Real Think Tank

The biggest CNC machine can build a house

2012-06-01T00:17:00.001-07:00

If it's true that those with the biggest toys win, a few lucky engineers over at EEW Maschinenbau in Germany just earned a gold medal; they have access to a gigantic CNC machine that is large enough to machine a house.

This machine was originally built to manufacture molds for fiberglass wind turbines that are over 50 meters in length. Because building a 50-meter-long CNC machine wasn't overkill enough, engineers at EEW Maschinenbau settled on a design that is 151 meters long, or almost 500 feet. Of course the HSM-Modal, as this machine is called, can only make parts 151 meters long in the x dimension. The y-axis has a span of 9 meters while the z-axis goes from 0 to 4.25 meters off the ground. Large enough to build cars, ship hulls, and even houses out of a single block of material.

There's a bunch of technical documentation on the EEW website and a PDF going over the specs. Not only can this gigantic mill machine molds much like an embiggened desktop CNC router, this thing can do drilling, sawing, grinding, plasma cutting, and even extrusion just like a Makerbot.

If you've got the cash, EEW Maschinenbau will build you one of these gigantic machines. We can't imagine how much that would cost, though.

via the Adafruit blog

Filed under: cnc hacks

-James

INFOGRAPHIC : Sexting & The College Student

2012-05-30T20:11:00.001-07:00

INFOGRAPHIC : Sexting & The College Student:
MakeUseOf has previously published several infographics on texting, such as when texting celebrated its 19th birthday, when we showed teens and their texting habits, and how SMS messaging is changing the world. But one texting-related subject that I haven’t approached yet (mainly because I didn’t want my boss to fire me for turning MakeUseOf into Hustler magazine) is “sexting”.
For those of you who don’t know what this is (but it’s pretty obvious from the word itself), it’s when you send a text message to someone with either sexually explicit text, a sexually explicit picture, or both. And it seems like this practice is on the rise (although all the ones to me must be getting caught up in a spam filter somewhere because I don’t seem to be getting any of them…).
According to today’s infographic, two-thirds of US students have sent sexually suggestive messages via their mobile phone. Those smartphone cameras have a lot to answer for! Just because you can take a photo…..
So…time to confess….have you ever sexted someone? Or has someone ever sexted you? Was it wanted or unwanted? Do you agree that this is a rapidly growing problem which has the potential to cause real problems, or do you look upon it as a bit of harmless fun? Reveal all in the comments!

Infographic Source: BestCollegesOnline.com

Vintage Posters from the Golden Age of Travel, 1910-1959

2012-05-30T20:04:00.001-07:00

Vintage Posters from the Golden Age of Travel, 1910-1959:
Motoring in Germany, hunting in the USSR, beaching in Portugal, and other adventures.
Mid-century graphic design gave us such treasures as Saul Bass, the WPA, and science ads like we haven’t seen since. From the Boston Public Library’s Print Collection comes this stunning collection of vintage travel posters from the Golden Age of Travel, when railways stretched across America and Europe, swanky ocean liners brought elegance to international waters, and the roads swelled with automobiles. Armed with these vibrant visual ephemera, travel agents and ticket salesmen reined in a new era of excitement about the adventures of travel, channeled through the language of design.

'Australia. Great Barrier Reef, Queensland,' Gert Sellheim, 1930-1939

'Orient Calls,' Mune Satomi, 1936

'Palestine Line,' T. Trepkowski, 1935

'Hunting in the USSR,' 1910-1959 (approximate)

'Italy,' Michahelles, 1910-1959 (approximate)

'La Syrie et le Liban,' Dabo, 1910-1959 (approximate)

'Visit Palestine,' Franz Krausz, 1930-1939 (approximate)

'Tasmania. The anglers' paradise,' 1910-1959 (approximate)

'Come and see Netherland India,' 1910-1959 (approximate)

'No rain in Portugal but tourists pour in,' Nuno Costa, 1954)

'Cote d'Azur,' Pierre Fix-Masseau, 1988)

'Klosters. Graubnden, Schweiz,' J. C. Müller, 1910-1959 (approximate)

'Japan,' Mune Satomi, 1937

'Varmland, Sweden. An unspoiled mecca for tourists,' Beckman, 1936

'Alaska via Canadian Pacific, Taku Glacier,' Greenwood, 1910-1959 (approximate)

'By train for seaside holidays! Take a Kodak,' Gert Sellheim, 1910-1959 (approximate)

'Motoring in Germany,' Ludwig Hohlwein, 1910-1959 (approximate)

'Where the deer and the antelope play. National Parks,' Dorothy Waugh, 1930-1939 (approximate)

'The adventures of today are the memories of tomorrow National Parks,' Dorothy Waugh, 1930-1939 (approximate)

'Eat more fruit. Put pep in your step' (Victorian Railways) by Dibdin and Brown, 1910-1959 (approximate)

For more delicious vintage design from the Golden Age of Travel, dig into 20th Century Travel: 100 Years Of Globe-Trotting Ads.

