Book Origami
Artist Painted Self-Portraits While On Various Drugs
But what happens when you try to make art when you are under the influence of various drugs?
That’s exactly what Bryan Lewis Saunders did for his art project. He took a lot of different drugs and then try to draw self-portraits. Here are the results:
dinosaurcity Blog interviewed Bryan about the best and worst drugs he took while doing the project:
The PCP was just as bad. Any drugs that detach your mind from your body I don’t care for too much. The PCP day I ate a ham sandwich with tomatoes in it and people kept knocking on my door asking if they could look at my Appalachian Trail self-portraits and I’d get to telling about 20 people at a time all of my hiking stories and showing them all of my drawings and then all of sudden someone would whisper, "Bryan, these people aren’t real." And I would flip the hell out! Because even the person that whispered that wasn’t real. And then there would be another knock at the door and more people would come in wanting to see my pictures and they too weren’t real.
What’s crazy is, my friend Audra said that she really did knock on my door and could hear me talking in there but I wouldn’t answer it. It was all I could do to draw myself vomiting on PCP, and each time I heaved my face shifted off in stages and red clumpy chunky stuff kept coming out of my nose. I thought my brain was hemorrhaging, but it turned out it was just tomato from my sandwich. Thankfully.
Dog Knows 1,022 Words
[Psychologist John W. Pilley] bought Chaser as a puppy in 2004 from a local border collie breeder and started to train her for four to five hours a day. He would show her an object, say its name up to 40 times, then hide it and ask her to find it, while repeating the name all the time. She was taught one or two new names a day, with monthly revisions and reinforcement for any names she had forgotten.
He did this day in day out for years until Chaser knows the names of 1,022 items:
Foursquare Utility Lets You Search for Places with the Most Lopsided Gender Ratios
A start-up company called Motivity developed this application for Foursquare. Ratio Finder lets users find check-in locations with the sharpest gender imbalances so that they can go there and, well, presumably flirt and such. Mickey Kaus writes:
Official Website
Great Chicago Fire
Chicago grew up fast. In 1840, it was a quiet settlement of 4,500 people. Three decades later, it had grown to a vibrant metropolis of 300,000. Unfortunately, the city planners didn’t take much stock of the materials they were using. From the planks of the sidewalks to the shingles on the roofs, the new city was built almost entirely of wood. And in the autumn of 1871, all of that came to a head.
Great Chicago Fire
Chicago grew up fast. In 1840, it was a quiet settlement of 4,500 people. Three decades later, it had grown to a vibrant metropolis of 300,000. Unfortunately, the city planners didn’t take much stock of the materials they were using. From the planks of the sidewalks to the shingles on the roofs, the new city was built almost entirely of wood. And in the autumn of 1871, all of that came to a head.
Nabokov's Theory on Butterflies
Vladimir Nabokov was the curator of butterflies at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. The lifelong butterfly researcher posed a theory of butterfly evolution in 1945. He said butterflies came to the New World in five waves of migration, through Asia across the Bering Strait into Alaska and then southward through North and then South America (much as humans migrated). Other butterfly experts scoffed at the idea. Nabokov’s theory was not taken seriously until after his death in 1977. Then, in the past decade, gene-sequencing technology finds that Nabokov was right all along! A paper co-authored by Naomi Pierce of Harvard was presented to the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London on Tuesday that proclaimed Nabokov’s theory to be supported by genetic research.
There were several plausible hypotheses for how the butterflies might have evolved. They might have evolved in the Amazon, with the rising Andes fragmenting their populations. If that were true, the species would be closely related to one another.
But that is not what Dr. Pierce found. Instead, she and her colleagues found that the New World species shared a common ancestor that lived about 10 million years ago. But many New World species were more closely related to Old World butterflies than to their neighbors. Dr. Pierce and her colleagues concluded that five waves of butterflies came from Asia to the New World — just as Nabokov had speculated.
“By God, he got every one right,” Dr. Pierce said. “I couldn’t get over it — I was blown away.”
Dr. Pierce and her colleagues also investigated Nabokov’s idea that the butterflies had come over the Bering Strait. The land surrounding the strait was relatively warm 10 million years ago, and has been chilling steadily ever since. Dr. Pierce and her colleagues found that the first lineage of Polyommatus blues that made the journey could survive a temperature range that matched the Bering climate of 10 million years ago. The lineages that came later are more cold-hardy, each with a temperature range matching the falling temperatures.
