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Oxygen tries to make friends with other elements, with varying results. This animation was Christopher Hendryx's senior project a year ago at the Ringling College of Art + Design. -via Metafilter

Yang Liwei became China's first astronaut when he orbited the earth in 2003. Cameras were rolling as Yang emerged smiling from the space capsule after his landing. It appeared to be a perfect mission. But was it?

In a lecture he gave to a group of journalism students last month, a top official at Xinhua, the state news agency, said that the mission was not so picture-perfect. The official, Xia Lin, described how a design flaw had exposed the astronaut to excessive G-force pressure during re-entry, splitting his lip and drenching his face in blood. Startled but undaunted by Mr. Yang’s appearance, the workers quickly mopped up the blood, strapped him back in his seat and shut the door. Then, with the cameras rolling, the cabin door swung open again, revealing an unblemished moment of triumph for all the world to see.

Xia's account of the space mission agrees with astronaut Yang's story in his new autobiography of how he suffered injuries during the flight. Xia's lecture, which covered other news stories and how they were altered for the public, was posted on many Chinese websites and quickly deleted by authorities. Link -via Fark

On Google search today, if you enter "world cup", the logo at the bottom of the page is quite different. Link -via The Daily What

Video game company logos, as logos for any company, evolve and update if they are lucky enough to survive enough years. Geekosystem has a look at how they've changed. Most of these logos look much better now.

Apparently, EA’s old logo confused people.Wikipedia: “Many customers mistook the square/circle/triangle logo for a stylized “EOA.” Though they thought the “E” stood for “Electronic” and “A” for “Arts”, they had no idea what the “O” could stand for, except perhaps the o in “Electronic.” An early newsletter of EA, Farther, even jokingly discussed the topic in one issue, claiming that the square and triangle indeed stood for “E” and “A”, but that the circle was merely “a Nerf ball that got stuck in a floppy drive and has been popping up on our splash screens ever since.” It’s still enough to induce waves of nostalgia in anyone who’s played Starflight.

Link

It's one thing to play music on a modern gadget -many people can tap out "Happy Birthday" on a cell phone. It's quite another to perform classical pieces! Believe it or not, this person is playing "Rondo Alla Turka" {audio file} from Mozart's Piano Sonota #11 on four telephones. http://www.butternutjelly.com/home/2010/6/7/phone-piano.html

Over the last couple hundred years, many men made a living demonstrating feats of strength, by wrestling, weightlifting, or other stunts such as pulling trains. Ask Men has a list of the ten most memorable, including The Great Antonio.

The adjective “great” is an understatement for Antonio’s stature and personality. Weighting 465 pounds and standing 6-foot-4, his suits were size 90, his shoes size 28 and he often ate 25 chickens or 10 steaks at one sitting. In 1952, the Guinness Book of World Records recognized him for pulling a 433-ton train for 19.8 meters. Guinness also mentioned him again in a later edition for his feat of pulling four city buses loaded with passengers. A noted eccentric, he offered to pull a Boeing 747 down the tarmac provided Boeing gave him a jet for his own personal use, and he approached Don King saying that he would do a fight film for $1 million.

Link - via Gorilla Mask

(YouTube link)

April Pignataro and Michael Curry of New York City got married yesterday. The bride wore a white wetsuit and the groom wore a traditional black wetsuit as they climbed inside a 120,000 gallon shark tank to take their vows at Atlantis Marine World in Riverhead, N.Y. Both are experienced divers, and said their "I dos" over a radio transmitter with an officiant who did not get in the tank.

"My mom was against it," Pignataro said. "She was concerned that my makeup and hair were going to get messed up in the water. But . . . I'm a tomboy. Hair and makeup don't mean a whole lot to me."

Link -via The Huffington Post

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When humans explore other planets, there's a possibility we may overlook something important. This animation was produced by Joe Bichard and Jack Cunningham. -via Laughing Squid

The original book Chicken Soup for the Soul is 17 years old. There have been sequels published about every topic imaginable -or maybe not. In today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss, you'll be given a Chicken Soup title, and you decide whether it's a real book or an imaginary title. How simple can that be? Not that simple; I scored only 60%. Link

The following is an article from Uncle John's Triumphant 20th Anniversary Bathroom Reader.


If you were to see some of the tacky stuff that adorns the walls here at the BRI, you may not think we are qualified to comment on what anyone else considers art. Well, we say: if dogs can play poker, anything is possible.

(Image credit: Kathy Keatley Garvey/UC Davis photo)

Artist: Rebecca O'Flaherty, the Monet of Maggots

This is Art? When making her paintings, O'Flaherty kind of cheats-she lets the maggots do the work for her. An entomology doctoral student at the University of California at Davis, O'Flaherty is fascinated with the larvae of flies. She dips the maggots in nontoxic paint, then lets them writhe around on the canvas (a piece of white copier paper). Result: unique trails of color and form. O'Flaherty displays her maggot paintings at gallery exhibits and even holds maggot-art workshops for kids. She also teaches forensic officers how to collect maggots at a crime scene for evidence and uses the maggot art as an "icebreaker" to get them used to dealing with the squirmy creatures.

Artist statement: "The activity usually begins with some measure of skepticism or disdain, but the maggots are quick to win over the critics."

Artist: Jessica May, the Rembrandt of Roadkill

This is Art? May, a 24-year-old graduate art student at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, decided that the roadkill lying on the roadside in and around her Midwestern town needed a little sprucing up. So she dressed dead raccoons in baby clothes, put nail polish on the claws of dead possums, and gave a deer carcass a coat of gold spray paint. May wears gloves when she works on her art, because when she finds the animals, they're "pretty far gone".