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Hot tuna: bluefins carry Fukushima isotopes across the Pacific

2012-05-30T15:34:00.001-07:00

Hot tuna: bluefins carry Fukushima isotopes across the Pacific:

Bluefin tuna migrate across the Pacific as they mature.

NOAA

The same factor that put the Fukushima power plants at risk—proximity to the ocean—ensured that a sizable fraction of the radioactivity liberated from the plants ended up in the Pacific. That helped ensure that the contamination was diluted back to safe levels rapidly, although radioactive isotopes were detectable in fish caught near the plants. But fish don't sit still, and a new study has also detected low levels of radioactivity from Fukushima in tuna that were caught off the coast of California.
The study takes advantage of the fact that there is an isotope of cesium, ¹³⁴Cs, that is both short lived and only produced through nuclear processes, making it an excellent tracer of contamination from Fukushima. A second isotope, ¹³⁷Cs, is present at very low levels due to historic nuclear tests thanks to its longer half-life. These can be contrasted with ⁴⁰K, a potassium isotope that is naturally present throughout the world's oceans.
The cesium isotopes were detected in sea life near Japan and that gave researchers good reason to look into the tuna population elsewhere. The bluefin tuna of the northern Pacific breed along its western shores, including near Japan. Immature fish stay in that area for a year or two before migrating across the Pacific to mature near California. Thus, younger fish caught near California had a good chance of having been near Fukushima when the reactors melted down.
Read more | Comments

40% of accounts on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks are spam

2012-05-30T15:30:00.001-07:00

40% of accounts on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks are spam:

Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are become focal points of our digital lives, and just as they did with email and other popular digital technologies, spammers are looking to capitalize. According to Mark Risher, chief executive officer of anti-spam software company Impermium, spammers are responsible for creating as much as 40% of the accounts on popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. “Social spam can be a lot more effective than e-mail spam,” Risher told Bloomberg Businessweek in a recent interview. “The bad guys are taking to this with great abandon.” Roughly 8% of messages sent on social networks are spam according to Risher, and that figure has doubled in the past six months, the spam expert estimates. Businessweek notes that companies like Twitter and Facebook are beginning to increase their efforts to quell spam, having recently sued several perpetrators and increased their respective investments in anti-spam personnel and resources.
Read

And THIS Tiny Sphere is All the World’s Water That We Can Use | 80beats

2012-05-27T18:31:00.001-07:00

And THIS Tiny Sphere is All the World’s Water *That We Can Use* | 80beats:
A few days ago, we wrote about a remarkable graphic released by the USGS, showing all the water on Earth—freshwater, saltwater, water vapor, water in plants and animals; all of it—rolled into a sphere.
That sphere was only 860 miles in diameter, fitting comfortably between Salt Lake City and Topeka, Kansas, on a map. It was striking, especially considering that the water available for humans use in our daily lives is only a very small fraction of that; the vast majority of the Earth’s water is saltwater, and most of the freshwater is tied up in glaciers.
How big would a sphere of just the freshwater available to humans be? Reader Jay Kimball of 8020Vision, his interest piqued, went ahead and made such a graphic:

That sphere—the sphere representing the freshwater available to humans—has a diameter of just 170 miles. Head to his blog to see the math.

How to Find Free and Cheap Ebooks

2012-05-27T15:17:00.001-07:00

How to Find Free and Cheap Ebooks:
Where I live, decent public libraries with connections to the software service Overdrive allow surprisingly easy checkout of "library books" wirelessly to your Kindle. The Overdrive system provides libraries with both audiobook downloads and eBooks. I find, like most, that reading or listening to these books on a computer is untenable, but transferring audiobooks to my Sansa Clip player is as easy as pie.

For the (increasingly) large selection of books with Kindle versions, it's very easy to get free content to show up via Amazon's Whispernet. Nothing fiddly about it, no cables either. And for the earlier cool tool of "User Manual First", Kindles are a pretty good place to keep these PDF files. Either transfer via cable (easy) or use your Kindle's email address which allow your docs to show up via Whispernet.