In case you were wondering, yes, this is that Vladimir Nabokov. He is better known outside scientific circles as the proclaimed author of Lolita and other novels. Link -viaThe Loom
Goose and Bull Love Each Other
A goose and a bull near Grisborne, New Zealand, have been attached to each other for ten years:The friendship between a Highland cattle beast and a goose was forged in January 2001 in the paddocks of Knapdale Eco Lodge off Back Ormond Road, after the two bonded following the death of one of their mates.
The goose has since become an unlikely member of the Highland cattle herd and is completely devoted to Hamish, born two weeks after the goose lost her mate.
The unlikely pair have been inseparable since.
Revolver that fires shotgun shells
This whopping handgun, called "The Judge," has been designed to fire shotgun shells. Taurus, who briefly imported the gun from Brazil, has withdrawn it from sale following a visit from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. According to Neatorama, "The Judge shoots .410 gauge shells as well as .45 Long Colt cartridges. 'The Raging Judge', pictured above, goes even further in this approach, firing the much larger 28 gauge shell."
Francis Ford Coppola, copyfighter
In this interview with The 99%, Francis Ford Coppola says some extremely thought-provoking and sensible things about creativity, mastery, copyright, the business of the arts, collaboration, and life. It's always great to learn about seasoned, accomplished artists who refuse the lure of reactionary, knee-jerk get-off-my-lawnery:
Lower the Thermostat to Lower 60s, Lose Weight!
Those headlong in their New Year, weight loss resolution -- and ready to shed more pounds -- don't need to barrel out in the snow sans scarf and mittens to start burning fat. (Though we know more time outdoors is always good for health and spirit!) According to the NYT, Dr. C. Ronald Kahn, a Harvard Medical School professor thinks simply lowering the thermostat to the lower 60s,
...Might actually help with weight control over time, provided people stick with it.
When we put people in a 60-degree room, they increase their energy expenditure by 100 or 200 calories a day if they're in light clothing," like hospital scrubs, he said. "They're not shivering. They activate their brown fat."
Over a period of several weeks, they will have burned an extra 3,500 calories, which translates into the loss of one pound. Wearing a sweater will dilute the effect.
Is Mango Wood the New Bamboo?
The mango tree can grow to a huge 80- to 100-foot height relatively quickly, when it then becomes difficult to harvest. With its limited lifespan for yielding the best fruit, the trees are cut down. On sustainably managed farms, mango trees are replaced every seven to 15 years with the barren tree providing farmers with extra income. As a sustainable source of hardwood, mango is best used for furnishings and home accessories such as bowls, vases, trays, shelving etc. as a good alternative wood choice. Its wood has a range of colors from blonde to dark brown, and can even show off a hint of pink, with unique grain. Though durable and as dense as ash or cherry wood, it's not hard enough for construction. Like bamboo flooring, it's probably not the best choice for walking on.
Tropical mango wood can have some hiccups in certain climates, such as the dry Southwest or cold Northeast where it requires care with occasional natural oil polishing. It is water-resistant but if not allowed to dehydrate, it can last for generations.
How to Make a Panograph: 9 steps - wikiHow
Steps
- 1Go out into the world and find something interesting to shoot. Pick your point of view, making sure you can see everything you want to shoot without moving from your position.
Photo Paint
Super Easy Picture Editor 100% Free Download! Webfetti.com/photos - 2Manually set the white balance, focus, f-stop, and shutter speed on your camera. This ensures that it doesn't light meter every shot and your photos aren't all differently exposed. If you want your panography to consist of many individual photos, zoom in a bit. If it's your first try, you may want to stay zoomed out so you'll have fewer shots to assemble at the end.
- 3Point and shoot. Don't move from your position, but do move your lens in all directions. Try tilting your camera to different angles to soften the straight panorama look. Keep in mind that the more your shots overlap, the easier it'll be to assemble your panography later.
- 4Make sure you cover every spot with at least one picture. We tend to only photograph the interesting spots, like lines and busy areas, and oftentimes forget to get the plain areas. Leave a shot out and you'll be left with a hole in your final piece with no way to fill it!
- 5Unload your camera and, using Photoshop, resize your photographs (try width or height of 800 pixels). It's tedious to do this manually for each photo; so to expedite the process, record the resizing and saving of one photo as a new Photoshop Action. Then go to File > Automate > Batch to select the new action and apply it to your entire folder ofpanography photos. This is also where you can select photomerge and have Photoshop do all the work.
