Art, Culture and Camouflage

Art, Culture and Camouflage  
In 1896 the American artist Abbott H Thayer (1849-1921) published an article entitled "The Law Which Underlies Protective Coloration", in which he explored how animals protected themselves by the use of graduated colours and tones on their feathers, scales or fur, allowing them to be camouflaged by their surroundings. Using a language that mixed art and optics, he said "the spectator seems to see right through the space really occupied by an opaque animal". While Thayer was not the first to observe how animals used this defensive colouration, he believed nature was acting as an artist, using colour and light for optical effect, and thought that this study "belongs to the realm of pictorial art and can be only interpreted by painters".

Also Check out the AIGA's The Art of Camo

We Feel Fine

We Feel Fine  
Woh, this is crazy extensive and aesthetically pleasing.

"This very well might be the most interesting and inspiring online project anyone has done in a very, very long time. We Feel Fine is an exploration of human emotion on a global scale throughout the blogosphere. Every few minutes their system searches the world's newest blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling", and when it finds a phrase, it records the full sentence up to the period and identifies all the feelings expressed within the sentence (sadness, happy, depressed, etc). The age, gender, location and local weather conditions are also recorded. The depth of the presentation and user interface here is absolutely amazing, and a gorgeous execution. Around 15-20,000 new feelings are added to the database every day, there are currently 3.3 million feelings from over 833,000 people. The findings are just mind boggling and really quite fun to read. - genius, pure genius." -Josh Spear (Web BLog)

The implications of the word "fuck"

Legal implications of the word "fuck"  
The University of Ohio's Christopher M Fairman has published a scholarly paper called "Fuck":

This Article is as simple and provocative as its title suggests: it explores the legal implications of the word fuck. The intersection of the word fuck and the law is examined in four major areas: First Amendment, broadcast regulation, sexual harassment, and education. The legal implications from the use of fuck vary greatly with the context. To fully understand the legal power of fuck, the nonlegal sources of its power are tapped. Drawing upon the research of etymologists, linguists, lexicographers, psychoanalysts, and other social scientists, the visceral reaction to fuck can be explained by cultural taboo. Fuck is a taboo word. The taboo is so strong that it compels many to engage in self-censorship. This process of silence then enables small segments of the population to manipulate our rights under the guise of reflecting a greater community. Taboo is then institutionalized through law, yet at the same time is in tension with other identifiable legal rights. Understanding this relationship between law and taboo ultimately yields fuck jurisprudence.

Robot hand controlled by thought alone

Robot hand controlled by thought alone  
A robotic hand controlled by the power of thought alone has been demonstrated by researchers in Japan.

The robotic hand mimics the movements of a person's real hand, based on real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of their brain activity. It marks another landmark in the advance towards prosthetics and computers that can be operating by thought alone.

The system was developed by Yukiyasu Kamitani and colleagues from the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, and researchers from the Honda Research Institute in Saitama.

Subjects lay inside an MRI scanner and were asked to make "rock, paper, scissor" shapes with their right hand. As they did this, the MRI scanner recorded brain activity during the formation of each shape and fed this data to a connected computer. After a short training period, the computer was able to recognise the brain activity associated with each shape and command the robotic appendage do the same.

The debate is over!!! The egg came first!

The debate is over!!! The egg came first!
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? According to a scientist, a philosopher and a chicken farmer, it was the egg.

The key to the age-old question apparently lies in the fact that since genetic material does not change throughout an animal's life, the first bird that evolved into a chicken must have initially existed as an embryo inside an egg.

But who or what laid the egg?

the debate continues?

Professor John Brookfield, from England's University of Nottingham, concluded that because of this, the living organism inside the eggshell would have had the same DNA as the chicken it turned into.

The specialist in evolutionary genetics was quoted in a number of newspapers as saying: "Therefore the first living thing which we could say unequivocally was a member of the species would be this first egg. The egg came first."

Brookfield's conclusion was backed up by Professor David Papineau, of King's College, London, and the chairman of the trade body Great British Chicken, Charles Bourns.

