”Women must give birth, men have to be tattooed,” says one Samoan tattoo song, expressing an age-old idea of equality between the sexes. Both must endure pain. In traditional Samoan society all young males had to be tattooed when they reached their late teens. Otherwise they were not considered real men. Nowadays, the custom is no longer general, but it is still associated with manhood and male prestige, and hugely popular.
(via dei-tea)
Codex Seraphinianus, 1976-1978
‘The Codex Seraphinianus is a book written and illustrated by Italian artist, architect and industrial designer Luigi Serafini, from 1976 to 1978. The book appears to be a visual encyclopedia of an unknown world, written in one of its languages, an alphabetic writing intended to be meaningless.’
(via lacklusterz)
FROM THE ARCHIVES: DOG SAVES OWNER BY DIALING 911 - “Faith…phoned 911 when Beasley fell out of her wheelchair and barked urgently into the receiver until a dispatcher sent help. Then the service dog unlocked the front door for the police officer.”
In 2004, a Rottweiler named Faith dialed 911 (the emergency telephone number in the U.S.) when her owner fell out of her wheelchair at her home in Washington. Not only did Faith call for help, she barked into the receiver and then unlocked the door so rescuers could come in. Here’s more from NBC News:
“I sensed there was a problem on the other end of the 911 call,” said dispatcher Jenny Buchanan. “The dog was too persistent in barking directly into the phone receiver. I knew she was trying to tell me something.”
Faith is trained to summon help by pushing a speed-dial button on the phone with her nose after taking the receiver off the hook, said her owner, Beasley, 45, who suffers grand mal seizures.
Guided by experts at the Assistance Dog Club of Puget Sound, Beasley helped train Faith herself.
The day of the fall, Faith “had been acting very clingy, wanting to be touching me all day long,” Beasley said Thursday.
Amazing story about an amazing service dog. Click here for the full story. (Photo by Paul T. Erickson)
<33333333333
(via jcamp)
At Gowanus Canal, Turning Toxic Waste Into Art
New York’s Gowanus Canal is notoriously toxic — full of dangerous chemicals, industrial waste, and, yes, poop. It reeks in the summer and lives in the popular imagination as the perfect dumping ground for dead bodies. No plant or animal life can survive in it for long. What that lends itself to, of course, are two kinds of images: gritty photos of the filth and pollution, and scenic landscapes that try not to dwell too long on the former.
(via laughingsquid)
Redefining The Kilogram
Veritasium takes you through the history of the kilogram standard, a block of metal locked in a basement that defines the most important international standard that we have.
Unfortunately, the mass of the current standard is changing thanks to … well, something not entirely known. Atomic evaporation maybe? What is definitely true is that a new kg standard is needed.
The replacement candidate is a nearly perfect sphere of a single isotope of crystalized silicon. It is the world’s roundest object! If this sphere were the Earth, the highest mountain and the lowest valley would only be a few meters apart.
An awesome chemistry and physics lesson from Derek!
“In March, due to a natural phenomenon, Siberia’s Lake Baikal is particularly amazing to photograph. The temperature, wind and sun cause the ice crust to crack and form beautiful turquoise blocks or ice hummocks on the lake’s surface.”
Photograph by Alex El Barto.
(via thetaoofdana)
A Russian billionaire, Dmitry Itskov, wants to bring the Avatar movie to real life by 2045. Allowing us to transfer our minds into a hologram body..
We might get to see some pretty crazy stuff in our lifetime.
“Scientists have already developed video game controllers that give players the ability to control on-screen movement with their brain waves, paralyzed patients can control a robot’s movements with just their thoughts via brain implants, and in Israel, a test subject was recently able to effectively direct the movements of a robot located nearly 1800 miles away.
In the 2045 Initiative, Itskov proposes the idea that humans can achieve immortality by 2045 through a series of advancing technological innovations.
- Year 2020: Humans will be able to remotely control robotic avatars through brain-computer interaction.
- Year 2025: Humans will be able to continue living after their physical bodies have given out by transplanting their brains into robotic avatars; this ‘autonomous life-support system’ will enable humans to continue to have an active life.
- Year 2035: The human brain and consciousness will be recreated via computer model and transferred to an avatar to enable humans to keep living after ‘death.’
- Year 2045: Immortality arrives in the form of a holographic avatar; the human brain and consciousnesses has been fully transferred to the artificial form.”
(via Humans Achieve Immortality As Holographic Avatars - PSFK)
(via soupsoup)
World’s Most Beautiful Abandoned Places
Italian product manager and web designer Francesco Mugnai recently added a collection of images to his blog touting some of the most beautiful images of abandoned spots and modern ruins that he’d ever seen. The images Mugnai has captured come from empty castles, shuttered power plants, and dilapidated churches around the world. From a sunken yacht in Antarctica to a forever-closed amusement park in Japan, these images all make up a sort of anti-phoenix; rather than rising as new from the ashes, these husks remain preserved in decomposition, forcing viewers to confront the strange beauty of ruination.
(via thogood)
Aztec sculpture of Mictlantecuhtli.
Artifact description via the Field Museum:
This statue depicts Mictlantecuhtli’s liver falling from his chest; the Aztecs believed that a person’s liver housed his passion, much like today’s society associates the heart with passion. The holes in Mictlantecuhtli’s head would have been filled with curly hair, which represented chaos to the Aztecs.
Courtesy & currently located at Templo Mayor, Mexico. Photo taken by feanor0
Banksy, the street artist
This man is a LEGEND
these are utterly amazing
(via thogood)
A diagram of the microbes that live inside of us, from my story in tomorrow’s New York Times. (via Invisible Residents - Graphic - NYTimes.com)
(via scientificillustration)
Neuroscience Meets Magic
Neuroscientists Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde observe master gentleman magician/pickpocket Apollo Robbins and explain how he uses the human brain against itself. The direction, and misdirection, of our brain’s attention tendencies are at the core of every great illusion.
I’m not sure which is more amazing, the neuroscience at play here or the amazing magic.
“Did you just take his wallet? He just took that guy’s wallet!”
(Video by Scientific American)
funneling the kind of pictures, products, and other posts that make you sit back in your computer chair and say "well that's cool"
