These fantastic captures are those of San Francisco-based photographer Beth Moon. For 14 years, Moon has done research to locate the world's oldest trees and traveled to photograph them. Some specimens are more than 1,000 years old. Moon said of the project,
"Many of the trees I have photographed have survived because they are out of reach of civilization; on mountainsides, private estates, or on protected land. Certain species exist only in a few isolated areas of the world. For example; there are 6 species of spectacular baobabs, found only on the island of Madagascar. Sadly, the baobab is now one of the three most endangered species on the island.
The criteria I use for choosing particular trees are basically three: age, immense size or notable history. I research the locations by a number of methods; history books, botanical books, tree registers, newspaper articles and information from friends and travelers.
Standing as the earth’s largest and oldest living monuments, I believe these symbolic trees will take on a greater significance, especially at a time when our focus is directed at finding better ways to live with the environment, celebrating the wonders of nature that have survived throughout the centuries. By feeling a larger sense of time, developing a relationship with the natural world, we carry that awareness with us as it becomes a part of who we are. I cannot imagine a better way to commemorate the lives of the world’s most dramatic trees, many which are in danger of destruction, than by exhibiting their portraits."
A book of this series, entitled Ancient Trees: Portraits of Time can be purchased at Abbeville Press. Visit Beth Moon's website to see more of her work. See more images from this series here.
BarbaraHudson writes The CBC is reporting that scientists have possibly found the source of Patient Zero's Ebola infection. From the story: "Patient Zero, two-year-old Guinean Emile Ouamouno, may have been infected while hunting or playing with bats inside a hollow tree near his home in a small village named Meliandou. The study determined Ouamouno's interaction with bats is the likely cause of transmission by ruling out other possibilities, namely that the virus was spread by the consumption of bushmeat. Only children and women presented symptoms or died in the beginning of the current epidemic. Research published in the EMBO Molecular Medicine journal finds that the single transmission, from bat to boy, was then spread human to human."
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
1. He was pals with Clint Eastwood.
Elvis and Clint Eastwood used to see each other around the studio they both worked at in the mid-60's. According to Clint: “I was always wearing a gun. (Elvis) loved to do fast draws and stuff, so we always did fast draws together.”
“I liked him. He seemed like a good guy. Had a lot of guys hanging around, big entourage.”
2. His wife would cut up his meat for him at meals.
Elvis always loved meat, hamburgers, steak, whatever, and he demanded it be cooked extra well-done or "burnt.” During his marriage to Priscilla, she would cut his meat for him before he ate it. If Priscilla wasn't present, Elvis would have one of entourage cut it up before he ate it. They also salted it before he ate it.
3. He tried LSD once.
The King did try LSD, just one time. According to Elvis' entourage member, Sonny West, Elvis was curious one day and tried some LSD.
Nothing much happened. Elvis watched the movie The Time Machine and ordered a pizza. He was quiet and, according to West, he was more interested in watching others' reactions to the drug.
4. He hated women with big feet.
As every Elvis fan well knows, Elvis was a notorious ladies man. The ladies loved Elvis and it was certainly reciprocal. One of Elvis's biggest turn-offs in the opposite sex was women with big (or dirty) feet. If Elvis ever noticed a woman had big or dirty feet, she wouldn't have a chance to "get to know him better.”
5. He wanted to make guest appearances on Laugh-In and Hee Haw.
Elvis was an inveterate TV watcher.He enjoyed watching many popular television shows in the '60s and '70s.
He actually thought about making cameo appearances on both Laugh-In and Hee Haw. He thought he could do a brief cameo on Laugh-In when he rode a tricycle, incognito. It never happened.
6. He didn't know the Beatles by name.
In 1965, the celebrated formal meeting of Elvis and the Beatles took place at Elvis' house in Bel Air. Since Elvis had no idea which Beatle was which, during the meeting, he addressed each one as “Beatle,” instead of using their first names.
7. He loved to shoot off guns (okay, you knew this one already).
Elvis loved and cherished his guns. He would sometimes carry as many as five guns on his person. He made sure his then-girlfriend (his later wife) Priscilla carried a concealed handgun.
He loved to shoot out television sets, especially if singer Robert Goulet (who he hated) appeared. Elvis once shot out a TV that was getting poor reception. He once shot his Ferrari after it stalled on the road.
