Archive for September 2012

This is off the Bermuda Triangle, where 16+ ships washed up on a sand bar.

The mystery of the Bermuda Triangle has been given a scientific explanation: methane vents which have been discovered in that region.

Methane reduces the density of water, causing ships that would normally float, to instead sink.

Methane, when in gas form, messes with the electrical components of aircraft, causing them to fail and sometimes fall right out of the sky.

Methane also causes the water to turn a ghostly greenish color, and the “ghost ships” reported to be seen are simply green reflections of the ships that scatter the bottom of the triangle.

If we allow Romney to be elected president the rest of the world will have no choice but to break the USA's section of the Earth off to float in space on its own until we come to our senses.
Here’s a diagram to help you understand:

(Source: marion-b.com)

Photographers looking for an easy-to-use camera that will help them create their next masterpiece need look no further than the Canon EOS Rebel T3i. The next in a long line of phenomenal compact DSLRs, the EOS Rebel T3i continues the Rebel tradition of easy operation, compact design and no-compromise performance. Featuring Canon's newest DIGIC 4 Image Processor and an 18.0 Megapixel CMOS Image Sensor - plus cutting-edge technologies like Full HD video recording, Live View shooting, Wireless flash photography and even a Vari-angle 3.0-inch LCD monitor - the EOS Rebel T3i offers the best of EOS photography in a compact package. Click the image for more details.

Cults
Self Titled ; 2011

I find most of my music through the popular music streaming service Pandora. When I find a song that I like, I bookmark it and go home and download it. I'll usually listen to it a few times and then it'll get lost in the bottomless pit that is my iTunes library. Cults on the other hand, held my attention. Rarely can I sit through an entire album and enjoy each song just as much, if not more, as the last. Most of the time the songs just blend into each other, I get bored, and move onto something new. Cults' self-titled album, released in 2011, is the perfect combination of catchy and sweet. The girl-pop element of their sound is pretty evident. The use of borrowed elements play along with the lyrics to create a little world where one minute Follin is singing a frustrated "fuck you" and dreaming of escaping the next.
It's this type of turn that keeps me hooked on an album and wanting more.

At just over a half hour, Cults feels like the perfect length just long enough for the commute to school (or to work).
But most importantly, it's allowed the group room to grow without overdoing themselves. This album is new and rewarding, and I give it a solid 8.5.

I am wet paint on a park bench. I am harmless until touched.
I am batteries that have run dry. I am frustration.
I am a pseudogene. I am useless. I am imperfect.
I am the last drop of ink in your favorite pen.
I am a book on the top shelf that no one can reach. I am hiding.
I am the change in the sofa, a typo in my own biography.

For his Brecce collection, Italian designer Marco Stefanelli devised an ingenious way of removing fragments from sawmill scraps, tree branches, and cement fragments, and replacing them with perfectly sculpted resin embedded with LEDs. The resulting lamps retain the organic nature of their original form yet cast a beautifully subdued light. You can see much more on Stefanelli’s blog. 

Paper artist Matthew Shlian who refers to himself perhaps more appropriately as a paper engineer, has a new series of intricate paper sculptures which are cut and constructed by hand as part of a process that involves more math than you could shake a protractor at. Via Ghostly International:

Matthew Shlian works within the increasingly nebulous space between art and engineering. As a paper engineer, Shlian’s work is rooted in print media, book arts, and commercial design, though he frequently finds himself collaborating with a cadre of scientists and researchers who are just now recognizing the practical connections between paper folding and folding at microscopic and nanoscopic scales.

(via illusion)

Beer bottles can do more than simply provide containment for our own grain-based beverage of choice. As it turns out, they can also engender some pretty slick pants. Denim made from recycled beer bottles? Yes indeed, and in celebration of Earth Day 2012, Bonobos is offering the Bottle Rockets – Premium Bonobos Denim featuring EarthSpun® Yarn from Cone Denim’s White Oak Mill. This innovative and environmentally sustainable fabric is produced entirely from recycled cotton, recycled polyester, and recycled plastic beer bottles (each pair of Bottle Rockets contains between 3 – 5 beer bottles, in fact). The result is one extremely comfortable, incredibly stylish, and truly conversation-worthy pair of jeans, fit for Earth Day, or any day.

The Swiss firm EM2N has recently completed the Keystone Building in Prague. The project’s most distinct feature is the faceted aluminum facad, which the firm says was inspired by Czech Cubism of the early 20th century. But the faceted facade also helps the building reduce emissions.

Source: Etsy

Source: Etsy

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living is an artwork created in 1991 by Damien Hirst, an English artist and a leading member of the "Young British Artists". It consists of a tiger shark preserved in formaldehyde in a vitrine. It was originally commissioned in 1991 by Charles Saatchi, who sold it in 2004, to Steven A. Cohenfor an undisclosed amount, widely reported to have been $8 million dollars, however the title of Don Thompson's book, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art, suggests a higher figure.

Due to deterioration of the original 14-foot (4.3 m) tiger shark, it was replaced with a new specimen in 2006. It was on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City from 2007 to 2010.

It is considered the iconic work of British art in the 1990s, and has become a symbol of Britart worldwide.

The work was funded by Charles Saatchi, who in 1991 had offered to pay for whatever artwork Hirst wanted to create. The shark itself cost Hirst £6,000 and the total cost of the work was £50,000. The shark was caught off Hervey Bay in Queensland, Australia, by a fisherman commissioned to do so. Hirst wanted something "big enough to eat you".
Because the shark was initially preserved poorly, it began to deteriorate and the surrounding liquid grew murky. Hirst attributes some of the decay to the fact that the Saatchi Gallery had added bleach to it. In 1993 the gallery gutted the shark and stretched its skin over a fiberglass mold, and Hirst commented, "It didn't look as frightening ... You could tell it wasn't real. It had no weight." When Hirst learned of Saatchi's impending sale of the work to Cohen, he offered to replace the shark, an operation which Cohen then funded, calling the expense "inconsequential" (the formaldehyde process alone cost around $100,000). Another shark was caught off Queensland (a female aged about 25–30 years, equivalent to middle age) and shipped to Hirst in a 2 month journey. Oliver Crimmen, a scientist and fish curator at London's Natural History Museum, assisted with the preservation of the new specimen in 2006. This involved injecting formaldehyde into the body, as well as marinating it for two weeks in a bath of 7% formalin solution. The original 1991 vitrine was then used to house it.

As of June 2011, it is no longer on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, nor has it been for "years" according to a museum representative, because it was on loan from 2007 until 2010.

Source: Wikipedia

Serotonin is a monoamine neurotransmitter. Biochemically derived from tryptophan, serotonin is primarily found in the gastrointestinal tract, platelets, and in the central nervous system of animals including humans. It is popularly thought to be a contributor to feelings of well-being and happiness.