The way of the ninja requires massive sacrifices, and samurai must live by the exacting code of Bushido. Usually, pop culture depicts ninjas and samurai as stoic men — but here are 10 amazing women who rose to the challenge.

1) Tsukikage Ran

While women weren’t technically allowed to be samurai in feudal Japan, that didn’t stop Ran Tsukikage from grabbing a sword and wandering the countryside as a ronin in this action-comedy anime. The only thing she’s better at than swordplay is drinking sake, which she takes very seriously (do not spill good sake in front of her, or you will pay). Of course, this sake-habit means she’s often broke, and takes various jobs as a guard to make ends meet. That is, when she’s not just bumming off her friend Meow.

2) Miho, Sin City

Whether Miho is more of a samurai or a ninja or just an assassin is debatable. One thing she isn’t, though, is a prostitute — she just hangs out with the prostitutes of Old Town, and protects them from the many horrible horrible people that live in Sin City, almost solely by killing them violently. She’s quiet — she never speaks — and fast, thanks to her roller skates, and I’m pretty sure she’s kills every single man she interacts with in Frank Miller’s Sin City comics, with the sole exception of Dwight, who apparently saved her from a group of Tong gangsters in the past.

3) Tomoe Gozen

Although we don’t know for sure if Tomoe Gozen was a real historical figure or just a character in the Heike Monogatari, this female samurai was as beautiful as she was badass, and apparently she was quite beautiful. She was a “swordswoman worth a thousand,” and helped lead the general Minamoto no Yoshihara’s armies to victory over the Heike, taking more than a few of the enemy’s heads herself. Apparently she carried a massive, anime-esque sword, too. After the battle, she disappeared; some say she gave up the sword and became a nun, other than she married an enemy military commander.

4) Tsunade, Naruto

Although the characters of Naruto are technically called ninja, they’re actually much closer to bizarre superheroes than anything like what is traditionally considered a ninja. They don’t wear black, they rarely sneak around, and basically everything they do is outright magic. So when I say that Tsunade is the greatest female ninja in Naruto, I mean that she has the ability to summon a giant talking slug that can split into thousands of tiny slugs which can heal people by attaching to them. She’s also just as powerful a warrior as she is a medic; she’s strong enough to literally split the ground apart with a single finger poke. In addition, she’s the fifth Hokage, the leader of the Hidden Leaf Village, helped win the Second Shinobi World War, and despite being 50-years-old uses a special ninja technique to appear like a 20-something, and has a figure which pretty much prevents a truly safe Google Image Search for her.

5) Makie Otono-Tachibana, Blade of the Immortal

Trying to explain the insanely intricate plot of the Blade of the Immortal manga would take all day. The short version is that Makie was born into a samurai family, inherited her father’s skill with the sword, which caused her brother to commit suicide after discovering he could not beat her. In a series jam-packed with samurai and warriors, Makie is the top three, even beating out the protagonist Manji and the main antagonist Anotsu, whom Makie loves. Of course, she ends up dying from some lung disease, but she racked up an impressive body count before that, though.

6) Jinx, G.I. Joe

Thanks to the myriad G.I. Joe continuities, the origin of Jinx varies wildly, but she’s always been Joe’s best (and only) female ninja. She’s part of the Arashikage ninja clan that trained Snake Eyes, is definitely related to Storm Shadow, and was specifically trained by the Blind Master, meaning she can fight equally well in the dark or blindfolded. In Renegades she’s the daughter of the Hard Master, Snake Eyes’ teacher; in the Devil’s Due comics she had a romance with fellow martial artist Budo; in the original Marvel comics she’s part of Ninja Force; and somewhere she started a bounty hunting business. Still, she’s a damn fine ninja.

7) Jubei-chan the Ninja Girl

Jiyu Nanohana appears to be an ordinary schoolgirl, but she’s anything but. She’s the descendant of the legendary samurai Jubei Yagyu, and she she puts on the mystical Lovely Eyepatch, she becomes the reincarnation of Jubei himself, with all his attendant sword-fighting skills. The Ryujoji clan, still smarting from having their champion killed by the real Jubei 300 years ago, keep sending out killers to take Jiyu out to regain their honor. Rest assured, having a heart-shaped eyepatch imbued with the spirit of one of Japan’s most powerful warriors is supposed to be a bit silly, although that doesn’t make Jubei-chan any less badass. And no, I have no idea why she's called "the Ninja Girl" when Jubei Yagyu was a samurai.

8) Elektra, Marvel Comics

After her father, a Greek ambassador, was murdered, Elektra Natchios went to Japan to study martial arts. Unfortunately, she ended up studying with the evil mystical Hand ninja clan, so when she returned to the U.S. it was as a somewhat evil assassin. This didn’t stop her from having a romantic relationship with the superhero Daredevil, nor did it stop Bullseye, a very evil assassin, from killing her, mostly to screw with Daredevil. Since then she’s been resurrected, abducted by aliens, became leader of the Hand, split into good and evil people, and more, so she’s keeping busy.

9) Minamoto no Hikaru, Otogi Zoshi

When the Emperor orders Minamoto no Raiko to retrieves the legendary Magatama to lift the curse from the city of Kyoto, Raiko unfortunately gets sick. So his sister Hikaru disguises herself as her brother and performs the quest in his stead. She’s at Green Arrow/Hawkeye level with her bow and arrow, and defeats some seriously bad dudes along her journey. And then at some point everything switches to the present and she’s a high school student and a landlady. Otogi Zoshi is kind of weird.

10) Oyuki, Lady Snowblood

Created by the team who also made Lone Wolf and Cub, Lady Snowblood makes that dark, superviolent samurai series look like Pokémon. Born in prison after her mother killed one of the four men who raped her, Oyuki’s sole purpose in life is to find and kill the other three men as horribly as possible. Seriously, her mother had sex with the prison guards, just to get pregnant, just to have a kid who could kill those fuckers. To fund her search, she’s also an assassin, accepting no more and no less than 1,000 yen per hit — most of whom end up being horrible men who abuse and mistreat women. She has no problem using her beauty and her body to deceive the bastards she’s been hired to eliminate, but in the end it’s the blade hidden in her umbrella that strikes the final blow. The manga inspired a live-action movie in 1973, and a recent scifi remake titled The Princess Blade.

Today sees the release of White House Down, which is the most Emmerichian film ever produced. But meanwhile, you could also enjoy Europa Report on VOD or Byzantium in select theaters. Tons of low-budget science fiction and fantasy movies are more exciting than your average big summer blockbuster. Here are 25 of them.

Note: These are all films made for less than $30 million in 2013 dollars, in most cases way less than that.

Trollhunter: In this Norwegian film, a group of students meet a "troll hunter" and discover there are worse things in the forest than just deadly wildlife.

Being John Malkovich: The movie that introduced us to super-writer Charlie Kaufman and allowed us to open a doorway into a great actor's mind.

Attack The Block: Basically, aliens wreak havoc in the projects. But it's also a really powerful story about community, crime and repentance.

Cemetery Man: This Italian horror-comedy about a grave-digger who's forced to kill the dead when they rise again is also a creepy, strange love story.

Insidious: There have been a billion low-budget horror films in recent years, but this one stands out for its strong atmosphere and intense family dynamics.

Sleep Dealer: Discover the dark side of telepresence, as Mexican workers remotely pilot robot gardeners, construction workers — and killer drones.

Bubba Ho-Tep: Bruce Campbell has made a ton of great off-beat films, but this one in which Elvis and JFK fight the supernatural inside a rest home could be the wildest.

Chronicle: Josh Trank earned his gig directing Fantastic Four by directing this incredibly well-realized story of three teenagers who get superpowers that go to their heads.

Robot and Frank: this movie about a retired thief who gets a robot companion turns into a heist movie, a chase movie and a buddy comedy, but it never stops commenting on our relationship with technology.

