Taiwanese performer Su Chung Tai (蘇仲太) is a master at the art of soap bubbles. In fact, he entertains crowds with his show called Be Fantasy, and is known as the “Bubble Performance Master.” There probably isn’t a lot of competition for the title. The show is mesmerizing, as he constructs complicated yet ephemeral bubble configurations, with bubbles inside bubbles, bubbles moving in strange ways, and bubbles changing as he pleases. Mr. Su has broken three Guinness World Records, although his website doesn’t say what exactly those records are, or whether he broke any of his own records. -via Viral Viral Videos
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What will we be eating in the post-apocalyptic world? What will you survive on when it all goes south? Henry Hargreaves, who you may remember from his various food-related art projects, has been exploring the world of doomsday preppers and the foods they stockpile for the coming disasters.
Hargreaves' latest art project consists of a short profile of the prepper and a typical meal prepared from the ingredients they believe will be available to them after disaster strikes.
Our armed forces are so regimented that the nuts and bolts of military life become ingrained in service members for life. That’s why those who falsely claim a false service record will be called out by someone who’s been there. That’s also why veterans tend to nit-pick war movies. Unless it was produced by the military with a full cast of veterans, a movie production will never be entirely accurate. However, some movies come closer to reality than others, particularly when you separate the component parts of a film. John Renehan, who served in Iraq, says, “No movie gets all of it right, but some of them get little parts of it perfect.” And he tells us about them.
Best Depiction of Boot Camp: "Full Metal Jacket" (1987)
An obvious choice, sure, but it hasn't been topped. Because R. Lee Ermey has made a career essentially playing himself since his star turn in "Full Metal Jacket," it's easy to forget how revolutionary his performance was as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. Many know the story of how Ermey, a former Marine, was merely a technical adviser to the film until Stanley Kubrick realized he had hired the wrong man to play his fearsome drill instructor. Ermey was unleashed to do the role his own way - improvising lines and writing his own dialogue - and an iconic, convincing character was born. Ermey did something that no one had tried before: He took the timeworn, fundamentally ridiculous role of the screaming drill instructor and played it with a straight face instead of as a cartoon caricature. (He had actually played one nearly a decade earlier, in the little-remembered 1978 film "The Boys in Company C.") He understood that drill sergeants are regular sergeants playing a character, and he played his character that way. The result was funny and terrifying and totally convincing. Like Daniel Craig's current incarnation of James Bond, Ermey's performance left all that had come before and most that have come since looking hokey and dated.
Other categories are Best Depiction of Helplessness, Best Deployment Phone Call Home, Best Portrait of Lost Innocence, Best Depiction of Facing Your Own Certain Death, and more, in an article at Word & Film. -via Digg
Science has determined over time that memories are not stored in the human brain the way that libraries store books, or that hard drives store digital files. The human brain has to reassemble memories of past events, and the process of recalling can change those memories. Outside influences can even change what we believe are our memories. Maybe we should spend some energy improving those memories to give ourselves a happy past, even if it’s not necessarily true. This is the latest comic from John McNamee at Pie Comic.
The comedy troupe Extremely Decent brings us an apocalyptic love story. An asteroid is about to destroy the earth, and everyone wants to find the person they love most. For our hero, Sarah is the one he wants to spent the end of his life with. As you can probably guess, things do not go smoothly. Contains NSFW language and adult subject matter. -via Tastefully Offensive
Want to save money on your wedding day? From experience, I can tell you that the easiest way to save is to not invite anyone. However, if you are determined to share the special occasion with family and friends, you can have a ceremony and even a reception without breaking the bank. Buzzfeed readers shared their tips on getting everything for less, from venues to flowers to the dress.
For example, a round of barbecue will cost much less than steak, and it will make you glad you bought a previously-owned white dress for less than the dry cleaning bill will be. Renting a house gives you a place to get married, hold a reception, and put up out-of-town guests for only one bill. And having your wedding on a day other than Saturday will save you a surprising amount on venues and professional services. There are plenty more money-saving ideas in this roundup.
Rock ’n’ roll billboards flourished on the Sunset Strip from the late 1960s to the early ‘80s. Music videos weren’t yet a thing, and a hand-painted billboard, paid for by the record company, was a sign that a band had really made the big time. Photographer Robert Landau spent those years snapping pictures of the billboards in Los Angeles that advertised rock groups. It wasn’t all that he did, but those billboard images are still here while the billboards are gone. Landau published a book of them in 2012, and now his images are the subject of an exhibit opening March 24 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. Collectors Weekly talked to Laundau about how he started photographing the ads as a teenager, and some of the strange experiences he’s had with them.
There’s a great story about that Beatles billboard. When “Abbey Road” came out in 1969, there were all these rumors going around that Paul McCartney was dead. People were playing their records backward, looking for clues, and even claimed that the image on the cover of “Abbey Road” was like a funeral procession. Realizing this helped sell records, the Beatles didn’t do anything to squelch the rumors. They just let it fly. At some point, while that billboard was up on Sunset, a couple of kids got up there with a saw and cut Paul’s head off the billboard.
At the time, Foster and Kleiser called Capitol Records, and their art director was a guy named Roland Young. Young went out to look at it and he said, “You know what, just leave it like that, it’s going to get more attention.” And in fact, it did. There were pictures in the papers all over the world. Nobody was too upset that the head went missing.
When my book came out, I posted on my Facebook page, “I’ll give a free copy of the book to anyone who could tell me what happened to Paul’s head.” The next day, I get a call from a guy named Robert Quinn, who is in his 60s now, and on his 16th birthday, he had climbed up there and cut the head off. He still has it hanging in his living room somewhere in the San Fernando Valley. I went out and took a picture of him holding Paul’s head. Thanks to him, a little piece of rock ’n’ roll history got preserved because the rest of the billboard is long gone.
