Lanny-yap: May 2013

31 May 2013

Church And State

YouTube | Jezebel

Americans United for the Separation of Church and State

30 May 2013

If Attacked Without Warning ...

Source unknown

29 May 2013

26 May 2013

YouTube

The movie Mama, which opened earlier this year, was based on a short film of the same name by Andy and Barbara Muschietti. Acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth) introduces the short and produced the feature.

17 May 2013

TGIF | Happiness Is A Cone Full Of Stuffies

Link

10 May 2013

TMN* | Giant Snails Invade Texas

Click image to enlarge

A Houston woman discovered a giant African land snail in her garden—a slimy horror of a creature that is as disgusting as it is deadly. Jokes about killer snails aside, the reason the snails can be lethal to humans is that one of the snails' favorite foods is rat feces, and one of the things you find in rat feces is a form of meningitis called "rat lungworm." So, if you are someone like local resident Jack Fendrick,who told local news KPRC, "I think most people, kids especially, will see a big snail and want to touch it," don't do that!

Autumn Smith-Herron, director of the Institute for the Study of Invasive Species at Sam Houston State University, is worried that too many Houston residents will find the 8-inch gastropods irresistable. "Unfortunately, humans are picking the snails up," she told KPRC. "They carry a parasitic disease that can cause a lot of harm to humans and sometimes even death. ... Perhaps just as disconcerting ... is that they're an invasive species, meaning they are ecological threats."

*Too Much Nature

Atlantic Wire

04 May 2013

Chet Phillips | Brigands, Nerds And Dread Pirates

Click images to enlarge

ChetArt via Laughing Squid

02 May 2013

Janelle Monae | Q.U.E.E.N.

YouTube | Via Jezebel

Love her and still love Tightrope.

A Neatly Compiled List Of Design Jargon Bullshit

"Ensures focus and consensus whilst encouraging maximum creative flexibility across multiple touchpoints" tinyurl.com/c9cf7g8
— DesignJargonBullshit (@DesignJargonBS) April 30, 2013

"Its logo demonstrates how the company add emotion to function, design totechnology and inspiration to performance" tinyurl.com/cznlgto
— DesignJargonBullshit (@DesignJargonBS) April 19, 2013

"A moody, sexy color palette and geometric font advance the personality of the brand and differentiate its identity" tinyurl.com/d5xseet
— DesignJargonBullshit (@DesignJargonBS) March 11, 2013

"Our digital dept may actually be made in binary. They eat, sleep & drink digital then regurgitate it into information" tinyurl.com/asnkqze
— DesignJargonBullshit (@DesignJargonBS) January 28, 2013

"Subtle touches of Javascript-enabled progressive enhancement to balance clarity and the capability to cross-promote" tinyurl.com/9uuyalx
— DesignJargonBullshit (@DesignJargonBS) October 24, 2012

More real design jargon here.

01 May 2013

Nathan Kaso | Miniature Melbourne

Vimeo Staff Picks

A short tilt-shift time-lapse film featuring the city of Melbourne, Australia. This piece is 10 months in the making and features a range of different events and festivals held in the city throughout the year.

Music: "Reflections" by Tom Day. Big thanks to Tom for his sound effects and audio mix soundcloud.com/tomday

Equipment: Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 17-40mm f/4L, 24-105mm f/4L and 70-300mm f/4-5.6 USM

The tilt-shift effect and grading was applied in Photoshop, and the film was edited in After Effects and Premiere Pro CS6.

Most of the shots were captured from the Eureka Skydeck, which is a lookout at the top of Melbourne's tallest building. Other locations were the Shrine of Remembrance memorial, car parks and bridges around the city.

More wonderful photography and videography at Nathan Kaso.

