Yes, there really was a Lynyrd Skynyrd, but his name was Leonard Skinner. Skinner, a gym teacher in Jacksonville, Florida, was the inspiration for the band's name. Skinner died yesterday at a nursing home in Florida. He was 77.
Mr. Skinner never asked to become part of rock ’n’ roll lore. He didn’t even like rock ’n’ roll. He was just a by-the-book gym teacher at Robert E. Lee High School, his alma mater, who, in the late 1960s, sent some students to the principal’s office because their hair was too long.
Gene Odom, who worked security for the band and survived the crash of its plane in 1977, said one of the longhairs was Gary Rossington. Rossington was guitarist in a rock band that would later name itself Lynyrd Skynyrd in a smart-aleck tribute to the gym teacher.
Skinner made friends with the band in later years, and took advantage of the name recognition for his business ventures. Link -via The Daily What
Dan Roe made these solar-powered kinetic flower sculptures that move on their own, as long as they are in the sun! I can imagine how much my cats would love these. See more kinetic and robotic artworks at his website. Link-Thanks, Dan!
You may have been to Disneyland, but how much do you really know about it? Find out in today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. I scored a dismal 25%. I'd like to say that is is because I've never been to Disneyland, but it was because I just didn't know the answers. Surely you can do better! Link
Have you ever noticed a highway guard rail with a cap on the end like this? It's not just for looks! Read an explanation of what happens when a car hits a guard rail with and without an end cap. Beware that there are pictures of what happens when a guard rail does not have the safety cap. When I read things like this, I have more and more respect for civil engineers. Link
See what can happen when you have a bobcat for a pet? I've been lacerated by domestic cats enough to know that I don't want to fight a wildcat over dinner. And this one is just a cub! People take in pets stranger than bobcats, however: read the stories of people who keep hippos, tigers, alligators, zebras, and more in The World's Ten Weirdest Pets. Link
You knew this was coming, and now its available to everyone. It's a camera that records everything you see. Loop the Looxcie over your ear and go about your day. If you see anything you think may be worth saving, hit the button and the previous 30 seconds are saved, and even uploaded to your selected social networking site to be instantly shared, or you can watch and edit the video first if you prefer. And it stores up to five hours of video! yeah, this is neat to have yourself -but what about when other people wear them? Would you tend to turn your head or hide when you see one of these coming? Link -via Nag on the Lake
It was the perfect place to grow marijuana: a section of the rhinoceros pen that only one zookeeper had access to. A zookeeper in Austria thought he would never be caught.
Salzburg Hellbrunn Zoo director Sabine Grebner said today (Mon): "It’s horrible! We never thought such a thing was possible. We are here for families and kids – and we don’t have anything to do with drugs."
Police said the 59-year-old rhinoceros carer kept 33 marijuana plants in a part of the enclosure which is hidden from visitors’ view, adding that they acted on an anonymous tip-off by "customer" of the offender.
Today, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is one of the most popular memorials in the United States, but at the time it was conceived it was so controversial that it's a wonder it got built at all.
MOVING PICTURE
One evening in March 1979, Jan Scruggs went to see The Deer Hunter, a movie about a group of friends who go off to fight in the Vietnam War. Scruggs had served in Vietnam, and the movie upset him so much that he sat up all night drinking whiskey to dull the pain. But something good came from the experience, too: Scruggs decided he wanted to try and get a memorial built for Vietnam veterans, to honor their sacrifices and aid in the healing process. In April he and an attorney friend, also a Vietnam vet, founded the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund to raise money to build the monument.
LAYING THE FOUNDATION
After a slow start, the memorial fund began to make progress. More veterans joined the efffort, the money started coming in, and legislation setting aside three acres on the Mall in Washington, D.C. for the memorial sailed through both houses of Congress. Jimmy Cater signed the bill into law on July 1, 1980.
