When I first saw this contraption on the Wired blog, I thought I was looking at an old drawing of mine from grade school, or something that would be used for transportation by Storm Shadow. I wonder how many miles to the gallon these vehicles get. It looks like only one human fits to each vehicle, and since they are using them for an expedition, there would be a whole formation of these gliding over the snow at once. Nice.
Lotus is renowned for building lightweight sports cars with razor-sharp handling, but it’s traded tarmac for snow pack with a prop-driven, biofuel-burning ice-rider designed for a 3,000-mile trek across Antarctica.
The CIV was built by Kieron Bradley, a former Formula 1 chassis designer, and polar guide Jason de Carteret. It burns biofuel and uses what looks to us like a BMW motorcycle engine to spin a huge propeller. The vehicle is 15 feet long and 15 feet wide and rides on three skis, each with independent suspension — Lotus builds sports cars, after all — to make traversing the sastruga fields a little easier on the guy in the cockpit. Braking comes from a spiked foot that works a bit like an ice axe.
The Royal library of Alexandria in Egypt was once the largest of its kind in the ancient world. The story behind its foundation in the 3rd century BC, destruction, and eventual rebuilding is shown below. If indeed the original library was met with destruction on several occasions, it leaves one wondering what ancient knowledge of previous civilizations were lost during the episodes.
It is first known library of its kind to gather a serious collection of books from beyond its country’s borders, the Library at Alexandria was charged with collecting all the world’s knowledge. It did so through an aggressive and well-funded royal mandate involving trips to the book fairs of Rhodes and Athens and a (potentially apocryphal or exaggerated) policy of pulling the books off every ship that came into port, keeping the originals and returning copies to their owners. This detail is informed by the fact that Alexandria, because of its man-made bidirectional port between the mainland and the Pharos island, welcomed trade from the East and West and soon found itself the international hub for trade, as well as the leading producer of papyrus and, soon enough, books.
Strange mammal alert. Don’t you wish you had a pet like this? I think if the X-men had a cat, it would be similar, except it would have some type of sonic sound ability. I like how this feline poses for photos: WITH AUTHORITY.
They say cats have nine lives, but this one has four ears.
A genetic abnormality gave Yoda, of Downers Grove, Ill., four ear flaps instead of two.
Ted and Valerie Rock first spied the little guy in 2006 at neighborhood bar on the South Side of Chicago before a Bears game. He was the last of a litter of eight put up for adoption by the bar’s owner.
“The people in the bar, because it was coming up on Halloween, were thinking it was a devil cat or had evil powers or something,” Ted Rock said.
But the Rocks, who had lost their cat of 20 years just 6 months prior, saw something special in the gray kitten and decided to take him home.
Their “Star Wars”-loving son thought to name the cat after the tiny Jedi master.
You may think you decided to read this story — but in fact, your brain made the decision long before you knew about it.
In a study published in Nature Neuroscience, researchers using brain scanners could predict people’s decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them.
This schematic shows the brain regions (green) from which the outcome of a participant's decision can be predicted before it is made. Courtesy John-Dylan Haynes.
The decision studied — whether to hit a button with one’s left or right hand — may not be representative of complicated choices that are more integrally tied to our sense of self-direction. Regardless, the findings raise profound questions about the nature of self and autonomy: How free is our will? Is conscious choice just an illusion?
“Your decisions are strongly prepared by brain activity. By the time consciousness kicks in, most of the work has already been done,” said study co-author John-Dylan Haynes, a Max Planck Institute neuroscientist.
What was captured on a camera in the early hours of the morning in North Carolina? Things that make you go hmm. I’m in the same frame of mind as Charlie, the guy in the video. But it seems even he is left scratching his head.
…..It’s something, so far, the Asheville School District says can’t be explained. Charlie Glazener, Executive Director of Public Relations for the District says, “I’m a logical person, and I wanted to be able to explain to these folks, or anybody, this is what I think it is. It’s a bat flying around here, and it casts a shadow; but then why is the shadow down here from a different angle, and it’s not in the shape of a bat?” It’s that shadow cast on the floor that has even the skeptics perplexed.
