Slavenka & Obi

Existential French cat doesn't want your cheeseburgers

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 15:20:28 PDT

Henri is the anti-Hello Kitty, a morose French feline who spends his time dissecting the absurdity of his daily grooming rituals and the despair of his solitary existence.

Bird On LAX Flight

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 14:24:11 PDT

Passengers on a 10-hour flight from Taiwan to California discovered a surprising stowaway when a songbird hopped down their plane’s aisle in what officials suspect is a failed animal smuggling attempt. U.S. Customs and Border Protection specialists said in a statement Friday that they seized the bird upon the flight’s arrival at Los Angeles International Airport on May 27. A flight attendant had captured the bird and handed it over to customs agents who put the bird in a cage and gave it seeds and water.
After screening and X-raying all passengers, crew and carry-on bags, no other birds, droppings or feathers were found.

Amazing Dogs skateboarding at Stuttgart

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 12:53:36 PDT

Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 05:35:24 PDT

Matt cartoons - Telegraph

Picasso Auto Repair

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 02:27:17 PDT

via

Bank error makes Croatian women a billionaire

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 02:19:02 PDT

A bank error has made one lady from the Croatian capital Zagreb an overnight billionaire - for a short while anyway. Croatian Postal Bank (HPB) instead of putting just 50 kuna (6 Euros), put a whopping 3,200,000.000 kuna (3 billion and 200 Million kuna) close to 500 million Euros onto the Zagreb residents account. When the mistake was detected, in a panic HPB called their suprised client, and then a representative from the bank turned up at the womens address, in search of a signature which could overturn the error, which the lady obliged in giving. A statement from the bank said that their workers were only human and not machines and that mistakes were always possible. via

Hosni Mubarak sentenced to life in prison

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 02:06:48 PDT

Egypt's ex-President Hosni Mubarak has been sentenced to life in prison after a court convicted him on charges of complicity in the killing of protesters during last year's uprising that forced him from power. Mubarak is the first Arab leader to be tried by his own people in the country. The sentence was handed down Saturday in a Cairo court.

Craig Venter’s Bugs Might Save the World

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 08:52:39 PDT

In the menagerie of Craig Venter’s imagination, tiny bugs will save the world. They will be custom bugs, designer bugs — bugs that only Venter can create. He will mix them up in his private laboratory from bits and pieces of DNA, and then he will release them into the air and the water, into smokestacks and oil spills, hospitals and factories and your house. Each of the bugs will have a mission. Some will be designed to devour things, like pollution. Others will generate food and fuel. There will be bugs to fight global warming, bugs to clean up toxic waste, bugs to manufacture medicine and diagnose disease, and they will all be driven to complete these tasks by the very fibers of their synthetic DNA.
Right now, Venter is thinking of a bug.

Watch Neil Young's 'Americana' Film

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 08:37:00 PDT

Neil Young and Crazy Horse have a new record coming out Tuesday. Americana is blistering guitar romp through the classic American songbook, from the 1800s to doo-wop and beyond. Well today NPR have a 40 minute film created by Bernard Shakey (Young's alias) filled with the music from Americana.

The Weirdest Legal Claims in Outer Space

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 04:55:52 PDT

"In January, a Quebec man named Sylvio Langvein walked into a courthouse in Canada and filed a suit declaring himself owner of the planets in our solar system, four of Jupiter’s moons, and the interplanetary space between. By way of explanation, Langvein said he wanted to collect planets the same way that others collect hockey cards, and also prevent China from establishing outposts above his head. The judge overseeing the case, Alain Michaud, dismissed it in March, calling Langvein a “quarrelsome litigant” whose paranoid actions were an abuse of the Canadian legal system. (This was Langvein’s 45th lawsuit — including four motions to the Supreme Court of Canada — since 2001). The case is bizarre, but not unprecedented.
“Every now and then, someone thinks no one has claimed the moon before, and then rushes to claim it,” wrote Virgiliu Pop, a space law researcher at the Romanian Space Agency, in an email to Wired. “Humankind has a short collective memory, so the claimant is able to create some buzz before the story dies out — to be followed by a similar story, years later.” As we enter an era when people are seriously advocating that the U.S. establish property rights on the moon and scholars debate the legality of mining asteroids, it’s interesting (and relevant) to look back at the people who have tried to assert ownership of the moon, Mars, other planets, and stars throughout history."
via Wired.com / continue reading

Dog Dating Sites

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 04:18:36 PDT

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Give Your Ice Cream The Royal Seal Of Approval!

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 03:56:42 PDT

Jubilee souvenirs in pictures

What is Angela Merkel doing with that glove?

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Thu, 31 May 2012 12:22:49 PDT

"Let's give this new Hollande guy a prostate exam." more here

The sexes may be more alike than we thought.