The Crazies: a remake of a little-remembered George Romero movie about a town that goes nuts, this recent version was surprisingly brilliant and suspenseful.

Another Earth: the poster child of plucky indie movies in recent years, this film about a girl struggling with guilt under a duplicate Earth packs a lot of surprises.

The Terminator: probably the greatest DIY action movie of all time, James Cameron's debut is less splashy than T2 but still full of excitement and cleverness.

Moon: Duncan Jones made this movie about a lonely man in a moonbase for just $5 million, but he managed to create a completely compelling, exciting vision.

The Signal: three different directors made this indie thriller about a mysterious signal that makes people go nuts — and the results are actually super impressive.

28 Days Later: with an estimated budget of around $8 million, this "fast zombies" film feels like a splashy, intense action movie.

Shaun of the Dead: the first film of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright's "cornetto trilogy" is the cheapest, but will probably remain the best, thanks to genre-savvy zombie comedy.

Timecrimes: this Spanish film uses time paradoxes and a looping storyline to keep you guessing, but the thrills come from the sudden violence and creepy scares.

Safety Not Guaranteed: another film whose director (Colin Trevorrow) was promoted to directing a huge-budget franchise pic (Jurassic Park 4) on the strength of genuinely clever, funny direction.

Xtro: we had to include one low-budget slimy creature film, and this Alien knockoff is a great choice, thanks to some completely bonkers set pieces and an engaging family story.

Pitch Black: the first Riddick movie sticks to the basics, featuring a total amoral badass on a deadly planet, and it's like a seminar in space-murderology.

Zerophilia: this off-kilter, surprising romcom takes place in a world where some people have a "Z" chromosome that causes your gender to change every time you have sex.

The Host: one of the greatest monster movies of the past decade, this film manages to kick your ass with a surprisingly dark, satirical take on the kaiju genre.

Let The Right One In: the original Swedish version of this vampire movie is just amazingly thrilling, while also being beautifully focused on developing its characters and the setting of a frozen town.

Robocop: Like Terminator, this is a masterpiece of low budget film-making, made for just around $26 million in today's dollars. And even though the upcoming remake probably has 10 times the budget, it won't even come close to matching the thrills.

Primer: And finally, another movie that's exciting because of its ideas as much as because of the action. This cerebral, brain-twisting time-travel film rewards repeat viewings, but is just perfect the first time around.

So what did we leave out? Share your picks below!

Thanks to Rob Bricken, Jenn Brissett, Meredith Woerner, Zack Stentz, John Bowker, Michael A. Ventrella, Dave Goldberg, David Voderberg, Katherine Dawson, Tobi Hill-Meyer, Chuck Searcy, Gary Bodman, Eric Wybenga, Sasha Harris-Cronin, Chris LaMay-West, Sunil Patel, Jessy Randall, Karen Meisner, Terry Bisson, Rina Weisman, Marc Bernardin, Joe Decker and everybody else who suggested stuff!

These days, it seems like every other literary novel has speculative fiction ideas buried in it. This isn't a trend that suddenly burst out of nowhere — "literary" writers have been playing with fantastical notions forever. Here are 10 great literary books you didn't know were science fiction or fantasy.

Top image: Heart of a Dog.

We all know about the obvious literary/SF crossovers, like David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest or Don DeLillo's Ratner's Star, or Doris Lessing's experiments — but there are tons of others you probably didn't know about. In fact, here's a huge list of books that straddle the literary/SF divide, courtesy of Bruce Sterling and the "slipstream" fiction movement. So here are some great literary books, in particular, that you probably didn't know were SF or fantasy:

1) Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

This novel by the master of post-modernism might seem like an obvious choice — it was nominated for a Nebula Award, after all — but people don't describe it as speculative fiction that often. It's a weird travelogue, with Marco Polo telling Kublai Khan about the cities he's visited, many of which are completely fantastical, like the city with no walls. This book inspired Jeanette Winterson, who went on to write some famously science fictional novels.

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2) The Tin Drum by Günter Grass

This famous post-war German novel has a lot of fabulist elements as well — Oskar stops growing at around age three, so he retains the stature of a child throughout his life. Although after the end of World War II, he decides to start growing again, and gets a bit taller. Oskar also has a piercing shriek with the ability to shatter glass, a talent he demonstrates with alarming regularity. Grass uses surreal and fantastical elements to create a metaphor for Germany during and after World War II.

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3) Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

Every science fiction fan should read this book, which was a National Book Award finalist. Geek Love is the story of a family of circus performers, who use radiation and chemicals to turn their children into mutants — including Chick, who has telekinetic powers and the megalomaniac Arturo, who has flippers instead of hands and feet. One of these mutated kids, Olympia, has a daughter named Miranda who has a tail and becomes a stripper at an unusual fetish club. This is a really fantastic book that everyone should read, everywhere.

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4) Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov

This ultra-weird and incredibly famous 1925 novel is a classic of anti-Communist satire from the heart of the Soviet Union. Circulated as a Samizdat until its official publication in 1987, this novel tells the story of a dog who undergoes an experimental operation to give him the pituitary gland of a human, along with some other human parts. Soon, the dog starts to look and act like a human, and it rejects all of the moral and social strictures of the former Tsarist regime.

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5) Secret Rendezvous by Kobo Abe

Long before Haruki Murakami was achieving fame with his weird reality-warping novels, Kobo Abe was channeling Kafka. In this novel, a former nude model is searching for his missing wife, but he keeps being visited by a horse that talks to him about its penis. And meanwhile, a hospital nearby is doing weird sex experiments on its patients — the whole thing culminates in a bizarre "body horror freakout."

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6) Beloved by Toni Morrison

This novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988, and was made into a movie starring Oprah Winfrey. And it's a story about a family after the Civil War who are haunted by a revenant — apparently the ghost of the two-year-old girl they killed — and later meet a young girl whom they believe to be the ghost brought back to life. Here's an interview where Morrison talks about the importance of ghosts in her work.

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7) Stories by Karen Russell

The Pulitzer Prize finalist has made a name for herself with tales of magical realism, including the story of a girl sailing away in a crab's exoskeleton in her first collection St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. Her new collection Vampires in the Lemon Grove is chock full of off-beat premises, including a vampire's shifting relationship with his mortal wife, and a massage therapist who experiences someone's memories through his tattoos.

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8) Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Høeg

This acclaimed mystery novel was made into a movie starring Julia Ormond. And its central trope is that Smilla has developed an intuition about snow, in which she understands it on a deep, visceral level. She's able to deduce or understand things by looking at snow. And the novel's McGuffin turns out to be a meteorite that crashed years earlier, and a mysterious parasite has infected several of the main characters.

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9) In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan

The author of Trout Fishing in America and A Confederate General From Big Sur also wrote this strange novella about a group of people living in a surreal commune called iDEATH, which is either the last outpost of humanity after an apocalypse or some kind of experimental community. The book is full of strange hints and portents, and inspired Neko Case's song "Margaret Vs. Pauline."

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10) Golden Days by Carolyn See

This classic 1987 novel starts out as a realistic story of California in the 1980s — and then a nuclear holocaust happens, and the latter part of the novel takes place in post-apocalyptic Malibu. (Similar to the transformation that takes place in Doris Lessing's Martha Quest novels and Jennifer Egan's recent A Visit from the Goon Squad.) The early part of the novel, in which we get to know this disaffected woman in a "realistic" world, inform the later sections, where we see her struggling after the end of everything.

Thanks to everyone who helped me with this one!

Talk about spooky: There's a statuette in a Manchester Museum display case that's slowly rotating — completely on its own — over the course of the day until it's facing the opposite direction. It might be the curse of Neb-Sanu — or perhaps something much simpler.

The 10-inch tall statuette of Neb-Sanu, which has been in the museum for the past 80 years, only spins during the day. The 3,800 year-old artifact doesn't appear to move at night.

The Independent reports:

Campbell Price, an Egyptologist at the museum, suggests the museum may have been struck by ancient curse.

