John Farrier's Blog Posts

Marvelous Papercrafts



Curious Collection, a maker of fine art papers, held a papercraft contest called Your Curious Story. At the link, you can view the winners of this contest, such as the above "The Girl in the Swing" by British student Frankie Lilley.

Link via Dude Craft | Artist's Gallery

Turkey's Cotton Castle



Pamukkale, which means "cotton castle" in Turkish, is a geological wonder in southwestern Turkey. In the second century B.C.E., the Hellenistic rulers of Pegamon built a spa at the hot springs located in this area. The site, dubbed Hieropolis by the Greeks and Pamukkale by the Turks, has been a tourist attraction ever since. Calcium carbonate deposits have created fascinating shapes and forms, as you can see at the link.

Link via The Presurfer | Photo by Flickr user nodomain.cc used under Creative Commons license

Extremely Narrow Buildings in Japan



Real estate development in densely-populated Japan can be expensive, so some architects have made good use of very narrow lots. Pictured above is one such project in Nagasaki. You can view several other very narrow buildings at the link.

Link via Super Punch | Photo by Flickr user Sergio in Nagasaki used under Creative Commons license

Extreme Close-Ups of the Human Eye



Suren Manvelyan is a photographer and physics teacher. He's created a series of detailed images of the human eye called "Your Beautiful Eyes":

The 34-year-old from Yerevan, Armenia, explains: 'It is quite natural when you shoot macro shots of insects and plants, but to try to make a picture of the eye? I did not expect these results.

'I was not aware they are of such complicated appearance. Everyday we see hundreds of eyes but do not even suspect they have such beautiful structure, like surfaces of unknown planets.'


Link via Nerdcore | Photo by Suren Manvelyan used under Creative Commons license

Tim Liddy's Board Game Paintings



That's not a photograph of an old Battleship set, but a painting. St. Louis-based artist Tim Liddy makes strikingly realistic 1:1 scale depictions of old board games on sheets of copper. Jeffrey Hughes writes:

Based on the illustrated box lids of board games, Liddy has developed a subject that like Wittgenstein's assertion that language games point to the rule governed character of language, these games are reminders of the rules of life.


Link via Dude Craft

Why Are the Western Ends of Cities Generally Wealthier than the Eastern Ends of Cities?

Dan Zambonini alleges that cities in the northern hemisphere tend to have poorer eastern rather than western sides. He then suggests that this is because wealthier people could afford to be upwind of air pollution:

Many older cities rapidly expanded during the Industrial Revolution, as workers flocked to the urban centers. As the towns and cities expanded, the residential areas for the workers tended to be in the east, with the middle and upper-classes in the west.

The reason for this is that in much of the northern hemisphere, the prevailing winds are westerlies – blowing from west to east. The massive, unchecked pollution from these early industries would therefore drift eastward, making the air quality much lower in the east end of cities, lowering the desirability (and price) of the housing. Middle classes preferred the cleaner west ends.

The issue was probably even pre-Industrial Revolution, as smoke from personal chimneys would still have caused problems to the east.


http://www.thejanuarist.com/why-are-the-east-of-cities-usually-poorer/ via Marginal Revolution | Photo by Flickr user otodo used under Creative Commons license

You Could Fit a Skyscraper inside the World's Largest Cave

Hang Ken, a cave rediscovered in Vietnam last year, may be the largest in the world:

Surrounded by jungle and used in the Vietnam war as a hideout from American bombardments, it is so large that it could hold a block of 40-storey skyscrapers. Its entrance was only rediscovered last year.

The photograph was taken by a British expedition returning to the rugged Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park near the border with Laos.

The cave, lit from above through a skylight, is one of a network of some 150 connected caverns, many still not surveyed, in the Annamite mountains.


Story Link and Slideshow via Super Punch | Photo: National Geographic/Carsten Peter

Burger King Creates Brussels Sprouts Burger



For a limited time, Burger King restaurants in Britain are offering Whoppers that come with Brussels sprouts. They vegetables are ground into a paste, mixed with Emmentaler cheese, and formed into a patty.

Link via Geekosystem | Photo: Burger King

Enormous Dialect Map of North America



Rich Aschmann, a linguist, created a huge map of North America describing the boundaries and differences between various dialects of the English language. Keep scrolling down at the link, and you can find Aschmann's extensive listing of audio examples of many of these dialects.

Link via The Agitator

High-Heeled Feet



deviantART user Hallincogenius made a pair of feet that look like high-heeled shoes. They're sculpted from raku clay and glazed.

Link

Scenes Cut from Paperback Covers



Artist Thomas Allen cuts images from book covers to create 3D scenes:

With simple lightning and the use of simple tools (i.e., scissors and razor-sharp knives), figures are cut out, bent and juxtapose in ways that present the tension and dynamics of staged drama.


http://www.thomasbarry.com/allen_c1.html via J-Walk Blog | Photo: Thomas Barry Fine Arts

The Last Mud Horse Fisherman

A mud horse is a wooden sledge that is pushed by a fisherman across tidal flats. Adrian Sellick of Bridgewater Bay, UK, may be the last man in the world skilled in this fishing technique:

Mr Sellick was first taken out on a mud-horse with his father when he was just six-years-old, and he remembers watching him and trying to learn the technique.

The mud-horse itself is a hand-built wooden sledge which enables fishermen to navigate his way over the treacherous mudflats of Bridgwater Bay, where the technique was used by many families only a couple of generations ago.

This then allows him to slide to the tide's edge, where stakes are battered into the mud and nets strung between them.

After the tide comes in and the waters withdraw, the fish and shrimps appear. The fish will likely be cod and whiting in the winter; skate and sea bass in the summer.


Link | Photo: SWNS

Pool Played with Bowling Balls



Steve Wienecke of Fredericktown, Missouri invented a game that he calls "Knokkers". It's similar to pool, but played on a surface scaled four times larger than a regulation pool table and with six-pound bowling balls. Wienecke hopes to one day see Knokkers platforms on cruise ships and in amusement parks and restaurants.

Link and Facebook Page via Brian J. Noggle | Photo: Rural Missouri Co-op

Would The Wonder Years Be a Good Video Game?


(Video Link)


In this video, Dan Meth imagines 80s-era Nintendo games based on the Chernobyl disaster, the movie Rain Man, The Arsenio Hall Show, and other icons of the 1980s. If you have any cheat codes for the Baby Jessica Well Rescue, please let me know.

Ski Mask Self-Portrait



Last year, we featured Andrew Salomone's portrait of Bill Cosby in Jello shots. More recently, he used an electronic knitting machine to make a self-portrait in the form of a ski mask:

The balaclava is knit from cotton yarn and the design is from a bitmap file, in which pictures of my head from every angle were photoshopped together into a single rectangular image. I used the same images to make the bitmap file as I did for the original ID-Preserving Balaclava project.


Link via Make | Photo: Andrew Salomone

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