You’ve had this late night conversation with a friend. At least, you’ve seen Back To The Future. And you’ve wondered, “What would happen if I went back in time and killed my grandfather?” Scientific American reports that according to recent studies, you would probably be ok.
Basically, scientists figure that you could theoretically travel to the future, because you’re always moving forward in time, and if you had somehow accelerated and traveled fast enough, you would blow past all those people experiencing boring regular time and end up in the future. Scientists also figure that it’s theoretically possible to bend time back in on itself through a powerful gravitational field like that of a black hole.
Then, there are the paradoxes of time travel. Paradoxes like that whole if-you-killed-your-grandfather-you-would-have-never-existed thing. And when scientists crunch the numbers for theoretical models of these paradoxes, the numbers come out like 1+1=refrigerator. Shit doesn’t compute.
For a long time, some scientists have believed that if time travel was possible, you simply wouldn’t be able to kill your grandfather. Some Final Destination stuff would happen and you’d get hit by a truck, or you’d have a heart attack before you did it. But a new study theoretically deduces that you actually could kill your grandfather. New mathematical models (that actually compute) suggest that if you entered a wormhole to go “back in time,” you would, more or less, come out in an alternate past universe on the other side.
“That is, a time traveler who emerges from a Deutschian CTC enters a universe that has nothing to do with the one she exited in the future.”
So you could go kill your grandfather. But it wouldn’t be your grandfather. It would be an alternate universe grandfather, in what amounts to a clone of the past. So you would never be born in that universe, but you would still continue existing.
TL;DR The universe is more Sliders than Back To The Future. Scientific Americanhas the story, and the paper is here.
You may have heard about the incident back in March in which Chase Culpepper was forced to take off the makeup he was wearing and 'look more like a boy' before officials at a South Carolina DMV office would take a driver's license photo.
16 year old Chase identifies as male and answers to male pronouns, but wears feminine or androgynous attire and makeup in his everyday life.
Chase was informed by DMV officials at the Anderson, SC office near where he lives that wearing the makeup constituted a 'prohibited disguise' and refused to take his picture for his drivers license despite his mother pointing out this is how Chase appears in his everyday life.
The Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund (TLDEF) filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday that alleges the DMV violated Chase's free speech rights in violation of state and federal constitutions.
“My clothing and makeup reflect who I am,” Chase said. “The Department of Motor Vehicles should not have forced me to remove my makeup simply because my appearance does not match what they think a boy should look like. I just want the freedom to be who I am without the DMV telling me that I’m somehow not good enough.”
The suit was brought by Chase’s mother Teresa Culpepper on his behalf as a minor. It asks the court to rule that denying Chase the freedom to wear his everyday makeup in his license photo constitutes sex discrimination and violates his right to free speech and expression under the United States Constitution. It also seeks a ruling under the U.S. and South Carolina Constitutions that the DMV’s photo policy is unconstitutionally vague, too broad, and lets DMV employees arbitrarily decide how a driver's license applicant should look, without regard for the rights of the people they are supposed to serve.
For you legal junkies, the suit is Teresa Culpepper v. Kevin A. Shwedo, et al, and is pending in the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, Columbia Division
Fayetteville police said they have arrested a woman after she allegedly stole $144 worth of eye shadow from Ulta.
Police said they received a shoplifting call Monday afternoon at Ulta Beauty Store.
The caller told 911 dispatchers 31-year-old Brandy Allen was grabbing handfuls of make-up and shoving it in her purse.
The manager told police she approached Allen about stealing makeup from the display. When confronted by the store manager, Allen started cursing and yelling inside the store, police said.
The store manager said Allen then took out each eyeshadow and rubbed her fingers over the surface to make them looked used.
Police booked Allen into the Washington County Detention Center on shoplifting and disorderly conduct charges.
“Playboy Bunnies“, une série du photographe freelance américain Robyn Twomey, basé à New York, qui a cherché à savoir ce que sont devenues les célèbres Bunnies de Playboy, ces pin-ups iconiques, serveuses dans les bars “Club Playboy” entre 1960 et 1988 (wikipedia). Des portraits simples et sans artifice, comme une réflexion sur les notions d’âge et de beauté…
A time-honored tradition of excluding gay groups from the New York St. Patrick’s Day parade crumbles this week. The New York Timesreminds that for decades, “gays could march but were not allowed to carry anything identifying them as a group.” As first reported by the Irish Voice, OUT@NBCUniversal will be the first LGBT group to participate in the parade on March 17th, 2015 and will be “accompanied by other participants who would also like to identify as gay.” Other groups may apply in the future.