Artist statement: "I think of this as my way of paying homage to these animals."

(Image credit: Herald Sun)

Artist: Colin Douglas Barnett, the Picasso of Publicity

This is Art? Frustrated that his art wasn't getting the attention he thought it deserved, Burnett, 46, decided to scare up some publicity in Melbourne, Australia. In October 2005, he sculpted a vase out of clay and put it on the sidewalk in front of the National Gallery of Victoria. Labeling it "The Peace Bomb", he called police and reported a suspicious package outside of the building. The gallery was evacuated, the surrounding roads closed, and the bomb squad was called in. Burnett received the press he was looking for, but it came in the form of news stories reporting his arrest. The artist was ordered to pay for the police investigation and sentenced to three months in jail.

Artist statement: "I'm totally embarrassed."

Artist: Wenda Gu, the Kandinsky of Coiffure

This is Art? The Chinese artist was commissioned by Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, to create two installations on their campus. First project: "The Green House," an 80-foot banner made from 420 pounds of human hair. All that hair came from Hanover barbershops, who collected the clippings from 42,000 haircuts and shipped it to Wenda's Shanghai studio, where his workers dyed it bright colors. Wenda then wove the strands together, creating the colorful banner that now hangs in the college library. Second project: "United Nations, United Colors," a seven-and-a-half-mile-long braid (begun in 1993) made from leftover hair donated by wig factories in China and India.

Artist statement: "The banner is a comment on education and capitalism, an the braid represents a utopian vision of unity among nations." (Image credit: Kawakahi Amina)



Artist: Ian Thorley, the Degas of Doormats

This is Art? In October 2006, Thorley, a British performance artist, received a £1,600 grant ($3,176) from the Wansbeck and Blyth Valley town councils for his weeklong art project "Utilitarian Utopia." The project: Thorley wore a badge that said "Government Doormat tester" and stood on a doormat in the middle of a sidewalk for a week. The councils were widely criticized for spending taxpayer money on the art. But they defended their actions, saying that Thorley "provides viewers with a thought-provoking experience."

Artist statement: "It's about drawing attention to, and invoking some sense of, the absurdity of existence and the things that we do."

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The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Triumphant 20th Anniversary Bathroom Reader.

Proving that some things do get better with age, the 20th annivesary Bathroom Reader is jam-packed with 600 pages of fascinating trivia, forgotten history, strange lawsuits and other neat articles.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

(YouTube link)

The lyrics are simple, so feel free to sing along. -via Arbroath

The pictures we see of birds and other wildlife affected by the Gulf oil spill are heartbreaking. What should we do about them? Some wildlife experts advocate euthanizing instead of cleaning individual birds.

"Kill, don't clean," recommends Silvia Gaus, a biologist at NationalPark Wattenmeer (Wadden Sea National Park) in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. Unfortunately, despite some short-term success in cleaning birds and releasing them into the wild, few, if any, have a chance of surviving even for a few months, reports Ms Gaus, who has worked as a biologist for 20 years.

"According to serious studies, the middle-term survival rate of oil-soaked birds is under 1 percent," Ms Gaus explained. "We, therefore, oppose cleaning birds."

Blogger and evolutionary biologist GrrlScientist took a closer look at those serious studies and found the survival rate of oiled birds depends on a number of factors, and can be as high as 100% among some populations. She advocates making the effort to clean and release birds.

I disagree with Ms Gaus's gloomy policy. Because all people use oil or oil-related products in some form, I maintain that it is both ethical and responsible to try to save as many oiled birds and other wildlife as we can. Some wildlife management professionals argue that cleaning oiled birds isn't worth the monetary cost and effort since little or no impact can be made on a species level. But actually, we don't know this to be true. Additionally, I ask you; what amount of money and effort is too much, and who should be making those decisions anyway? Further, what do we, as scientists and as a society, gain by trying to save these unfortunate animals? Certainly, I think it is imperative to develop our technology to the best level possible so we can use it to help all birds, whether their populations are doing fine or they are threatened or endangered, so we are capable of helping them in the sad event that they are impacted by an oil spill. This requires that we continually refine and improve our techniques and equipment to do the job properly.

There is much more information on previous spills and bird survival rates at Living the Scientific Life. What do you think? Should we leave oiled birds to their fate, euthanize them, or wash and rehabilitate them one by one? Link

(Image credit: Paul Buck/EPA)

NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day today is a cosmic cloud called Thor's Helmet, for obvious reasons.

Heroically sized even for a Norse god, Thor's Helmet is about 30 light-years across. In fact, the helmet is actually more like an interstellar bubble, blown as a fast wind from the bright, massive star near the bubble's center sweeps through a surrounding molecular cloud. Known as a Wolf-Rayet star, the central star is an extremely hot giant thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova stage of evolution. Cataloged as NGC 2359, the nebula is located about 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Canis Major.

Link -via Digg

(Image credit: Star Shadows Remote Observatory and PROMPT/UNC/Steve Mazlin, Jack Harvey, Rick Gilbert, and Daniel Verschatse)

"The Curse" is a new song from Josh Ritter about an archaeologist who falls in love with a mummy. The video was produced by Ritter's drummer, Liam Hurley, who is also a puppeteer. See the video and read more about it at NPR's All Things Considered. http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2010/05/27/127220892/josh-ritter-video-premiere -via mental_floss

Adding subtitles is work best left done to professionals. Professionals usually work only with languages they actually speak and read. Urlesque has a collection of screen captures featuring subtitles so bad they deserve to be kept for posterity. Some are TV feeds, which have to be done in an instant, but most are bootlegged movies transcribed by ear, or possibly by alchemy. Link