- 6Create a fairly large new RGB canvas to work on. If it turns out the canvas is too small, you can always add some space later (Image > Canvas). Copy the new 800px versions of your images into your canvas--5 to 10 images at a time ought to be manageable.
- 7Set the opacity of each photo to about 50%. Using the Transform function (Ctrl/Apple+T), start rotating each photo to fit the ones next to it. Be careful to make sure you're rotating (you should see a curved arrow tool when you're near a corner) and not skewing the photographs. Now go photo by photo and assemble your panography like a puzzle. It will take a while to get it right, so be sure to save your work as you go along.
- 8When you're finished assembling the photos together, make final color, contrast, and levels adjustments. Go to the layer palette and add a new adjustment layer of any kind by clicking the round black/white symbol.
- 9To share your panography or post it online, just combine all the layers (Shift+Ctrl/Apple+E), and resize your image. Be sure to save this file separately instead of overwriting the original, which you'll want to keep in case you want to make changes later.
Free Panoramic Software
Edit, Stitch Panoramic Photos Download Free Software Now! www.Serif.com/PanoramaStarterFree Gimp Download
Download Gimp 100% Free Online! Your Free Photo Editing Software. freeze.comGoPano+ Panoramic Optic
360º Panoramas in one shot PhotoWarp and VideoWarp software www.EyeSee360.com
editTips
- If you want to save the originals, don't forget to duplicate your folder before you resize.
- Submit your creations to the Panography group on Flickr. But be sure to follow the rules if you do:
- Individual images are not to be skewed or rescaled.
- The base color is white.
- The sides are not to be cropped, even if there is one long strand of shots standing out.
- The images should all have similar color or contrast adjustments for an even look. This is not Techno.
- Microsoft's Digital Image Suite 2006 automates the entire process if you're looking for a faster method.
editWarnings
- The more photos you take, the more RAM your computer will need to make the panography. Also, some cameras don't give you the option of manually setting the f-stop and shutter speed. Sometimes, one of your preset modes (for example, landscape mode), will keep your settings relatively uniform. Give it a try. If all else fails, automatic mode still works; the effect is just a little different.
- Try not to set the opacity using the "transform" method as this can destroy information (you will not be able to revert this - even if you wanted to). Rather we suggest that you make sure each photo gets its own layer and you set the opacity for that entire layer to 50% - you can change this as many times as you see fit with no loss of information or extra overhaul to your memory space.
editThings You'll Need
- Image manipulating software (Adobe Photoshop, Corel Paint Shop Pro, Macromedia Fireworks, Hugin, or GIMP)
- Camera (photos)
5 Offbeat Useful Websites For Booklovers & The Social Joy Of Reading books
The book web service positions itself as the ‘Pandora’ for book lovers. Just like the music service tries to match listeners to new music according to their tastes, BookLamp tries to do the same for book lovers. Think of it as an automated book recommendation service which can correlate the book you like with another one that has a similar writing style and features like pacing, density, description, dialog, and action.
Study: African-American men say doctor visits are often a bad experience
ANN ARBOR, Mich.---A majority of African American men said they do not go to the doctor because visits are stressful and physicians don't give adequate information on how to make prescribed behavior or lifestyle changes, a new University of Michigan study shows.
CNN Money rounded up eight American banks that might not be consumer paradises, but offer free checking, no ATM fees, and comparatively high interest rates for savings accounts.
The article itself is a slideshow, but here are CNN's suggestions:
- Ally Bank
- ING Direct
- USAA
- Capital One
- Alliant Credit Union
- PNC
- The Incredible Bank
- Charles Schwab
Most of these are not brick-and-mortar banks in most of the country, so if you like to hand over your deposits to a real live teller, they are not for you. Check out the offerings of your locally-owned banks and credit unions
10 Non-Toxic House Plants: Keeping Your Pets Safe ASPCA
The following plants are non-toxic to both cats and dogs:
1. Blue Echeveria 2. Bamboo 3. Areca or Golden Palm 4. Burro's Tail or Lamb's Tail 5. Christmas Cactus 6. Cliff Brake or Button Fern 7. Hens and Chickens 8. Pearl Plant 9. Pony Tail Palm
10. Spice Orchid
Surgery for obstructive sleep apnea reduces daytime drowsiness
The study finds surgery greatly reduces daytime sleepiness – a common side effect from this disorder in which the upper airway is partially or completely blocked during sleep – when compared to other non-surgical treatments for obstructive sleep apnea.
