Snoopy Sloop the unmanned toy boat attempting Atlantic crossing

This week a toy boat called Snoopy Sloop will follow in the wake of Transatlantic pioneers like Christopher Columbus when it attempts to become the first craft to make an unmanned crossing of the ocean. Its creator Robin Lovelock, a retired Nato scientist, has spent four years developing a craft he believes can survive the 6,000 mile journey. The vessel has already demonstrated its endurance, having completed more than 5,000 miles during seven months of almost continuous sailing, albeit on the gentler waters of Bray Lake, just off the M4 motorway near Windsor.
Now it faces a more testing voyage.

 

Living cells captured in pyramid cages

This microscopic pyramid is actually a cage for a living cell, constructed to better observe cells in their natural 3D environment, as opposed to the usual flat plane of a Petri dish. Researchers from the University of Twente in the Netherlands made the cage by depositing nitrides over silicon pits. When most of the material is peeled away, a small amount of material remains in the corners to create a pyramid. Because the pyramids have holes in the sides and are close together, the cells can interact for the most part as they naturally do. "The thing is because they're so open, [cells] can easily make connections to the outside," said Aart van Apeldoorn, one of the researchers. "The 3D surface is more or less mimicking how cells act in actual tissues. Everything in our body is three-dimensional."

via Short Sharp Science
 

You know it’s bad when even Facebook thinks it’s time for you to get a job.

“Facebook just launched a new app. They teamed up with the Department of Labor to create what they call the social jobs app. You can browse through two million job listings. You know it’s bad when even Facebook thinks it’s time for you to get a job.” — Jimmy Kimmel

 “Facebook also has an app that can help you lose your job. It’s called Facebook.” — Jimmy Kimmel

 “Facebook and the Department of Labor have teamed up for a new app that displays job openings. It’ll be weird when people find a job because of Facebook, then get fired from that job for using Facebook, then use Facebook to find another job. It’s the circle of life.” — Jimmy Fallon

 

He Doesn't Get It

via

 

Discussion with my dog

Secret Stash

Badly behaved dogs named, shamed and made to wear a sign saying just what they did wrong. 

Help me mom!

Young woman terrifies her mother with prank photo showing her falling into Grand Canyon.

 

Casablanca Turns 70

Earlier this year, when the British Film Institute’s monthly magazine Sight & Sound announced the results of its most recent “greatest films of all time” poll — a once-every-decade exercise that Roger Ebert has called the only poll taken seriously by anyone who works in the film business — cinephiles were astounded to learn that Citizen Kane had been toppled from its perennial perch atop the list. The greatest film of all time, according to hundreds of critics, festival programmers and others around the world was not Orson Welles’ 1941 drama, but Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 masterpiece of unease and obsession, Vertigo. While the rest of BFI’s 2012 list is comprised of standard film-geek fare — Renoir’s Rules of the Game, John Fords’ The Searchers and so on — the excellence and legitimacy of the winners is hardly up for debate. They’re all powerful exemplars of the art of cinema. But what about the greatest movie of all time? What about the best, most thoroughly enjoyable, most enduringly, rightfully beloved movie ever made? A film, after all, is generally understood to be a creation that aspires to the status of art; a work of import, depth and vision brought to the screen almost solely through the passion and drive of its director — its auteur. A movie, on the other hand, is an unabashedly pop-culture creation whose purpose is to entertain — and, of course, make money. While the director, screenwriter, producer, cast and crew working on a movie might very well strive for real quality, most everyone involved knows and accepts that if it doesn’t put people in the seats, it can hardly be judged a success. With that distinction in mind, now is as fine a time as any to celebrate the best movie ever made: Casablanca.
  By Ben Cosgrove/ Time /more

 

Black Friday

Sexy Lingerie

Thanksgiving was My Birthday

On Thanksgiving, I celebrated my 83 years on this earth. 

 So, I spoke to my toes. "Hello toes.", I said. "How are you? You know, you are 83 today.

 Oh the times we've had! Remember how we walked in the mall every morning. The times we waltzed on the dance floor?

 Happy Birthday toes!" "Hello, knees.", I continued. "How are you? “You know you're 83 today…” “Oh, the times we've had! Remember when we marched in the parade? 

Oh, the hurdles we've jumped together. 

Happy Birthday, knees." 

 Then, I looked down at my crotch. 

 "Hello Willie! You little bugger.” “Just think, If you were alive today, you'd be 83.”

 

What’s in a name? Quite a lot when it comes to top chefs and a renowned gastropub.

Bloomberg reports that celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has applied for a U.K. trademark for the restaurant name the Spotted Pig, which happens to be the name of the famous New York eatery opened in 2004 by celebrity chef Mario Batali, restaurateur Ken Friedman and chef April Bloomfield, who also helms the restaurant. (Jay-Z and Bono are also co-owners.) The restaurant has remained one of New York City’s dining hot spots. Ramsay’s company, Ramsay Holdings International, submitted the application last month, but objections to the application can be filed for up to two months. So far, neither Batali nor Bloomfield, who is British, has registered a public objection.
 Other celebrity chefs, however, have waded into the issue. 
 

Guinness crisps

Bar flies, beer geeks, salted snack fetishists, your attention please. 

Word of Mouth has an important announcement to make. 

There is a new proprietary pub snack on the market: 

behold, Guinness-flavoured crisps. 

 

Paco De Lucia & Al Di Meola The Reunion "Mediterranean Sundance"

Little Lomo

In 1991, a group of Austrian art students on a trip to nearby Prague found, in a photographic shop, a curious little camera. Black, compact and heavy, the camera was rudimentary. The lens was protected by a sliding cover. Loading, focusing and rewinding were all done by hand. After developing the shots, the students found it produced pictures unlike anything they had seen before. The colours were rich and saturated, an effect heightened by the lens's tendency to darken the corners of the frame to create a tunnel-like vignetting effect, and there were dramatic contrasts between light and dark. 