He told the Manchester Evening News: "I noticed one day that it had turned around. I thought it was strange because it is in a case and I am the only one who has a key.

“I put it back but then the next day it had moved again. We set up a time-lapse video and, although the naked eye can’t see it, you can clearly see it rotate on the film. The statuette is something that used to go in the tomb along with the mummy.

“Mourners would lay offerings at its feet.

“In Ancient Egypt they believed that if the mummy is destroyed then the statuette can act as an alternative vessel for the spirit. Maybe that is what is causing the movement.”.

The likely explanation? Differential friction. The two different surfaces — the bottom of the stone statuette and the glass shelf — are rubbing against each other as museum-goers create step vibrations. And it's these vibrations that are making the statuette slowly spin.

But the museum curators aren't buying it, saying “But it has been on those surfaces since we have had it and it has never moved before. And why would it go around in a perfect circle?”

Some of the most provocative artists today deal with biotechnology. Working with scientists and engineers, these artists transform living tissue and even their own bodies into works of art. Here are seven bio-artists whose contributions you should know.

"Ear on Arm" by photographer N. Sellars

1. Stelarc

The legendary Cypriot-Australian performance artist Stelarc likes to consider how technology extends the capacities of the human body and how at the same time our bodies are becoming increasingly obsolete.

Image: Demiaux.

Neither a utopian or a dystopian, Stelarc's central claim is that we’re progressively extending ourselves into our environment and our technological artifacts, and as a result, are transforming ourselves into both cyborgs and zombies.

Stelarc’s performances often involve robotics and other modern technologies. He has undergone voluntary surgeries, endowed himself with a third arm, and risked killing himself after ingesting a “stomach sculpture.”

In one performance, he allowed his body to be controlled remotely by electronic muscle stimulators connected to the internet. Most recently, he had a cell-cultivated ear surgically attached to his left arm.

Image: The weight of the rocks are in perfect balance with Stelarc. Image: Stelarc.

He’s also famous for his suspension performances.

2. Orlan

Shocking, controversial, and highly provocative, Orlan uses her body — and especially her face — as her canvas. She applies cosmetic surgery to transform her face into any number of forms, including The Reincarnation of Saint-Orlan piece in which she morphed herself into elements from famous paintings and sculptures of women.

Orlan used these surgeries to conform her face to the feminine ideal as depicted by male artists.

Image: Prometeogallery.

The surgery is part of the performance. Image: USCB

But by using cosmetic surgery as the means of her transformation, she shows the power of technology to transform our physical appearance. What’s more, her art shows how fungible the human form can be.

Image: Orlan Gallery.

Image: marvellousartmusings.

3. Genesis Breyer P-Orridge

An English musician, poet, writer, and performance artist, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge’s work explores a diverse number of themes, including sex work, occultism, and gender issues. S/he is most famous for Project Pandrogeny — a collaborative effort with his wife Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge in which the two tried to create an amalgam of their two selves. The project touched upon such themes as personal transformation, deep interpersonal coupling, and postgenderism.

Image: Paul Quitoriano, Village Voice

The experiment to create a pandrogynous being named Breyer P-Orridge required the couple to undergo breast implants and other physical transformations. They also adopted gender neutral and alternating pronouns (e.g. s/he, h/er, and h/erself).

Image: PopMatters

“And then over the years, we transformed more and more until we were both running around in miniskirts, dressed the same,” they noted to the Village Voice.

Image: PortableTV

Image: NYMag

4. Eduardo Kac

Brazilian-American "transgenic artist" Eduardo Kac uses biotechnology and genetics to explore and critique scientific techniques.

In his first work, "Genesis," Kac took a bible verse, translated it into Morse code, and then converted it into the base pairs of genetics. He then implanted the resulting genes into an unspecified bacterium that he grew in a petri dish. The idea was to create a dichotomy between biblical injunctions against tampering with nature with doing exactly that.

But his most famous work is Alba, the creation of a green-fluorescent rabbit. Kac took a rabbit and implanted it with a Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) found in jellyfish. When placed under a blue light, the rabbit glowed a bright, eerie green.

Kac says that the “nature of his new art is defined not only by the birth and growth of a new plant or animal but above all by the nature of the relationship among artist, public, and transgenic organism.”

Kac also has a microchip in his ankle, choosing that part of the body because slaves were often branded there.

5. Natasha Vita-More

A seminal figure in the transhumanist and extropian movements, Natasha Vita-More integrates her futurist visions and ethos into her conceptual art pieces. An advocate of human enhancement and morphological freedoms, her work explores such themes as biotechnology, robotics, information technology, nanotechnology, neuroscience and cognitive science, artificial general intelligence. Human nature, argues Vita-More, is predicated on the desire to solve problems through innovative methods and design.

Her best known work is Primo Posthuman, a project that proposes the possibilities of the future human — one that’s the product of intentional design rather than the forces of natural selection. The Primo Posthuman is a futuristic version of the human form that’s overcome disease, aging — and which features any number of new “features.”

“Unlike the cyborg, Primo’s unfolding nature is based on expanding choices,” she says, “Unlike the transcendent, Primo is driven by the rational rather than the mystical.”

She notes:

Primo is engineered like a finely tuned machine and displayed visually like a biological body to mirror the human shape for cognitive association, visual recognition, and aesthetic appeal. Yet, the Primo body does not age, is easily upgraded, has meta-sensory components, 24-hour remote Net relay system, and multiple gender options. Its outer sheath is primed with smart skin which vanguards practical designs purposes for communication. The model structure is composed of assembled massive molecular cytes or cells connected together to form the outer fabric of the body. The smart skin is engineered to repair, remake, and replace itself. It contains nanobots throughout the epidermal and dermis to communicate with the brain to determine the texture and tone of its surface. It transmits enhanced sensory data to the brain on an ongoing basis. The smart skin learns how and when to renew itself, alerts the outside world of the disposition of the person; gives specific degrees of the body’s temperature from moment to moment; and reflects symbols, images, colors and textures across its contours. It is able to relate the percentages of toxins in the environment and the extract radiation effects of the sun.

6. Micha Cárdenas

American performance and new media artist, Micha Cárdenas’s work explores the impacts of biotechnology, wearable computing, and the intersection of the real and virtual worlds. Her work investigates the way technologies can both extend and morph the human body, particularly beyond conventional gender roles.

Back in 2008, Cárdenas performed “Becoming Dragon,” a 365 hour mixed reality performance in Second Life. For the entire 365 hours, Cárdenas took on the form of a dragon named Azdel Slade.

She’s also the co-author of The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities in which she discusses augmented reality, mixed reality, alternate reality approaches.

7. Aimee Mullins

Aimee Mullins is primarily known for her accomplishments as a Paralympian athlete, but in 1999 she collaborated with British fashion designer Alexander McQueen on a rather interesting project. Mullins, who had both of her legs amputated below the knee when she was one year old, posed on pair of hand-carved wooden prosthetic legs made from solid ash, with integral boots.

Image: MetMuseum

The BBC reported:

"You always expected the unexpected with Alexander McQueen," says Helen Boyle a fashion stylist and presenter. "Everyone was waiting to see who was on the catwalk, and what they were wearing.

"By putting disabled people on he was taking people out of their comfort zones, making people think, making people sit up in their chairs."

In 2003 she collaborated with director Matthew Barney for the Cremaster 3 project in which she posed for a series of provocative scenes, showing how the human body can be presented and extended beyond so-called human “normalcy.”

Image: Screen grab from Cremaster 3

Sabine Pearlman's photographs find beauty in the destructive engineering of ammunition with this series of cross-sections of bullets cartridges from a Swiss bunker. They reveal the complexity inside each case.

This series, which consists of 900 specimens, was photographed inside a WWII bunker in Switzerland. Pearlman says that she is intrigued by the beautiful complexity of the ammo set against its destructive purpose, at once showing off humanity's ability to create and destroy. You can see more cross-sections on Pearlman's website.