Finally, if you sign up for Amazon Prime service, you not only get free shipping on your purchases, you also get access to the "Kindle Owner's Library" - more books without fees. And if your Kindle is a Fire (or you don't mind watching on a PC), you also get access to lots of streaming video (my wife is re-enjoying Ally McBeal (and I'm enjoying not being exposed to it, too)).

Anyway, go to your library's website and look for Overdrive services. Another convergence of several cool tools that merge to form a new level of cool tool.

-- Wayne Ruffner

The ubiquity of ereaders like the Kindle, Nook and iPad has driven a surge in ebook availability. Retailers like Amazon and Barnes and Noble have the lock on bestsellers and the like, but a flourishing underground market for free and cheap ebooks has become a boon for readers.

The best established source for free ebooks is Project Gutenberg whose archives contain over 36,000 ebooks that represent nearly every out-of-copyright classic piece of literature along with a vast archive of obscure but pleasurable reads. The quality of digitization is excellent, and the site's vibrant community ensures that any errors are quickly fixed. They also offer the ebooks in a variety of formats (ePub, mobi, html), including some as downloadable audiobooks.

With more and more libraries getting into the game of lending ebooks, the software company Overdrive (that Wayne mentioned) has been leading the way. Libraries contract out their ebook libraries to OverDrive who make them available for a limited loan period (via a proprietary DRM from Adobe) through their software that is available on most operating systems including iOS and Android. Once you have the application, simply add your local or state library system (some are better stocked than others) and Overdrive allows you to browse the ebooks that they have available to check out. Everything's automated so there are no late fees, and often times you can get best sellers without waiting (or, if they're "checked out" you can reserve them and when they become available they are automatically downloaded).

ManyBooks.net is the friendliest index of free ebooks of the bunch. It will search Project Gutenberg's archives, as well as troll through numerous other archives. They also provide recommendations and reviews (which is incredibly useful given the sheer number of available titles).

Outside of strictly free sources, InkMesh is the best search engine I have found for identifying if an author or a book is available in ebook form, whether it is free, where I can download it, and in what format. They have also collated a comprehensive list of free ebooks available for a variety of platforms.

Two more sources for the ebook crazy are the blogs Pixel of Ink and Books on the Knob which highlight attractive deals for the Kindle.

Finally, to manage this inundation of ebooks I heartily recommend the previously reviewed Calibre. If you have other recommended sources for eBooks and the like, feel free to leave a note in the comments and I'll make sure to update this page.

-- Oliver Hulland

Overdrive

Free

Amazon Prime

$79/year (or $39/year for students)

Project Gutenberg

Free

ManyBooks.net

Free

InkMesh

Free

Pixel of Ink

Free

3 Best Websites To Get A University Level Education For Free

2012-05-27T14:35:00.001-07:00

3 Best Websites To Get A University Level Education For Free:
The idea that you are never done learning has never been more true than today. The Internet has revolutionized the way we access information and knowledge – formerly a luxury accessible only to the rich and highly gifted – which is now freely available to anyone with Internet access.
Education and learning should be a lifelong process and the Internet is your chance to get a university level education for free, regardless of where you are in life. This article introduces you to the three best websites to get started.

Khan Academy

The Khan Academy is probably the most famous educational website out there. It was started in 2006 with the mission to provide “a high quality education to anyone, anywhere.” Meanwhile, the site provides over 3,000 videos on subjects from science to humanities, which have been delivered to millions of people. More than just videos, the site also offers short exercises to help students practice the knowledge they have acquired by watching the video material – all of it for free.

Coursera

Online education is spreading and the traditional institutions are taking note. Coursera has partnered with top US universities to provide some of their courses for free. The site offers lectures on computer science, healthcare, social sciences, and economics from universities like Princeton, Stanford or Berkeley.
Like the Khan Academy, they offer interactive exercises. Moreover, Coursera promises that you will join a global network of thousands of students, who you can depend on for feedback and support. Coursera takes you through full courses, which follow a schedule, meaning you have to sign up for them in advance.

If you enjoy Coursera and the Khan Academy, you may also enjoy one of these 6 Really Good Sites with FREE Video Lectures from Top US Colleges or 5 Great Sites with Free Video Lectures from Top Colleges.

Academic Earth

Similar to the Khan Academy, Academic Earth’s vision is to offer “a world-class education for everyone on earth“. The site offers free online classes and in-depth online learning through video lectures from university professors. Interestingly, Academic Earth has partnered with the same universities as Coursera and many more. In addition to Princeton, Stanford, and Berkeley, you will find video lectures from UCLA, Harvard, and Yale. Moreover, Academic Earth has partnered with the Khan Academy.