Mayor Bill de Blasio became the first mayor in twenty years not to march in the parade last year, unlike Giuliani and Bloomberg who participated annually. The landmark decision was announced today, following de Blasio’s threat to boycott the parade once more, and due to various pressures and pull-outs from sponsors and public disapproval of ye olde discriminatory policies. The other time-honored decision of gettingshitfaced will continue as scheduled. (Photo: @hansziel)
But are you paying attention to what’s going on??? My heart is so heavy….. so heavy…
An attorney for the family of John Crawford III, the man fatally shot by police in an Ohio Walmart store, says surveillance video contradicts the police department’s version of events. Officers say Crawford refused to drop the pellet gun he was holding, but the video allegedly shows them gunning him down “on sight.”
Crawford, 22, was shopping at the Beavercreek, Ohio store on Aug. 5 whenpolice responded to another customer’s report that Crawford was carrying an AR-15 rifle. He was actually holding a pellet air rifle he had just picked up from a shelf in the store’s toy department.
Attorney Michael Wright says he viewed surveillance video that shows Crawford was facing away from the cops and talking to his girlfriend on the phone when police spotted him, and didn’t have the toy gun raised. Hetold WDTN Crawford probably didn’t see or hear the officers before he was shot.
"John was doing nothing wrong in Walmart, nothing more, nothing less than shopping,"Wright said, according to Reuters.
When enterprising skateboarding enthusiasts decide to build an indoor skate park they usually build it inside a similar pre-existing structure, like a warehouse or roller skating rink, but the House of Vans didn’t want to build just any old skate park.
They wanted something that looked crazy cool, had plenty of surfaces to ride and grind, and wasn't in danger of being sold out from underneath them, so when they found a space underneath London Waterloo station it was clearly meant to be.
House of Vans-London is a "free creative space" and London's only indoor skatepark, and the 3,000 square foot venue is home to more than some sick skating sessions- it also houses a decent sized music venue, art gallery, cafe, movie theater, and a few bars so guests can wet their whistle after the sesh.
The last page of a medieval book is usually a protective flyleaf, which is positioned between the actual text and the bookbinding. It was usually left blank and it therefore often filled up with pen trials, notes, doodles, or drawings. This addition I encountered today and it is not what you’d expect: a full-on drawing of a maiden playing the lute, which she holds just like a guitar. A peaceful smile shines on her face. I love this rockstar lady, so unexpectedly positioned at the end of the book, trying to catch the reader’s attention as he is closing it.
Pic: London, British Library, Sloane MS 554 (more here).
Le Monocle was a well-know lesbian bar located in Montmartre section of Paris, France that was open from the 1920s thru the early 1940s.
During the 1920s, Paris gained a reputation for the variety of its nighttime options and for its free and easy attitude toward life in general. As a result, many gay and lesbian nightclubs opened and flourished. Among these was Le Monocle, which is credited with being one of the first, and certainly the most famous of lesbian nightclubs. It was opened by Lulu de Montparnasse in the Montmartre area, which at that time was the main gathering place for Parisian lesbians who were often seen at Montmartre’s outdoor cafes or dancing at the Moulin Rouge. Le Monocle’s scene was describe by Florence Tamagne as, “All the women there dressed as men, in Tuxedos, and wore their hair in a bob.”
The name Le Monocle derived from a fad at the time where women who identified as lesbian would sport a monocle to indicate sexual preference. The writer Colette once obsevered the fad by describing women in the area as “often affecting a monocle and a white carnation in the buttonhole.”
There’s something to be said for thinking outside the box and turning an idea on its head, and that’s exactly what photographer Trevor Christensen is doing with his hilarious and surprisingly thought-provoking series, Nude Portraits.
That’s because there aren’t actually any nude people in his portraits… the only person who’s naked during the photo shoot is Christensen himself, who is busy capturing his subjects’ reaction to his birthday suit.
