Lrbever

[reddit] [h/t: pleatedjeans]

A Russian zoo is home to Zita the liger. She is half-lioness, half-tiger and has just had a litter of liliger cubs (half-lion, half-liger).

Did you know that colors can be seen as well as heard? Well, now you do, thanks to 31-year-old Neil Harbisson, a color blind artist who spent years looking for a way of experiencing the colors of the world around him. For the past 10 years, Neil has been wearing an external electronic eye that picks up the frequencies of the colors before him and converts them into sound vibrations that he can hear. Initially he wore the device outside his head. But later, the London-based artist convinced surgeons to implant the chip int his skull to be able to perceive more intricate colors.

The idea for the device came about when Neil heard a cybernetics talk by computer scientist Adam Montandon at Dartington College of Arts in 2003. The pair then collaborated to create the device and Neil ended up memorizing various frequencies so he could recognize colors. So he still couldn’t see the colors, he could now hear and identify them. Neil, who was born with achromatopsia (a rare condition that allows him to see only black or white), said during a talk in 2012: “For me the sky is always grey, flowers are always grey and television is black and white.”

“But since the age of 21 instead of seeing color I can hear color. So I’ve been hearing color all the time for eight years so I find it completely normal to hear it all the time. At the start I had to memorize the names you have for each color and the notes but after some time all this information became a perception and I didn’t have to think about the notes and after some time this became a feeling. I started to have favorite colors and I started to dream in color.”

A group of third graders proved that discrimination has deep and lasting effects. The results are so scary

Jane Elliott, a third grade teacher from Riceville, Iowa, decided that she wanted to teach the kids in her class about racism and discrimination shortly after the murder of Martin Luther King in 1968. The problem she was faced with was that all the children in her class were white and came from similar backgrounds and from the same community. How could she get them to understand discrimination on a personal level?

She divided her class into two groups, (the "blue eyed people" and the "brown eyed people") telling them that those with blue eyes are superior to those with brown eyes. She told them that the brown eyed kids are not to play with the blue eyed kids because they are not as good or as smart. The blue eyed kids had to put collars on the brown eyed kids so that they could be distinguished from a distance.

Jane Elliot reported: "I watched what had been marvelous, co-operative, wonderful and thoughtful children, turn into nasty, vicious, discriminating little third graders in a space of fifteen minutes. " Fifteen years later, the kids who unknowingly took part in the experiment spoke about their feelings of that day.

The blue eyed children felt like rulers and kings and truly looked down on the brown eyed kids, venting all their anger toward them as if it was then justified. The brown eyed kids reported that they felt worthless and as if there would be no use in trying to become anything. They also felt intense hatred towards those who treated them so badly.

(Source)

mydrunkkitchen:

sleep:

what a time to be alive

I will never be the same

(Credit: Video screenshot by Amanda Kooser/CNET)

Looking for an excuse to play more Tetris? Good news: Engaging in just a few minutes of highly visual activities like the game appears to reduce the strength, frequency, and vividness of cravings for things like food and drugs.

Reporting in the journal Appetite, researchers at Plymouth University in the UK said that because imagery is so closely tied to cravings, they wanted to test whether highly visual activities -- in this case Tetris -- might decrease craving imagery and ultimately the cravings themselves.

Co-author Jackie Andrade said her team recruited 119 volunteers who, unlike in previous studies, were not artificially induced to crave something but instead reported whether they were craving anything at the moment. Of the mostly female volunteers, 58 said they were craving food or a drink, 12 nicotine, and 10 caffeine. Then half of the group played Tetris for 3 minutes, while the other half were told to wait for a screen to load, though it rather cruelly never did.

For all 70 participants who reported starting the test with a craving, the strength of their cravings diminished over time regardless of whether they were enjoying a game of Tetris or staring at a frozen screen. But the strength of cravings fell significantly more for the gamers than it did for their thumb-twiddling counterparts.

Related stories

• Yep, it's playable Tetris on a business card
• One-man a capella Tetris is a winner
• Why eye doctors may soon prescribe Tetris

"When we want something really badly, it is hard to think about anything else -- and the experience is a very sensory one," David Kavanagh, who has done similar research at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, told Reuters. "It engages our imagination. That can be a real torture. But it also gives us a hint about how we can deal with cravings: If we can do something that engages the same brain functions, we can blunt the craving, and make it easier to resist the temptation."

But if you think you can con your way into playing a lot of Tetris as the sole way to deal with cravings, Andrade says that in reality any highly visual activity should do the trick. In fact, in another study she conducted, making shapes out of plastic produced a similar result.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've worked up quite an appetite for, ahem, Tetris.

Related Links:
Yep, it's playable Tetris on a business card
Can a simple app really give you superhero sight?
Trapped in the Time Travel Lab: My puzzling Sunday
Farmer's Fridge brings fruit, veggies to vending machines
Fresh Jawbone apps tackle the science of sounder sleep

Maud stole the show today, that's for sure! Just look how enthused she is about being the header for tonight.

Hope you all are having a good weekend so far! Now on to the news!

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Private commission.  Her crown is removable.

Tumblr photoset: viistar.tumblr.com/post/798571…
Youtube video turn in progress I had light issues so it is delayed ^^


Please see my journal for commission status, Demo videos, and materials list.  

Thank you guys for all the nice comments on the previous happy!dash sculpt ;u; I'm doing my best to keep up with work and get to my notes!   

If you're interested in a remake of this Princess Twi for yourself there are a few stipulations!  I will only be making one of these per year.  There is one for 2013 and one for 2014, so you'll have to wait until 2015.  Be the first to contact me then and get an invoice for down payment and she's all yours!

Satisfying things