The thought of getting out of bed seems like way too much effort.

maddie on things 

  These motivational quotes will make you more eager to get out of bed in the morning.

How Italian Police Finally Busted Thieves for Nabbing $875,000 in Cheese

After two years of robbing Italian warehouses blind, police have finally caught the group behind a massive series of cheese thefts. The gang of gourmands are being charged with the theft of 2,039 wheels of the region’s iconic Parmegiano-Reggiano and is worth up to $875,000.
 Cheese theft may sound frivolous, but Parmegiano-Reggiano is no joke.

 

For killer pain, a killer fish might be the solution.

A dish that’s as risky as it is fancy, fugu must be specially prepared by a licensed chef who knows exactly how to slice the deadly sea critter, and how to remove its toxin-packed liver, ovaries, and other hazardous innards. But on Wednesday, Japanese pharmaceutical company Astellas Pharma announced an initiative to make pain killers that work on your neurons the same way fugu poison does.
Except, y’know, it’ll just kill your pain and not you.

 

Catnap, Peter de Sève

The New Yorker

 

So the good news is that there’s water. But the bad news is that it’s poisonous water.

"The running water on Mars is briny, rather than pure, and loaded with deadly perchlorates. Nevertheless, the treatment and processing of that water—as well as making use of subsurface reservoirs of ice and tapping possible underground aquifers—that all adds up to the ability of humans to live off the land: Marsland. A water supply on Mars could enable the growing of vegetation and edible foods, and perhaps the cultivation of protein-rich fish. So this revelation about water and the Red Planet makes a lot of things possible. Furthermore, I’m positive that other exciting findings about Mars are in the offing. One of which is that, perhaps, the planet is today an extraterrestrial address for microbial life. The evidence of water on the surface of Mars has many implications. In fact, the finding is a wellspring, a gusher of good news to make possible the creation of a permanent settlement outpost on the Red Planet. Still, back here on Earth, we need to face the ebb and flow of politics and budgets. It’s time to rebuild and sustain America’s space program that makes the vision of our future on Mars valid.
 No dream is too high for those with their eyes in the sky!"
 Buzz Aldrin 

 

find your flow

marc johns

 

Is it fat clothes weather yet?

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Yoda by Otto Duecker

Otto Duecker depicts celebrities from the 20th century such as Mick Jagger, Basquiat, John Lennon, Marilyn Monroe and more surprisingly Yoda.

 

Van Gogh Painting So Big You Can See It From The Sky

For the last forty years, Stan Herd has been transforming open plots of land into stunning works of art. His medium, which he refers to as landscape or earthworks art, involves sculpting the terrain by mowing outlines, trimming grass for depth, and using various plants to create shade and texture. His large-scale projects have cropped up across Kansas, reinterpreting famous art pieces and even delving into important social issues, earning him coverage and accolades from publications around the world. In a recent piece commissioned by the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia), Herd reimagined Vincent van Gogh’s 1889 “Olive Trees” using an acre of land outside the airport. continue

There may be flowing water on Mars. But is there intelligent life on Earth?

Evidence for flowing water on Mars: this opens up the possibility of life, of wonders we cannot begin to imagine. Its discovery is an astonishing achievement. Meanwhile, Martian scientists continue their search for intelligent life on Earth.We may be captivated by the thought of organisms on another planet, but we seem to have lost interest in our own. The Oxford Junior Dictionary has been excising the waymarks of the living world. Adders, blackberries, bluebells, conkers, holly, magpies, minnows, otters, primroses, thrushes, weasels and wrens are now surplus to requirements. In the past four decades, the world has lost 50% of its vertebrate wildlife. But across the latter half of this period, there has been a steep decline in media coverage. In 2014, according to a study at Cardiff University, there were as many news stories broadcast by the BBC and ITV about Madeleine McCann (who went missing in 2007) as there were about the entire range of environmental issues. Think of what would change if we valued terrestrial water as much as we value the possibility of water on Mars.
 By George Monbiot / continue

 

Woman Has Ingenious “Robot” Standing in Line at an Apple Store in Australia

Believe it or not, the day has finally come when people can have their iPads wait in line every time a new iPhone is released! A woman named Lucy Kelly was the first to try it out – she sent an iPad robot to stand proxy for her at an Apple store in Sydney, just before the launch of the new iPhone 6s.
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Are you good at picking someone out of a crowd?