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Thu, 31 May 2012 08:43:43 PDT

"For most of history, men's and women's different roles in life were assumed to be mainly innate and unalterable. This was challenged in the west with the rise of feminism in the second half of the last century. Perhaps the different behaviours of boys and girls arose because of cultural norms: parents praising boys for romping and smashing toy cars, for instance, while expecting girls to be more reserved and play with their dolls. Around the same time, though, new light was being shed on the biology of gender. In the womb, we all start out more or less female, until sometime between six and 12 weeks of pregnancy. Then, in male fetuses, a gene on the Y chromosome causes certain cells to make testosterone, which leads to the development of the penis and testicles. Female fetuses do not have this "testosterone bath" and so develop female reproductive organs. But the sex hormones' influence is not limited to our gonads: they also play a key role in the brain's development, influencing the architecture of various neural circuits. As well as establishing these anatomical differences, the sex hormones presumably affect our behaviour as adults too, as their receptors have been found in many brain regions. Understanding the ways in which male and female brains differ has become a hot topic in neuroscience, particularly in the past decade with the growth of brain scanning as a research tool."
By Kayt Sukel via New Scientist / continue reading

When things get tough, this is what you should do.

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Thu, 31 May 2012 08:05:38 PDT

Make Good Art (7 pics)

Day of the city of Zagreb

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Thu, 31 May 2012 04:20:23 PDT

Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. The name Zagreb appears to have been first recorded in 1134 in a document relating to the establishment of the Zagreb bishopric around 1094, although the origins of the name Zagreb are less clear. The Croatian word "zagrabiti" translates approximately to "to scoop", which forms the basis of some legends. One Croat legend says that a Croat ban (viceroy) was leading his thirsty soldiers across a deserted region. He drove his sabre into the ground in frustration and water poured out, so he ordered his soldiers to dig for water. The idea of digging or unearthing is supported by scientists who suggest that the settlement was established beyond a water-filled hole or graba and that the name derives from this. According to another old legend, a city ruler was thirsty and ordered a girl named Manda to take water from Lake Manduševac (nowadays a fountain in Ban Jelačić Square), using the sentence: "Zagrabi, Mando!" which means, Scoop it up, Manda!. Some sources suggest that the name derives from the term 'za breg' or 'beyond the hill'. The hill may well have been the river bank of the River Sava (the modern Croatian word "breg" or "brijeg", meaning "hill", originally meant "river bank"), which is believed to have previously flowed closer to the city centre. Another possible origin is the term "za grabom", meaning "behind the moat", as the city was heavily fortified since its beginnings.

To mark the Day of the City of Zagreb, Zagreb Tourist Board gives to its citizens and visitors "Zagreb stiklec" - city tour through the stories and legends about Zagreb, on Thursday, 31st May.

Where do you think you're going?

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Thu, 31 May 2012 00:42:46 PDT

Bossy baby puma tries to stop zookeeper leaving her enclosure by grabbing hold of his leg.

Sammie the seal takes it easy in his very own dinghy

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Thu, 31 May 2012 00:26:14 PDT

When it comes to relaxing, you’ve got to do whatever floats your boat. For Sammie the grey seal, it means soaking up the sun in his very own leisure craft.

Bird Strike!

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Thu, 31 May 2012 00:26:09 PDT

Both rider and, incredibly, bird survived the high-speed collision.

The Big Bang Theory Quotes

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Wed, 30 May 2012 11:48:49 PDT

Sheldon: At my age do you know how I'm statistically most likely to die?
Leonard: At the hands of your room mate?
Sheldon: An accident.
Leonard: That's how I'm going to make it look.

Raj: I don't like bugs, okay? They freak me out.
Sheldon: Interesting. You're afraid of insects and women. Ladybugs must render you catatonic.
more here

Facebook Tips

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Wed, 30 May 2012 08:03:34 PDT

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Why Pointy Eyebrows Look Evil

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Wed, 30 May 2012 08:03:29 PDT

Researchers at the University of Warwick found that human beings are wired to see downward pointing triangles -- as detected in eyebrows or a pointy chin -- as threatening. Their study, published in the journal Emotion, sheds some light on why so many evil cartoon characters are drawn with these features. "These shapes correspond with our own facial features," explained University of Warwick's Elisabeth Blagrove, "and we are unconsciously making that link."

Can you train yourself to be an optimist?

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Wed, 30 May 2012 08:03:24 PDT

Cognitive psychologist Elaine Fox from the University of Essex, UK, explores the ways in which we can retrain our brains to view the world with a positive outlook in her book Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain.
New Scientist asked her why some people see the glass as half empty, and what techniques science offers us to change that perspective.

9 Bulldogs High-Fiving

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Wed, 30 May 2012 00:21:18 PDT

more here

Beware of your smile: it may betray you.

noreply@blogger.com (Slavenka) — Wed, 30 May 2012 00:21:12 PDT

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a way to discern the sincerity—and level of frustration—associated with your grin. By analyzing measurements of the subtle differences between a smile generated by frustration and one born out of actual happiness, the computer program has so far shown a better success rate than human observers in figuring out the emotional state of their subjects.