[Sabine Pearlman via mashKULTURE]

Edit: Commenter Phil Metal Jacket points us to these labels, identified by Redditor DrakeGmbH. From top to bottom, left to right:

1. Some flavor of 5.56x45 loaded with a steel projectile in a copper half-jacket to protect the bore

2. 5.56mm XM216 SPIW Flechette

3. 7.62/.220 Salvo Squeezebore

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1. 7.62x51mm Plastic short-range training tracer

2. This one is curious - it looks like a 7.62x51mm but the interior looks like a 'sabotage' cartridge as it appears to be loaded with a blasting cap and a small amount of explosive. Upon further consideration, I believe it may be a 7.92mm Mauser rather than a 7.62mm NATO based on the case dimensions and bullet construction.

3. 6.5x55mm wood bullet blank (guessing at the cartridge on that one, it looks right!)

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1. 9x19mm Cobra "High Safety Ammunition" - steel darts inside a polymer sabot

2. 9x19mm Israeli riot control - steel balls embedded in amber resin

In 2007, San Francisco artist Shoshanah Dubiner – who had spent the preceding 40 years designing costumes in Italy, working as a graphic designer in Los Angeles, and teaching handwork at the Waldorf school (among other things) – enrolled in a university course on cell biology. Her experience in the classroom inspired a ridiculously awesome series based on the world seen through the microscope.

Featured here is a piece called "The Deep." Dubiner describes the piece on her blog:

My painting, "The Deep," interprets the vision of the great Russian scientist Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1863-1945). A minerologist, geochemisty, and founder of the biosphere concept, Vernadsky calculated the amount of cosmic energy that the biosphere absorbs through solar energy being trapped by chlorophyll of green algae. Vernadsky ultimately saw living matter as the greatest of all geological forces. In this painting, the sun’s energy, shown as photons, is transformed by photosynthesizing red and green bacteria, algae, and plants into a “green fire,” shown here as flames. According to Vernadsky, the expansion of the “green fire,” fed by the sun, pressured other beings, like animals, to become more complex and more dispersed, i.e. to evolve into the millions of species of creatures who have inhabited and still inhabit our planet.

See more of Dubiner's awesome science art on her website.

[Via I ]

This ad for Stephen King's long-awaited sequel to The Shining, titled Dr. Sleep, is short, but it does confirm a few things: 1) Danny Torrence, the young boy from the original novel, is back, 2) his life is still horrible, and 3) somebody's gonna write "REDRUM" on something.

Dr. Sleep hits bookstands on September 24th.

[Via LA Times]

 

How does hostage negotiation get people to change their minds?

The Behavioral Change Stairway Model was developed by the FBI’s hostage negotiation unit, and it shows the 5 steps to getting someone else to see your point of view and change what they’re doing.

It’s not something that only works with barricaded criminals wielding assault rifles — it applies to most any form of disagreement.

There are five steps:

1. Active Listening: Listen to their side and make them aware you’re listening.
2. Empathy: You get an understanding of where they’re coming from and how they feel.
3. Rapport: Empathy is what you feel. Rapport is when they feel it back. They start to trust you.
4. Influence: Now that they trust you, you’ve earned the right to work on problem solving with them and recommend a course of action.
5. Behavioral Change: They act. (And maybe come out with their hands up.)

The problem is, you’re probably screwing it up.

 

What you’re doing wrong

In all likelihood you usually skip the first three steps. You start at 4 (Influence) and expect the other person to immediately go to 5 (Behavioral Change).

And that never works.

Saying “Here’s why I’m right and you’re wrong” might be effective if people were fundamentally rational.

But they’re not.

From my interview with former head of FBI international hostage negotiation, Chris Voss:

…business negotiations try to pretend that emotions don’t exist. What’s your best alternative to a negotiated agreement, or ‘BATNA’?  That’s to try to be completely unemotional and rational, which is a fiction about negotiation. Human beings are incapable of being rational, regardless… So instead of pretending emotions don’t exist in negotiations, hostage negotiators have actually designed an approach that takes emotions fully into account and uses them to influence situations, which is the reality of the way all negotiations go…

The most critical step in the Behavioral Change Staircase is actually the first part: Active listening.

The other steps all follow from it. But most people are terrible at listening.

Here’s Chris again:

If while you’re making your argument, the only time the other side is silent is because they’re thinking about their own argument, they’ve got a voice in their head that’s talking to them. They’re not listening to you. When they’re making their argument to you, you’re thinking about your argument, that’s the voice in your head that’s talking to you. So it’s very much like dealing with a schizophrenic.

If your first objective in the negotiation, instead of making your argument, is to hear the other side out, that’s the only way you can quiet the voice in the other guy’s mind. But most people don’t do that. They don’t walk into a negotiation wanting to hear what the other side has to say. They walk into a negotiation wanting to make an argument. They don’t pay attention to emotions and they don’t listen.

The basics of active listening are pretty straightforward:

1. Listen to what they say. Don’t interrupt, disagree or “evaluate.”
2. Nod your head, and make brief acknowledging comments like “yes” and “uh-huh.”
3. Without being awkward, repeat back the gist of what they just said, from their frame of reference.
4. Inquire. Ask questions that show you’ve been paying attention and that move the discussion forward.

So what six techniques do FBI hostage negotiation professionals use to take it to the next level?

 

1. Ask open-ended questions

You don’t want yes/no answers, you want them to open up.

Via Crisis Negotiations, Fourth Edition: Managing Critical Incidents and Hostage Situations in Law Enforcement and Corrections:

A good open-ended question would be “Sounds like a tough deal. Tell me how it all happened.” It is non-judgmental, shows interest, and is likely to lead to more information about the man’s situation. A poor response would be “Do you have a gun? What kind? How many bullets do you have?” because it forces the man into one-word answers, gives the impression that the negotiator is more interested in the gun than the man, and communicates a sense of urgency that will build rather than defuse tension.

 

2. Effective pauses

Pausing is powerful. Use it for emphasis, to encourage someone to keep talking or to defuse things when people get emotional.

Gary Noesner, author of Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator has said:

Eventually, even the most emotionally overwrought subjects will find it difficult to sustain a one-sided argument, and they again will return to meaningful dialogue with negotiators. Thus, by remaining silent at the right times, negotiators actually can move the overall negotiation process forward.

 

3. Minimal Encouragers

Brief statements to let the person know you’re listening and to keep them talking.

Gary Noesner:

Even relatively simple phrases, such as “yes,” “O.K.,” or “I see,” effectively convey that a negotiator is paying attention to the subject. These responses will encourage the subject to continue talking and gradually relinquish more control of the situation to the negotiator.

 

4. Mirroring

Repeating the last word or phrase the person said to show you’re listening and engaged. Yes, it’s that simple — just repeat the last word or two:

Gary Noesner:

For example, a subject may declare, “I’m sick and tired of being pushed around,” to which the negotiator can respond, “Feel pushed, huh?”

 

5. Paraphrasing

Repeating what the other person is saying back to them in your own words. This powerfully shows you really do understand and aren’t merely parroting.

From my interview with former head of FBI international hostage negotiation, Chris Voss:

The idea is to really listen to what the other side is saying and feed it back to them. It’s kind of a discovery process for both sides. First of all, you’re trying to discover what’s important to them, and secondly, you’re trying to help them hear what they’re saying to find out if what they are saying makes sense to them.

 

6. Emotional Labeling

Give their feelings a name. It shows you’re identifying with how they feel. Don’t comment on the validity of the feelings — they could be totally crazy — but show them you understand.

Via Crisis Negotiations, Fourth Edition: Managing Critical Incidents and Hostage Situations in Law Enforcement and Corrections:

A good use of emotional labeling would be “You sound pretty hurt about being left. It doesn’t seem fair.” because it recognizes the feelings without judging them. It is a good Additive Empathetic response because it identifies the hurt that underlies the anger the woman feels and adds the idea of justice to the actor’s message, an idea that can lead to other ways of getting justice.

