I don’t believe we’ve ever posted anything by Bobby McFerrin during the more than a year(!) we’ve been doing this thing, so I present to you the always enjoyable “Don’t Worry Be Happy.”
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
A daily miasma of frivolity by two wanna-be cultural critics. Or: just, like, some good links, dude.
Jon Gomm covering Radiohead’s “High and Dry”. Absolutely incredible.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
How WWII codes on Twitter thwarted French vote law
How WWII codes on Twitter thwarted French vote law
Charles Onians, AFP:
Twitter users turned Sunday’s French presidential election into a battle between a green Hungarian wine and a red Dutch cheese in a bid to get round tough laws banning result predictions.
The #RadioLondres hashtag was the top France trend on Twitter during the first-round presidential vote, in homage to World War II codes broadcast to Resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied France from the BBC in London.
But French citizens have written a new codebook in a subversive bid to get round laws that mean anyone announcing vote predictions before polls closed at 8:00 pm (1800 GMT) could be fined up to 75,000 euros (100,000 dollars).
I won’t spoil any of the code names for you — but rest assured they’re all worth it.
Modern Mechanix: This Gun Replies to “Hands Up!” With Bullets
Modern Mechanix: This Gun Replies to “Hands Up!” With Bullets
This is probably the best post in the history of Modern Mechanix. From the May 1929 issue of Modern Mechanics comes a machine gun vest. That’s a vest with a machine gun in it. That fires. Bullets.
Sergey Larenkov takes photos from World War II and merges them with present-day photos of the same locations. The one accompanying this post is titled “Vyborg. Bridge to the past.” You should probably go to his LiveJournal and check out his other work, including the first photo in this D-Day set and this set from Gatchina.
Hubble Zooms in on a Magnified Galaxy
Hubble Zooms in on a Magnified Galaxy
NASA:
Thanks to the presence of a natural “zoom lens” in space, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope got a uniquely close-up look at the brightest “magnified” galaxy yet discovered.
Not only is that cool as hell, the pictures are amazing.
Gladstone Scientists Regenerate Damaged Hearts By Transforming Scar Tissue into Beating Heart Muscle
Gladstone Scientists Regenerate Damaged Hearts By Transforming Scar Tissue into Beating Heart Muscle
Cool medical news out of the Gladstone Institutes (affiliated with UC San Francisco):
“The damage from a heart attack is typically permanent because heart-muscle cells — deprived of oxygen during the attack — die and scar tissue forms,” said [Deepak] Srivastava, a UCSF professor who directs cardiovascular and stem cell research at Gladstone, an independent and nonprofit biomedical-research institution. “But our experiments in mice are a proof of concept that we can reprogram non-beating cells directly into fully functional, beating heart cells — offering an innovative and less invasive way to restore heart function after a heart attack.”
In laboratory experiments with mice that had experienced a heart attack, Qian and Srivastava delivered three genes that normally guide embryonic heart development — together known as GMT — directly into the damaged region. Within a month, non-beating cells that normally form scar tissue transformed into beating heart-muscle cells. Within three months, the hearts were beating even stronger and pumping more blood.
Next is to test if the technique scales up larger animals.
Olympics 2012: branding “police” to protect sponsors’ exclusive rights
Olympics 2012: branding “police” to protect sponsors’ exclusive rights
The Guardian:
Fans in the crowd won’t be allowed to upload snippets of the day’s action to YouTube – or even, potentially, to post their snaps from inside the Olympic Village on Facebook. And a crack team of branding “police”, the Games organisers Locog have acknowledged, will be checking every bathroom in every Olympic venue – with the power to remove or tape over manufacturers’ logos even on soap dispensers, wash basins and toilets.
My response:
Lorenz Lnggrtnr and Rene Hoffmeister have put together “Builders of Sound,” a large music boxy thing that plays a few bars of the Star Wars main theme with Lego dioramas of the movie.
While I’m busy working out how I’m going to steal it, Lnggrtnr has a lot of pictures and videos up.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
“Darth Vader and Son”
Jeffrey Brown’s new children’s book “Darth Vader and Son” looks like a real hoot. Real charming illustrations.