Cooper Griggs

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Been a while since I’ve taken a space pic, enjoy this one of Saturn looking like a weird eye. 

Diga di Luzzone — дамба в Швейцарии высотой 165 метров. С недавнего времени стена дамбы была оборудована специальными выступами для тренировки скалолазов. На сегодняшний день это место является самым большим искусственным скалодромом в мире. Чтобы пощекотать себе нервы поднимаясь по отвесной стене, придется выложить порядка 20$…

источник

Each year, volunteer artists from Japan travel to one of the poorest regions of India to share their talents with schoolchildren at the Niranjaya Public Welfare School. They join local artists at the annual Wall Art Festival to collaborate with the students on amazing works of temporary art in their school.

With the help of donations (mainly from Japan, Australia and New Zealand) the building that houses the Niranjaya Public Welfare School was constructed in 2007. Here, any student can receive a free education (including study materials), regardless of gender, caste or religion. This is especially important in Bihar, which has the lowest literacy rate in India: only 47 percent. About 85 percent of the population lives in villages like Sujata, in which the school is located.

With uniforms, computers and textbooks to buy and 12 full time teachers’ salaries to pay, the initial donations were not enough to continue on—they needed a way to guarantee funds for the school. Part fundraising strategy, part educational enrichment, the Wall Art Festival was born. Each year volunteer artists from Japan are selected to visit the school and, along with local artists, lead the children in a school-wide art project. The white walls inside and out are transformed into works of art that are complex, expressive and wrap themselves around the figures and dreams of the students within.

Japanese artist Yusuke Asai has participated in the festival for three years and brings a unique approach to the project. Rather than buying paints, he led students to collect various kinds of soil from the village to use as paint. You might think it would make for a bland painting, but you would be wrong.

The intricate designs he meticulously daubed onto the walls cover even the ceiling and the bookshelves at the back of the room. He took traditional Indian art as his inspiration, so his mural is reminiscent of intricate henna patterns. The figures break out of their borders, stretching limbs out and over the heads of the occupants.

They added straw to the floor, softening the atmosphere.

There is so much detail here that you could stay for hours admiring each piece of the magnificent puzzle.

Not every artist stuck to such meditative aesthetics. Mythological figures explode out onto this wall on waves of blue.

Another artist changed the very shape of the room, covering every surface in designs and symbols that look like they could be ancient etchings or alien language.

Some pieces recall textile patterns…

…and some recall childhood storybooks and puppet shows.

Some pieces were modern and simple…

…but the impact is undeniable. This child looks as if he’s about to be sucked into a vortex!

Realistic depictions of places the children may never see are brought right to their classrooms…

…alongside dream-like landscapes imagined in serene colors.

Monochromatic paintings with simple elements tell stories…

…while the figures dance around the students.

The school’s facade is also transformed for the event.

Even this elephant’s skin became a canvas!

Above all, this is an incredible coming-together of people. Across divides of class, culture and language, people gave of themselves and created a wonderful experience together. Undoubtedly, the participants walk away with an appreciation for art and education, but also for the good that exists in others.

It looks like an incredible experience for hosts and visitors alike.

Once the festival is over, the murals are all removed and the walls are returned to their original white. The excitement is over for now, but the donations delivered to the school fund another year of lessons and the experience lives on in the minds of all who participated.

Sources: Amusing Planet, Niranjaya Public Welfare Trust
Images: Wall Art Festival

• Tokyo’s 7 coolest public art pieces
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• Saiyans, pirates, and Jesus all come alive on Japanese blackboards
• Japanese artist recreates Matsumoto Castle out of cardboard
• Parents create amazing Studio Ghibli mural for daughter’s nursery before she’s even born

Origin: Stunning murals bloom in an impoverished Indian school with the help of Japanese artists
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Kiev, Ukraine, March 2014.

A bear walked across I-90 in Washington on Friday morning, and then hung out on the median for a while. Clearly, the Bear Patrol was asleep at the switch. Unfortunately, traffic cameras couldn’t capture the bear on film, so DOT staffer Mike Allende decided to tweet this hyperrealistic doodle of the bear on the highway.

Can’t see that black bear in I-90 median on camera, but here’s what it may look like. pic.twitter.com/9QddUOYzxk

— WSDOT Traffic (@wsdot_traffic) May 30, 2014

As you can see in the photo, the black bear appears to be larger than a car, stands on two legs, and is generally amiable, waving at passing cars. At least one person in a passing car has noticed the bear. You really can’t tell that this is just a drawing.

WSDOT Traffic, Seattle PI

Let’s say you’re a complete unknown in Arizona who failed to win as a write-in Tea Party candidate for Congress in 2012, and then lost a campaign for Phoenix City Council in 2013. Maybe you’d have better luck with some name recognition? So former nobody Scott Fistler legally changed his name to “Cesar Chavez” and is now running as a Democrat to replace retiring congressman Ed Pastor. Can’t possibly go wrong, because your Latino voters are going to see the name of the famous guy on there and figure that after dying in 1993, the activist and civil rights leader has rested up and deserves a seat in Congress.

We do have to at least agree that this much of Fistler/Chavez’s story sounds plausible: Fistler’s name change petition, filed last November, said plaintively, “I have experienced many hardships because of my name[.]” No doubt.

And just look at the huge mass rallies in favor of this fantastic candidate, as seen in these photos from his campaign webpage:

Never mind that the top photo is of supporters of late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, and the middle one is of a march honoring the California labor leader in Kansas. And the bottom one is Venezuela too.