A poor response would be “You don’t need to feel that way. If he was messing around on you, he was not worth the energy.” It is judgmental. It tells the subject how not to feel. It minimizes the subject’s feelings, which are a major part of who she is. It is Subtractive Empathy.

Curious to learn more?

To get my exclusive full interview with former head of FBI hostage negotiation Chris Voss (where he explains the two words that tell you a negotiation is going very badly) join my free weekly newsletter. Click here.

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The post 6 hostage negotiation techniques that will get you what you want appeared first on Barking Up The Wrong Tree.

“Leaving is not enough. You must stay gone. Train your heart like a dog. Change the locks even on the house he’s never visited. You lucky, lucky girl. You have an apartment just your size. A bathtub full of tea. A heart the size of Arizona, but not nearly so arid. Don’t wish away your cracked past, your crooked toes, your problems are papier mache puppets you made or bought because the vendor at the market was so compelling you just had to have them. You had to have him. And you did. And now you pull down the bridge between your houses, you make him call before he visits, you take a lover for granted, you take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic. Make the first bottle you consume in this place a relic. Place it on whatever altar you fashion with a knife and five cranberries. Don’t lose too much weight. Stupid girls are always trying to disappear as revenge. And you are not stupid. You loved a man with more hands than a parade of beggars, and here you stand. Heart like a four-poster bed. Heart like a canvas. Heart leaking something so strong they can smell it in the street.”

- Frida Kahlo 

via http://www.calligraffiti.nl/page/3

A flag embodies the hopes and aspirations of a country or state. It's more than just an emblem — it's a grand statement. So it's too bad so many flags are kind of boring. Here are some flags from throughout history (plus a few current ones) that bring some serious pizzazz.

Above: the flag of Mozambique between 1975 and 1983.

Most Serene Republic of Venice or Republic of Venice (697-1797)

(via Flanker)

Isle of Man (13th century-)

(via Sodipodi flag collection)

The Kingdom of Ireland (1542-1801)

(via Trajan117)

Burma (1752-1885)

(via Mnmazur)

The Bowman Flag of Australia (1806)

(via Sodacan)

The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (1816-1848; 1849-1860)

(via Flanker)

State ensign of Siam (1817-1855)

(via Xiengyod)

Gran Colombia (1819-1820)

(via Shadowxfox)

Peru (1821-1822, created by José de San Martín)

(via Huhsunqu)

Swedish merchant flag (1844-1905)

(via Jeltz)

Kingdom of Hungary (December 21, 1867 - November 12, 1918)

(via Thommy)

Republic of Formosa or Republic of Taiwan (1895)

(via Jeff Dahl)

South Africa (1912-1928)

(via Fornax)

First flag of the Republic of China (1912-1928)

(via Kibinsky)

Naval Ensign of Austria-Hungary (1915-1918)

(via Hugh Jass)

South Africa (1928-1994, known as the Oranje-Blanje-Blou)

(via Denelson83)

Flag of the Second Spanish Republic (1931-1939)

(via SanchoPanzaXXI)

Japanese occupation of Cambodia (March-October 1945)

(via AnonMoos)

Eritrea (1952-1962)

(via Orange Tuesday)

Herm, the smallest of the Channel Islands open to the public (1953-)

(via Denelson83)

Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic (1953-1990)

(via Urmas and Nokka)

French Sudan (November 24, 1956 - April 4, 1959)

(via Akiramenai)

British Columbia, a province of Canada (1960-)

(via -xfi-)

Burundi (1962-1966)

(via Orange Tuesday)

Gozo, a small island in Malta (1964-)

(via Sannita)

Papua New Guinea (1965-1970)

(via Orange Tuesday)

Rhodesia (1968-1979)

(via Sagredo)

Zaire (1971-1997)

(via Moyogo)

Northern Territory in the central northern region of Australia (1978-)

(via Froztbyte)

Flag of Aragon, an autonomous community in Spain (1982-)

(via Willtron)

Sicily, Italy (1990-)

(via Angelo Romano)

Abkhazia, a territory that is fully recognised by Russia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Nauru and Tuvalu (1992-)

(via Achim1999)

The only Buddhist region of Europe: The Republic of Kalmykia, Russia (1993-)

(via Conscious)

Veneto, Italy (1999-)

(via Flanker & Angelus)

Christmas Island, a territory of Australia (unofficially adopted in 1986, but made official only in 2002)

(via Tony Couch)

The Mari El Republic, a federal subject of Russia (2011-)

(via Urmas)

Pereira, Chile

(via Guilherme Paula)

Pernambuco, a state of Brazil

(via E2m)

Ceuta, an autonomous city of Spain in Africa

(via Ulaidh)

Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, a province of central Ukraine

(via Hellerick)

Bonus: A Flag of the Governor-General of India (1885-1947)

(via Sodacan)

The long awaited Y: The Last Man movie adaptation is as "close as it's ever been" to happening. Which fills us all with excitement and dread. Please be good. Please be good.

In an interview with Crave Online, producer David S. Goyer spilled the beans that Y: The Last Man is actually getting closer to becoming a real movie:

"I am. We've got a script that's as close as it's ever been," he said. "That could go into production next year.... The first movie is meant to function as a standalone," he said, "but hopefully continue. Hopefully there will be others."

Created at Vertigo Comics, the series was penned by the great Brian K. Vaughan. The book follows the travels of the last man on Earth. But he's not alone, there are plenty of women left on Earth, just no men. Still not sure how this series can translate into a standalone film, or perhaps that's just because we'd rather see it as an HBO series. Oh well, at least this is progress!

A whole host of pieces have been revealed for next month's Celebration Europe Art Show, showcasing some of the coolest Star Wars fan art from artists around the world... although there's something playfully ironic about depicting George Lucas as the Dark Lord of the Sith in a work designed to celebrate the legacy of Star Wars.

The 17 unveiled pieces will only be available to purchase and collect from Celebration Europe in Germany next month, with preorders for the extremely limited-run prints available now. There's some pretty awesome stuff in there, from a celebration of the recently-departed Clone Wars, to female Sand Troopers, Darth Vader's order to put down Owen and Beru Lars, and more than a few depictions of Leia's slave bikini - it is Return of the Jedi's 30th Anniversary, after all.

Check out a few of the pieces below, and if you're going to Celebration, you can preorder a print here.

Homecoming, Brian Rood

Apology Accepted, Jerry VanderStelt

The Dancer's Pit, Shea Standefer

In Order: Shade, Drew Baker,

Biker Scout, Joshua Smith (a.k.a Hydro74),

Our Actions Define Our Legacy, Lin Zy,

Dream Maker, Tsuneo Sanda

[SW Celebration]