Below are some links and great pictures (notcot.com) taken at the I am 8 Bit event that happened a couple of days ago. A few of my friends (Woebots, Peekaboo, 2H) from Pocket Full of Monsters customized an arcade machine that was sitting out in front of the venue. Wow. It looks like they took full advantage of the larger space for the show, there was a lot going on there!
Every once in a while a crazy game comes along that does something to redefine the genre in its time. I was blown away by the play mechanics and logic puzzles in Portal, and it looks like Braid is something of the same category. When I first saw videos if it, the design style had more than a passing resemblance to Super Mario Brothers. In motion in mechanics, however, it shines as something completely unique. The critical response has been favorable for it also.
Check out the SamW89’s Gametrailers.com review below, and read the developer’s blog here. The story behind how this game was made is just as compelling as the game itself. A lot of hard work was put into it being made independently, so I have to give respect for that alone.
I think it is only available for download on XBox Live Arcade and PC in the near future. Hopefully they will release it on the other consoles as well.
Something that interests me between different cultures, and even within a culture is the coexistence of the acceptable and taboo. A friendly gesture by a group is an insult to another. What is sacred to one is seen as insane by the next person. The video explores one example of this in northern Greece.
A firewalking festival called the Anastenaria, revolves around a set of ancient icons that worshippers believe have special powers - to purify, heal, and protect. But others view the ritual as sacrilege.
Hey so that art show I’m in is here soon (august 14th). Make sure to look for the Chrono Trigger painting I did. I will post pictures of all 6 characters in a couple of days. IGN did a nice little write-up for the show, and my friend Jim Mahfood rocked a nice flyer for it as well. Here’s the flyer design….
And here’s some details on the show.
“After undergoing major renovations to the gallery, we’re extremely excited that such a large-scale show like I AM 8-BIT has chosen World of Wonder as its home this year,” says Randy Barbato, co-founder of WOW. “It’s bound to be our biggest, most extravagant art event to date!”
For a while I had a translation engine on my blog because more than half of the visitors on this site are from other countries. I wanted to start catering to their needs since they were visiting.
Unfortunately because of the high amount of translation requests, I ended up having to take it down. I looked around for a better translator that was more reliable in writing cache files and load-balancing requests to different sources. I was able to find an improved translation engine, and have revised my permalink structure as well.
You can translate my blog or any blog entry by clicking on the country flag in the upper-right hand corner of the page. You will see also that it creates a permalink for each translated page which you can easily bookmark.
Here’s some other sky-born phenomena. We see lightning for a flash during any storm, but what if we were able to slow time down to view its movement? Someone managed to do just that, and here it is. I’d like to know what kind of camera they used to capture at a frame rate this high. Crazy.
This week was car maintenance happy-fun-time. ( I guess it’s my turn to get owned ) Out of the ordinary issues arose, which caused a chain reaction of other things to happen. The details don’t really matter all that much besides it putting the schedule into a different rhythm.
On my way back from the mechanic I saw these awesome clouds off the side of the highway and got pictures with my cellphone camera. They were like this for about 5 minutes, then disappeared. Looking at them made me feel peaceful and remember to keep things in perspective.
Back in college, I used to go hang out with friends or draw to music played through the earliest builds of winamp. Usually we had version one of the whitecap or geiss plugins running in the background. There was a growing underground community of people writing their own visualization mods for plugins (it was relatively new technology at the time). I think I had collected a library of about 7000 mods for one plugin. That’s what this animation reminded me of. All that hunting for a computer script to run parallel with the Led Zeppelin albums…..
My friend Joe had this up on his blog and it blew my mind. I’ve seen similar animated images that end at the star Betelgeuse, but this one goes even farther in scale. What’s amazing is how much the sun dwarfs our planet, and that the largest stars when compared to our sun make it look like nothing more than a spec. I start thinking about the microscopic radius that our own planet orbits on, and how it hovers in a temperature range that is the equivalent of an atomic hair and perfect to sustain life. We are small. It is a very humbling thing to think about.
