Bronia Sawyer crafts lovely sculptures from old books, some abstract and some surprisingly realistic. She writes:
I love to take something like a book and turning it in to something visually pleasing. With book sculpture I like the fact that books are flat and square they have order but by cutting them and folding them you can create organice and random shapes. I also like to add colours but mainly for the way it looks in photographs.
After hearing reports that an alligator was loose in a suburban neighborhood, Kansas City police rushed to a home and found a concrete, ornamental alligator. Except they didn't realize that's what it was right away:
After consulting a conservation agent, who told them to kill the gator if they felt it posed a danger, one of the officers shot it twice in the head before realizing something was up, said Tom Gentry, an Independence police spokesman.
"It didn't move," Gentry said. "They inched up closer and closer and discovered it was a mock-up of a real alligator made to look like it was real."
For forty years, Alexander Perfiliev has been making miniature model firearms. They're duplicates of the actual designs (such as the Makarov pistol pictured above) scaled way, way down. English Russia reports that they actually work. We've seen functional miniature guns in the past, so it wouldn't surprise me in the least.
Jed Mildon, 24, of New Zealand became the first BMX rider to perform a triple backflip. He gained the necessary momentum by riding down a 20 meter ramp, then up a 3.6 meter ramp, which launched him into the air. You can watch a video (self-starting) of his feat at the link.
It was a golden mole, which can be found in the desert of Sperrgebiet National Park, Namibia. It survives the heat by tunneling around just under the surface of the sand. At the link, you can watch a video of one being captured and examined by researchers.
You're still using a chocolate iPad? Pfft. That's so old-fashioned. The new thing is the chocolate iPad 2, which is so much more Apple than the chocolate iPad. Get with the times! Instructables user stevequag tells you how to make one.
After he was kidnapped, George Lucas spent twenty years in captivity, watching an imposter destroy his reputation with three intentionally terrible prequels. Now he's out and looking for revenge in this fake trailer by Bridge Stuart and Mike Litzenberg. "Not all men are created prequel."
HMS Flake 99 (shouldn't that be HMAICV?) is sailing through the UK's rivers, canals, and along its shores to sell its yummy wares. It's a promotional venture by Cadbury Icecreamland. Just paddle, swim, or sail up and place your order.
Think of Mike Knuepfel's sculpture as an infographic. The height of each letter is greater the more often that a letter is used in the English language:
Idea – I’ve been thinking about and exploring the idea of using 3d rapid prototyping techniques to create sculptural data visualizations. One idea was to have elements or data of the sculpture represent the object itself.
http://itp.nyu.edu/~mk3321/itp_blog/?p=779 via Geekologie
Rajni, a bagger at a silk market in Chennai, India, treats his job like a performance, and his customers like they are an audience. Now, just add a backflip to the routine....
In this anxiety-inducing video, you can see shark expert Valerie Taylor feeding a Great White Shark...by hand! And the end, she actually pets the shark on the head. As one YouTube commenter puts it "holy crap its the Shark Whisperer."
Well, I thought that the DIY vasectomy kit that we sell in the NeatoShop would have been sufficient, but apparently some men are looking for alternate solutions in the field of contraception. Namely, one that isn't so permanent. An Indian researcher named Sujoy Guha thinks that he's found the solution. Here's how the procedure works:
Once the drug had taken effect, Das gathered a fold of skin, made a puncture, and reached into the scrotum with a fine pair of forceps. He extracted a white tube: the vas deferens, which sperm travel through from the testes to the penis. In a normal vasectomy, Das would have severed the vas, cauterized and tied up the ends, and tucked it all back inside. But rather than snipping, Das took another syringe, delicately slid the needle lengthwise into the vas, and slowly depressed the plunger, injecting a clear, viscous liquid. He then repeated the steps on the other side of the scrotum.
This liquid doesn't block the path of sperm cells exiting the testicles, but renders them inert as they move past. This substance should be removable, thus returning fertility to the patient. You can watch a video of the procedure at the link. Content warning: scrotum.
Link via DVICE | Photo by Flickr user aesop used under Creative Commons license
According to a study by the American College of Sports Medicine, it's the Minneapolis-St.Paul metropolitan area, followed by Washington, D.C.:
Their winning rank reflects the cities' relatively low (and rapidly-diminishing) smoking rate, their above-average percentage of regular exercisers, moderate-to-low rates of obesity, asthma, diabetes, and other chronic concerns, and rising share of farmers' markets (indicative of a trend towards healthier dining). Boston takes the bronze, with Portland, Oregon fourth and Denver in fifth place. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Oklahoma City ranks as America's least fit metro, followed by Louisville, Memphis, Birmingham, and Detroit.
Link via Marginal Revolution | Photo (unrelated) by Flickr user Jason Lengstorf used under Creative Commons license
