Link Latte 142


#142 - Week of September 29, 2010

Time Likely To End Within Earth's Lifespan - [love this headline]
The Interconnected Chart of Beers - [great infographic]
Foam Printer Cloud Sculpting - [cool video]
Inside the World’s Most Opulent Private Jets - [photos]
A diamond star of 10 billion trillion trillion carats - [space]
Australia's Lost Mega Animals, gallery - [fascinating]
Aletrnative Reality Generator - [funny site]
Unique Land Art & Outdoor Typography - [art]
Beautiful Macro Pictures of Insects - [nature]
Neat Design: Wild Froggy Trike - [concepts]
Automatic Menu Translation Fail, more - [hilarious]
Constructing a Medieval Castle, Today! - [great project]
Spider-licious Fine Art - [flickr set]
A Science Article in A News Blog - [funny]
Most Frightening: Fire Hurricane, Fire Tornadoes - [WW2 atrocity]
How to Make Giant Books - [for fun and profit]
Twisted and Detailed Collages by Lola Dupre - [art]
Would You Know Hitler's Face if He Settled Near You? - [pic]
What's This With Nazis & Skulls? - [fun video]
A Kiss From Tokyo - [60s-style animation]
Some Extreme Animated Violence - [hilarious trailer]
Bullet Hell Arcade - [impossible video game]
Surprise: Bringing Opera to the Market - [flash mob video]
Some Extreme Turnarounds, more - [wow videos]
Almost Crashes, more - [traffic videos, loud audio]
Breakneck Moped Stunt - [wow video]
The Best Feel-Good Commercial in the Universe! - [fun video]
DVD Mega Sale - All DVDs only 1 Dollar - [promo]

SEE ALL OTHER LINK LATTE ISSUES HERE

Mandelbox Mystery Trip


Link - by Avi Abrams & M. Christian
Scroll down for today's pictures & links.

Mandelbox Mystery Trip

Want to fly around inside an antique alien spaceship? Benoit Mandelbrot may have discovered the math to create staggering Mandelbrot sets but it was Tom Lowe who took Mandelbrot into the 3rd dimension with his Mandelbox. Check out this staggering simulation of his creation (try to watch it full-screen and in High Definition). Just don't get lost! -



Link

Today's pictures & links:

There is a second sun in Melbourne, Australia:

A staggeringly beautiful art installation that makes it look like there's a new sun in the sky: Solar Equation by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer -


(image via)

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Batmobiles Made to Order

DC Comics just licensed Mark Racop of Fiberglass Freaks to build 1966 Batmobile replicas, which he will happily set out doing right away, and some of you can even own one now:





(images via Mark Racop)

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If You Like Your Art Large -

– then look no further than Lake Baikal in Russia where Jim Denevan, who previously broke the world record for art in Nevada (see our article), just topped himself with a new installation:



(images via 1, 2)

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Mixed fresh links for today:

Brains of Mice on Drugs - [educational and fun site]
Real Carrots Are Purple. Orange Carrots Are Mutants - [wow fact]
Incredible X-Ray Visions: Bus of Skeletons! - [wow art]
A Pirate Insult Generator - [hilarious site]
Best Time to Buy Airline Tickets (and Everything Else) - [very useful infographic]
"Echo Park" Time Travel Store - [cool travel pics]
Japanese Cityscapes with Monster-Sized Wildlife - [just what it says]
Around the Solar System - [Big Picture]
Conceiving & Creating a New Women's Perfume - [video interview]
Cameras Attached to Birds: Wow, more - [wow videos]
The Lake That Vanished - [wow video]
Ken Block Destroys a Car... with Mucho Gusto - [wow video]
The Ultimate List of Weird Phobias - [compilation]

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Charming Little Steampunk Towns

Welcome to little villages powered by whimsy and steam (more info):


(image via)


(image credit: Michael Whelan)


("Zeppelin City", art by Benjamin Carre)

Read the full story "Zeppelin City" by Michael Swanwick and Eileen Gunn here.

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Kamishibai: The People's Theater of Japan

Kamishibai were entertainers who traveled Japan by foot – when it was first started in the 12th century - and later by bicycle, telling illustrated stories to villagers using a special tiny stage. The last remaining Kamishibai were making children and adults laugh well into the 1950s!



(images via Shinya Watanabe, 2, Hurukuta, Esai Sehari-hari)

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The Mighty Telephone Company

Pay your bill or Electro SMASH!


(image via)

Another one of these impressive Space Age floats:


(original unknown)

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Back When Men Where Men -

- and robots were robots. A beautiful classic science fiction vision by Alex Schomburg:


("Golden Age Comic Book Stories" by Mr. Door Tree, art by Alex Schomburg)

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Look Closer. What Do You See?

Scroll down to see what these dots on a dam are...



Well...


(original unknown)

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I Dream Of Atlantis

A lovely illustration of Atlantis: much closer to Plato's description than many common fantasies:


(image credit: Unsolved Mysteries)

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Sunshine Diva


(image credit: Dragan Todorovic)

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Your Mileage Can Vary

When will Detroit finally create a car for the average American driver? Photo by Thomas Michael Alleman, see the entire "Social Studies" series:


("Social Studies Series", photo by Thomas Michael Alleman)

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This is... extreme


(original unknown)


READ THE PREVIOUS ISSUE ->

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Carnivorous Plants: Hungry & Gorgeous

"QUANTUM SHOT" #654
Link - article by M. Christian and A. Abrams



Passive-Aggressive, Green and Very Hungry!

You have to admit, it does make a kind of twisted sense: After all, we've been feasting on their fibrous, nutrition-packed stems, leaves, tubers, and fruits since we began to actually eat the salad that came with our steaks so, naturally, there must have been a certain ... well, 'desire' for reciprocity. In other words if we eat them why shouldn't they want to eat us?



