Amazon Prime Air Parodies

Last month Amazon announced it's intentions to pursue the use of drones to deliver small packages. It's difficult to predict whether or not the idea will ever come to fruition but I do like this kind of out of the box thinking.



Though I think a lot of people have been much too quick to dismiss the venture, some of the parodies are pretty humorous.










And don't forget to play the modified Duck Hunt replacing the ducks with drones.

https://googledrive.com/host/0B6ep5zmvmqloTVRWUF95OFpCeTA/

Animal Vision

Clip of a new video game which attempts to simulate what it is like to see the world through the eyes of a hawk, cat, dog, bee and rat.


NewScientist 

Ultimate Rubik’s Cube

The ultimate Rubik's cube; in terms of scale that is.



Puzzle Facade from Javier Lloret on Vimeo.

Alexander Khokhlov

Russian photographer Alexander Khokhlov and makeup artist Valeriya Kutsan use the faces of female models as a canvas. I particularly like the photos in which they purposely try to turn the models faces into 2d images.

Perhaps the worst attempt at a music video ever

This is definitely in the category of so bad it is funny. It has everything; terrible writing, terrible singing and terrible choreography. Just hilarious.

The Touching Story Behind These Unique Headstones

The graves of a Catholic woman and her Protestant husband who, due to the segregation of the period, were not allowed to be buried together.

In the 19th century, the Dutch lived with a form of segregation known as pillarisation. The two primary pillars were the Catholic and the Protestant. Each pillar had there own separate schools, newspapers, banks, hospitals, trade unions, political parties, ect. This often led to a situation were people of one pillar had little to no contact with people from another.

In 1842, J.W.C. van Gorkum, a colonel of the Dutch Calvary, married  J.C.P.H van Aefferden. The marriage was no doubt scandalous as van Gorkum was Protestant and van Aefferden a Catholic. Despite this, the two remained married until the passing of van Gorkum in 1880. Eight years later van Aefferden passed away. Though the couple wished to be buried together, the pillarisation of the period would not allow it. As a work around, arraignments were made for each to be laid to rest near the wall which separated the Catholic side of the cemetery from the Protestant side. The tomb stones rise above the wall with two hands reaching over the top clasped together.

Headstone of J.W.C. van Gorkum

Headstone of J.C.P.H van Aefferden

The cemetery near the chapel in't Zand

Pillarisation

Boing Boing: Segregated headstones reach over the cemetery wall

Nanny State: Watch Where You Point That Thing!

I guess zero tolerance also means zero brains. According to this local news story, eight year old Jordan Bennett (pictured bellow) was suspended from Harmony Community School in Osceola County Florida after fashioning his hand into a gun during a game of cops and robbers.

The boy's mother, Bonnie Bennett, stated "There was nothing in his hand. He used his thumb and index finger. It was a game. He made no threatening advances or threats to harm anyone. No words were said.” 

Using way too much common sense for the school to handle, Bennett said that she would have been fine with the school giving him a warning or even a lighter punishment but feels the suspension goes too far.  “They took a child that has never been in trouble before and went to the extreme...A child that has no history of violence is now classified as a violent offender.”

The school won't comment specifically on the incident due to confidentiality but says that after reviewing the incident, the boy's actions violated the code of conduct. 

I personally think that there must be other considerations which we are not privy to. For instance, what sort of gun was it that he fashioned his hand into? Did this gun have a high capacity magazine? Did it hold illegal hollow-point bullets? 

We need tougher regulation over the use of the thumbs up. There is ample

evidence to demonstrate how easy it is to convert such a gesture into a 

handgun by simply extending the index finger.

http://www.clickorlando.com/news/boy-suspended-after-using-finger-as-pretend-gun/-/1637132/22204876/-/hfv59e/-/index.html

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/8-year-old-boy-suspended-florida-school-fingers-gun-game-cops-robbers-article-1.1473853

Perspective Illusions In Honda Commercial

Very clever Honda commercial using some of my favorite perspective illusions.

Aeromobil Flying Car

The Aeromobil 2.5 is the latest attempt at the car/plane hybrid. Created by Stefan Klein, a designer from Slovakia, the Areomobile has a major advantage over other flying cars such as the Terrafugia. That being it looks so freaking cool. With this prototype demonstrating it's potential with the short flight shown in the video below, Klein hopes to find investors willing to help make his dream a reality.

 


http://www.aeromobil.com/

Ron Mueck: Larger (And Smaller) Than Life Sculptures

London based sculptor Ron Mueck creates works which are both real and impossible. The incredible detail would probably cause one to momentarily guess whether they were looking at a sculpture or a real person if it weren't for the fact that most (if not all) of his work is out of scale. Beyond that I suppose it is up to the viewer to give each piece additional meaning as the artist doesn't provide obvious explanations. To me, when you look at his work collectively, there is an overarching cycle of life theme. We're born, we grow, live, think and feel. We grow old, contemplate, reflect and die...

