Collecting “PostNatural” life: “
The Center for PostNatural History was created ‘to acquire, interpret and provide access to a collection of living, preserved and documented organisms of postnatural origin.’ Center for PostNatural History (via IFTF Future of Science, thanks Ariel Waldman!)
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[New work from Audrey Kawasaki. -e]
~ in progress ~
[LOVE. -egg]
Sure, it’s not really what he had in mind. But I’m rather struck by the fact that pretty much every flame war ever could be avoided if we only listened to him. Shorter version: Recognize that you could be wrong, be tolerant of people who say things you hate and kind to people with whom you disagree, and, for god’s sake, don’t feed the trolls*.
*He didn’t actually say that last bit, but it’s just assumed at this point, right?
Via Joe Dwyer
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[And speaking of Tortoise…]
[Video Link] Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman (Catfish directors) made this terrific short documentary about Metropolis II, Chris Burden‘s incredible kinetic sculpture, a 20′ x 30′ model city with 1,200 Matchbox-type cars running at 200 scale mph. It took four years to make and will open at the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art (LACMA) in Fall 2011.
Below, a photo of co-director Ariel Schulman:
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Ladies! Cannonball cure for constipation: “
In 1901, this Ladies Guide in Health and Disease ad advised women that they should let an “eminent German physician” cure their constipation by rolling a leather-encased cannonball around on their tummies.
Haters Gonna Hate: microscopic edition: “
Funniest captioning of a motor-protein ever. (after the jump, so I don’t get lynched for a 2.5MB image on the front page)
Haters gonna hate. [crosspost from r/gifs]
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Cityscape gouged into a meadow: “
EVOL, a German artist, excavated a miniature cityscape gouged into an idyllic meadow near Hamburg. Viewers thunder down the mini-scale street-trenches of his X-shaped city block, towering over the rooftops.
Usually I prefer to work on site by interfering with already existing structures. As I came there first, that’s what I found: endless meadow, trees and blue sky. Not exactly what I play with usually. So I decided to cut open the idyll, and pretend there is no endless meadow, but only rooftop-gardens of the disgust underneath … 8 exhausting days of hard work (at least for people who usually cut paper only).
(via This is Colossal)
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Like-for-like photos of life in Mumbai and NYC: “
Nisha Sondhe’s photos from Mumbai and New York compare like-for-like scenes of life in crowded, exuberant urban centers — trains and fishmongers and butchers and happy people — and captures each city’s distinctiveness as well as the universal character of urban life.
(via MeFi)
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Yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee voted 19-10 for H.R. 1981, a data-retention bill that will require your ISP to spy on everything you do online and save records of it for 12 months. California Rep Zoe Lofgren, one of the Democrats who opposed the bill, called it a “data bank of every digital act by every American” that would “let us find out where every single American visited Web sites.” Here’s commentary from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who’ve got a form for contacting your rep to ask her or him to kill this:
The data retention mandate in this bill would treat every Internet user like a criminal and threaten the online privacy and free speech rights of every American, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have recognized. Requiring Internet companies to redesign and reconfigure their systems to facilitate government surveillance of Americans’ expressive activities is simply un-American. Such a scheme would be as objectionable to our Founders as the requiring of licenses for printing presses or the banning of anonymous pamphlets. Today’s vote is therefore very disappointing, but we are especially thankful to GOP Representatives Sensenbrenner, Issa and Chaffetz, who chose principle over party-line in opposing this dangerous tech mandate. We hope that bipartisan opposition will grow as the bill makes its way to the House floor and more lawmakers are educated about this anti-privacy, anti-free speech, anti-innovation proposal.
House Committee Approves Bill Mandating That Internet Companies Spy on Their Users
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