firehose

Link (thanks, some idiot!)

sci-universe:

Galileo’s sketches from Sidereus Nuncius (1610), the first published scientific work based on observations made through a telescope

the-misha-metalocalypse:

expl0sive-cucumber:

skinnymini-13:

myresin:

THIS VIDEO

WATCH THIS VIDEO

WORDS CANNOT EXPRESS HOW WELL DONE THIS VIDEO WAS DONE TO SPREAD AWARENESS.

Everyone watch this

I WANT TO BREAK MY MOUSE WITH REBLOG

SERIOUSLY, EVERYONE REBLOG THIS.

Pity the youth ministry. It's a real struggle recruiting kids to your cause. You know who else struggled to recruit the young people? Life Savers Ministries of Opelika, Alabama, sure does.

Via the Columbus, Ga., Ledger-Enquirer:

A billboard at the Village Mall in Auburn, Ala., features five smiling kids beneath a quote from Adolf Hitler: "He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future."

According to Lamar Advertising's Montgomery office, the billboard was rented out by Life Savers Ministries, based in Opelika, Ala.

Worse still, the quote—with an attribution, in red, to der führer—sits just above the well-known Bible verse from Proverbs: "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it."

To be fair, Life Savers Ministries—which boasts a KidzBoost leadership academy and cool buses instead of school buses—is not a neo-Nazi group. Just well-intentioned youth pastors filled with spirit and a little naïveté:

The billboard went up Friday and will be taken down Tuesday, per LSM's request.

"We are pulling the billboard and certainly never intended to cause confusion. ... Herbert Hoover would have been a far better one to quote when he said, 'Children are our most valuable resource,'" founder James Anderegg told the Ledger-Enquirer.

Whitney Houston also would have worked, probably.

Anderegg added: "We are a children's organization and had honorable intentions and nothing less."

You know who else had honorable intentions?

[Photo credit: Julie Burns/Ledger-Enquirer]

Original Source

importantbirds:

julessonoferis:

He missed detroying my computer.

[video]

THE BAD BEHAVIOR! NO DO NOT birb you go to JAILS

The potential evidence in the O'Bannon case, which begins June 9, could be damaging to the NCAA.

Electronic Arts has settled with the plaintiffs of the Keller suit for $40 million in damages, paying money it owed college athletes for illegally using their likenesses in its college football and basketball video games. However, O'Bannon lawsuit plaintiffs claim in a recent court filing that they will present at trial evidence that EA wanted to pay the players, even though the NCAA wouldn't allow it, due to its amateurism rules.

The (plaintiffs) will present documentary evidence and testimony from Joel Linzner of EA at trial that while EA abided by the prohibition on paying college athletes for the use of their (likeness) in NCAA-lisenced videogames, it nonetheless wanted to obtain the rights for more precise likenesses and the names of every college athlete on each roster, for which EA was willing to pay more to the NCAA and the college athletes themselves.

Players in other sports are compensated ahead of time for the use of their likenesses in video games, as EA does with the NFLPA when making its NFL games.

EA and the NCAA had attempted to get around the likeness issue by not using players' names and claiming the players in the games were random. However, the NCAA knew EA based their "random" players on real athletes and an EA producer admitted to using real players. EA canceled its college football series amid the ongoing legal battle.

EA had hoped to use names, even if that meant paying the athletes, because it knew customers wanted that.

EA knew that consumers wanted those improvements to the videogames, and increased sales would result. But the NCAA remained steadfast in its prohibition against sharing revenues with players and worried that any additional similarities between the athletes and the videogames would further expose the fiction that the videogame "avatars" did not represent real people

At this point, there's basically no chance that the NCAA can win the Keller video games suit, and it should settle before the March 2015 trial.