(images via)

For all you geeks out there – and, yes, we know who you are – it's commonly thought that the first depiction of a salad making a meal out of a man comes from Dr. Carl Liche, writing in 1881. J.W. Buel echoed the idea in his Land and Sea in 1887 (see below). Unluckily for Liche and Buel they've been since exposed as 'imaginative' instead of 'accurate.' ("The Day of the Triffids" by John Wyndham also deserves a mention). Hate to disappoint but true man-eating plants are a total myth:


(image via, click to enlarge)

But that doesn't mean that the next time you sit down to feast on a supposedly defenseless potato there aren't other forms of plant life that are also having a tasty meal of, while not us humans, then most definitely other animals – and sometimes rather large animals.


(images credit: Barry Rice, 2)

Venus Entrapment

The poster-plant for botanical carnivores has got to be the legendary Venus Flytrap. A resident of swamps and bogs, the flytrap has evolved a dramatic solution to its lack-of-nutrient diet: it catches flies – and pretty much anything big enough to get caught.


(left via; right image credit: Karoshi)

What's amazing about this plant is its mechanism. Anything that happens to stumble between the two halves of its unique mechanism will find itself in caught in a quickly-snapping-shut botanical bear trap. What's even worse is that after being caught the Venus then fuses those leaves together, turning them into a kind of stomach to digest its prey. What's extra-fascinating is that the trap has two triggers, and that both of them have to be tripped for the leaves to snap shut, to avoid misfires.


(image via)

Alluring Perfume in a Deadly Pitcher

While the flytrap looks like something out of a monster movie it rarely grows to any really impressive size – unless you happen to be a housefly. But one carnivorous plant that really is impressive, and recently discovered, is what's called a passive hunter. Instead of using snapping traps its family instead has evolved fluid-filled pitfalls lined with very slippery sides, and baited with a very alluring perfume.


(right: Sarracenia hybrid - images credit: Helene Schmitz, National Geographic)

Pitcher plants come in a wide variety of shapes, types, and sizes – including a special one native to the Philippines. Most pitchers feast on bugs and sometimes small lizards: pretty much whatever's unfortunate enough to get seduced by the plant's alluring smells and is small enough to fit down its leafy throat. While its mechanism is similar to its smaller kin, nepenthes attenboroughii (named after journalist and TV presenter David Attenborough), has traps that are large enough to catch not only bugs, lizards, and – what's more than a bit scary – rats (more info).


(images via 1, 2)


(image credit: Caroling)



(images credit: Shatalkin)

A Cobra Lily

"A pale green butterfly senses nectar and alights on a rare California pitcher plant. Also called a cobra lily for its bulbous head, forked tongue, and long tubular pitcher, it grows in mountainous parts of the West Coast and is an oddity among its kind. Although it traps prey in a manner similar to other pitcher plants, its leaves contain no digestive enzymes. Instead, it relies on symbiotic bacteria to turn captured insects into usable nutrients." (see the whole gallery).


(left: Cobra Lily; right: Nepenthes lowii - images credit: Helene Schmitz, National Geographic)


(image credit: Noah Elhardt)

Pretty, Pretty Sundew

Another device carnivorous plants use is to make its prey stick around long enough to be digested. The sundew, for instance, has leaves covered with dozens of tiny stalks, and each stalk is covered with very, very, very sticky stuff. When a bug happens to walk across these leaves it gets – you guessed it – very, very, very stuck. What's more, though, is that the plant then contracts, bringing more and more of those stalks into contact with its prey, completely trapping and then digesting it:


(images credit: Helene Schmitz, National Geographic)



(images via 1, 2)

Here is a great video depicting the "War between Carnivorous Plants and Herbivorous insects" - YouTube link.


(image credit: Olga Sytina)

Enter the Kudzilla!

But then there's the other, the monster, the beast, the chlorophyll creature that could – if any plant could be – considered a bona fide killer. Innocently imported to the US in 1876 from its native Japan, it was sold as a botanical miracle: ink, paper, jelly, tea, you name it and you could make it from this wonderful plant. But what no one could expect that this so-called marvel would have darker roots.


(image credit: MissyPrince)


(image credit: Patrick Walker)

Kudzu is its name and right now it covers – in some cases quite literally – a huge part of the Southeastern United States. While bamboo is a racehorse at two foot a day, Kudzu is hardly a slacker at covering half that distance in the same amount of time. In the South there are homes, cars, houses and entire communities that have been hungrily, potentially, covered – and subsequently strangled – by this ferociously determined plant.



(images via 1, 2, 3, 4)


(image credit: Kyle Telechan)

Sure, kudzu may not be carnivorous, but it's green infestation, it's emerald conquest, it's verdant domination is definitely worth a mention – and maybe a serious shudder of fear. Or, as they sometime say in the South: "A cow won't eat kudzu, but kudzu will definitely eat a cow."


(image credit: Josh Sommers)

CONTINUE TO "FRACTALS FOR FOOD"! ->

ALSO READ: "STRANGEST PLANT ON EARTH" ->

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Halloween Coloring Pages Collection 2010

Halloween Piglet coloring page
Many of the friends who do not celebrate Halloween, there is even one friend who also volunteered their children to school because there is Halloween parade. If I do, is simply to enliven it. Who respect the land we live, who have revived me and my family for so long. Remains just about the past, enliven the day I'll be more variable. life experience is also a part of a "memory album" us later. I still respect them a different principle, also for the good purpose anyway.

So did not spend too much money, I really had an intention to make their own costumes children. In Canada, it is part of school activities. They circled the school (the parade) for performance costumes and creativity. Even in school Adel, parade as she requested donations to buy library books
halloween coloring pages
halloween coloring pages
disney halloween coloring
coloring halloween pages

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