The Austrians were hooked, and so were their friends when they showed them the results back home in Vienna. The little camera was the Lomo LC-A - Lomo Kompact Automat, built in Soviet-era Leningrad by Leningrad Optics and Mechanics Association (Lomo) - and very soon a craze was born. It was an analogue Instagram in the days before digital photography. 

 This Lomo craze may have ended up helping save film photography from an untimely end. 

 In 1992, the students set up Lomographic Society International, exhibiting shots taken on unwanted Lomos they had bought up from all over Eastern Europe. Then, in the mid-90s, having exhausted the supply of left-over Lomos gathering dust in Budapest, Bucharest or East Berlin, they went to the camera's manufacturers - still making optics in St Petersburg - and persuaded them to restart production. The negotiations were helped along by the support of the city's then deputy mayor, Vladimir Putin.

 On Friday 23 November, Lomography is celebrating its 20th anniversary, by starting a series of parties in some of its 36 stores around the world. 

By Stephen Dowling /BBC News /more

 

Happy Thanksgving Day!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends and followers from the USA. Have a great day.

Barack Obama pardoned the National Thanksgiving Turkey

Fresh off a four-day trip to Asia, President Barack Obama pardoned the National Thanksgiving Turkey Wednesday, taking a shot at his former Republican opponent and cracking jokes about his reelection. "They say that life is all about second chances and this November I can't agree more," Obama said.
"So in the spirit of the season I have one more gift to give," Obama joked in apparent reference to Mitt Romney's claim after the election that Obama won by giving "gifts" to minority groups, Obama said he was going to pardon the National Thanksgiving Turkey, named Cobbler, and his stand-in, Gobbler. “The American people have spoken, and these birds are moving forward," he added.
 

“What religion is Thanksgiving?”

14 Best Questions People Have Asked About Thanksgiving.

 

Where were you in your last dream?

And wouldn't it have been a better dream if you were flying. 

Hungarian photographer David Budapest asked these questions to his friends before posing them for a series of dreamlike images of people floating in midair.

 

Ah, Geneva — a place where you can stroll along the lakefront, gaze at Mont Blanc and, according to scientists, be bowled over by a giant tsunami.

Researchers say they’ve found good evidence that it has happened before. In the sixth century — the age of King Arthur, Mohammed and the bubonic plague — a bishop named Gregory of Tours noted an unusual event in Geneva. In 563, he wrote, a cascade of rocks plunged into the Rhone River, generating a wave of water that “overwhelmed with a sudden and violent flood all that was on the banks as far as the city of Geneva,” over 40 miles away, according to the New York Times.

Wisdom has it the moon can make you howling mad, but what's the scientific evidence?

Age: Four and a half billion years, give or take. 

 Appearance: Large, round, shining, a little mottled.

 Do you mean our largest natural satellite as seen during the brief period when it is on the far side of the planet in relation to the sun thus reflecting back a complete hemisphere of sunlight? I do. 

As opposed to what? 

 As opposed to an act of thorough bottom-showing. Right. Yes, it's definitely the satellite we're talking about. Good. Although the two might often go together, I suppose. Don't people get a bit, you know, "eccentric" when the moon is full? Funny you should ask. It turns out that they don't. But a link between full moons and general craziness has been a part of the popular imagination since Aristotle! The word "lunatic" is derived from the idea. True. Yet the theory has a drawback: no evidence at all.

 Evidence shmevidence. OK, but a study published in General Hospital Psychiatry begs to differ. Some Canadian psychologists looked at 771 patients who were admitted to hospital with mental-health problems over a period of three years and found no relationship at all with lunar phases, other than a 32% reduction in panic attacks during the last quarter before a full moon. Perhaps they have a different moon in Canada? They don't. 

 Besides, that's just one study. A number of previous meta-analyses of several studies found no link either. Meta-analyses, shmeta-analyses. Stop saying that. "If you still want to believe it, go ahead," says Professor Geneviève Belleville from Laval University's School of Psychology. "It's not my job as a scientist to convince … it's my job to check the facts." How about the moon's gravity, did she consider that? It causes the tides, so surely it also exerts some force on our bodies? It does indeed, about the same as an ant walking past. Or to put it another way: it doesn't.

 Do say: "Whenever there's a crescent moon I feel strangely compelled to eat French breakfast items while clipping my toenails."

 Don't say: "So how will I know when to look out for werewolves?"

The Guardian
 

Santana & Clapton - Jingo

Luxury Pet House Or Doggie Death Chamber?

The Korean manufacturer Autoelex has equipped this penthouse for pets with some impressive features. Though it looks a little cramped, it has temperature and humidity control, antibiotic air-filled environment, and carbon filter deodorizer.

18 Weird, Wacky and Crazy Pet Product Designs 

 

Pygmy hippopotamus mother gives her newborn calf a bit of a push

Picture: Lowry Park Zoo/Rex Features

 

Facebook and smartphones used in a war against tram ticket controllers in Zagreb

Fare dodgers in Zagreb have started organising themselves over Facebook and a specially developed app after ticket prices were raised by 40 percent. The 10,000-strong group keep each other informed via smartphone telling them where ticket collectors are and on what lines they are travelling.
Tram company ZET says it is looking into the situation.

 

Architecture for dogs

A group of designers have come up with structures designed especially for dogs.
The Architecture for Dogs project is the brainchild of Muji creative director Kenya Hara who is endeavouring to bring "a new kind of joy to the relationship between dogs and humans".
 quirky dog houses