Mask II (2001). Photo by Henry Romero

Boy (1999). Photo by Tamaki Sono

Spooning Couple (2005)

Spooning Couple

Big Man (2000)

Woman With Sticks (2008). Photo by  thomas salva / lumento

Woman with Sticks

Old Woman In Bed (2000)

A Girl (2006)

Youth (2009)

Drift (2009). Photo by David Levene

Photo by David Levene

Two Women (2005)

In Bed (2005)

Couple Under An Umbrella (2013). Photo by Thomas Salva/Lumento

Couple Under An Umbrella. Photo by Thomas Salva/Lumento

Carrie remake promotional gag

A very well done promotional stunt for the new Carrie remake due out sometime this month. I thought the effect of the tables moving all at once was awesome. Unfortunately I'm guessing the movie won't be as good.

Ylvis: The Fox

It got a chuckle out of me.

Box

Created by Bot & Dolly, Box is a truly astonishing combination of projection mapping, robotics and artistic vision. Certainly the next stage in the use of projection mapping.

Recent Phish Concert

Love the new sound!

Rubber Hand Illusion

The rubber hand illusion is a now classic example of how our sense of self can be fooled. As the videos demonstrate, the illusion is conducted by hiding the participants real hand and in its place setting up a rubber hand. The experimenter then strokes the rubber hand and the real hand at the same time and on the same finger which after a few strokes creates the illusion that the rubber hand is actually the participants real hand. Once the connection to the rubber hand is established, the experimenter, without warning, will smash or stab the false hand inducing a stress.



The (overly) simple explanation as to why the illusion works is that our brain utilizes multiple channels of sensory input, such as visual, tactile and positional information, to create the perception of self and other. By manipulating this information, the experimenter causes us to believe that an inanimate object is actually a part of our body.




Here is a good layperson explanation from science.howstuffworks.com

Multisensory Integration
Body transfer illusion

Parent Arrested At School Meeting

This short video of a Towson, Maryland father being arrested at a school meeting has caused quite a stir in the blogosphere. Robert Small was arrested and charged with second degree assault on a police officer and disturbing a school operation after raising questions about the implementation of common-core education standards.

There are really a few different issues worthy of discussion which the video helps to shine a bright light on: the common core standards, the controlled somewhat manipulative manner in which these forums are conducted and of course, the legitimacy of the charges against Mr. Small.

The charges levied against Mr. Small is the issue which I found the most egregious. The meeting was supposed to be a question and answer forum used to convey information about the new standards to the public but rather than allowing the audience to directly speak, questions were to be written in advance and some would be selected to be answered. It seems that Mr. Small became frustrated after the first hour of the hour and a half long meeting was more of a pep rally for the new standards, so he decided to stand-up and raise his concerns. The video depicts what took place at that point.

It is true that Mr. Small did not follow the pre-arranged format of the meeting and did not immediately comply with the officers instructions to leave. This validates the charge of disturbing a school operation though as I insinuated above, the format of submitting questions in advance allows for the forum leaders to avoid any difficult questions thus censoring any opposition.

It is the charge of second degree assault against a police officer which I find to be disturbing (a charge which carries a fine of $2,500 and up to 10 years in prison). According to this story from The Baltimore Sun the police report "said Small had attempted to push the officer away when he first confronted him." I watched the video closely and didn't see anything remotely close to that. Unless I'm missing something, this seems like another example of a police officer creating charges where the facts of the situation clearly do not support it. Isn't this a simple case of false arrest? And yet, according to this Baltimore Sun story, the state's attorney's office believes that the officer clearly "acted appropriately and did have probable cause to make an arrest on both charges." Really? If that is true than there is something wrong with the law. Mr. Small did not initiate contact with the officer yet somehow it is appropriate to charge him with such a serious crime.?

Thankfully, the all so generous state's attorney's office has decided to drop the charges against Mr. Small. I wonder, if there hadn't been a video recording of the event he would be so lucky?

Burning Man 2013

Adam Bacchus

September 2nd marked the end of the 2013 Burning Man festival in Nevada's Black Rock desert. As always there was plenty of eye candy exported back to us who didn't attend.

Jim Urquhart/Reuters

Trey Ratcliff

Neil Girling

Neil Girling

Neil Girling

Jeff Huber

Mack Reed

TWITA2005

Trey Ratcliff

TWITA2005

Jeff Huber

Reno Gazette-Journal, Andy Barron

Mack Reed

Jonathan Goody

George Krieger

Julia Wolf