StumbleUpon | natezomby's URL reviews

Tweed - How to Talk Like an Intellectual - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:57:42 -0800

From the page: "How to Talk Like an Intellectual

"The reification of the natural is homologous with the engendering of the gendered body."

You've probably had that very thought, or one like it, but you couldn't find the words to express it. Be an intellectual wallflower no longer!

With the University of Chicago Writing Program's academic-sentence generator you can baffle them with your bombast.

Or, if you're too lazy to string together your own sentence, let Pootwattle, the Virtual Academic, do the work for you. Smedley, the Virtual Critic, responds with an automatically generated counter-argument.

Go ahead, give it a try! "

ABCDeology & Blaze of Blue - The Kingfisher

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:33:53 -0800

From the page: "Beautiful photographs of the Eurasian Kingfisher taken by Charlie Hamilton James; some appearing in National Geographic magazine's November 2009 issue, the Daily Mail and some from his website."

Charles Kenny on why TV, not Facebook or Twitter, is going to revolutionize the world | Foreign Policy

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:20:48 -0700

From the page: "According to a recent fatwa in India, television is "nearly impossible to use … without a sin." Last year, a top Saudi cleric declared it permissible to kill the executives of television stations for spreading sedition and immorality."

Arbre du Ténéré - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 14:31:17 -0700

Imagine you're a 15 year old Twareg caravaner on the 500 mile trek across the Greatest Desert, 600 feet tall sand dunes slowly rolling across the path of your ancestors. Your father took this very same route through the desert for 25 years until he died of malaria in a tin shack with nothing but a Kalashnikov, a bag of salt and a son to his name. Hallucinating as he died, he sighed, "The tree! We are saved! I can see it..." You now protect the salt caravan carrying the same AK-47, wearing the same sunglasses. Lead by the same tree.

Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre Photography - The Ruins of Detroit

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 02:02:29 -0700

"At the beginning of the 20th Century, the city of Detroit
developed rapidly thanks to the automobile industry.

Until the 50's, its population rose to almost 2 million people.
Detroit was the 4th most important city in the United States.

It was the dazzling symbol of the American Dream City with
its monumental skyscrapers and fancy neighborhoods.

Increasing of segregation and deindustrialization caused violent riots in 1967.
The white middle-class exodus from the city accelerated and the suburbs grew.
Firms and factories began to close or move to lower-wage states.
Slowly, but inexorably downtown high-rise buildings emptied.

Since the 50's, "Motor City" lost more than half of its population.

Nowadays, its splendid decaying monuments are, no less than the Pyramids of Egypt,
the Coliseum of Rome, or the Acropolis in Athens, remnants of the passing of a great civilization"

ABCDeology

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 01:16:23 -0700

Current blog. Some tidbits:

CIVILIZATION: Civilization is a video installation Crush created with artist/director Marco Brambilla for the elevators in Standard Hotel in NYC. It's comprised of over 400 video clips and it takes elevator passengers on a trip from hell to heaven as they go up or from heaven to hell as they go down.

WINDOWS BLISS ORIGIN: "The `Bliss' image was actually taken outside Napa, Calif.,"

BARACK THE BARBARIAN: In "Barack the Barbarian," art imitates life with "Sorceress Hilaria, her demigod trickster husband Biil, Overlord Boosh and Chainknee of the Elephant Kingdom,"

GRIZZLY BEAR CHAIR: What has 4 legs, 2 arms, 1 head, 8 inch serrated teeth and is covered in soft fur?

BABY TURTLE: I almost stepped on the poor little guy when taking a shortcut through an overgrown field on a walk

Macroglossum stellatarum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 10:23:23 -0800

Hummingbird Hawkmoth
Enchanting Chimeric Hybrid

The Hummingbird Hawk-moth (Macroglossum stellatarum) is a species of hawk moth with a long proboscis, and is capable of hovering in place, making an audible humming noise. It looks remarkably like a hummingbird and feeds on flowers.
It seems to be really good at imitation, and even its eggs look like flower buds.

�
"Hummingbird Hawkmoth (macroglossum stellatarum)

Spotted between showers yesterday in Cambridgeshire. Only the second
time I've seen one of these. They really are like humming birds. "

Wiki Article
Flickr Photo Set
All Life Cycles Photographed
Science Info
BBC Site Info
BoingBoing Post
Video of a hummingbird hawkmoth feeding from a buddleia flower.
Another Youtube vid.

Zymoglyphic Museum - Xenophora

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 06:40:12 -0800

Xenophora
at the Zymoglyphic Museum

"Marine snails of the genus Xenophora collect shells,
rocks, and other debris from their environment. They attach these
objects to their shells at intervals during the shell's growth.
Sometimes it creates a neat radiating pattern; sometimes the effect is
more that of a jumble of debris. The result for us in any case is that
their collections become little samplings of a variety of faraway
underwater realms.

It is not known to what extent an artistic sensibility plays a part in
this behavior. The ones who live in shallower water (where there is
enough light for them to be seen) probably use their collections for
camouflage. The ones that live in the deeper, dark waters, such as X. pallidula,
are believed to be motivated more by a desire to not to be sucked into
the viscous muck in which they live. Attaching extensions to their
shells spreads out the shell's surface area and helps prevent the
animal from sinking. The additions may also strengthen the snail's
relatively thin shell."

Xenophoridae Ecology Page
Zymoglyphi Museum Page
Xenophoridae at SpecimenShells.net
Paleobiology Database Info
via

The Six Foot Walk On Water Ball at Hammacher Schlemmer

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 06:13:17 -0800

Water Balls
Human Hamsterballs let you Walk on Water!

"...the kids can do it easily enough for me its not so easy , you need
balance, coordination and keep them feet a moving as you go , lean
forward and your waterball walking"

You just go in throught the zipper, and can apparently stay inside for many hours without needing to get out for more air!

Kids in Brazil Playing at the Beach in Waterballs (Video)

Buy a Waterball for $275 (I'll pass for now...)

Album of Waterball Photos

Old School Water Walking

Voynich manuscript - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 14:13:59 -0800

The Voynich Manuscript

"The World's Most Mysterious Book"

"The Voynich manuscript is a mysterious illustrated book with incomprehensible contents. It is thought to have been written between approximately 1450 and 1520 by an unknown author in an unidentified script and unintelligible language.

Over its recorded existence, the Voynich manuscript has been the object of intense study by many professional and amateur cryptographers, including some top American and British codebreakers of World War II fame (all of whom failed to decipher a single word). This string of failures has turned the Voynich manuscript into a famous subject of historical cryptology, but it has also given weight to the theory that the book is simply an elaborate hoax %u2014 a meaningless sequence of arbitrary symbols."

Wiki Article (Comprehensive)
Gallery of Online Images from the Manuscript
Yale University High Resolution Image gallery
Voynich.nu - Great Informational resource
Scientific American Article
World's Most Mysterious Book May Be a Hoaxe - Nature Journal