However, this also hurts one of its key arguments in the O'Bannon television broadcasts suit, as well. The organization has argued that the players, themselves, are not what companies purchase the rights to when they broadcast games. The plaintiffs will argue that the evidence from EA shows that the use of real players in the video games makes the product more valuable, so this means the likenesses of the players must provide value in television broadcasts as well.

wickedclothes:

Lord Of The Rings Glow In The Dark Nenya Galadriel Ring

Nenya Galadriel, one of the rings of power in the popular Lord of the Rings series, is known for protection, preservation, and concealment from evil. This rendition of Nenya Galadriel glows bright blue when worn in the dark and is crafted out of fine sterling silver. Sold on Etsy.

Anouk Wipprecht had a charged audience at the Bay Area Maker Faire with her Faraday Dress, according to 3DPrintingIndustry. Famous for her tech couture, her work has been featured in commercials and many stages.This particular project was a collaboration with ArcAttack, a band that uses Tesla Coils to create music. Although the final performance was spectacular, the making of the dress is its own show. I know as a hardware lover the first thing I was thinking was, “that’s going to be tricky to test”. Apparently both materials and testing were hurdles, according to Anouk.

It’s a bigger process than just gathering the right materials or colors and constructing it, so I flew into Austin, Texas, where ArcAttack’s builder shop is housed. It’s “form follows function” in this case — a continual back and forth between design and role or purpose, where function was alpha, above all: multimeter testings of constructed connections, metal and aluminum materials that were ordered and mostly turned out not to reach the required conductive capabilities, paint jobs and coating that isolated too much of the created grounding structure.

It’s always trial and error when you are trying to do something new — and by testing it time after time, you secure your best options. When it was finally time for fitting and testing we started with firing up the coils lightly and built it up step by step. If the arcs raise through your heart, you might not live to tell, so if anything, this process was done very carefully. ArcAttack have been doing this for over 10 years and are specialists in their field.

Check out the test; you can hear some laughs with the zaps.

The dress was created with Autodesk 3D Design Tools and individual metal panels were finally cut from a sheet of metal with an Omax water jetting machine. Apparently the most time consuming part was connecting the 96 metal panels together — it resembles the chainmail you see at Renaissance festivals. There are also shoulder pieces that were 3d printed and nitrogen filled to give the outfit the electro effect.

This dress certainly is something that any teenager would love, but I’m more interested in where fashion is headed.  Our ability to include technology in the process and material of fashion is now offering us the chance to also use it as an artist would — to contradict or  reflect. This dress can represent challenge, power, women, and polarity. It can also represent the trend of Tesla lovers that want alternative energy sources, which asks, “What if we controlled our own power?” This is why the intersection of technology and art is so interesting; we are creating a new visual vocabulary.

So, speaking of vocabulary, maybe you and your daughter aren’t quite ready yet to make a Faraday dress. Why not start out by learning the basics  with the Manga Guide to Electricity. Then you can dive into a fun project like our NeoPixel Punk Collar. It’s not quite lightening bolts, but it is the perfect accessory for any concert goer.

Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!

We weren't exactly devastated when the live-action adaptation of Akira fizzled out, but the project certainly left behind some stunning concept art. And it looks like at one point, the filmmakers imagined Chris Evans and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the starring roles.

Read more...

djempirical

#sexpand

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What could possibly go wrong when you're trying to erect a 10-foot bronze statue of a fictional movie character in a city with a massive amount of logistical problems that make even the smallest task a headache?

Everything, apparently. The long-delayed RoboCop statue — according to our good, all-knowing-of-Detroit friends at Gawker, it was "fucking happening" earlier this year, but actually didn't — was supposed to finally be put up today. There were press releases. There was local news coverage. There was national and international news coverage. Today was supposed be the day.

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Giant RoboCop Statue Rises Just As Detroit Falls Into Financial AbyssGiant RoboCop Statue Rises Just As Detroit Falls Into Financial AbyssGiant RoboCop Statue Rises Just As Detroit Fall...