Christensen launched the project on Monday, and since then it has exploded as this simple concept of turning the tables on the genre attracted thousands of up-votes and skyrocketed Nude Portraits onto the “Front Page of the Internet’s” front page.
Speaking with Utah Public Radio, Christensen revealed that his purpose all along has been to examine the photographer/subject relationship. “When I’m taking someone’s picture, often it puts them in a very vulnerable position,” he explained. “I think that power dynamic is really interesting, and I just want to give them the chance to also see me in a vulnerable state.”
This isn’t a surprise or trick either, he speaks to each of his subjects before hand to try and ease any potential discomfort and explain what is going to be going on. And yet, even knowing that it’s coming, the reactions are still well worth capturing on camera.
For now, the four photographs here are the only ones he’s taken, and they feature friends and girlfriends — in other words, people he’s familiar with. But his ultimate goal, as he tells UPR, is to shoot “a really broad demographic.”
As a 25-year-old, straight, white male, he wants to explore the reactions of people who fall into none of those categories. “I’m looking for [...] any amount of variation possible,” he says, mentioning ‘little old ladies’ as a possible subject, “because only my hipster friends isn’t really quite as interesting as a broader demographic.”
To see more from Christensen or keep up with Nude Portraits as he seeks out diverse subjects to strut his stuff in front of, head over to his website or give him a follow on Instagram and Twitter.
Image credits: Photographs by Trevor Christensen and used with permission
Fun Fact: You have several kinds of microscopic spider-relatives living on your face right now. These mites inhabit every mammal that scientists have ever attempted to find them on, with some mammals carrying up to four different species at once!
Scientists first began to understand how prevalent these mites are when they realized you can find mite DNA embedded in any sample of facial skin cells. And where there’s mite DNA, there are mites. As far as the two types of mites growing on our faces, it’s difficult to tell how they got there. They are not closely related, so it would make sense that they arrived on our skin in different ways. We may have even adopted one of them from domestic animals or pets.
These two mites could actually give us information about the history of humanity. Sequencing their genes, we could trace the path that humans took as we spread out over the Earth.
When looking at the DNA from one of our mite species, D. brevis, we found that mites from China are genetically distinct from mites from the Americas. East Asians and European populations diverged over 40,000 years ago and so far it looks like their mites did as well. On the other hand, D. folliculorum from China is indistinguishable from that of the Americas. Of the two Demodex species associated with humans, D. brevis lives deeper in your pores than folliculorum and is probably shared between people less readily, whereas D. folliculorum appears to enjoy global domination.
The Dalit (formerly untouchable) community is building a temple in Banka village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh to worship the Goddess of the English language, which they believe will help them climb up the social and economic ladder.
About two feet tall, the bronze statue of the goddess is modelled after the Statue of Liberty.
"She is the symbol of Dalit renaissance," says Chandra Bhan Prasad, a Dalit writer who came up with the idea of the Goddess of English.
"She holds a pen in her right hand which shows she is literate. She is dressed well and sports a huge hat – it's a symbol of defiance that she is rejecting the old traditional dress code.
"In her left hand, she holds a book which is the constitution of India which gave Dalits equal rights. She stands on top of a computer which means we will use English to rise up the ladder and become free for ever."
There could have been a black temple here. The entrance might have said ‘Paradise Lost’ after John Milton’s poem about man’s disobedience and ouster from the Garden of Eden. Milton intended the poem to justify the ways of God to men. There was no justification intended here. The temple was meant to celebrate the outcastes, the fallen—Paradise Lost would be a refuge. Within its walls, Dalits would chant ‘ABCD’ and solve mathematical equations. They would denounce other gods and goddesses who perpetuate caste barriers.
The goddess wore a hat, a gown, and had gold hair. She looked like a Statue of Liberty knock-off. Chandra Bhan Prasad, the man who created her, says there were modifications made to give the new goddess her own mythology. The Goddess of English held a keyboard and a pen. She was atop a computer on the screen of which was the chakra of the Buddhist faith. She also held the Constitution of India to cement her bond with the Dalit community because Dr BR Ambedkar, the Dalit scholar and leader, was its founding father.
