California Carnivores
Cool Hunting Video Presents: California Carnivores from Cool Hunting on Vimeo.
Sehr schöner Clip von Cool Hunting über California Carnivores, ein Laden für fleischfressende Pflanzen.
In our latest video we trekked out into the beautiful farmland outside Sebastopol, California to visit California Carnivores, North America’s largest carnivorous plant nursery. We spoke with founder Peter D’Amato about his personal history with these hungry plants, their cultural significance and what it takes to raise up fantastical plants from seed. Taking in the active plant life, we watched Venus Flytraps chowing down and a got a peak inside the stomach of an American Pitcher Plant.
Vintage Insect Anatomy Poster
Bibli Odyssey hat eine kleine Sammlung großartiger Insect Wall Charts aus der “‘Wall charts Entomology and Phytopathology’ collection out of the Special Collections Digital Library at Wageningen University and Research Centre”, hier ein paar meiner Favs:
English Giants long Johns for sale
Demnächst werden im Auktionshaus Tennants die Hosen des englischen Riesen Frederick Kempster versteigert, der 1889 geboren wurde und mit 22 Jahren zu einem Zirkus stieß, mit dem er durch die Lande zog. Beim Ausbruch des ersten Weltkrieg wurde er in Berlin unter Arrest gestellt, zusammen mit einem Zwerg ohne Beine. So ist das.
In 1911, he marched in the “Parade of Giants” at the Crystal Palace in London as part of the celebrations leading up to the coronation of King George V. That’s what gave him the idea that he might actually be able to make a living just by being his tall self.
A few months later, he got a job as a giant at Astley & Co.’s American Circus in Essex. For the next three years he toured Europe and America with the circus, staying near his sister in Essex during his downtime. Articles about him from 1913 describe him as 7’9″ by now and over 300 pounds. Each hand reputedly had a 16-note reach on a piano.
He was in Germany with his troupe when World War I broke out in August 1914. Frederick and four other members of the company including a legless dwarf were stranded in Berlin and kept under house arrest in a room they’d rented. Some news stories report that he was mistreated and malnourished, but in interviews Frederick seemed downright sanguine about his time as a POW. They played a lot of cards and dominoes, he said, and the local police chief would bring his kids around to see them.
Free the Network: Documentary about DIY-Internet
Spannende Minidoku von Motherboard über Hacker, die eigene Netz-Architektur am Rande der Occupy-Proteste bauen.
If the argument for mesh networking, a sort of pirate radio Internet scheme that allows people to talk to one another online through no middle man, is that a centralized ‘Net lends itself to the sort of surveillance and censorship that, however futile, strokes the Internet kill switch of science fiction, is there a way to circumvent that system altogether? Is there a way to build a new network from the bottom up? To occupy a fresh Internet outside the existing confines of the Web? Or is that all just the stuff of ideological fantasy?
To check the pulse of the Internet – and to get a feel for what life’s like in the digital nerve center of what’s arguably the first fully Web-fueled social movement in America – Motherboard has been following Wilder and Tyrone Greenfield, communications director for the Free Network Foundation, for the past half year.
The History of subversive Remix Videos before YouTube and the N.W.A.-Muppets
Jonathan McIntosh hat eine fantastische YT-Playlist plus Artikel mit seiner “Brief History of Subversive Remix Video Before YouTube”. Oben nur eins der dreißig Videos, Muppets und Niggaz Wit Attitudes, die komplette Playlist gibts hier, den begleitenden Artikel da und dort ist sein Blogeintrag dazu.
For the purposes of creating this history I used five essential criteria to decide if a transformative video work fit into the political remix genre.
1.Works appropriate mass media audiovisual source material without permission from copyright holders, and rely on the fair use doctrine (or fair dealing in the UK).
2.Works comment on, deconstruct, or challenge media narratives, dominant myths, social norms, and traditional power structures—they can be either sympathetic to or antagonistic to their pop culture sources, sometimes both at the same time.
3.Works transform the original messages embedded in the source material, as well as the source material itself.
4.Works are intended for general audiences or do-it-yourself (DIY) communities rather than academic or high-art audiences, and thus tend to use familiar mass media formats such as trailers, television ads, music videos, and news segments as vehicles for the transformed messages.
5.Works are DIY productions and rely on grassroots distribution methods such as VHS tape duplicating circles, underground screenings, and, eventually, self-hosted Web sites. Since its launch in November 2005 many subversive video makers now put their works on YouTube.
A Brief History of Subversive Remix Video Before YouTube
Google Glasses Remixed with Google Ads
Die etwas realistischere Version von Googles Augmented Reality Brillen-Video inklusive contextsensitiver Werbung.
Google will probably not be this obvious with their interface but there’s no question the company will be gathering massive amounts of extremely personal data to build detailed profiles and sell super targeted ads. Because let’s face it, Google really is just a massive advertising company at heart.
Fun Fact: All of the AdWords used are actual Google ad returns found via Google searches based on the dialog, situation or setting in the original video. Yes “Music, Stop!” does actually return an ad asking if you would like to listen to music.
Teenage Girl Exorcist Squad in the News
Vor einer Weile hatte ich ‘ne Meldung über drei Mädchen gebloggt, die tatsächlich Teenage Exorcists sind. Damals hielt ich die Story wegen der Quelle für Bullshit, aber anscheinend ist das kein Scherz, sondern ernst gemeint: ABC hat die Gören zuhause besucht. Frohe Ostern!