RoboCop rises just as the city of Detroit plummets further into a nightmarish financial abyss, just … Read moreRead on

Detroit's 10-Foot Bronze Robocop Statue Is Fucking Happening, PeopleDetroit's 10-Foot Bronze Robocop Statue Is Fucking Happening, PeopleDetroit's 10-Foot Bronze Robocop Statue Is ...

Detroit is in trouble. It's bankrupt. It's practically begging people to live there. It… Read on gawker.​com

And not just any day. See, today is "RoboCop Day" in Detroit. The 2014 remake of the 1987 film is out on DVD today, so today would be a perfect day for a statue unveiling. I've never had the pleasure of planning a statue unveiling, but it seems to be one of those monumental tasks that shouldn't be screwed up. Today, for whatever reason, it was.

RoboCop Throws Out The First Pitch At A Detroit Tigers Game TonightRoboCop Throws Out The First Pitch At A Detroit Tigers Game TonightRoboCop Throws Out The First Pitch At A Detroit...

This city's strange infatuation with a fictional police officer (despite all of our troubles… Read moreRead on

The RoboCop statue was not put up today. From what I can gather, here's why.

Let's start with a review of how Detroit was supposed to get a statue of a fake movie cop to begin with. A couple people on the Internet suggested that former Detroit Mayor Dave Bing put up a statue of RoboCop in Detroit because Philadelphia has a statue of Rocky Balboa. Bing, who had quite a bit on his plate at the time — a revolving door of police chiefs, a revolving door of his own administrative staff, skyrocketing crime, oh, and the city was circling the bankruptcy drain — nixed the suggestion.

So people on the Internet started a Kickstarter to raise almost $70,000 to make their own statue. That started in 2011. Three years later, the statue has been cast and bronzed, but unable to find a date for the wraps to come off, much less a suitable place to be displayed.

Press releases were sent out sometime last week indicating that the statue would be unveiled June 3 at Detroit Police Headquarters downtown, officially kicking off RoboCop Day in Detroit. I didn't get the press release; I, like most Detroiters, likely found out by reading it in the news.

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So the statue was supposed to go up at noon. Knowing how press events in Detroit can be — giant news vans snapping up all the good parking and whatnot — I get to DPD at 11:45. There, two women are waiting outside. "Are you here for RoboCop?" they ask?

"Yes," I reply.

"Oh, no," one of the women says. "It's been moved to Campus Martius."

Campus Martius, for those unaware, is the center of downtown Detroit; "Detroit's Gathering Place," where a public park with real-deal statues, a fountain, and little shops and cafes are located. It's also the most trafficked area of downtown, which makes it a helluva challenge to find easy parking. Nice last-minute change-of-venue there, guys!

So I make my way to Campus Martius and surprisingly find a place to park that has a working meter, a unicorn downtown these days. I go over to the park and don't see a ton of media. I start asking around; "anyone know what's up with RoboCop?" No one knows what I'm talking about. I see a guy with a bunch of camera equipment. He's a photographer for a European wire service who, like me, originally went to the police department and was sent down here. He points me toward two women who he says are public-relations people working with RoboCop.

I ask them what they know and they say the festivities will be moved to an adjacent part of Campus Martius across the street. As for RoboCop, "he'll be here in half-an-hour." It's already past noon at this point.

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So we all move over to the other part of Campus Martius where there are people setting up cupcakes. (From here on out, they will be referred to as RoboCupcakes.) There are promo team members from 105.9, an adult R&B station that plays Kem's "Share My Life" 1,300 times a day. And there's a giant box full of T-shirts and hoodies that say "RoboCop" on the front.

What I don't see is something indicative of a big, statue-unveiling-type ceremony: A placeholder for a 10-foot statue, or perhaps a large ribbon or novelty scissors. Even more concerning is that I don't see anyone associated with the RoboCop statue project.