"This study validates what patients have told us regarding their improved alertness after surgery," says study author Kathleen L. Yaremchuk, M.D., Chair of the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Henry Ford Hospital.
Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) affects an estimated 2 percent of women and 4 percent of men in the U.S., putting them at an increased risk for hypertension, coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, stroke and death.
Exploring the world's ruined breweries
Irony alert: the majority of these photos (which document unauthorized incursions into private property) are marked "All Rights Reserved" on Flickr!
1. The Dixie Brewery – New Orleans, Louisiana
2. Stella Artois Brewery – Leuven, Belgium
5. Hamm’s Brewery – St. Paul, Minnesota
7. Iron City Brewery – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Researchers discover age of onset of puberty predicts adult osteoporosis risk
We found that early puberty was associated with greater bone mass while later puberty resulted in less."
9 Things We Wished We Did Before Our House Burned Down - The Consumerist
1. Subscribe to an online data backup service (my external back up drive sat right next to my laptop in my office) 2. Keep passports in a safe deposit box 3. Take pictures of each room initially and update them as improvements are made (storing them somewhere offsite - like Flickr) 4. Take pictures and keep hyperlinks of all expensive purchases, including jewelry 5. Hire an architect (my dad in our case) or use floorplanner.com to document each floor layout along with precise wall/ceiling measurements, each outlet, light switch, crown molding, other trim, type of flooring, any unique items to structure of property 6. Put phones in a consistent place each night 7. Get fire ladders for any second floor bedrooms 8. Scan each photo and receipt [for expensive purchases], again keeping them offsite, or on an online data backup service 9. Do not be frugal with homeowner's insurance. Spend the extra $50 per year for the most coverage
Just as we layer clothes, U.S. architects finally start layering buildings
Fringe benefits of this type of renovation are that the tenants need not move out during the re-fit, saving some bread there, and the double wall provides more blast protection for would-be terrorist targets (the Cleveland building houses certain Department of Defense offices). Learn more about it here.
Learn more quickly by transcranial magnetic brain stimulation
What sounds like science fiction is actually possible: thanks to magnetic stimulation, the activity of certain brain nerve cells can be deliberately influenced. What happens in the brain in this context has been unclear up to now. Medical experts from Bochum under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Klaus Funke (Department of Neurophysiology) have now shown that various stimulus patterns changed the activity of distinct neuronal cell types. In addition, certain stimulus patterns led to rats learning more easily. The knowledge obtained could contribute to cerebral stimulation being used more purposefully in future to treat functional disorders of the brain. The researchers have published their studies in the Journal of Neuroscience and in the European Journal of Neuroscience.
2010: A Year of Record Warmth and Weird Weather
According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center (NOAA NCDC), the global temperature for both years was 0.62°C above the 20th-century average 13.9°C; 2010 came second by a thousandth of a degree. (Climatologists usually give temperatures as anomalies relative to an average, because they are easier to compare than absolute temperatures. The last month with a temperature below average was February 1985.) 
Turritopsis nutricula - Wikipedia
Turritopsis nutricula, the potentially immortal jellyfish, is a hydrozoan whose medusa, orjellyfish, form can revert to the polyp stage after becoming sexually mature. It is the only known case of a metazoan capable of reverting completely to a sexually immature, colonial stage after having reached sexual maturity as a solitary stage.[2][3] It does this through the cell development process of transdifferentiation. Cell transdifferentiation is when the jellyfish "alters the differentiated state of the cell and transforms it into a new cell." In this process the medusa of the immortal jellyfish is transformed into the polyps of a new polyp colony. First, the umbrella reverts itself and then the tentacles and mesoglea get resorbed. The reverted medusa then attaches itself to the substrate by the end that had been at the opposite end of the umbrella and starts giving rise to new polyps to form the new colony. Theoretically, this process can go on infinitely, effectively rendering the jellyfish biologically immortal,[3][4] although in nature, most Turritopsis, like other medusae, are likely to succumb to predation or disease in the plankton stage, without reverting to the polyp form.[5] No single specimen has been observed for any extended period, so it is impossible to estimate the age of an individual, and so even if this species has the potential for immortality, there is no laboratory evidence of many generations surviving from any individual.
Materials: Carbon fiber and other textures in sheet form
Made for aesthetic purposes, their line of sheet-good products come in textures and patterns like carbon fiber, brushed aluminum, a variety of camouflages, etc. No good to those of us who aren't fast & furious, but it occurred to me that the material could be useful to ID-student modelmakers who need to fake the real thing on the cheap. 
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