Illustrations by Franz Wacik for the humor magazine Die Muskete, circa 1906–1911 Vienna 1909 Li-An has been posting a ton of material from Die Muskete on his tumblr. As I work my own way through the complete archive at Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Franz Wacik's strange out-of-time work keeps catching my eye. Apparently he published 600 drawings in the magazine from 1906 to 1919. (I've made it through mid-1911 and have hoarded a couple hundred.) Information about Wacik (Vienna, 1883–1938) is scant, so luckily Barbara Copeland Buenger discusses him in her essay "Unwieldy Wien" (from Design, Vienna: 1890s to 1930s):As one of the group's greatest founders and practitioners, [Czeschka] has always received central notice in histories of modern Viennese art and design. Such is not true of Franz Wacik, widely admired as a political and social cartoonist for a popular Viennese humorous weekly, occasional theater designer, and illustrator of children's books (he designed three volumes in the Gerlach series). Wacik is all but forgotten in texts that present the Wiener Werkstätte as Vienna's only modern art movement and thus reminds us that a richer, more complicated history of modern art often falls outside a too-strictly-construed modernist canon. Wacik was a regular member and exhibitor with the Secession, and illustrated Hugo von Hofmannsthal's famous wartime children's book, Prinz Eugen der edle Ritter [Prince Eugene the Nobel Knight] in 1915. [Ed.: See my scan at the bottom of this post.] Another short bio at Kunsthandel Hieke:[Wacik] studied at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts and at the Vienna Academy. [Ed.: he studied with Alfred Roller, Christian Griepenkerl, Franz Rumpler, and Heinrich Lefler.] From 1906 to 1919, he worked for the magazine “Muskete” -- 600 of his drawings are from this period. In 1924, he designed the frescoes on the first floor of the Vienna Secession, and in 1927/8 the frescoes in the arcades of the municipal building on Vogelweidplatz...For his work, he was awarded the Lampi Prize and the Füger Medal as well as the State Prize in 1934. The Vienna Secession held a memorial exhibition in 1939. Buenger mentions "the artist Marianne Wacik, Franz Wacik's wife" — I haven't yet looked her up. Anyway, ENJOY. At the end of the post I provide some non-Muskete work. 1906 1909 (is that Jeeves?) 1906 1910 1907 1906 1907 1909 1908 1907 1906 (this one's all about the cat) 1906 1910 1907 1907 1907 1910 1911 Non-Muskete work: Illus. for Hugo von Hofmannsthal's wartime children's book, Prinz Eugen der edle Ritter (1915) "The Midnight Feast" via John Coulthart's 2009 post on feuilleton 1912 poster by Franz Wacik via The Vienna Secession site Also see: Twenty Postcards of the Wiener Werkstätte and Der Orchideengarten

Secret Cinema is an immersive and extensively well thought out audience participation cinema event. Their latest screening was of Terry Gilliam's Brazil, and words cannot express the insane amount of detail that went into this massively staged screening in Croydon. So we'll let this astounding gallery do the talking.

The whole event took place in an office building. Not a single detail was missed — heck we even spotted a few Central Services workers. Here's just a small amount of images from Gavin and Jason Fox on Flickr — there's tons more. Go check it out, they're all really this beautiful.

[Secret Cinema via Super Punch]

We have seen similar problems before.

The future, as envisioned by Japanese illustrators in the 1980s, is as beautiful as it is bizarre.

Top image by Ryoko Ishioka, via 50 Watts

Featured here is but a small sampling from a huge collection of futuristic Japanese illustrations from the 70s and 80s, all of them sought out, scanned, and compiled by design blogger/historian/custodian of retrofuturistic relics Will Schofield. For the full collection (the expansion of which is on hiatus while Schofield curates a related assortment of artwork) visit Space Teriyaki at 50 Watts.

Images and captions via Will Schofield

Shusei Nagoaka, Humanoid, movie poster

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Noriyoshi Orai, advertising poster, 1980

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Pater Sato magazine cover

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Komatsuzaki, Underground metropolis, ca. 1980

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Naoki Yasuda, ca. 80s

Sadao Sato, late 80s

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Shusei Nagaoka, from Androla in Labyrinth, 1984

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Kazuaki Iwasaki, mid-80s

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Shusei Nagaoka, Androla in Labyrinth, 1984

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Shusei Nagaoka, Androla in Labyrinth, 1984

Whoops, this is insane. Completely insane. Game designer and ex-TimeGate-er Drew Rechner’s been on a seven-year quest to recreate the entirety of Baldur’s Gate (including expansion Tales of the Sword Coast) in Obsidian’s Neverwinter Nights 2, and he’s finally succeeded. With the help of a programmer and contributions from a ragtag team, he squeezed every last drop of the original’s genre-defining juice into a glistening concoction of role-playing past and present. There’s a trailer after the break, and it’s pretty bonkers. I’m reinstalling NWN2 right now, because wow. Madness.

(more…)

In case you were worried you'd ever get a good night's sleep again, here are some stuffed animals that go way beyond wrong.

The Lion of King Frederick I of Sweden

In 1731 the Swedish king received a lion as a gift from the Bey of Algiers, and sent it to a taxidermist who had never seen a living lion. The poor man had just the pelt and the bones to work from.

(Photo: Hans Thorwid/Nationalmuseum, via Facebook)

The Freak Kitten by Walter Potter

(via Taxidermy4cash)

Sad fox by the British taxonomist Adele Morse

(via Fotopozitiv)

A Leopard from the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle in Tours, France

(via Flickr/Julie Hascoët)

Sad otter

(via Anorak)

There is something wrong with this donkey

These animals are high or stoned

A cougar

Hungry Hyena

Tanuki or the Japanese Raccoon Dog

The Vietnamese Zombie Horse

Kinky bobcat

The cock-stealing beaver

Wolves at the Natural History Museum of Kochkor, Kyrgyzstan.

An adorable dog from the Gwangju Folk Museum, Gwangju, South Korea

The Cowardly Lion from the Wizard Of Oz

Hybrids

Scared Cat

A happy seal with serious dental problems

Surprised Owl

(via Crappy Taxidermy, Badly Stuffed Animals and Bad Taxidermy)

A lot of post-apocalyptic tales look really awesome with their explosions and rotting monsters, but they don't have a lot of philosophical depth. Here are 13 stories about armageddon that actually teach valuable lessons about the real world — and its demise.

What's interesting about some of these stories is that they are about anticipating a post-apocalyptic world, or moving through many stages of apocalypse — perhaps it's the long view in them that allows their creators to pull lessons out of an apocalyptic scenario.

1. Dollhouse, "Epitaph"

There is something very valuable about the idea of “birthmarks” found in the two-part series ender “Epitaph.” Birthmarks are a tattoo of a person’s real name, on his or her back, so that people can distinguish between people still in their own bodies and people who have been imprinted. Priya, who had been the doll Sierra, came up with the idea: “So I’ll always know who I am. If I wake up thinking I’m someone else, I’ll have to face up to that hideous lie.” There are two great lessons in the birthmark: no matter what, know who you are; and make sure other people know it, too.

2. Logan’s Run

The ending teaches a lesson that we really shouldn’t forget: Garbage in, garbage out. Computers aren’t infallible, no matter how appealing it may be to let a supercomputer run our whole world, we need to make sure that they’re making determinations based on truth. In Logan’s Run, no one bothered to check to see if the planet was still uninhabitable, just let the computer run their lives based on that assumption.

3. Waterworld

Yes this movie was a trainwreck. But it actually offered a few interesting ideas to mull over, including ones about how humanity might evolve to deal with a world that has been transformed by global warming into a giant ocean. We learn that humans should embrace helpful mutations, like gills, that will help you survive the changed world. Also, don't be afraid to drink your own pee.

4. The Postman

Both the movie and the book teach that symbols are important, and that rebuilding infrastructure and lines of communication are the first steps to rebuilding society. The book focuses more on how people will cling to normalcy to survive and how extreme views embodied by the Holdnists, a group of hyper survivalists, can derail and actively work against rebuilding. Most of all, the story teach us that the true heroes of the post-apocalypse are the humans who fight to help disconnected groups stay in touch with each other.

5. Mass Effect

This is one of those stories that is about planning ahead for the future post-apocalypse. The main lesson is: Always leave a detailed plan for future cycles. You might not be able to survive personally, but you can give hope to the future. It was only by building on the work of previously harvested civilizations that the Crucible could be built and the cycles of galactic annihilation could end.

6. Foundation Trilogy

Like Mass Effect, the original Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov deals with storing up knowledge for future civilizations that will rise from the ashes of a dark age or apocalypse. When the mathematician Hari Seldon discovers that galactic civilization is headed for a 30 thousand-year dark age, he also discovers that if he can build storehouses of knowledge that these dark ages will only last for a thousand years. The books deal with his efforts to build two Foundations, at either side of the galaxy, and the struggle to create a new Galactic Empire after the first has fallen — just as Seldon predicted.