I send out a few feelers on Twitter and Facebook — "what the hell is going on with RoboCop?" — when it dawns on me: RoboCop the statue isn't coming in a half-hour. Some guy in a RoboCop suit is. After a closer look at the RoboCop T-shirts in the box, they all say "out on DVD and Blu-Ray today."

I get a few tweets from someone with a private account but who's close to the project: "The statue announcement was cancelled. The pieces are still at the foundry." So, is it going to happen soon? "We've got a progress meeting soon. I think the price of doing some things in Detroit is that things can take forever."

It's true. We do have an influx of creatives and entrepreneurs, but the simplest things — opening a business, for example — takes three steps too many. I can't imagine the process for putting up a statue. I'm still trying to figure out where in this city it would go.

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There are several people here, including some press, lost about which RoboCop is coming. There's even someone dressed in a RoboCop costume — the 1987 version, not the 2014 version. Oh, but there are RoboCupcakes! So the PR people command everyone to get in line for RoboCupcakes, upon which two Rick Ross-built security guards stand on each side of the line grimacing everyone. Heaven forbid a gaggle of 8-year-olds break out into a fight over some buttercream-covered yellow cake.

I decide to hang around for a bit to see if this is a giant troll put on by the RoboCop statue people. Maybe they really were going to put up the statue in secret and fool the press by telling them it was canceled, thus owning the story themselves.

Meanwhile, a few messages on Facebook seem to confirm the obvious: The statue ceremony had indeed been canceled, and some press had gotten word of the cancellation last night. Apparently not all; one of the PR women collected some of our information, including some from an NPR reporter.

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A Lincoln Navigator (insert your Kwame joke here) pulls up and the security guards spring into action again. As expected, a guy in a RoboCop suit steps out. He does his best to walk…robotically, I guess…to a stand where he can take pictures with the crowd. "One picture per person!" the security guards repeatedly yell. Fuck this, I'm out.

So here's the thing about this RoboCop statue: Does anyone in Detroit really want this thing? Does anyone still care? It's been delayed for awhile now. Maybe this is a sign that it's not meant to be? I get that there was a ton of effort in making this statue happen, but surely one of these galleries around here will take the damn thing.

And you see what's happening with the Shinola clocks, right? As soon as those were put up, one was tagged. Yeah, Shinola cleaned it up, but apparently another one was tagged sometime this morning. (The tag read "gentrification." Ooh, picky subject…let's discuss elsewhere.) Is that a risk you'd want to take with a bronze statue?

Or maybe this whole thing was just an Internet thing that should have never happened in the first place. Detroit has enough trouble with cops. The city's department is underfunded. The state's department is overzealous. Why glorify a fake one?

According to everyone on the Internet, the statue unveiling is TBA.

Original Source

djempirical

Charleston Southern University associate professor Paul Roof says the school fired him Friday after his bearded visage appeared on cans of Holy City Brewing's Chucktown Follicle Brown.

"They said that this was not an image for the Christian environment and that it may seem to students that I am endorsing the use of alcohol," says Roof, who taught at the university for seven years and also founded the social club Holy City Beard & Moustache Society. HCBMS hosts beard and mustache competitions as charity fundraisers for ovarian cancer patients and their families.

Charleston Southern is affiliated with the S.C. Baptist Convention, and potential employees must write a statement of faith when applying for a position. The City Paper sent a request for comment to several CSU administrators and received the following response from John Strubel, the school's director of integrated marketing: "Your request is a personnel matter and we do not share personnel information."

Roof has entered and won competitions nationwide, including 1st Place Freestyle Beard in the 2011 Miami Beard & Moustache Championships. The photo of a cowboy hat-bedecked Roof and his carefully waxed whiskers was taken by Las Vegas photographer Greg Anderson at the 2013 Beard and Moustache National Championships in New Orleans. Before it appeared on a beer can, the image was used on posters for the interactive conference Dig South 2014, where Roof emceed the Culturama finale event at the Alley. It has also been used by the Lubbock, Texas, branch of the Christian organization Young Life, which, if you scroll through its Facebook page, appears to have an abiding fascination with facial hair.