What makes Academic Earth unique is that you can sign up to earn an actual online degree. While this isn’t necessarily free (no definite information is available), it may at least be accessible to you regardless of where you live.
If you still haven’t learned enough, we have written about 8 MORE Knowledge Websites With Free Online Video Lectures, as well as 12 Great Free Video Tutorial Sites To Brush Up Your Tech Skills, and 5 Websites To Watch Educational Videos That Will Expand Your Mind. Would you like to take classes on your iPad, iPhone or iPod? Check out iTunes U, which we have recently reviewed here: Taking Free Classes & Courses At iTunes U.
Fans of YouTube, check out these articles:

How do you maintain lifelong learning? Are there any great resources we have missed so far?
Image credits: Education via Shutterstock

Space Station crew savors “new car smell” of Dragon capsule

2012-05-26T09:59:00.001-07:00

SpaceX's Dragon capsule revealed its secrets to the crew of the International Space Station earlier today, a cache of food, equipment and "new car smell" as astronauts opened the hatch for the first time. After successfully docking with the ISS yesterday – and setting a new record in the process, as the first private craft to link with the station – after a 3.5 day trip through space, Dragon's more than 1,000 pounds of cargo will be unloaded over the next four days, before the shelves are packed up again for the return trip.

NASA astronaut Don Pettit opened the hatch this morning, May 26, at 5:53 am EDT as the station flew 253 miles above Auckland, New Zealand. He and the rest of the ISS team wore protective masks and goggles, a standard precaution when any newly-arrived vehicle docks with the station, and Pettit and Station Commander Oleg Kononenko were first to enter Dragon.

Inside there's food, equipment, clothing and more, including scientific kit and parts for the ongoing repair cycle of the orbiting platform. The team will refill it before it detaches midway next week; before then, when the station atmosphere has successfully combined with that of Dragon, they'll be able to take off their goggles and masks.

"There was no sign of any kind of FOD [foreign object debris] floating around in the atmosphere inside," Pettit told Houston mission control after making his first inspection of Dragon. "It kind of reminds me of the cargo capability that I could put in the back of my pickup truck. And the smell inside smells like a brand new car."

Dragon is scheduled for splashdown several hundred miles west of California, on May 31. SpaceX will then prep for its next trip up to the ISS, as part of a twelve mission contract with NASA to ferry supplies now that the Space Shuttle has been mothballed.

SpaceX Dragon capsule hatch opening:

Space Station crew savors "new car smell" of Dragon capsule is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 - 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

-James

Revisiting why incompetents think they're awesome

2012-05-26T00:16:00.001-07:00

Aurich Lawson

In 1999 a pair of researchers published a paper called "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments (PDF)." David Dunning and Justin Kruger (both at Cornell University's Department of Psychology at the time) conducted a series of four studies showing that, in certain cases, people who are very bad at something think they are actually pretty good. They showed that to assess your own expertise at something, you need to have a certain amount of expertise already.

Remember the 2008 election campaign? The financial markets were going crazy, and banks that were "too big to fail" were bailed out by the government. Smug EU officials proclaimed that all was well within the EU—even while they were bailing out a number of financial institutions. Fast forward to 2012, and the EU is looking at hard times. Greece can't pay its debt. Italy can, but the markets don't trust it to be able to. Spain and Portugal are teetering around like toddlers just waiting for the market to give them one good push. Members of the public are behaving like teenagers, screaming "F**k you," while flipping the bird. The markets are reacting like drunk parents, and the resulting bruises are going to take a while to heal.

In all of this, uninformed idiots blame the Greeks for being lazy, the Germans for being too strict, and everyone but themselves. Newspapers, blogs, and television are filled with wise commentary hailing the return of the gold standard, the breakup of the Euro, or any number of sensible and not-so-sensible ideas. How are we to parse all this information? Do any of these people know what they are talking about? And if anyone does, how can we know which ones to listen to? The research of Dunning and Kruger may well tell us there is no way to figure out the answers to any of these questions. That is kind of scary.

Genes in space | Gene Expression

2012-05-25T23:43:00.001-07:00

From some of the same people who brought you the genetic map of Europe, a very important paper, A model-based approach for analysis of spatial structure in genetic data. Here's the abstract:

Characterizing genetic diversity within and between populations has broad applications in studies of human disease and evolution. We propose a new approach, spatial ancestry analysis, for the modeling of genotypes in two- or three-dimensional space. In spatial ancestry analysis (SPA), we explicitly model the spatial distribution of each SNP by assigning an allele frequency as a continuous function in geographic space. We show that the explicit modeling of the allele frequency allows individuals to be localized on the map on the basis of their genetic information alone. We apply our SPA method to a European and a worldwide population genetic variation data set and identify SNPs showing large gradients in allele frequency, and we suggest these as candidate regions under selection. These regions include SNPs in the well-characterized LCT region, as well as at loci including FOXP2, OCA2 and LRP1B.