Laundau has more stories about the bygone days of rock ’n’ roll billboards in the interview at Collectors Weekly.
(Image credit: Robert Landau)
In anticipation of Pi Day coming up on the 14th, the folks at Shutterstock invited (or, as they say, “challenged”) artist Aaron Coleman to create lithographs of stained glass artistry featuring heroes of science. Coleman rose to the challenge, and gave them Ada Lovelace, Isaac Newton, Nikola Tesla, Alan Turing, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson, rendered in stained glass imagery using Shutterstock photos. Go see them all- each has a short biography of the scientist, too.
It’s a lighter with Spider-Man on it. But there’s an issue here that redditor Fear_Jeebus’s cousin, who’s had the lighter for years, never realized until now. But others noticed several things wonky about this lighter. How many can you name? You can embiggen the picture at imgur if you need to.
Benny the Bull is the mascot of the Chicago Bulls basketball team. He was named the top sports mascot in America by Forbes magazine in 2013.
Inside the suit is Barry Anderson, who earned the position after embodying Monte for the University of Montana. In his job, you’ve got to be a dancer, actor, acrobatic, basketball player, and comedian -all at the same time while wearing a hot and heavy suit that obscures the vision. Enjoy this montage of Benny the Bull’s highlights of the 2013-14 season. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
The San Diego Department of Animal Services makes videos to show off pets for adoption. A cat named Banks has a particularly endearing habit of returning the favor of a back scratch. Such rare feline generosity worked wonders, and Banks was adopted soon after this video was released. Of course, the shelters always have more cats looking for homes. -via Tastefully Offensive
In 1961, actress Lauren Bacall bought a three-bedroom apartment overlooking Central Park at the Dakota in New York and lived there for the last 53 years of her life. Now the apartment is for sale (for $26 million) and most of her art, antiques, and other possessions will go up for auction March 31 and April 1 through Bonham’s Auction House. The catalog for the auction is 375 pages, and they include photographs of Bacall’s home before it was stripped and prepped for real estate photos. Curbed has a selection of those photographs, so you don’t have to download the entire catalog.
Also see Jon King of Bonham’s host a video tour of the collection while explaining what he learned about Bacall and her possessions. -via Metafilter
Winter starts off exciting, with plenty of holidays, but it ends with all of us tiring of snow, ice, and cold temperatures- 2015 more than most. But spring is just around the corner and it’s time to dream of nature’s yearly renewal and blooming flowers and those lovely green spaces we call gardens. And just in time for those dreams, Roads Publishing presents Reflections: Gardens by Andrew Grant.
Francis Bacon once said, “God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.” Gardens are our connection to the earth, a restorative place to relax and contemplate the wonder of nature. The great gardens of the world are a each reflection of the culture that created them, a theme explored in the book Gardens. I was delighted to get a preview of the book in gorgeous photographs from all over, and which Neatorama is proud to share with you.
The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research.
Research involving feathers
compiled by Stephen Drew, Improbable Research staff
Through the years, many humans have spent days, months, or years counting feathers on birds. Here are some of those counters’ reports to their fellow humans.
Wetmore’s Comprehensive Feather-Counting Report
In 1936 Alexander Wetmore of the U.S. National Museum in Washington, D.C., gathered all of the reports he could find in which someone or other counted how many feathers were on particular birds:
“The Number of Contour Feathers in Passeriform and Related Birds,” Alexander Wetmore, The Auk,
vol. 53, 1936, pp. 159–69.
“The work of feather counting is tedious and exacting,” Wetmore admitted, “and yields small result relative to the labor involved.” Among Wetmore’s gatherings from his predecessors:
Dr. Jonathan Dwight found 3235 feathers on a male Bobolink taken in spring. R.C. McGregor has recorded 1899 feathers on a Savannah sparrow (presumably a western form) and 6544 on a Glaucous winged Gull both enumerations being made from study skins. Miss Phoebe Knappen has reported 11,903 feathers on an adult female Mallard obtained March 19, 1932 at Pohick, Virginia, the bird being one that had died from phosphorus poisoning.
Wetmore proceeded to have someone he could count on do some new counting on Wetmore’s behalf and for his credit:
The actual labor of counting was done under my direct supervision by Marie Siebrecht (now Mrs. James Montroy) who, employed as an assistant, worked carefully and conscientiously at a long and somewhat tedious task...
Wetmore kept records of where each bird entered his locus of control. Many came via a single collecting point:
I am indebted to Miss Phoebe Knappen for a number of birds killed by striking the Washington Monument during fall migration.
Wetmore detailed how Montroy performed her function:
In this study contour feathers alone have been considered, the downs and filo plumes being disregarded. The feathers were plucked a few at a time by means of fine tweezers and were counted in lots of one hundred, a check mark being made for each hundred. At any interruption in the work the number counted was set down at once to avoid error....
The feathers as counted were placed in a glass beaker on which there was a paper cover held in place by a rubber band. By means of a small hole cut in the paper top it was possible to confine the feathers and to ascertain the weight of the plumage.....
With ordinary small birds one specimen was counted each day, two being handled on a few occasions. The work was exacting so that more prolonged effort was liable, through fatigue, to lead to errors.
(Image credit: Maia Weinstock)
(Image credit: Maia Weinstock)
Writer and editor Maia Weinstock is also a LEGO artist. To celebrate the women of the U.S. Supreme Court, she recreate them in custom LEGO minifigs! The project is called the Legal Justice League. They are, from left, Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sandra Day O’Conner (who retired in 2006), and Elena Kagan. See the full group in various judicial activities and individually in Weinstock’s Flickr set. -via Metafilter
Previously: Scientists of the Internet Age in LEGO
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