Roof taught sociology in CSU's behavioral sciences department, where his classes included American Popular Culture, Urban Sociology, and Social Research Methods. To him, he said, the widely varying use of his own bearded image was an interesting case study.

click to enlarge

• Roof's image was also used to promote a Young Life event in Lubbock, Texas.

"It's a symbol, and symbols get used in all different locations and venues and areas, and it was on the beer can," Roof says. "I don't own the image, I have not been compensated for the image, and the brewery didn't come to me and say, 'Hey, Paul, can we use your picture?' They're friends of mine, and they said, 'We're doing a beer can,' and I'm like, 'Yeah, that's cool.' I'm not in control of somebody else's business. They don't have to ask my permission."

As for his future with the school, Roof says he is "in the process of getting an employment attorney."

"My wife's about to get on a plane to go to Albuquerque, N.M., for a conference, and she's like, 'OK, this is great, what are we going to do now?' But you have to stand up for what's right," Roof says.

Roof says he talked about the beer can earlier in the week with Keith Callis, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Roof says Callis said he was "comfortable with it." But on Friday at 1 p.m., Vice President of Academic Affairs Jackie Fish held a meeting with Roof to tell him he was losing his job. Roof had been promoted earlier in the year from assistant professor to associate professor.

"When I was brought into the meeting Friday, [Callis] was obviously upset seeing what was about to happen," Roof says. "My department chair did not even know I was going to be terminated Friday."

click to enlarge

• Roof emceed a finale event for Dig South this year, and the festival used his image in a promotional poster.

Roof says the impetus for the meeting was a Facebook post from Total Wine & More that showed Roof's image on a sales display for Holy City Follicle Brown, which the brewery started selling in cans this month. Roof was tagged in the photo, and some CSU students Liked the photo on Facebook.

The code of conduct for CSU employees does not prohibit the drinking or promotion of alcohol, but it does include the following clause:

"We each are responsible for safeguarding and promoting Charleston Southern University through ethical and principled leadership and action that is informed and directed by our core values. This type of ethical and principled leadership is sometimes difficult. There will be times when situations will involve subtleties and complexities that lead to difficult choices. When in doubt, ask yourself whether you feel confident that your actions and decisions would withstand objective scrutiny."

CSU is affiliated with the Southern Baptist denomination, and some Southern Baptist churches have strict rules against behaviors including dancing and drinking alcohol. Roof, on the other hand, is a member of James Island Presbyterian Church. Churches in the Presbyterian denomination tend not to prohibit drinking, and some even host fellowship events in bars.

click to enlarge

• Joshua Curry file photo
• Paul Roof is the founder of the Holy City Beard & Moustache Society, which raises money to support families dealing with ovarian cancer.

According to the Holy City Brewing website, the company created Follicle Brown last summer to commemorate HCBMS' hosting of the 4th Annual Southeastern Beard & Moustache Championships. "There is some magical, unspoken connection between folks that make beer for a living and folks that dig on facial hair," the website states.

Roof shared the news of his firing with students and friends in a Facebook post Friday, writing, "If this news upsets you, feel free to contact your administration." Friends of Roof have also started a page on GoFundMe.com to raise money for the Center for Women in Roof's name.

Beard and mustache competitions hosted by HCBMS have raised more than $25,000 to date for Lowcountry Women With Wings, a service of the Center for Women that provides education and support services for families dealing with ovarian cancer.

Original Source

I smell fear on you. (Louise Belcher)

kidcrimefighter:

#iconic

brinconvenient:

ihasabutter:

vapor-man:

all u using these nerd things like iphones and androids, get a fucking real communication device

get a BONE PHONE

Photon now owns this.

It’s obvious now that she has never owned any other phone …

scifilivingspaces

mattfractionblog:

GPOY

Always halfling, always a thief.