IBM | A Boy And His Atom

YouTube

The ability to move single atoms — the smallest particles of any element in the universe — is crucial to IBM's research in the field of atomic memory. But even nanophysicists need to have a little fun. In that spirit, IBM researchers used a scanning tunneling microscope to move thousands of carbon monoxide molecules (two atoms stacked on top of each other), all in pursuit of making a movie so small it can be seen only when you magnify it 100 million times.

Via Laughing Squid

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RECOMMENDED: The Death of Expertise

From Amazon: People are now exposed to more information than ever before, provided both by technology and by increasing access to every level of education. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Today, everyone knows everything: with only a quick trip through WebMD or Wikipedia, average citizens believe themselves to be on an equal intellectual footing with doctors and diplomats. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism. As Tom Nichols shows in The Death of Expertise, this rejection of experts has occurred for many reasons, including the openness of the internet, the emergence of a customer satisfaction model in higher education, and the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine. Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement. Nichols has deeper concerns than the current rejection of expertise and learning, noting that when ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy-or in the worst case, a combination of both. The Death of Expertise is not only an exploration of a dangerous phenomenon but also a warning about the stability and survival of modern democracy in the Information Age.

RECOMMENDED: The Magic of Reality

From Amazon: Richard Dawkins, bestselling author and the world’s most celebrated evolutionary biologist, has spent his career elucidating the many wonders of science. Here, he takes a broader approach and uses his unrivaled explanatory powers to illuminate the ways in which the world really works. Filled with clever thought experiments and jaw-dropping facts, The Magic of Reality explains a stunningly wide range of natural phenomena: How old is the universe? Why do the continents look like disconnected pieces of a jigsaw puzzle? What causes tsunamis? Why are there so many kinds of plants and animals? Who was the first man, or woman? Starting with the magical, mythical explanations for the wonders of nature, Dawkins reveals the exhilarating scientific truths behind these occurrences. This is a page-turning detective story that not only mines all the sciences for its clues but primes the reader to think like a scientist as well. Click the pic to buy the book at Amazon.

RECOMMENDED: Decoding Your Dog

From Amazon: "More than ninety percent of dog owners consider their pets to be members of their family. But often, despite our best intentions, we are letting our dogs down by not giving them the guidance and direction they need. Unwanted behavior is the number-one reason dogs are relinquished to shelters and rescue groups. The key to training dogs effectively is first to understand why our dogs do what they do. And no one can address this more authoritatively than the diplomates of the American College of Veterinary Behavior, whose work, the culmination of years of rigorous training, takes them deep into the minds of dogs in an effort to decode how they think, how they communicate, and how they learn. In Decoding Your Dog, these experts analyze problem behaviors, decipher the latest studies, and correct common misconceptions and outmoded theories. The book includes:effective, veterinary-approved positive training methods, expert advice on socialization, housetraining, diet, and exercise, and remedies for behavior problems such as OCD and aggression."

RECOMMENDED: The Sixth Extinction

From Amazon: "Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us. In The Sixth Extinction, two-time winner of the National Magazine Award and New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert draws on the work of scores of researchers in half a dozen disciplines, accompanying many of them into the field: geologists who study deep ocean cores, botanists who follow the tree line as it climbs up the Andes, marine biologists who dive off the Great Barrier Reef. She introduces us to a dozen species, some already gone, others facing extinction, including the Panamian golden frog, staghorn coral, the great auk, and the Sumatran rhino. Through these stories, Kolbert provides a moving account of the disappearances occurring all around us and traces the evolution of extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in revolutionary Paris up through the present day. The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy; as Kolbert observes, it compels us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.'