Within the guts of this paper they make an important observation: constructing a set of populations and then ...

-James

Groupon to pay $8.5M for alleged illegal deal expiration dates

2012-05-23T00:59:00.001-07:00

Groupon has agreed to pay $8.5 million for allegedly imposing illegal expiration dates, reports the Chicago Tribune. The suit claims the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act forbids the sale of gift certificates with expiration dates of less than five years. Google has more reader-friendly articles on the suit; click here for legal and claim-filing information.

-James

Kiddie Pool-Sized Shell of Extinct Turtle Found in Colombian Mine | Discoblog

2012-05-22T23:36:00.001-07:00

Kiddie Pool-Sized Shell of Extinct Turtle Found in Colombian Mine | Discoblog:

Don’t mess with this.
Folks, those turtle-shaped sandboxes are not just a consumerist fantasy: Carbonemys cofrinii is an extinct turtle with a 10-inch skull and, more impressively, a shell that rounds out to five feet, seven inches in length. That really is big enough to dig around in. That’s also the same height as the grad student who found the 60-million-year-old fossil in a Colombian mine.
The turtle was so big that it probably drove off other turtle competitors and dominated the lake by itself, scientists say. They think that C. cofrinni preyed on mollusks and small reptiles, like the one depicted in this artist’s interpretation. If we’re going to be spending time in the belly of a turtle, though, we’d personally prefer it to be full of sand and toys rather than chewed up food.
[via Wired]
Image via North Carolina State University, credit: Liz Bradford

NCBI ROFL: The physics of tossing pizza dough. | Discoblog

2012-05-22T23:13:00.001-07:00

NCBI ROFL: The physics of tossing pizza dough. | Discoblog:
Rotating bouncing disks, tossing pizza dough, and the behavior of ultrasonic motors.
“Pizza tossing and certain forms of standing-wave ultrasonic motors (SWUMs) share a similar process for converting reciprocating input into continuous rotary motion. We show that the key features of this motion conversion process such as collision, separation and friction coupling are captured by the dynamics of a disk bouncing on a vibrating platform. The model shows that the linear or helical hand motions commonly used by pizza chefs and dough-toss performers for single tosses maximize energy efficiency and the dough’s airborne rotational speed; on the other hand, the semielliptical hand motions used for multiple tosses make it easier to maintain dough rotation at the maximum speed. The system’s bifurcation diagram and basins of attraction also provide a physical basis for understanding the peculiar behavior of SWUMs and provide a means to design them. The model is able to explain the apparently chaotic oscillations that occur in SWUMs and predict the observed trends in steady-state speed and stall torque as preload is increased.”

Photo: flickr/Jeff Kubina
Related content:

Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Does pizza cause cancer?

Swarms of air-bubble microrobots with laser engines could assemble live cells

2012-05-22T23:03:00.001-07:00

Swarms of air-bubble microrobots with laser engines could assemble live cells:

Building robots out of bubbles is an intriguing idea in its own right, but propelling them with lasers is just plain crazy. The bubble microrobots, devised by the researchers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, have no mechanical parts whatsoever, but can nevertheless be manipulated with very high precision. Combined into complex robotic systems, they could potentially be used to assemble larger objects, such as biological cells...
Continue Reading Swarms of air-bubble microrobots with laser engines could assemble live cells

Section: Robotics

Tags: bubbles,
microbotics,
Robots,
University of Hawaii

Related Articles:

Thanks to everyone! Over a million page views!

2012-05-20T15:05:00.000-07:00

Who would have thought a little ol' blog would get over a million page views. Thanks!

BitTorrent Piracy Boosts Music Sales, Study Finds

2012-05-19T16:14:00.001-07:00

For more than a decade researchers have been looking into the effects of music piracy on the revenues of the record industry, with mixed results.

None of these researchers, however, used a large sample of accurate download statistics from a BitTorrent tracker to examine this topic. This missing element motivated economist Robert Hammond, Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University, to conduct his own research.

In a paper titled "Profit Leak? Pre-Release File Sharing and the Music Industry" Hammond published his findings.

Between May 2010 and January 2011 the professor collected a variety of download statistics of new albums that were released on the largest private BitTorrent tracker dedicated to music. He then used this data in combination with sales numbers to construct a model that predicts what the causal effect of piracy on music sales is.

The results are unique in its kind and reveal that BitTorrent piracy causes an increase in album sales.

