural History Museum of Los Angeles Count
According to Greek myth, Cronus, the leader of the Titans, was destined to be overthrown by one of his own children. He was aware of this prophecy. Consequently, Cronus ate any child that Rhea bore. Zeus, however, survived and fulfilled the prophecy. It's kind of funny, in a gruesome way, as Graham Annable depicts the scene. Link -via Super Punch | Artist's Website
Kung Fu, which aired from 1972-1975, was an unusual blend of the social questioning of 70s America, an emerging fascination with the martial arts, and the introduction of Eastern thought into American pop culture. It was one of the last Westerns of American television and thus straddled a great cultural shift that occurred during that era. It was also a fine show that earned high ratings and continues to entertain legions of fans to this day. Let's take a look at some things that you might not know about the series.
1. Kwai Chaing Caine’s last name is a reference to the Cain of the Bible. Cain, having murdered his brother, was marked and cast into the wilderness. So, too, was Kwai Chang Caine marked by the dragon and tiger branded into his forearms and wanted for murder in China. The $10,000 bounty on his head was a constant source of trouble for Caine throughout the series.
2. David Carradine shaved his head once, when shooting the pilot movie. He never cut it again for the rest of the series. So it’s possible to gauge when an episode was shot during the series by looking at Carradine’s hair.
3. Caine must walk a strip of rice paper to demonstrate the lightness of his footsteps. To prepare David Carradine for this task, kung fu consultant Kam Yuen had him step on eggs without breaking them.
The training turned out to be unnecessary. When it finally came time to film the rice paper scenes, no one could locate rice paper. The directors tried butcher paper, but it wouldn’t tear under the feet of Radames Pera, the actor who portrayed Caine as a child. They even attached sandpaper to Pera’s feet, but the paper stayed intact. Finally they pre-tore the strip of paper and had Pera walk over it. To show the adult Caine walking without leaving a trace, they simply left the butcher paper untorn.
Aled Lewis has made pixelated, video game-style versions of several classic works of art. The above piece is a mashup of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure and Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory. He's also altered works of Van Gogh, da Vinci, and Edward Hopper. They're his contribution to an upcoming art show called iam8bit.
People look at you funny if you roll around in public in a realistic R2R2 costume. This sweater by Etsy seller Erica Schoenberger is a more discreet and possibly even workplace-friendly alternative. Link -via OhGizmo!
The loss of sphincter control is a common and humiliating problem for aging adults. Researchers led by Shreya Rhagavan of the University of Michigan Medical School may have developed a solution: a replacement sphincter grown inside a laboratory. So far, eight such bioengineered anal sphincters have been successfully implanted in mice. The team hopes to work on human subjects in the future.
Link -via io9 | Photo: Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine
Rhiannon Brooksbank–Jones of Beeston, UK, loves the Korean language and plans to study it in college. But she found that some sounds are hard for her to duplicate. So she's taking a surgical solution:
Her parents agreed to her having a lingual frenectomy, a 15–minute operation under local anaesthetic that involved an incision in the flap of skin. Rhiannon admitted that it was "agony at first" but her tongue is now about 1cm longer and she can say words that were impossible before.
"I'd been learning Korean for about two years, and my speaking level was high, but I was really struggling with particular sounds," she said.
"It became apparent after a little while that I was having trouble with the Korean letter 'L', which is very frequent and comes from a slightly higher place in the mouth than the English 'L', and that my tongue was too short.
"The surgical procedure was my only option. My pronunciation was very 'foreign', but now I can speak with a native Korean accent."
This is a bronze sculpture by Sukhi Barber. That is possible to make such an object self-supporting is mind-blowing.
One of Barber's major themes is "the transcendence of our limiting view of a solid reality." So, appropriately, this sculpture is entitled "Appearance/Emptiness."
The Frisian language is spoken by about half a million people in the Netherlands and Germany. It is the closet surviving relative of Old English, the tongue of Anglo-Saxon England. How mutually intelligible are the two languages? In this clip from the documentary series Mongel Nation, Eddie Izzard, speaking only Old English, tries to buy a cow from a Frisian-speaking farmer. -via Ace of Spades HQ
Shane Waltener creates elaborate installations around his lace doilies, such as this one entitled Auntie Peggy Has Departed. To him, doilies represent dreamcatchers that make a moment in the past accessible for the present.
Another rather striking work that I found at his website is a doily spider web meant to be viewed in front of a chandelier by glass artist Dale Chihuly. The juxtaposition of Waltener's white lines and Chihuly's colored spheres is quite lovely.
YouTube user trpchaki made this amazing puppet that looks like Wheatley from Portal 2. She took many in-progress photos showing the amazing skill and inventiveness that went into building it -- especially the controls, the sound system, and the movable parts. Link -via Geekologie
This sculpture by Olaf Mooji, appropriately dubbed "Braincar", expresses his belief in "the nearly psychological connection between drivers and their cars." There's a projection system inside that permits Mooji to put weirdly psychedelic or clear, coherent images to people watching it drive by. At the link, you can find a video of the car as well as photos of its construction.
Windoodles is a new Tumblr blog that compiles doodles that people have put on windows with dry erase markers so that the images project onto the scenery outside. This one is by a MTV employee named Gusto.