Why was the temple to be black? Because people would have found it strange. It would provoke reaction and this goddess was all about reactions. Black is seen as evil. The goddess would redefine black, give it sanction, says Bhan. This was Paradise Lost. They would regain it. But nothing happened. The English goddess went as suddenly as she came.
Why? Well,
The goddess came but only just. After the first day, she was stacked away in the office of the headmaster and for a few days, remained there in hiding. The district administration shut the temple down because, it was rumoured, Mayawati, then Chief Minister, had said there could only be one Dalit goddess in the state. Bhan wrote to the administration asking for a reason and was told there was a Supreme Court directive that no temple should be built on public land without permission from the administration.
“We said this was private land, and they still said you can’t build it,” says Bhan. “They kept sending police officials. When we started building the roof, they came and stopped us.”
The goddess was transported to the house of the school owner in a nearby town. There she remains, hidden away till she can be installed once again. The expensive black granite that was bought for construction of the temple lies around unused. Rain pours down, washing away the dirt, and the stones glisten again. A dog seeks shelter in the old office from the rain. This is where the goddess had been moved after the police came to Banka and ordered that construction be stopped.
Sometimes, the best thing about the interwebz is when you just kind of come across some website that just feels incredibly out-of-place to you. A website that seems to not really understand what it is selling or promoting. A website that feels like it came right out of 1996 and somehow landed back in your computer, almost 20 years later. Today, for me, that site is:
First and foremost, it is clear they take what they do at the Cookeville Police very seriously. You know how you can tell? The way the website has flashes of lightning around the name. Heck, even that photo on the main page says: We are not playing any games (even though the site totally looks like it would totally be a load screen for some lame action game).
Keep in mind, we say this with no disrespect for the police force in mention. We tip our hats to what they do. It takes courage and bravery to choose that line of work and we commend you all for it.
But your webmaster on the other hand? Um, not so much.
In the September issue of Smithsonian magazine, we see how archaeologists can explore underground without digging it up. Vince Gaffney heads a project that has given us a sort of three-dimensional map of what’s underneath the land surrounding the most mysterious place in Britain: Stonehenge.
Gaffney’s latest research effort, the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project, is a four-year collaboration between a British team and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology in Austria that has produced the first detailed underground survey of the area surrounding Stonehenge, totaling more than four square miles. The results are astonishing. The researchers have found buried evidence of more than 15 previously unknown or poorly understood late Neolithic monuments: henges, barrows, segmented ditches, pits. To Gaffney, these findings suggest a scale of activity around Stonehenge far beyond what was previously suspected.
I’m hearing that TV spots for The Identical are starting to pop-up around the country, so it seems the cat is almost out of the bag. If you saw one and wondered “what the hell is going on?” you’re not alone. What looks like a Jackie Jormp-Jomp* Elvis movie come to life is actually even stranger than that. It’s also part of Hollywood’s ongoing move to bring Christian-themed projects into the mainstream, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
If lead “Blake Rayne” reminds you of Elvis, you’re not alone. He used to be Ryan Pelton, described as “the world’s number one Elvis impersonator,” who, according to lore, got his start when his mom entered him into an Elvis impersonation contest in 1998. From there he traveled the world, eventually showing up on American Idol in 2007, and playing a circuit of state fairs, as well as “a nightly act at the Myrtle Beach Legends In Concert theatre in South Carolina,” which I bet was an incredible place to meet chicks. Pelton announced early last year that he’d no longer be performing as an Elvis impersonator and would instead by striking out on his own under his new awesome stage name, Blake Rayne, which, he says, being a big Batman fan, reminded him of Bruce Wayne.
City of Peace
So, The Identical is what happens when you try to make an origin story about an Elvis impersonator without being able to use Elvis or any of his songs? Well, sort of. There’s also a Christian angle. The film is about an Elvis-looking dude who gets separated from his identical twin at birth, with one brother raised by an evangelical preacher (played by Ray freakin’ Liotta). The Identical was produced by a little-known independent production company called “City Of Peace,” whose mission is “to provide framework where music, films and video with ‘redeeming value’ can be developed, produced, marketed and distributed worldwide, bringing a message of hope, love and encouragement to this generation.”
Director Dustin Marcellino says “the underlying theme of the film is, if God is in your dreams, then nothing can stand against you.”