Papineau, an expert in the philosophy of science, argued that the first chicken must have emerged from an egg even though it was laid by a different species of bird, but it was still a chicken egg because it had a chicken in it.

The conclusion therefore must be that the egg came first and the chicken afterwards

The bike rack

Extra Functional bike rack
This product falls under the category "why didn't I think of that?" It's a basically a bike rack but it has a air pump built in. The Rack was conceived for an art project in Ypenburg (a newly build neighbourhood in the Netherlands). The goal of the project was to stimulate an interaction between neighbours, while pumping up the tires of their bicycles. The hurdle is made out of polished stainless steel. Because of this, it shines like a jewel on the grey pavement. Available in every color.

Mystery Robot Said to Solve Crimes in Chile

Mystery Robot Said to Solve Crimes, Find Mines in Chile
It's Chile's raging scientific controversy: How does that robot work?

Manuel Salinas, a 39-year-old inventor, claims he has built a machine that has extraordinary capabilities for finding buried objects.In less than a year, Salinas says, he has helped solve two of the highest profile criminal cases in this South American country. And now that university lab tests seem to confirm that his robot works, mining and oil corporations are flooding him with business plans, Salinas says.

How this machine functions is still an "industrial secret," Salinas said. But ask him for proof that it works and he'll hand you a pile of press clippings on the device, called Geo-Radar or Arturito (a play on the name of Star Wars robot R2-D2).

The first public use of the Geo-Radar technology was in the case of Luis Francisco Yuraszeck, a Chilean businessman who had been missing since March 2004.

In July 2005 Policía Investigaciones de Chile, the local equivalent of Scotland Yard, asked Salinas to help on the case.
Salinas took his robot to a rural farmhouse selected by the police. With reporters watching, the robot scanned the landscape. Within two hours, Geo-Radar provided an exact location of Yuraszeck's body, buried under 12 feet (4 meters) of cement.
Arturo Herrera, general director of Investigaciones de Chile, publicly acknowledged the effectiveness of the Geo-Radar technology in locating the body. Check it.

Sorry your sperm is too dark, and your is too BALD!!! (?)

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Sperm
With more than 500 sperm banks in the United States and tens of thousands of donors, it was bound to happen.  As reported Friday in the Journal of Pediatrics, a sperm donor from Michigan passed on a rare and potentially deadly genetic disorder to five children.

The disorder, called severe congenital neutropenia, affects only one in five million newborns.  Those with the disorder lack a certain type of white blood cell, and this leaves them vulnerable to a host of infections and also leukemia.  Fortunately medication, albeit at $200 a day, can keep white blood cell counts high.

Doctors thought it was more than a coincidence when five kids born to four couples in the Detroit area were discovered with congenital neutropenia.  They traced it back to one sperm bank and one man.

For now this seems to be an honest mistake.  The donor, known but unnamed in the report, could have been an asymptomatic carrier of the disease.  (The only problem is that his whereabouts are unknown; the children are several years old now, and the donor has fathered other children.)  The sperm bank, known but unnamed in the report, only screens for about ten of the most common hereditary diseases, such as cystic fibrosis. 

Maybe the incident will bring about more rigorous genetic testing.  But no one seems to care about the biggest flaw in the system.

Well, at least his eyes were blue...

What's really wrong with sperm donation?  Einstein wouldn't have stood a chance.  He would have been deemed too short.  Genius, check.  Humanitarian, check.  What? Under 5'9"?  Hit the road, Jack. 

That's right:  Most sperm banks draw the line at 5'11".  We're weeding out the weaklings.  Sperm banks can't be expected to screen for rare genetic disorders when there are so many more pressing concerns to find out about the donor, such as baldness, salary history, hobbies and taste in clothing. 

Check it.