"I isolate the causal effect of file sharing of an album on its sales by exploiting exogenous variation in how widely available the album was prior to its official release date. The findings suggest that file sharing of an album benefits its sales. I don't find any evidence of a negative effect in any specification, using any instrument," Hammond concludes in his paper.

In total the sample includes 1,095 albums from 1,075 artists. The research focuses on albums that leaked before their official release. The music industry often states that "curbing pre-release piracy is a particular priority for the recording industry." These releases are also the focus of criminal proceedings against pirate sites both in the US and the UK.

However, according to the research, sales may actually be hurt by going after these sites. Hammond's findings suggest that piracy itself acts as a form of advertising similar to radio play and media campaigns, where more downloads result in a moderate increase in sales.

That said, the effect described in the paper is a moderate one. Taking all factors into account Hammond finds that an album that leaks a month in advance results in 59.6 additional sales.

To some degree the results are surprising, as other studies have found a negative relation between music piracy and sales. However, Hammond notes that none of these studies had access to such detailed and precise download statistics which make it possible to go beyond the usual correlation.

Also, unlike several other studies, Hammond's focuses on album releases instead of single songs.

"I focus on how file sharing of an individual album helps or hurts that album's sales. The question of interest here is whether an individual artist should expect her sales to decline given wider pre-release availability of the album in file-sharing networks. I find that the answer is no."

Another unique finding reported in the paper is that popular artists profit more from piracy than less established acts. For smaller artists there is no effect of pre-release piracy on sales. This contradicts older research. Hammond, however, notes that his data is richer than in the other studies, and therefore more accurate.

In addition, we'd argue that the focus on pre-releases may also account for the missing effect on new artists.

While the reported data appears to be solid, the question has to be asked how representative the data set is for all music piracy on BitTorrent. The private tracker in question has more than 150,000 users, who are almost exclusively more than average music fans.

Overall, the paper offers a unique and unprecedented analysis of BitTorrent piracy on music sales. It clearly disputes the music industry argument that pre-release piracy hurts album sales, and suggests that BitTorrent piracy can act as promotion.

Source: BitTorrent Piracy Boosts Music Sales, Study Finds

-James

This Tattoo Stinks

2012-05-19T16:11:00.001-07:00

Here's the story:

Tattoo artist Ryan Fitzgerald from Dayton, OH was hit with a $100,000 lawsuit last week by his ex-girlfriend Rossie Brovent. She claims that her boyfriend was supposed to tattoo a scene from Narnia on her back but instead tattooed an image of a pile of excrement with flies buzzing around it.
Apparently, Ryan found out that Rossie had cheated with a long-time friend of his, but instead of confronting her about it he acted like everything was normal and hatched a plan for revenge. Originally, Rossie tried to have Ryan charged with assault, but the ingenious tattoo artist had covered his bases by plying Rossie with wine and tequila shots and getting her to sign a consent form that stated the design was "at the artist's discretion."
No word from Rossie on whether the illicit night of passion with Ryan's friend was worth it. Moral of the story? Never cheat on a tattoo artist.

… Not that a tattoo of Narnia would have been better.

Submitted by: Unknown

Via: Manchester Post-Hardcore

-James

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Lesser-Known Contributions to Graphic Design

2012-05-04T21:58:00.001-07:00

Shedding new light on the iconic architect's legacy through the kaleidoscope of his diverse design work.

Frank Lloyd Wright is considered by many the most influential architect in modern history, but despite his enormous cultural recognition, the full extent of his contribution to design — posters, brochures, typography, murals, book and magazine covers — remains relatively obscure. In Frank Lloyd Wright: Graphic Artist (public library), Penny Fowler examines Wright's ingenious and bold graphic work — his covers for Liberty (some of which were so radical the magazine rejected them), his mural designs for Midway Gardens, his photographic experiments, his hand-drawn typographical studies, the jacket designs for his own publications, including The House Beautiful and An Autobiography, and a wealth more.

Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West, 1955. ©FLLW Foundation

From his childhood encounter with Friedrich Froebel's educational building blocks at the 1876 Centennial Exposition to his experiments with geometric designs long before the Mondrian age to his obsession with the woodblock art of Old Japan, Fowler traces Wright's inspirations, influences, and singular style as his work dances across aesthetic movements like Bauhaus, Japanisme, Arts and Crafts, and De Stijl.

Magazine cover, Town and Country, July 1937.

One of the designs that Wright originally proposed for Liberty, it is the only one ever published as a magazine cover. ©FLLW Foundation

Frank Lloyd Wright, 'Descriptive Geometry' class drawing, 1885.