[update] Dangerous Minds hat ein paar Hintergründe: “TV and radio “exorcist” Bob Larson’s daughter, Brynne, is now a second-generation demon rebuker herself, along with two of her girlfriends and now Pastor Larson—who has never, ever, been accused of being a fraud or of taking advantage of mentally ill people for financial gain, uh uh, no, not this guy—is trying to sell a TV reality show about them. They’re just “normal girls who do something extraordinary for God.” Well, God and $$$.”
Jim Marshall, Father of Loud, R.I.P.
Jim “Father of Loud” Marshall ist gestern im Alter von 88 Jahren gestorben. \m/ Hier ein Van Halen-Snip aus dem Nachruf auf Golem: Technikpionier Jim Marshall ist tot
Van Halen, der seit Beginn seiner Karriere Ende der 1970er Jahre an Gitarren und Verstärkern herumbastelte, schlug Marshall angeblich vor, die Leistung von Vor- und Endstufe getrennt regelbar zu machen. Die Endstufe hatte künftig die Bezeichnung “Master” am Drehregler, die Vorstufe wird meist mit dem Knopf “Gain” geregelt.
Zuvor kam Van Halen zu seinem damals einzigartigen Sound, indem er sich eine Eigenheit der Marshall-Verstärker zunutze machte. Da die ersten Geräte noch durch Jim Marshall von Hand gebaut worden waren, hatten sie keine oder nur kleine Platinen. Die Verbindungen wurden “hand wired”, also mit frei verlegten Kabeln hergestellt. Zudem gab es noch etliche kleine Regler im Inneren der Verstärker, welche für eine Anpassung der je Exemplar elektrisch unterschiedlichen Röhren nötig waren. Van Halen hatte einige seiner Verstärker so umgebaut, dass die Röhren mit veränderter Spannung oder Stromstärke liefen – das reduzierte zwar deren Haltbarkeit, ergab aber noch mehr Verzerrung.
Es dauerte bis 1980, um den Namen “Marshall” endgültig synonym mit dem Verstärker für harte Rockmusik zu machen. In diesem Jahr kam das Modell “JCM-800″ auf den Markt, das durch die spätere “New Wave of British Heavy Metal” bald auf jeder Bühne zu finden war. Der Verstärker mit Master-Volume lieferte – oft in Verbindung mit zusätzlichen Effektgeräten wie Verzerrern – den harten Sound, den Bands wie Iron Maiden und Judas Priest gesucht hatten.
Shitter: Twitter-Feeds printed on Toiletpaper
“Shitter will take one or more Feeds from your Twitter-Account and turn it into four rolls of toilet paper, delivered straight to your door.”
Multidimensional Mathematical Palindrome
Eine mathematische Gleichung als Palindrom (irgendwas, das vorwärts wie rückwärts gelesen dasselbe ist), was auch dann noch Bestand hat, wenn man die einzelnen Zahlen mit Multiplikationszeichen oder Additionszeichen teilt und all das gilt auch dann noch, wenn man alle Bestandteile aller Gleichungen mit sich selbst multipliziert. Good enuff for me.
From Royal V. Heath in Scripta Mathematica, March 1955:
0264 + 4125 + 5610 = 0165 + 5214 + 4620
… remains valid if you split each term with a multiplication sign:
02 × 64 + 41 × 25 + 56 × 10 = 01 × 65 + 52 × 14 + 46 × 20
… or an addition sign:
02 + 64 + 41 + 25 + 56 + 10 = 01 + 65 + 52 + 14 + 46 + 20Remarkably, everything above holds true if you square each term.
Google shows Augmented Reality-Glasses Prototype
Google hat ein Video und ein paar Designshots zu ihrer kommenden Augmented Reality-Brille gepostet. Das Ding sieht aus wie Cyclops Augendings, nur ohne Laser. Snip von der New York Times:
The prototype version Google showed off on Wednesday looked like a very polished and well-designed pair of wrap-around glasses with a clear display that sits above the eye. The glasses can stream information to the lenses and allow the wearer to send and receive messages through voice commands. There is also a built-in camera to record video and take pictures.
Giant Tyranno Dino-Chicken
Dass Dinosaurier tatsächlich wie Vögel aussahen und mit Federn daherkamen wusste ich, ich dachte aber bislang, das würde “nur” für kleinere Arten gelten. Jetzt hat man in China einen Verwandten des Tyrannosaurus Rex gefunden, inklusive Spuren von Federn. Und jetzt hätte ich gerne ein Remake von Jurassic Park — mit Riesenhühnern!
It’s not your father’s tyrannosaur: Yutyrannus huali, a newly discovered ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex, was covered from head to tail in downy feathers.
At 30 feet long and weighing 3,000 pounds, Y. huali wasn’t so large as T. rex, which came 60 million years later, but it’s the largest feathered tyrannosaur yet found. That such a big creature was feathered suggests its iconic descendant could have been similarly plumed.
The discovery provides “direct evidence for the presence of extensively feathered gigantic dinosaurs,” wrote paleontologists led by Xing Xu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in their description of the new dinosaur, published April 5 in Nature.