Still, New Chavez guy tells the Arizona Republic, he’s a totally legit guy:

“It’s almost as simple as saying Elvis Presley is running for president,” Chavez, the candidate, said in a phone interview. “You wouldn’t forget it, would you?” [...]

“People want a name that they can feel comfortable with,” Chavez said. “If you went out there running for office and your name was Bernie Madoff, you’d probably be screwed.”

Plus, he’s got all kinds of qualifications, like “My name is on a lot of popular things,” he says. And also, he’s a military veteran, although he declined to tell the paper which branch of the service he was in, possibly to avoid compromising the safety of agents still in the field, we bet. He also wouldn’t confirm to the reporters whether he actually was the person formerly known as Scott Fistler, saying only, “I feel right in everything I do. I never broke the law,” and if those don’t sound like the words of someone who’s ready to be in Congress, what would?

Also, too, he didn’t want to say, one way or the other, whether he’s as Hispanic as his name: “I like to look at people as Americans and citizens of the world.”

People familiar with the real candidates trying to succeed Rep. Pastor aren’t especially worried that Emilio Fistlervez will fool many voters, seeing as how the real Cesar Chavez is pretty well-known as a hero who has rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible.

While Yr Doktor Zoom is leery of endorsing anyone with a fake name (since what are they hiding, huh?), we are definitely hoping that this guy gets enough signatures to make the ballot, and that please, dear god please, he’s included in any televised debates.

[AzCentral.com / Arizona Capitol Times via TPM]

Follow Doktor Zoom on Twitter. He is pleased to announce his write-in candidacy for U.S. Senate as Ronaldreagan Georgewashington Jesuschristalmighty.

Taken recently off the coast of Bali, these surreal photos are the creation of Montreal-based director and photographer Benjamin Von Wong, known for his exceedingly difficult photoshoots. Where it might be more practical to create the complex aspects of these photos digitally, Von Wong took a different path and assembled a team of two models who also happen to be trained freedivers, 7 additional support divers, and obtained special permission to utilize a 50-year-old underwater shipwreck. The entire shoot took place 25 meters below the surface, and because of the extreme conditions and limitations, he relied heavily on natural light to create the final images you see here.

You can watch the video above to see how the photoshoot came together and read more about the process over on his blog. (via PetaPixel, My Modern Met)

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Born and raised in the Philippines, New Jersey-based artist Gregory Halili is deeply influenced by the vegetation and wildlife he experienced as a child. His latest series of work involves a fusion of the human form with the natural world in these amazing bas-relief shell skulls. Halili carves and then paints with oil on raw, gold-lip and black-lip mother of pearl found in shells collected from the Philippines. The pieces will soon be exhibited at Silverlens Galleries in Manila and Nancy Hoffman Gallery in NYC, but for now you can see much more in this Facebook gallery. (via Junk Culture, Skullspiration)

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uss-sasserprise:

webothsoldit:

cwtae-withthataxeeugene:

A delicately choreographed whatever the hell it is they’re doing.

Is this a Cats rehearsal?

the pervert’s guide to ideology & the punk singer

two documentaries that i can recommend. a lots.

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Every time I read about the synapse, the all-important junction between two neurons, the cartoon above pops into my head. It shows the gist of how a synapse works: An electrical pulse enters the cell on the left and activates those little blue balls, called vesicles, to release their chemical contents, called neurotransmitters. The neurotransmitters spill out into the space between the cells, called the cleft, and activate those blue rectangles, called ion channels. The channels trigger the cell on the right to fire its own electrical pulse, or action potential, and this message travels on to the next cell. It’s pretty neat. Our brains are full of trillions of synapses, each with the capability of converting an electrical signal into a chemical one and back again.

My doodle is conceptually useful for understanding many neuroscience studies. It helped me visualize, for example, how researchers record the messages of brain cells, and how the synapse plays a role in developmental disorders, and how the firing patterns of all of these synapses provide our brains with a sophisticated coding scheme.

The downside of the cartoon synapse is that it gives a false impression. It makes it seem as if the synapse is simple and all figured out, when actually it’s mostly baffling. I was reminded of its complexity by a study published in today’s issue of Science. Researchers in Germany used an array of techniques — including Western blot, mass spectrometry, electron microscopy, and super-resolution fluorescence microscopy — to create a three-dimensional model of a typical synapse in the adult rat brain. You’ll see in the video below that their new model doesn’t look much like my drawing:

To get the most out of the video, click on the white arrows in the lower right hand corner, which will expand it to full screen. The video shows the synaptic bouton, which is the left part of my cartoon. The glowing red “active zone” at the bottom is where the neurotransmitters get dumped into the cleft. Toward the end of the video you can see a close-up of a vesicle releasing its contents and then being recycled by the cell.

The model shows some 300,000 individual proteins, and remember — they’re all hanging out at a single synapse! The image below shows a cross-section of the bouton; each color corresponds to a different kind of protein. The active zone is again the glowing red part at the bottom.

Wilhelm et al., Science 2014

(Click to enlarge)

More often than not, neuroscientists (and therefore, science writers covering neuroscience) tend to focus on a single protein at a time. For instance, I’ve written about that green guy, parvalbumin, because in certain neurons the protein seems to trigger high-frequency brain waves that have been linked to cognition. And that red SNAP-25 has been linked to ADHD, and the yellow VDAC has been proposed as a good target for chemotherapy drugs.

The only way to untangle this complex picture is to focus on its individual components, figuring out one piece at a time. But the next time you read about one of those pieces, recall how it fits into the whole, and be wowed.

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