7. Always Coming Home, by Ursula Le Guin

Le Guin's novel is a direct retort to Foundation. Instead of preserving the old civilization in vast storehouses, this book advocates throwing out the old civilization and starting over fresh with new ideas that won’t lead to a repeat of past mistakes. This book’s particular new civilization on a an idyllic, primitive matriarchy. Perhaps a little to Utopian for reality, but it does make a case for not repeating history.

8. Last and First Men, by Olaf Stapledon

In this classic novel from 1930, Stapledon explores the long future of humanity, which punctuated by many apocalypses and returns from the brink of destruction. Though humanity does continue on, evolving into dramatically different creatures and colonizing the solar system, we don't seem to learn much from our mistakes. Ultimately the sun grows dimmer and humanity faces its demise after dozens of cycles of savagery and civilization. Perhaps it is our fate to never quite get out of the cycle of destruction and rebirth.

9. Canticle for Lebowitz, by Walter Miller, Jr.

An even darker (and less whimsical) version of Last and First Men can be found in this horrifically depressing novel, where humanity is doomed to repeat its mistakes and obliterate itself in war over and over again. There is no hope for us to really evolve beyond where we are now — human civilization is always rising only to strangle itself.

10. Star Trek: First Contact

Leave it to Star Trek to bring back hope out of the post-apocalypse. Even though humanity does go through a dark age in the Star Trek timeline, we finally get a close look at how we pull ourselves out of it in this film. Humans continue to innovate technology in the rubble, despite the witchhunts and hunger and collapse of government. And at last, one man with a vision invents warp drive. That's when the Vulcans arrive and invite humans into a partnership that eventually becomes the Federation. So scientific innovations will save us and lead us forward into a better future, despite our best efforts to sabotage ourselves.

11. The Hunger Games books

There are a number of possible messages to take away from The Hunger Games books. The series, for all its faults, an excellent primer on media manipulation. But what it does, especially in the third book, is remind us that manipulation is not the sole province of one side or the other. Katniss’s allies in the fight against President Snow and the Capital are just as, if not more, willing to use her as a symbol.

12. The Newsflesh Trilogy, by Mira Grant

When the zombie pandemic comes, the only news outlets that report on it truthfully are blogs and social media. This is a simple lesson, but effective. If you want to know what's really going on in the world, don't trust the mainstream media.

13. Zombieland

The movie features 49 rules, including the famous "cardio" and "double tap." These are of course very useful in almost every circumstance.

In 1997, Last Unicorn Games released Dune: Eye of the Storm, the first installment of a Dune collectible card game. These paintings for the game, by artist Mark Zug, offer a gorgeous return to Frank Herbert's world.

Zug explains that when he first began these paintings for Last Unicorn, he was told that the design of the game would be based on David Lynch's Dune film, but later he was told to steer clear of the Lynchian designs. So some of his paintings look quite close to the film, while at least one includes an original character—one who doesn't appear in any prior Dune media.

You can see more of Zug's Dune paintings on his website.

Dune, the Card Game [Mark Zug via MetaFilter]

Dune, the Card Game [Mark Zug via MetaFilter]

A new software program called GoogleFaces uses Google Maps and facial recognition software to isolate geographic structures that look like human faces. It's far from perfect, but the program has uncovered some remarkably face-like surface features.

Humans are good at picking out faces from everyday objects and structures — a characteristic known as pareidolia; we see faces nearly everywhere, whether it be on the foam of our lattes or the surface of Mars.

Looking to take advantage of this psychological phenomenon, designers at Berlin's Onformative developed an algorithm that scans the surface of the Earth with Google Maps, picking out geographical structures that are likely to be construed as having face-like features.

Here's how the software works.

One of the key aspects of this project, is the autonomy of the face searching agent and the amount of data we are investigating. The source of our image data is halfway voluntary provided by Google Maps. Our agent flips through one satellite image after the other, in order to feed the face detection algorithm with landscape samples. The corresponding iteration algorithm steps sequentially along the latitude and longitude of our globe. Once the agent circumnavigated the world, it switches to the next zoom level and starts all over again.

In order to process the face detection algorithm on top of different satellite images and store the geographical coordinates, we needed a precise communication between our standalone application and a virtual browser surfing Google Maps. Therefore we decided to use ofxBerkelium, which is an OpenFrameworks wrapper for Berkelium. This library offers the possibility to capture browser images within a standalone application and to communicate via Javascript.

This video shows GoogleFaces at work:

All images Onformative/GoogleMaps.

[Via Geek]

Russian artist Tauart has a habit of body-painting attractive women and turning them into bizarre (but beautiful) aliens, and it's a habit that deserves to be shared with the world. WARNING: This gallery is NSFW, on account of mild nipplage. Be sure to check out more of tauart's amazing work at his DeviantArt page!

[Via Fashionably Geek]

We all know that Middle-Earth is a sausage fest. But what would happen if you flipped all the genders? Could Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings still work as well if you replaced Sean Bean, John Noble and Sean Astin with women? This dream cast proves it would. It's... a diversion.

Over at Livejournal, Annis created this gender-swapped cast for Jackson's LotR, and the results are amazing. Even though Annis claims to be "bad at actors" and not a movie buff, the choices are pretty perfect. Annis explains:

When I created this picspam, I had a couple of requirements when choosing an actor. First off: they should be of an approximately fitting age. No 20-year-old Aragorn or 40-year-old Gandalf. Second off: they should have some tie to the movie version of the character, as that's what I'm casting after.

Check out the whole thing over at LJ, but here are some of our favorites:

Today we have body farms. Toward the end of the 19th century, we had pieces like "Body of a Courtesan in Nine Stages," by Japanese artist Kobayashi Eitaku.

h/t Scientific Illustration

Disney and other Hollywood sanitizers have convinced everybody that fairies are benevolent wish-granters, or maybe environmental champions. But in actual folklore? Fairies are terrifying. They're more into baby-stealing and murder than pixie dust. Here are 10 terrifying things fairies could do to you.

Fairies, or the “Good People” from the legends of Ireland, Scotland and England, are usually depicted as capricious at best, and downright wicked at worst.

While probably most cultures have tales of earth spirits with uneasy relationship to humans, the Celtic fairies have done a lot to inform the modern popular interpretation of what a fairy is and looks like. Part of this is due to the collection of fairy lore as a serious anthropological pursuit in the 1880s by noted scholars and poets like W.B. Yeats and the gorgeous and romantic Pre-Raphaelite art movement that illustrated the tales.

Sensibly superstitious people sought to avoid the notice and ire of the fairies. The terms “Good People” or “Fair Folk” were used to placate a temperamental neighbor — and as an accurate description of their general nature. With good reason — get on the bad side of a fairy, and they would mess you up.

Here are some examples of their less friendly behavior:

Giving your soul to the devil

According to the ballad of Tam Lin, the Fairy Queen pays a tithe to Hell every seven years. The fairies kidnap mortals, like Tam Lin, to pay their due on Halloween. It is from this fate that Janet must save her lover. There are several modern recordings of the songs, from groups like Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, and the Medieval Babes. And Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin is a modern novelization of the tale.

Keeping sailors’ souls as collectables

In the story "Soul Cages" collected in Yeats' Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, an otherwise sociable and friendly merrow (a type of merman) collects the souls of drowned sailors. The merrow places lobster pots at the bottom of the ocean and the confused, cold souls of the dying sailors seek refuge in them. The pots are collected and put on the merrow's curiosity shelf — but other than that the merrow was an alright and friendly fairy.

Drowning

There are a ton of fairies that specialize in drowning, like Jenny Greentooth and the Scottish Dracae. George Douglas in Scottish Fairy and Folk Tales says the Dracae lure women into the water by showing them a golden bauble. Sometimes the women are just abducted and not drowned. Kelpie are horse shaped fairy folk that lure riders onto their back and ride into a lake to drown them like in the “Whitsuntide Legend of the Fairy Horses”. In an interesting a weird variation of the tale, “The Doomed Rider,” a kelpie is a harbinger of drowning though it doesn’t actually participate.