Marcellino, making his directorial debut on The Identical, by the way, is the grandson of Jerry Marcellino, a record producer who wrote and produced songs for the Jackson 5, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Frankie Valli, and others; and the son of Yochanan Marcellino, who founded a series of Christian record labels.
Ahh, so it’s a CHRISTIAN unlicensed Elvis movie, you’re probably thinking. Again, partially right, but it’s not that simple either.
City of Peace
Turns out, the Marcellinos are some kind of Jews for Jesus operation, with Yochanan’s label promoting Christian-themed projects alongside Zionism from its headquarters in Israel, where Dustin was partly raised.
The label was involved in a 1998 joint project with Integrity Music, Adonai: The Power of Worship from the Land of Israel, a compilation album featuring multiple artists.
The label signed a long-term distribution deal with Provident Music Distribution in 1999.
Provident Music, incidentally, put out Facing the Giants, a Christian-themed football movie.
So it seems, The Identical is this sort of a dual vanity project from a former Elvis impersonator and a Christian/Zionist record label that hopes to promote him as their next big artist. Ergo, the answer to “what’s the deal with ‘The Identical'” is, imagine The Room if Tommy Wiseau was an evangelical Christian Elvis impersonator making a royalty-free origin story in which he played his own twin.
Avco-Embassy Pictures
Oh, except that instead of a cast of complete unknowns, it stars Ray Liotta, Ashley Judd, Joe Pantoliano, Seth Green, and the hot girl from Silicon Valley. Christian movies are really the only independent movie game in town right now, AND THINGS ARE GETTIN’ REAL WEIRD. More on this as it develops, obviously.
*30 Rock’s famous, fictional Janis Joplin biopic that fails to secure the rights to Janis Joplin’s name or music, and thus has to be called “Jackie Jormp-Jomp.”
Washington, D.C., circa 1920. "Swartzbaugh, C.E., Mrs." Who'll be the first to write on her wall? Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative. View full size.
Taking the “broken windows” law enforcement theory to absurd extremes, Queens Assemblyman Phil Goldfeder has voiced his desire to ban a toy called Kidffiti. The kit sold at Toys R Us includes stenciling tools. Sprayable chalk that imitates spray paint is sold separately. “Graffiti is just the first act of vandalism. It oftentimes leads to drug abuse and drug sales,” Goldfeder said.
Goldfeder has written a letter to Toys R Us asking them to take the toy off shelves. “What this product is doing is marketing directly to minors in a way in which it is glorifying vandalism instead of artistic value,” Goldfeder told the Daily News. “It is important to address graffiti before it escalates.” A spokeswoman from Consumer Affair commented that her agency isn’t able to ban toys that aren’t illegal.
Goldfeder isn’t alone in his graffiti-inspired panic. Police Commissioner Bill Bratton recently condemned a graffiti art show happening at the Museum of the City of New York which he called “outrageous,” and similarly warned could influence children to engage in illegal activities. (Image: Toys R Us)
What do you think the face above is made from? It might look like a carefully carved wooden sculpture but the truth is, it’s not made from wood at all. It’s made from something a lot greener and sweeter; something that once fell to the ground and inspired a man called Isaac. And got two people banished from the Garden of Eden.
Yes, it’s the humble apple, and this year it’s more scary than sweet. Soon you’ll be swapping your pumpkins for apples because this easy-to-create work of art will be the best way to keep people off your porch this Halloween!
The process starts with a few carved lines in an ordinary apple. Create a face and then simply leave it to dry outdoors.
As the apple loses moisture, it takes on a very different texture.
After a week, it begins to look like an ancient artifact excavated from an archaeological site.
The process from moist apple to ancient artifact has Japanese netizens intrigued, with many people heaping praise on the creative idea.
Creative idea or a waste of good fruit? Either way, it’s further proof that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. And possibly everybody else too.
“We have to try really hard to not accidentally summon a demon.” —Peyton Manning On his pre-snap adjustments
Ever wonder what’s on the mind of today’s most notable people? Well, don’t miss our unbelievable roundup of the best and most talked about quotes of the day:
You may have heard about the incident back in March in which Chase Culpepper was forced to take off the makeup he was wearing and 'look more like a boy' before officials at a South Carolina DMV office would take a driver's license photo.
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