RECOMMENDED: When Strangers Meet

From Amazon: When Strangers Meet argues for the pleasures and transformative possibilities of talking to people you don’t know. Our lives are increasingly insular. We are in a hurry, our heads are down, minds elsewhere, we hear only the voices we already recognize and rarely take the effort to experience something or someone new. Talking to strangers pulls you into experiences of shared humanity and creates genuine emotional connections. It opens your world. Passing interactions cement your relationship to the places you live and work and play, they’re beautiful interruptions in the steady routines of our lives. In luminous prose, Stark shows how talking to strangers wakes you up. Threaded throughout are powerful vignettes from Stark’s own lifelong practice of talking to strangers and documenting brief encounters, along with a deep exploration of the dynamics of where, how, and why strangers come together. Ultimately, When Strangers Meet explores the rich emotional and political meanings that are conjured up in even the briefest conversations and unexpected connections with strangers. Stark renders visible the hidden processes by which we decide who to greet and trust in passing, and the unwritten rules by which these encounters operate. When Strangers Meet teaches readers how to start talking to strangers and includes adventurous challenges for those who dare.

RECOMMENDED: Shrink-Rap: Three Psychiatrists Explain Their Work

RECOMMENDED: The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons

From Booklist: "Science writer Kean explores the vagaries and inconsistencies of the human brain via diverting stories that chronicle medical science’s fits and starts. To say these are diverting is, however, an oversimplification since their subjects—primarily unfortunate individuals with brain injuries—command sympathy if not empathy. Yet Kean’s focus is on their contribution to the field of neuroscience along with, in too many instances, the misguided misinformation of the medical professionals who treated them. Take the case of France’s King Henry II. When he lost his right eye plus a bit of his brain to a poorly aimed jousting spear, his physicians’ limited knowledge of the brain’s physiognomy cost him his life. Then there’s President Garfield’s assassin, Charles Guiteau, whose undiagnosed bipolar mind was further addled by syphilis and who, naturally . . . thought himself fit for politics. To pick up one of these stories is to lose oneself in them. Where does the brain end and the mind begin? Curious readers will find both brain and mind fully revved up while engaging with this powerfully appealing and thought-provoking work of neuroscience history."

RECOMMENDED: American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America

From Amazon: According to award-winning journalist and historian Colin Woodard, North America is made up of eleven distinct nations, each with its own unique historical roots. In American Nations he takes readers on a journey through the history of our fractured continent, offering a revolutionary and revelatory take on American identity, and how the conflicts between them have shaped our past and continue to mold our future. From the Deep South to the Far West, to Yankeedom to El Norte, Woodard reveals how each region continues to uphold its distinguishing ideals and identities today, with results that can be seen in the composition of the U.S. Congress or on the county-by-county election maps of presidential elections.

RECOMMENDED: Gulf War Vets: The Richest Of Resources

From Amazon: "We are now poised as a country either to repeat the mistakes of the Vietnam era or to create the services and supports that our returning veterans deserve." This research focuses on the importance of using an integrated change management approach to bring together the civilian, corporate, and military communities to support veterans of the Global War on Terror, specifically those veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Using force field analysis methodology and original survey research, the study includes a review of the current literature on Gulf War Era veterans in the areas of the labor market, diversity, employee assistance, human resources (HR), behavioral health, disability, and career management. Survey respondents … identified nine forces they believe have a large impact on change in corporate policies, practices, and programs related to the employment, engagement in productive work, and retention and advancement of veterans. The[y] … also identified the seven factors they believe are most important in effecting a change in corporations' approach to employing Gulf War Era veterans … Employers, labor market experts, educators, and human services professionals must be prepared to welcome these veterans home and support them as they navigate the social, political, and economic turbulence challenging our country now and in the coming years. Click the pic to buy the book at Amazon.

Interests

Absurdity, ambiguity, anomalies, bacon, behavior, bonobos, brain science, consciousness, conversation, design, evolution, expressive arts, extremes, food, frontiers, gadgets, hermetics, humor, ingenuity, irony, maps, martinis, mental health, monkeys, mysteries, mysticism, nonsense, oddness, paradoxes, phenomenology, rocks, semantics, sf, social justice, spirituality, technology, tilt-shift and time-lapse, the visual presentation of data, anthropo-, bio-, eco-, etho-, ethno-, psycho- and sociology

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