8. He was crazy about Monty Python.
Elvis just loved Monty Python. He could recite entire episodes of their TV show Monty Python’s Flying Circus and watched the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail many times. When recovering from a serious bout of ill health in the mid-1970s, he watched Monty Python’s Flying Circus reruns. He saw in the new year 1976 by viewing a Monty Python marathon at Graceland.
He sometimes called people "squire" in homage to the "wink wink, nudge nudge" Monty Python sketch. Elvis liked to interject Monty Python references in his live shows.
9. The “Gladys" factor.
Interestingly, Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe, probably the most popular male and female sex symbols of the 20th century, each had mothers named “Gladys".
10. The "added on" final scene in an Elvis film.
In the original version of Elvis' first film Love Me Tender (1956), Elvis is shot and killed and is never shown again. But after a screening of the film, the audience had a very unfavorable reaction to Elvis dying.
So, to placate the Elvis fans, the studio added a new scene of Elvis singing the movie's theme song over the end credits. Interestingly, Elvis' hair is dark black in this new ending, although it was blondish-brown all through the rest of the film. Elvis had started dying it dark black after he'd originally finished filming.
On December 9 The Pirate Bay was raided at the Nacka station, a nuclear-proof data center built into a mountain complex near Stockholm.
Two weeks later the domain became responsive again, waving a pirate flag and a counter that kept track of the time that had elapsed since the raid.
During the weeks that followed there were a handful of changes to the site, including a link to a pirated copy of “The Interview” and various cryptic messages.
Today, there’s another update that gives Pirate Bay users hope that the site may be working on a comeback.
As of a few hours ago the counter stopped counting up and began counting down. This suggests that something is going to happen on February 1, although it’s not officially confirmed what that will be.
In addition to the updated counter the javascript used to display fireworks on the site also has a promising name, “allishere.js.” Sources previously told TF that there were issues with Pirate Bay’s backups, but the “allishere” reference may suggest otherwise.
A source close to The Pirate Bay team informs TF that more exciting news and an official announcement will follow in the near future.
It makes an Arduino look like a 555. A 364 Mhz, 32 bit processor. 8 MB RAM. GSM. Bluetooth. LCD controller. PWM. USB and dozens more. Smaller than a Zippo and thinner than corrugated cardboard. And here is the kicker: $3. So why isn’t everyone using it? They can’t.
Adoption would mandate tier after tier of hacks just to figure out what exact hardware is there. Try to buy one and find that suppliers close their doors to foreigners. Try to use one, and only hints of incomplete documentation will be found. Is the problem patents? No, not really.
[Bunnie] has dubbed the phenomenon “Gongkai”, a type of institutionalized, collaborative, infringementesque knowledge-exchange that occupies an IP equivalent of bartering. Not quite open source, not quite proprietary. Legally, this sharing is only grey-market on paper, but widespread and quasi-accepted in practice – even among the rights holders. [Bunnie] figures it is just the way business is done in the East and it is a way that is encouraging innovation by knocking down barriers to entry. Chinese startups can churn out gimmicky trash almost on whim, using hardware most of us could only dream about for a serious project.
He contrasts this with the West where only the big players like Apple and Google can step up to the plate. Everyone else is forced to use the embarrassingly obsolete hardware we are all familiar with. But [Bunnie] wants to get his foot in the door. “Can we find a way to still get ahead, yet still play nice?” he asks.
Part of his solution is reverse engineering so that hardware can simply be used – something the EFF has helped legally ensure under fair use. The other half is to make it Open Source. His philosophy is rooted in making a stand on things that matter. It is far from a solid legal foundation, but [Bunnie] and his lawyers are gambling that if it heads to a court, the courts will favor his side.
The particular board targeted is the one described above – the MT6260. Even spurred by the shreds of documentation he could gather, his company is a 2-man team and cannot hope to reverse engineer the whole board. Their goal is to approach the low-hanging fruit so that after a year, the MT6260 at least enters the conversation with ATMega. Give up trying to use it as a phone; just try to use it like the Spark Core for now.
He is already much of the way there. After telling you what is on board and why we would all want to use it, [Bunnie] shows how far he has gone to reverse engineer and describes his plans for the rest. From establishing an electronic “beachhead” base of operations to further probe the device, to X-rays, photos, diagrams and the beginnings of an OS. If this type of thing interests you at all, the meticulous approach and easy-reading of this tech teardown will surely impress and inspire you. Every step of progress requires a new hack, a new solution, a new ingenious way to pry information out.