Stealing and Enchanting Brides

On the subject of abduction, the fairies often stole young women as brides, or perhaps for other, less honorable purposes. In the aptly named tale “Stolen Bride,” a gang of fairies carries off a young woman, and something similar happens in "Jamie Freel and the Young Lady". In both cases, the women are put under an enchantment that leaves them mute and confused. Being noble does nothing to protect a woman, especially if the King of Fairies takes a shine to you, as in the tale Ethna the Bride.

Stealing new mothers to serve as nursemaids

Having children also makes a woman vulnerable to fairy abduction. Fairies will steal mothers directly from their child bed, and often leave a doppelganger in their place that would appear to die according The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies from 1691. After service in the fairy realm, the woman will sometimes be released to return to her family. If the husband has remarried, due to thinking the mother was dead, he has to divorce the second wife. According to lore, though, the fairies aren't completely heartless. The poem The Fairy Nursemaid tells of how they let a captured human mother return to her child at night for feeding.

Destructive seduction

While human women tend to be carried off, men tend to be seduced by fairy women. While the activity is more pleasant, it still doesn’t end well for the men. Yeats describes a type of fairy called the Leanhaun Shee (Fairy Mistress) If a man refuses her love she becomes their slave, but if they accept her love they are trapped by the fairy until they find another to take their place. She is considered the Gaelic muse and the inspiration for art and poetry, but she dries a man up and leaves him a wreck. It is said this why the Irish poets die young. The poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci is an interpretation of Keats about a seductive fairy leaving a man a wreck. “The Dream of Angus” is an ancient legend where a proud warrior is brought low by pining for a supernatural woman.

There is a male fairy seducer called gean-cānach (love talker) who's described by Yeats. He seduces shepherdesses and milkmaids and ruins their reputations.

Baby Stealing

One of the more common and disturbing practices of the fairies of lore is stealing babies and leaving a changeling in their place. The fake child is always sickly looking and fussy. The only way to truly determine if a person is a changeling is a trial by fire, or the application of a red hot poker. The story of “The Brewery of Eggshells” shows how a mother tricks a fairy into revealing itself and winning her own child back. If a mother is too soft-hearted to put a red hot poker to a child and a fairy stays in the house, things go poorly for the rest of the ,family as witnessed in the tale "The Young Piper." A more modern take on the tradition of fairy baby-stealing is the movie Labyrinth.

Murdering children for petty grievances

You just do not want to upset the fairies, or they will make you suffer. One of their most common forms of exacting vengeance is by killing the children of a family. It doesn't really matter how slight the offense was. In the tale “The Fairies’ Revenge,” a farmer builds his home on the land the fairies enjoy meeting and dancing on. The fairies destroy his livelihood and cause his child to die. In the story “The Farmer Punished,” the farmer is just a tight-fisted skin flint, refusing to share any of his wealth. This angers the fairies who by tradition have rights to any food spilled on the ground. The farmer goes out of his way to make sure not even a drop of milk is ever spilt. In revenge the fairies arrange to have the son killed.

A general over-reaction to rude behavior

If you were simply rude or off-putting to a fairy, they might not murder your children — but they would make you suffer beyond the simple offense. In one story, a boy doesn't let a fairy woman into his house. He's struck with strangeness and terror for the rest of his life, and the family is cursed to poverty and social ostracization. In the tale of “Paddy Corcoran’s Wife” , the wife is sick for years, before finding out the fairies were mad at her for throwing wash water out at the time they were passing by. Remember, the fairies were invisible when she was tossing out her water, so she couldn't have known. In the old familiar tale of Sleeping Beauty, the princess gets cursed to death because a fairy was insulted for not being invited to the christening party. Fairies have a wicked temper.

Enslavement

People with bad characters and dubious behavior leave themselves open to magical enslavement by the faeries. The story of “Teig O’Kane and the Corpse” tells of a rowdy womanizer who's compelled into service by fairies for a terrifying night of work. In “Master and Man,” the hard partying young man is enslaved by a fairy for seven years. The young man thwarts his Master’s wicked plot and get released after one night.

Sources:

Croker, Thomas Crofton, Fairy Legends and Traditions. 1825.

Douglas, George. Scottish Fairy and Folk Tales. 1901.

Gregory, Lady Augusta. Cuchulain of Muirthemne. 1902

Kirk, Robert and Lang, Andrew, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies. 1893.

Wildes, Lady Francesca Speranza, Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland. 1887.

Yeats, William Butler, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry. 1888.

Everyone, these are electro animals. They are the work of French graphic designer and illustrator YOAZ. They will 100% turn your eyes, ears, nose and mouth into a hot gooey puddle of face-stuff.

Buffalos, gorillas, big cats, owls, bears; the list of intricately detailed circuit board beasties in YOAZ's kaleidoscopic menagerie goes on and on. (Conspicuously absent, however, is an electric sheep.) We've pulled together a few of our favorites, but you'll want to check out YOAZ's Facebook, Tumblr, and Bēhance pages for more spellbinding examples.

[Via Laughing Squid]

There are so many great video games out there, and so little time to play them. HowLongToBeat is a community-based site that predicts how long you'll need to get through various video games to help you better plan which one to play next.

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Bitcoin mining machines are insane powerhouses, and they're only getting crazier. How much power is getting sunk into the digital cryptocurrency? More than the world's top 500 supercomputers combined. What a waste.

According to Bitcoin Watch, the whole Bitcoin network hit a record-breaking high of 1 exaFLOPS this weekend. When you're talking about FLOPS, you're really talking about the number of Floating-point Operations a computer can do Per Second, or more simply, how fast it can tear through math problems. It's a pretty common standard for measuring computer power. An exaFLOPS is 10¹⁸, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 math problems per second. The most powerful supercomputer in the world, Sequoia, can manage a mere 16 petaFLOPS, or just 1.6 percent of the power geeks around the world have brought to bear on mining Bitcoin. The world's top 10 supercomputers can muster 5 percent of that total, and even the top 500 can only muster a mere 12.8 percent.

And that 1 exaFLOPS number is probably a little low. Because Bitcoin miners actually do a simpler kind of math (integer operations), you have to do a little (messy) conversion to get to FLOPS. And because the new ASIC miners—machines that are built from scratch to do nothing but mine Bitcoins—can't even do other kinds of operations, they're left out of the total entirely. So what we've got here is a representation of the total power spent on Bitcoin mining that could theoretically be spent on something else, like real problems that exist naturally.

Because of the way Bitcoin self-regulates, the math problems Bitcoin mining rigs have to do to get more 'coin get harder and harder as time goes on. Not to any particular end, but just to make sure the world doesn't get flooded with Bitcoins. So all these computers aren't really accomplishing anything other than solving super difficult and necessarily arbitrary puzzles for cyber money. It's kind of like rounding up the world's greatest minds and making them do Sudokus for nickels.

Projects like Folding@Home and SETI@Home use similarly networked power for the less-pointless practices of parsing information that could lead to more effective medicines or finding extra-terrestrial life, respectively, and either are hard-pressed to scrounge up even half of a percent of the power the Bitcoin network is rocking. And with specialized Bitcoin-mining hardware on the rise, there's going to be an army of totally powerhouse PCs out there that are good for literally nothing but digging up cybercoins.

It's incredible to think about the amount of power being directed at this one, singular purpose; power that's essentially being "donated" by thousands of people across the globe just because they have skin in the game. It's by far the most computational effort that has ever been devoted to a single purpose. And sure, Bitcoins are fine and all, but can you imagine what we could do if this energy was put behind other tough problems? We'll you're going to have to imagine, because so long as mining Bitcoins can earn you money and folding proteins can't, it's pretty clear which one is gonna get done. [The Genesis Block via Digg]