Shade and Shadow of a Surface of Revolution. Pencil and ink on paper. ©FLLW Foundation

LEFT: This colorful 1973 adaptation of Wright's design is a backlit art glass mural made for the Arizona Biltmore by Taliesin Architects. ©FLLW

RIGHT: Frank Lloyd Wright, Saguaro Forms and Cactus Flowers. Cover design for Liberty, c. 1927–1928. Presentation drawing (detail). Pencil and color pencil on tracing paper. ©FLLW Foundation

As Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation director Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer writes in the introduction, what Wright wrote in 1908 of architecture could well apply to his graphic design work as well:

As for the future — the work shall grow more truly simple, more expressive with fewer lines, fewer forms; more articulate with less labor; more plastic; more fluent, although more coherent; more organic. It shall grow not only to fit more perfectly the methods and processes that are called upon to produce it, but shall further find whatever is lovely or of good repute in method or process, and idealize it with the cleanest, most virile stroke I can imagine.

Frank Lloyd Wright, presentation drawing, City by the Sea mural (south wall), Midway Gardens.

Pencil, color pencil, gold ink, watercolor, and crayon on tracing paper. ©FLLW Foundation

Frank Lloyd Wright, 'Kinder Symphony,' for the Avery Coonley playhouse, Riverside, Illinois, 1912.

Midway Gardens. Tavern Room, looking north to entranceway.

'The Eve of St. Agnes'

Fowler writes of Wright's formative years:

Reading, sketching, and music each played a role in shaping Wright's character. So did hard work. Beginning when he was eleven, he worked through the late spring and summer on his uncle's farm. Wright described the long hours and hard work as 'adding tired to tired.' Nevertheless, this farm labor as an 'amateur hired hand' fostered an everlasting appreciation of nature.

TOP: Frank Lloyd Wright, conceptual sketch for promotional brochure, Midway Gardens. Pencil and color pencil on paper. ©FLLW Foundation

BOTTOM: Cover, Midway Gardens (Chicago: The Midway Gardens Co., n.d.) This rare promotional pamphlet describes the facilities and their attractions and features photographs of patrons enjoying the cosmopolitan atmosphere. Collection of Brian A. Spencer, AIA/IAA

Frank Lloyd Wright, perspective of model J902. 'American System-Built Houses for the Richards Company,' 1915–1917.

Hendrikus Theodorus Wijdeveld, wrapper design for the Wendingen Wrightnummers (fourth paper, January 1926).

Published by C. A. Mees, Santpoort, Netherlands. Black and red ink on white paper. This wrapper design was used (with minor variations) for all of the Wrightnummers (October 1925–April 1926). ©FLLW Foundation

Frank Lloyd Wright, 'Saguaro Forms and Cactus Flowers.' Rug design, 1955.

Adapted from a cover for Liberty magazine, 1927–1928. Presentation drawing. Pencil and color pencil on tracing paper. ©FLLW Foundation

BOTTOM: Frank Lloyd Wright, Scherzo. Rug design, 1955.

Hendrikus Theodorus Wijdeveld, 'Architectuur/Frank Lloyd Wright,' 1930.

Frank Lloyd Wright, cover and dust jacket, The Disappearing City (William Farquar Payson, 1932).

Wright's abstraction of the "futile pattern" foretold the American dilemma of centralization without planning. ©FLLW Foundation

Shedding new light on the beloved creator's legacy through his kaleidoscope of creative contributions, Frank Lloyd Wright: Graphic Artist is an essential bible of design and cultural history.

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-James

Volta Volaré's futuristic GT4 e-hybrid airplane available for order

2012-05-04T21:19:00.001-07:00

Volta Volaré has begun taking orders for its four-seater GT4 hybrid private aircraft it calls "the most technologically advanced private aircraft available anywhere on Earth." Though the GT4 is perfectly capable of taking off and flying powered only electrically, a gas engine starts when the airplane's battery drops to 25 percent capacity in order to recharge it mid-flight. Surprisingly, perhaps, Volta Volaré makes a strong economic case for the GT4. Because the powertrain has only one moving part - the motor or "EViation Drive" - the company claims the need for maintenance is reduced significantly, offering increases in TBO (time between overhaul) by up to a factor of ten when compared to a combustion engine... Continue Reading Volta Volaré's futuristic GT4 e-hybrid airplane available for order

Section: Aero Gizmo

Tags: Aircraft, Aviation, Electric Aircraft, Hybrid

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-James

29 year old has ZERO concept of economics! Painful to watch.