History of the Lowrider

History of the Lowrider
In 1959 a young Mexican-American customizer from San Bernadino, Ron Aguirre, had developed the "X-Sonic," a wild bubble-canopy custom Corvette. While en route to a show in LA when a traffic cop pulled him to the side of the freeway, itching to ticket him for the car being too low. The cop dutifully measured its ground clearance, and began scratching his head. "Huh," Aguirre later quoted the perplexed cop, "I could have sworn this car was too low." What that confused patrolman didn’t know was that Aguirre’s X-Sonic was packing a secret new technology: hydraulic Pesco pumps and valves (scavenged from a surplus B-52 bomber) that allowed him to change ride height at the flick of a switch. Its debut at the Renegades show in LA later that same day caused a sensation, as Aguirre demonstrated his innovative adjustable suspension system.

Check it.

Animal Sounds in other languages

Animal Sounds in other languages
Have you ever wondered what do their Rooster says? In Danish its "kykyliky" where in german it's "kikeriki" We say "cock-a-doodle-doo" right... Here is a List of animal sounds in other languages...

8,000mpg Car

8,000mpg Car
The world's most fuel-efficient vehicle has been unveiled by its British inventor.
Andy Green, 45, from the University of Bath, believes his three-wheel TeamGreen car is capable of doing 8,000 miles to the gallon.

His budget eco-motor cost just £2,000 to build and will be the sole British contender for the title of the world's most fuel-economic car in a global competition being later this month.

Woh! .

Can the other white meat's manure make black gold?

UI researcher makes crude oil from pig manure

This would be amazing!!!

They say you can't turn a sow's ear into a silk purse, but University of Illinois researchers are working some interesting magic at the other end of the animal.

"We are the first to actually do this," professor Yuanhui Zhang says proudly of his team's ability to turn swine manure into crude oil. He's a bio-environmental engineer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who has led the 10-year research project that recently announced a breakthrough in porcine petroleum.

That neat trick may sound crude.

But it also sounds good to a pork industry swamped with oceans of swine manure, and it sounds like the national anthem to those looking to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil.

A Real Sugar High!

A Real Sugar High! Oreo's Used as Rocket Fuel
Food contains an amazing amount of energy. It fuels our bodies and makes us tick. What would happen if that same food Were placed in a rocket, imagine the energy it could produce...

A king-size Snickers has 541 Calories. That’s Calories with a capital “C,” or 1,000 lowercase calories. A small-“c” calorie represents the energy required to heat one gram of water by one degree Celsius. So that Snickers could theoretically heat a gram of water 541,000 degrees or, more realistically, bring a gallon and a half of water from nearly freezing to nearly boiling.

The energy in food is typically released when, through a complex biochemical pathway, sugars, starches and fats react with oxygen from the lungs. It’s a form of slow-motion burning that, thankfully, rarely involves fire.

ut you can liberate the same amount of energy in much less time by mixing the Snickers with a more concentrated source of oxygen—say, the potent oxidizer potassium perchlorate. The result is basically rocket fuel. Ig­nited on an open fireproof table, it burns vigorously, consuming an entire candy bar in a few seconds with a rushing tower of fire. If you could bottle the energy of kids playing and turn it into a Molotov cocktail, this is what it would look like.

Of course, you can’t actually fire a rocket with a Snickers bar; the nuts would clog the nozzle. Oreo cookie filling, however, works very nicely in standard model-rocket engines. (Caution: The Model Rocket Safety Code does not approve of filling rocket motors with highly reactive chlorate-Oreo mixtures.)

Cast Away the Clouds

Rose Melberg New CD!
It's seems like forever since I have heard a new song from the former leader of Tiger Trap, Go Sailor, the Softies... Rose Melberg. Now there is 12 beautifuly recorded, mejestic songs to listen to.


So what has Rose been doing in the past five years? DoubleAgent Site says: After moving to a small Canadian lakeside town, she started a family, developed into a mature singer/songwriter akin to Nick Drake, Tracey Thorn, and Elliott Smith, and created her solo masterpiece, Cast Away the Clouds , the beautiful continuation of an impressive career.

Power Tool Drag Racing

Power Tool Drag Races in San Francisco
Sunday May 7 was time for the Fourth Non-Consecutive running of the Power Tool Drag Races at the world-famous Ace Motor Speedway in San Francisco, California. Here's a gallery of still photos that attempts to capture the highlights and colorful spectacles of the "competition."


Thanks: boingboing