We’ve featured some awe-inspiring reverse engineering attempts in the past, but this is something that is still new and relevant. Rather than only exploit his discoveries for himself, [Bunnie] has documented and published everything he has learned. Everyone wins.
Seven hours sounds just about right for the average puzzle enthusiast to solve a standard 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube. But Youtuber RedKB isn't your average puzzle enthusiast. Instead of tackling a 3x3x3 cube, he solves this incredibly complex 17x17x17 cube designed by Oskar Van Deventer. In the end it took him about seven-and-a-half hours to get all the colored sides put back in order, and you can check out a timelapse of the entire process below.
Using a bidet can be intimidating if you’ve never done it before. How much more intimidating can it be to use one for the first time while the camera is roiling, capturing your every reaction? Be warned, this video contains quips about anatomy and bathroom habits -as you could probably guess. -via Buzzfeed
Grapes used to make some of the famed white wines in fact contain anthocyanin pigments that give red wine its colour, which could solve a winemaking mystery
Zen is a branch of Buddhism that came about in China during the 6th century. So it has been around for a little while. Many of the teachings and quotes find their way into things, but they sometimes come across as nonsensical phrases meant to sound obscure. There is meaning behind the quotes, however, and many of the lessons are still useful today.
If you have an old Android phone you've upgraded from lying around, there are tons of projects to put it to good use, but this one is relatively easy and can bring you a little peace of mind: Turn it into a Wi-Fi web or home security camera.
How would you like to take your tinkering skills to the next level with an Arduino? The range of cool projects you can do with this awesome development board is truly staggering. Of course, you aren’t just going to run out, buy an Arduino, and be an expert. You’ll need some knowledge and skills, and that’s exactly what the awesome course will teach you. For just $19, you can get access to the Introductory Arduino Course and be well on your way to making some amazing projects. This course normally sells for $101, so you’ll be saving 81% off the normal...
There are so many horrible companies in the world that make their profits by stewing in consumer misery. According to a just published list of this year's most hated companies, the worst are unsurprisingly Time Warner Cable and Comcast. Yup, the two giants that want to merge.
It's tempting to imagine that few online safeguards will stop NSA surveillance in its tracks, but that's not true. A new leak from Edward Snowden's files reveals that there's a surprising number of ways to thwart these snoops, at least as of 2012. Wh...
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
Elvis always loved meat, hamburgers, steak, whatever, and he demanded it be cooked extra well-done or "burnt.” During his marriage to Priscilla, she would cut his meat for him before he ate it. If Priscilla wasn't present, Elvis would have one of entourage cut it up before he ate it. They also salted it before he ate it.
now the Beatles by name.
Elvis just loved Monty Python. He could recite entire episodes of their TV show Monty Python’s Flying Circus and watched the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail many times. When recovering from a serious bout of ill health in the mid-1970s, he watched Monty Python’s Flying Circus reruns. He saw in the new year 1976 by viewing a Monty Python marathon at Graceland.
On December 9 The Pirate Bay was raided at the Nacka station, a nuclear-proof data center built into a mountain complex near Stockholm.
Part of his solution is reverse engineering so that hardware can simply be used – something the EFF has helped legally ensure under fair use. The other half is to make it Open Source. His philosophy is rooted in making a stand on things that matter. It is far from a solid legal foundation, but [Bunnie] and his lawyers are gambling that if it heads to a court, the courts will favor his side.
He is already much of the way there. After telling you what is on board and why we would all want to use it, [Bunnie] shows how far he has gone to reverse engineer and describes his plans for the rest. From establishing an electronic “beachhead” base of operations to further probe the device, to X-rays, photos, diagrams and the beginnings of an OS. If this type of thing interests you at all, the meticulous approach and easy-reading of this tech teardown will surely impress and inspire you. Every step of progress requires a new hack, a new solution, a new ingenious way to pry information out.
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It's tempting to imagine that few online safeguards will stop NSA surveillance in its tracks, but that's not true. A new leak from Edward Snowden's files reveals that there's a surprising number of ways to thwart these snoops, at least as of 2012. Wh...
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