2012-05-04T20:32:00.001-07:00

I don't care for Sean Hannity, but this kid is a moron! Where do you think governments get money? From the taxes working people pay! It doesn't fall out of the sky. He is supposedly a grad student? What college, nay High School failed this kid??

Occupy Fleabagger leader Harrison Schultz debates Sean Hannity on why capitalism is wrong. In the debate, Mr. Schultz is offended when it's inferred he may be a radical. He posed several conspiracy theories of how the cops sent rapists and vagrants to Zuccotti park in order to make the movement look bad. In summary, he explains that school, housing, daycare, information, transportation, etc. should all be free.

The Weather Underground Organizer Planted The Acorn Bill Ayers and our media gave us Barack Obama. The...
Video: Black Senate Candidate Rips Obama's Assault On The Constitution E.W. Jackson Sr. is a Marine Corps veteran, lawyer, and...

-James

Researchers spot planet-eating white dwarfs

2012-05-04T20:18:00.001-07:00

Planets as small as Earth are hard to spot orbiting other stars; obtaining good data about their chemical composition is well beyond the abilities of our current instruments. However, a new study of four white dwarfs provides hints about the fate of planets like our own. It's not an especially happy one, as the astronomers found that the chemical composition of debris on the white dwarfs closely matches that of Earth.

These observations, which will be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, focused on four "polluted" white dwarfs, which have traces of elements not usually seen in this type of star. B. T. Gänsicke et al. studied their ultraviolet spectrum using the Hubble Space Telescope, and determined they contained excessive amounts of silicon, aluminum, iron, and other elements, with abundances similar to those found on Earth. These results indicate that rocky debris has crashed onto the white dwarfs—debris that may possibly be from the destruction of a planet similar in composition to Earth.

Read the comments on this post

-James

The Mystery of the Melanesian Blondes | 80beats

2012-05-04T19:54:00.001-07:00

A blond boy from the island of Vanatu

In many places, blond hair usually goes with white skin and European ancestry. But in the islands of Melanesia and among the Aborigines of Australia, blond hair crops up on dark-skinned people with no known European heritage. Scientists have long wondered, is it because they have some (very, very) long-lost European ancestors? Or did blond hair arise from a genetic mutation in the population there?

A paper published in Science this week lays that question to rest. The researchers found that blond Solomon Islanders in Melanesia have a single amino acid difference in the tyrosinase-related protein 1 (TYRP1) gene, which codes for an enzyme involved in the production of the pigment melanin. Other mutations in TYRP1 can give people albinism; this one gives them light-colored hair. The mutation is recessive, so only people who have two mutant copies of the TYRP1 gene are blond.

This mutation is not responsible for European blondness, which hammers home the fact that pale hair didn't arrive on a boat with early European explorers—it's definitely native to the islands.

For the full story and lots of tasty genetics, head over to Discover's Gene ...

-James

Sexting Judge: ‘No Shame to My Game’ [VIDEO]

2012-05-04T19:41:00.001-07:00

Behold: Possibly the weirdest local news broadcast in some time.

A Detroit woman reportedly received a photo text message of her half naked boss, who happens to be a judge in the Motor City. A Fox 2 News reporter went and asked Detroit 3rd Circuit Judge Wade McCree about the photo. His on-camera response?

"There's no shame to my game…shoot."

The clip was uploaded to YouTube on April 23, where it's accumulated nearly 20,000 views. Friday it appeared on the Tumblr blog On the Media and began making the rounds on Twitter. View count starts to climb — and quick.

The sunglass-ed, hyperactive reporter bringing us this story? Charlie LeDuff, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 at The New York Times before deciding to return to his hometown of Detroit and report there. (He does serious work, too, including this A+ freelance piece for Mother Jones.)

The amazing sexting judge episode, however, leaves one lingering question: Can someone please autotune this?

More About: sexting, viral, YouTube

-James

Dubai Water Discus hotel will allow guests to sleep underwater

2012-05-04T19:39:00.001-07:00

It seems the construction boom in bustling Dubai is far from over – already home to several world record-holding projects, including the tallest building (for just a little while longer), the largest shopping mall and biggest man-made island, plans are now afoot to construct what will likely be the world's largest underwater luxury hotel, the Water Discus. Several years ago, we reported on another such ambitious project, Hydropolis, which sadly never got past the blueprint stage. If Polish company Deep Ocean Technology's (DOT) plans come to fruition, however, guests could one day find themselves asleep beneath the waters of the Persian Gulf... Continue Reading Dubai Water Discus hotel will allow guests to sleep underwater

Section: Holiday Destinations

Tags: Dubai, Futuristic, Hotel, Ocean, Tourism, Underwater

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-James