Most of us are better at recognising faces than distinguishing between other similar objects, so it’s long been suspected there’s something mysterious about the way the brain processes a face. Now further evidence has emerged that this is a special, highly evolved skill. A study of twins suggests there are genes influencing face recognition abilities that are distinct from the ones affecting intelligence – so it’s not that people who are good with faces just have a better memory, for instance.
 “The idea is that telling friend from foe was so important to survival that there was very strong pressure to improve that trait,” says Nicholas Shakeshaft of King’s College London. Previous studies using brain scanning have suggested there is a part of the brain dedicated to recognising faces, called the fusiform face area. But others have suggested this region may in fact just be used for discriminating between any familiar objects. Wondering if genetics could shed any light, Shakeshaft’s team tested more than 900 sets of UK twins – including both identical and non-identical pairs – on their face recognition skills. The ability turned out to be highly heritable, with identical twins having more similar abilities than fraternal ones. The same went for intelligence, which had earlier been tested as part of a long-running study. However, there was little relationship between face recognition abilities and intelligence: in other words you could be clever but bad with faces, or vice versa. Comparing individuals against their twin suggested that only 10 per cent of the heritability of face recognition was down to genes that also influenced intelligence. “That’s consistent with the idea that there are genes that drive the development of a specific brain region,” says Shakeshaft. Ashok Jansari of Goldsmiths, University of London, says looking at the genetics of face recognition is a useful alternative approach to brain scans. “It’s completely different,” he says. “But it goes along with the idea that face processing is a very special ability.”
You can test your own face recognition skills here.
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Cold Nose, Warm Heart

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Sad owl standing in the rain

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Welcome to The Park Bench

Bizarro 

 

Happy Birthday

Michael Murphy Creates A Floating Human Portrait Out Of 100 Laser-Cut Logos

Michael Murphy is a Brooklyn-based artist known for his perception-challenging sculptural installations. Featured here is a new work titled “Branded,” commissioned by the Manhattan creative consultancy Lippincott. In an exploration of the term “brand identity,” Murphy used 100 laser-cut images of graphic logos to create a human face—more specifically, the face of his daughter, Iris Isadora. Portions of her photo where printed across each logo. From a distance, the image appears complete; move closer, however, and the portions break apart into distinct logos—Starbucks, Instagram, and KFC among them. Watch the video here and see how the installation changes form depending on one’s vantage point.

 

Robert Schultz

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Loneliness

Tahereh Mafi 

Snack Time

Beverly Houwing

 

A Standout

Photograph by Christian Ziegler, National Geographic

 

We should "hope" that there's a god?

The argument, made by the 17th -century French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, holds that believing in God is a good bet at any odds, since the possible payoff — eternal happiness — far outweighs any costs of believing — even of believing in a God who does not exist. Most discussions of Pascal’s wager take it as a peculiar if not perverse calculation of self-interest. As Pascal puts it: “If you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing.” Taken this way, the argument seems morally suspect; William James noted that those who engaged in such egotistic reasoning might be among the first that God would exclude from heaven. In considering it again, I found what I think may be a more fruitful way of developing the wager argument. The wager requires a choice between believing and not believing. But there are two ways of not believing. I can either deny that God exists or doubt that God exists. Discussions of the wager usually follow Pascal and lump these two together in the single option of not believing in God. They don’t distinguish denying from doubting because both are ways of not believing. The argument then is about whether believing is a better option than not believing. My formulation of the argument will focus instead on the choice between denying and doubting God. Pascal’s Wager 2.0 by Gary Gutting / continue 

 

Nasa scientists find evidence of flowing water on Mars

Liquid water runs down canyons and crater walls over the summer months on Mars, according to researchers who say the discovery raises the odds of the planet being home to some form of life. The trickles leave long, dark stains on the Martian terrain that can reach hundreds of metres downhill in the warmer months, before they dry up in the autumn as surface temperatures drop. Images taken from the Mars orbit show cliffs, and the steep walls of valleys and craters, streaked with summertime flows that in the most active spots combine to form intricate fan-like patterns. Scientists are unsure where the water comes from, but it may rise up from underground ice or salty aquifers, or condense out of the thin Martian atmosphere.  continue

 

Nasa Mars announcement

Nasa is set to make one of the biggest announcements in its history later, teasing the press conference with only a note saying that it will announce a Mars mystery has been solved. "NASA will detail a major science finding from the agency’s ongoing exploration of Mars," it said in a statement. Many have expected that the event will bring an announcement that it has found water on Mars — a discovery that could lead to a whole range of new findings. The conference begins at 4.30pm UK time, or 11.30am in Nasa's local Eastern Daylight Time.

 

Blood Moon

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Supermoon lunar eclipse 2015

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