As fundraising continued, the organization announced that the design for the memorial would be chosen in a national contest. Any U.S. citizen over the age of 18 was eligible to enter. The deadline for entry was March 31, 1981; the winning design would be chosen by a jury of eight architects, sculptors, and other professionals in May. For an entry to be considered, it had to meet four criteria: 1) It had to be "reflective and contemplative" in nature; 2) It had to fit in with its surroundings on the Mall; 3) It had to contain the names of all U.S. personnel who died in the war or went missing in action; and 4) It could not make a political statement about the war.
In all, 4,241 people entered designs. The entries were identified by number only to prevent the judges from knowing who was responsible for each design. It took them four days to winnow the entries down to 232 and then to 39 and then to 1, entry number1,026. That entry had been submitted by Maya Lin, a 21-year-old Yale architecture student who created it as a class assignment. (It got a B+). Her design won by unanimous vote.
THE WALL
Lin's design was simple and stark: Two long black walls that met at a 125 degree angle. The walls were just over ten feet high where they met at the apex, and taper to just eight inches tall at the far ends.
Austin Seraphin got an iPhone. Since he is blind, the first thing he did was activate VoiceOver, which reads text out loud. Then later, he tried the Color ID app, which identifies colors picked up by the camera.
I have never experienced this before in my life. I can see some light and color, but just in blurs, and objects don’t really have a color, just light sources. When I first tried it at three o’clock in the morning, I couldn’t figure out why it just reported black. After realizing that the screen curtain also disables the camera, I turned it off, but it still have very dark colors. Then I remembered that you actually need light to see, and it probably couldn’t see much at night. I thought about light sources, and my interview I did for Get Lamp. First, I saw one of my beautiful salt lamps in its various shades of orange, another with its pink and rose colors, and the third kind in glowing pink and red.. I felt stunned.
The next day, I went outside. I looked at the sky. I heard colors such as “Horizon,” “Outer Space,” and many shades of blue and gray. I used color queues to find my pumpkin plants, by looking for the green among the brown and stone. I spent ten minutes looking at my pumpkin plants, with their leaves of green and lemon-ginger. I then roamed my yard, and saw a blue flower. I then found the brown shed, and returned to the gray house. My mind felt blown. I watched the sun set, listening to the colors change as the sky darkened. The next night, I had a conversation with Mom about how the sky looked bluer tonight. Since I can see some light and color, I think hearing the color names can help nudge my perception, and enhance my visual experience. Amazing!
Groovy! This page takes recent Creative Commons photos from Flickr and turns them into kaleidoscopic images. Use the lowest button to change the image, and your mouse to change the kaleidoscopic effects. Link -via J-Walk Blog
Talk about inspirational -Ben Davis lost 120 pounds! But that's not all he accomplished, as you'll see in this video. Davis also chronicled his progress on his blog. Link -via reddit
The old parlor trick of staring at yourself in a mirror until your face starts to change has now been studied scientifically. Giovanni Caputo led a study in which 50 people tried the trick and reported their reactions.
At the end of a 10 min session of mirror gazing, the participant was asked to write what he or she saw in the mirror. The descriptions differed greatly across individuals and included: (a) huge deformations of one’s own face (reported by 66% of the fifty participants); (b) a parent’s face with traits changed (18%), of whom 8% were still alive and 10% were deceased; (c) an unknown person (28%); (d) an archetypal face, such as that of an old woman, a child, or a portrait of an ancestor (28%); (e) an animal face such as that of a cat, pig, or lion (18%); (f ) fantastical and monstrous beings (48%).
Have you ever tried this? The effect can be really creepy, like this video example from Lasse Gjertsen (in Norwegain, but may sound NSFW). The entire article is available as a pdf, or you can read a summary at Mind Hacks. Link -via Metafilter
Etsy artist Chet Phillips has created a set of dogs and cats as famous authors. Or are they famous authors portrayed as cats and dogs? Anyway, these Literary Pets are sold as prints or sets of trading cards. Shown are H.P. Lovecat and Spaniel Defoe. Link
You may remember Ricardo Autobahn as the creator of the awesome Golden Age of Video, or you might know him as part of the musical duo Spray, along with Jenny McLaren. Here is the video for their latest song, "Everything's Better with Muppets."-Thanks, Ricardo!