Michael Tellinger talks about what he believes to be the discovery of the oldest man-made structure on Earth, around 75,000 years old. A new book by Johan Heine and Michael Tellinger outlines the events that led to this discovery in South Africa by explorer/pilot Johan Heine.
How weird this creature is. After closer inspection, its face seems to have proportions closer to a gorilla than a monkey, but I guess “monkey-faced piglet” has a catchier sound to it. Either way, the fact that it jumps because its back legs are long make for an even stranger appearance.
Villagers were shocked after a monkey-like piglet was born in China.
Curious locals flocked to the home of owner Feng Changlin after news of the piglet spread in Fengzhang village, Xiping township.
“It’s hideous. No one will be willing to buy it, and it scares the family to even look at it!” Feng told Oriental Today.
He says the piglet looks just like a monkey, with two thin lips, a small nose and two big eyes. Its rear legs are also much longer than its forelegs, causing it to jump instead of walk.
Feng’s wife said the monkey-faced piglet was one of five newborns of a sow which the family had raised for nine years.
“My God, it was so scary. I didn’t known what it was. I was really frightened,” she said.
“But our son likes to play with it, and he stopped us from getting rid of it. He even feeds it milk.”
Neighbours have suggested the couple keep the piglet to see how it looks as it matures.
Oobleck is Non-Newtonian (corn starch and water). As this video demonstrates, it does not behave like a typical liquid, and spontaneously changes into bizarre shapes in a “solid” state when stress is applied. If you have a large subwoofer and baking pan at home, you can do the same experiment.
Back in April I knew that my sister was planning on getting married sometime in July, but I didn’t know which weekend it would be. It just so happened that it was on the same weekend as Comicon this year, which was bittersweet but good in the end. I was working overtime to get a painting finished for a show here in a few days, and some other odds and ends (replace an old cell phone and get the oil changed in the car). I didn’t know if I’d be able to get things done on time before leaving, but somehow managed to pull it off with little sleep.
between ohio and new jersey you will find.....
So off my wife and I go back east to Pennsylvania to meet friends and family I haven’t seen in years, and others I’ve never met. It’s interesting how different regions of a country can be a country within themselves: landscape, architecture, dialect, etc have a character of their own. It’s something I’ve developed a better appreciation for as I’ve gotten older. It was a great time and a break away from the normal routine of the creative world. That’s why I haven’t posted anything for the past few days either, I didn’t want to lug the laptop around on the trip. It was better off anyway, I wasn’t as distracted. Haha. Back to the grind….
Did you know that some dogs can learn to talk? We have a neighbor with a couple of dogs, and I heard one whining yesterday. It started to make noises sort of like these creatures in the video. It sure surprised me. I thought maybe the dog had captured someone and was holding them for ransom or something.
When I’m looking for some real hip hop, I’ve always got to dig deep. Thankfully there are bands out there with a natural metronome of pacing, lyrical rhythm, and style, all wrapped up in a bun of philosophy and content.
Flobots, I feel, satisfies this checklist. Their album, Fight With Tools is a mix between many ideas, and It’s sure to provoke agreements and disagreements on the myriad of social and political concepts it explores.
born in the flood
bloody fingerpaint sets
blackmarketed fresh
water canons forget me not
epitaph airbrush with death
white t’s
wife beaters
button up
reattach flesh
in between the lines
outside of the law
underneath the veil
we dig our foundations
we navigate the globe
trying to find a pattern to break the mold
with a family to feed
theres nowhere we wont go
but what if were caught
they say Im a snitch
shot at the check point
found with his throat slit
theres spray paint on the teleprompter
anchorman screams that hes seen a monster
mayday
theres bloodstains on his shirt
mayday
they say that hes gone berserk
) Out of the ordinary issues arose, which caused a chain reaction of other things to happen. The details don’t really matter all that much besides it putting the schedule into a different rhythm.
