jondaeneryssnowborn:

I think I’m not leaving the house for the next few days!

Ontem, domingo dia 26 de maio, matéria de capa do jornal o Estado de São Paulo chamava atenção para um estudo da Controladoria Geral da União (CGU) no qual apontava desperdício e a falta de planejamento generalizados na compra de bilhetes aéreos por órgãos do governo federal (clique aqui). O título da matéria destacava que […]

The Master AkA Ein Douglass Stubby, think’s he’s man enough to take on my sisters 2 year old dane Tank. 
They play constantly and Tank and my mother’s dane are so bloody gentle with him even though he beats up on them all the time. 
Also, both ears are up now. 

Submitted by Lacey

Another look at Titanic.

dropsdafal:

Gatos. Criaturinhas de Deus.

mabelmoments:

You have to love Gavin, the photobombing parrot fish.

allcreatures:

Alpaca shearing day.

Picture: REUTERS/Michaela Rehle (via Alpaca shearing day in Germany - Telegraph)

“It’s like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.” – Nigel Tufnel, This is Spinal Tap.  

The Gaboon viper is a fairly docile creature, and that’s where the good news ends. It also has the longest fangs of any snake—2.2-inch-long weapons that swivel forwards like switchblades. The fangs are connected to such huge glands that they deliver more venom than any other snake—a cocktail of toxins that thin the blood, trigger massive internal bleeding, and can stop hearts.

And to make things much, much worse, the Gaboon viper is virtually impossible to see.

From above, its head looks like a dead leaf. Its five-foot-long body is patterned with rectangles and hourglasses, and shaded in cream, yellow, brown and black. Against the leaf litter of its forest home, the viper simply fades away.

Now, Marlene Spinner from Kiel University has discovered one of the secrets to the Gaboon viper’s exceptional camouflage: The black on its body is really, really black. Not just black, but black. Ultra-black. None more black.

These dark patches also have the texture of velvet, so they’re evenly black from every possible direction. There’s no gloss to them, which creates an illusion of depth. The patches don’t seem to be part of the same surface as the rest of the viper. This, together with the geometric shapes and sharply contrasting colours, break up the snake’s outline and aid its camouflage.

Spinner studied the West African Gaboon viper (Bitis rhinoceros). It’s one of two snakes that people thought were the same, until genetic studies showed that they are dissimilar enough to qualify as separate species.

She looked at the snake’s scales under a powerful electron microscope, which requires samples to be covered in a thin layer of gold. As a result, the pale parts of the viper’s scales developed a light metallic sheen. But the black areas still looked black. That’s a clue—it means that the colour isn’t just produced by a dark pigment, but also by the structures of the scales themselves.

Spinner caught a glimpse of these extraordinarily intricate structures down the microscope. The dark parts of the scale are covered in small ridges, like leaves standing on end (a, below). There are around 1,900 of these leaves in every square millimetre of scale, and each is just 30 micrometres (millionths of a metre) tall.

Spinner zoomed in a thousand times closer, and saw that each leaf was itself covered in a network of even thinner ridges, each just 60 nanometres (billionths of a metre) thick (c). They form a branching pattern like a fingerprint (b). And even the areas between the leaves are covered in hair-like projections (d). The gaboon viper’s black scales contain the most intricate of patterns, in spaces barely wider than a human hair.

When light hits the dark scales, it gets repeatedly reflected and scattered by the tiny leaves and ridges. As it bounces back and forth, it gets increasingly absorbed by dark pigments. In the end, less than 11 percent of any incoming light gets reflected away. This is why the viper’s black patches look so damn black, and evenly so from any viewing angle.

Other closely related vipers don’t use the same nano-scale trick, but there’s a butterfly that does. The Ulysses butterfly (Papilio ulysses) has wings with eye-catching electric blue centres, but their edges are ultra-black for the same reason as the Gaboon viper’s scales. They have a hierarchy of ridges upon ridges that repeatedly reflect incoming light onto absorbing pigments.

Spinner suggests that these tricks could be useful to engineers who work with machines that want to retain as much light as possible, such as solar panels. Admittedly, we have already created blacker-than-black materials that surpass even the viper’s scales. The current record-holder is a surface covered in carbon nanotubes that reflects just 0.045 percent of the light that falls on it. However, it’s extremely fragile. The Gaboon viper might reflect more light, but its black surfaces can cope with months of slithering through rough undergrowth.

