Mask

The Pende people have some brilliant masks.

The Ghost of Romantic Transceiver

Please Vote For Me

Wuhan is a city about the size of London located in central China. It is here that director Weijun Chen has conducted an experiment in democracy. A Grade 3 class at Evergreen Primary School has their first encounter with democracy by holding an election to select a Class Monitor. Eight-year-olds compete against each other for the coveted position, abetted and egged on by teachers and doting parents.

Elections in China take place only within the Communist Party, but recently millions of Chinese voted in their version of Pop Idol. The purpose of Weijun Chen's experiment is to determine how democracy would be received if it came to China.

James Randi The Bullshit Hunter

The James Randi Educational Foundation currently offers a $1,000,000 reward to anyone who can prove to have paranormal abilities.

Toy Soldiers

Toy Soldiers from Alta Media Productions on Vimeo.

And with this I think we can safely say that tilt-shift video has reached its pinnacle.

Portals II

Billboard photos by Branislav Kropilak.

previously from him

previous portals

Aerial football

aerial photography by Stephan Zirwes

via ektopia

Razzle Dazzle Camouflage

via wikipedia:

"Dazzle camouflage, also known as Razzle Dazzle or Dazzle painting, was a camouflage paint scheme used on ships, extensively during World War I and to a lesser extent in World War II. Credited to artist Norman Wilkinson, it consisted of a complex pattern of geometric shapes in contrasting colors, interrupting and intersecting each other. Dazzle did not conceal the ship but made it difficult for the enemy to estimate its speed and heading. The idea was to disrupt the visual rangefinders used for naval artillery. Its purpose was confusion rather than concealment."

There are a bunch of design plans here, filtered from here.

Bonus ball

Satirical Map of Europe

click to enlarge

Lifted from BibliOdyssey:

"Louis Raemaekers (1869-1956) was one of the most famous cartoonist/caricaturists of WWI. He crossed the border from Holland into Belgium to witness first-hand the atrocities of the advancing German army. He subsequently chronicled the brutality of theses forces in his cartoons which drew the wrath of the Germans. They forced the Dutch authorities to put the illustrator on trial for jeopardising the neutrality of the Netherlands (acquitted). A reward was offered by the Germans for Raemaekers' arrest and he escaped to Britain where he continued to skewer the German army in his drawings. He produced a thousand cartoons during the war and gained world wide acclaim from their syndication."

See more incredible maps at BibliOdyssey.

Kamikazes

Keepon

Keepon is a rhythmically intelligent robot developed by Hideki Kozima designed to study social development by interacting with children.



Although it's charismatic personality and dancing abilities...



... have made him a bit of a star...



the end

Good MOrning!

have at it!

Not the best idea ever...

Someone should organise flash mobs to go queue outside banks.

Just to see what happens.

Gaza Strip

By Blu for Nakba60

Wake up sheeple!

Also:



via at room temperature

The Crow Vending Machine

Joshua Klein is a man of genius. His idea? Training crows to put coins they find in the street into a vending machine he's created and get peanuts as a reward.

NPR explains it thus: "Klein says this all started when he used a modified version of Skinnerian training to teach his cat to use the toilet, and it worked really well. That made him think that he might be able to use the method with crows. The first inklings that he would work with crows came about 10 years ago, at a cocktail party, when he argued that harnessing the birds to do something useful would be a much better plan for his native Seattle, plagued by crows, than mass slaughter.

In the first two steps of his four-step experiment, Klein says he provides crows with coins, peanuts and the vending machine, in order to get them used to the materials. Then he provides the birds only with coins, and in frustration they bang around until the coin gets in the machine’s slot. That introduces the next step, when the machine dispenses a peanut as a reward for each coin. In the fourth step, he gives the birds nothing. But the crows see that coins have been spread on the ground near the machine. This reveals what’s special about crows. Squirrels, for example, look at the box a half-dozen times, then disappear to play in traffic. Crows make the connection: Pick up the coin, put it in the box and receive a reward."

Now he is working on a self-teaching mechanism for crows. From his website:

"The goal of this project is to create a device that will autonomously train crows. So far we've trained captive crows to deposit dropped coins they find on the ground in exchange for peanuts. The next step is to see how quickly we can get wild crows to learn the system, and then how quickly they can learn it from each other."

So what is this? A cunning plan to make money without moving a finger? Not at all:

"Once we've got system down for teaching coin collection we'll move to seeing how flexibly they can learn *other* tasks, like collecting garbage, sorting through discarded electronics, or maybe even search and rescue. The crows continue to amaze us with their abilities, so who knows?

In the meantime, the idea of mutually beneficial synanthropy is gaining ground. That's the concept that we can have mutually beneficial relationships with animals adapted to human ecologies. We're doing some consulting with companies that have animal-related problems to find animal-related solutions - instead of just bombing, shooting, or poisoning them."

As I say: genius.

You can visit the Vending machine for crows page, and watch Joshua presenting his project at a TED conference.

Also, see what the nonist has to say about it (where the above picture is from).

How to stop worrying and love the firebomb

"I was on the island of Guam. In [chief of staff of the Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific during World War II General Curtis E. LeMay's] command, in March of 1945, in that single night, we burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo -- men, women, and children. I was part of a mechanism that in a sense recommended it. I analyzed bombing operations, and how to make them more efficient -- i.e. not more efficient in the sense of killing more but more efficient in weakening the advisary (sic.). ... I don't want to suggest that it was I that put into LeMay's mind that his operations were totally ineffecient ... but anyhow that's what he did ... he decided to bomb with firebombs. ... Fifty square miles of Tokyo were burned."

Robert McNamara

Firebomb: How to Stop Worrying And Love The Firebomb