Reference: Spinner, Kovalev, Gorb & Westhoff. 2013. Snake velvet black: Hierarchical micro and nanostructure enhances dark colouration in Bitis rhinoceros. Scientific Reports. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep01846

Also: Credit to Alok Jha for the Spinal Tap reference

More on structural colours:

• The world’s shiniest living thing is an African fruit that looks like a pointillist bauble
• A shiny dinosaur –four-winged Microraptor gets colour and gloss
• Camouflaged communication – the secret signals of squid
• Forget butterflies – wasps and flies have hidden rainbows in their wings
• Bird of paradise creates colourful dance with microscopic mirrors in its feathers

In the early 1600s, Johannes Kepler wrote a fantasy in which he imagined a journey to the moon:

We congregate in force and seize a man of this sort; all together lifting him from beneath, we carry him aloft. The first getting into motion is very hard on him, for he is twisted and turned just as if, shot from a cannon, we were sailing across mountains and seas. Therefore, he must be put to sleep beforehand, with narcotics and opiates, and he must be arranged, limb by limb, so that the shock will be distributed over the individual members, lest the upper part of his body be carried away from the fundament, or his head be torn from his shoulders. Then comes a new difficulty: terrific cold and difficulty in breathing. The former we counter with our innate power, the latter by means of moistened sponges applied to the nostrils.

Somnium is largely a treatise on lunar astronomy, describing the motions of the planets as observed from the moon. But Kepler also considers the appearance of the moon’s inhabitants, who “wander in hordes over the whole globe in the space of one of their days, some on foot, whereby they far outstrip our camels, some by means of wings, some in boats pursue the fleeing waters, or if a pause of a good many days is necessary, then they creep into caves.” Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov called it the first work of science fiction.

Esse catálogo aí tá bem legal.

catalogodepessoasfamiliares:

Homem, entre os 50 e 60 anos de idade. Formado em Engenharia, qualquer uma das especializações. Depois de formado, trabalhou em uma multinacional, o que garantiu uma aposentadoria precoce. Um pouco antes da aposentadoria, foi convidado por um amigo da juventude a trabalhar um cargo mais administrativo que técnico, em um ramo que desconhecia. Ainda trabalha, mas já declarou que sua aposentadoria vem em um ou dois anos, no máximo. Passa os fins de semana em casa, na maioria das vezes. Aluga filmes policiais do Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino ou Denzel Washington. Adora todos os filmes do Denzel Washington, mesmo não sabendo o nome do filme que ele está falando.

Incredibly the origins of martial arts can be traced back 4,000 years ago to ancient China. A system of tradition and combat that combinnes physical health, fitness, mental development, self-defence, spiritual development and even entertainment. It’s now expanded across the world and in the process fragemented and developed into countless distincitve styles, some more practiced and well-known that others.

Karate, Sumo & Judo from Japan, Wing Chun from China and Muay Thai from Thailand are amongst the more popular styles, but other countries also have their own unique combinations. In Brazil they practice Jiu-Jitsu, Wen-Do in Canada, El Juego del Garrote in Venezuela and Sarit Sarak in India.

We’re not totally sure which martial arts are being use in the following 12 examples, but either way they serve as perfect displays of strength, poise, finess & power.

Just make sure you don’t get into an argument with these guys.

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ENJOYED IT? SHARE IT!

goldsilversweetness:

floccinaucinhilipilification:

didney-worl-no-uta:

admiralrainbow:

rirygoesrawr:

cyanide-poisoning:

Men Experiencing Labor Pains

With their wives supporting them.

HAHAHHAHAHA TOO GOOD

I bet a kick in the balls would feel real good right about then.

“Men can handle anything”

“Women exaggerate everything”

And then they realized just how wrong they were

my favorite part is where the wives high five each other

ABOUT TIME! Appreciate the mother of your children guys!

AHAHAHAHAHAHA

This gas station had this sign up at the bathrooms and B$M for sale on their little movies rack. This gas station is me.

brichibi:

untitled-titles:

i want to cry

He tried so hard.  And got so far.  But in the end.  It doesn’t even matter.

jordanorsomething:

CRYING

KERPOW!

his blog is fascinating and, of course, there's a subreddit  

datcracker:

tanemon:

judgmentofparis: 

“Wrong Century” — Brilliant illustration by artist   Tomas Kucerovsky depicting the fate of plus-size beauty in the modern age.

Can’t stop reblogging this

9gag:

Tourist Shot User Manual