A Rube Goldberg concept and construction with fire and torches.

A Rube Goldberg machine is an extremely complicated apparatus that performs a very simple, easy task in an indirect and convoluted way. Some examples of his machines have an anticipation factor, as the machine makes slow but steady progress toward its goal. In Goldberg’s original drawings, the machines very often involved and depended upon actions of a captive live animal, which was part of the device and expected to perform an operation, thereby greatly increasing the complexity, maintainance difficulty, and unreliability of the contraption. For obvious reasons, animals have less often been part of actual devices built in homage to Goldberg. - wiki

Seems like something M. C. Escher would have created if he were still around and had a computer.  This wordpress theme won’t let me show pics without borders, so you don’t really get the full wallpaper effect. Check it out on the source: swimmingcolorgods.ytmnd.com. If you use Internet Explorer instead of Firefox the animation is slower and in time with the Quicktime music on the site.  Something to stare at if you want to try self hypnosis.

I love being a virtual tourist. What is the deal with this photo? This looks like advanced military training where a guy does a back flip over barbed wire while throwing a hatchet at the enemy. Holy crap!

The site I found it on is terrible because among some funny photos it has pics of crashes where people obviously did not survive. I find things like that too gross and disrespectful, so I won’t link to them.

If you know who took this photo let me know so I can give proper credit.

Wow, I’ve discovered that I love dark energetic jazz! Find your own sound with http://musicovery.com internet radio.

Annalee Newitz writes:

It’s the next step on the path to robust tissue engineering and synthetic meat. Researchers today announced that they’d used special progenitor cells to grow human blood vessels inside mice. The vessels grew after scientists injected the cells into the mice, forming a “ball” of self-assembled veins that connected to each other and pumped blood. The next steps could be transplanting these blood vessels, or using progenitor cells to grow vessels in engineered muscles or organs.

It really is weird. According to Eureka Alert:

“What’s really significant about our study is that we are using human cells that can be obtained from blood or bone marrow rather than removing and using fully developed blood vessels,” said Joyce Bischoff, Ph.D., senior author of the study and associate professor at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston.

The researchers combined two different types of progenitor cells in a culture dish of nutrients and growth factors, then washed off the nutrients and implanted the cells into mice with weakened immune systems. Once implanted, the progenitor cell mixture grew and differentiated into a small ball of healthy blood vessels.

Kenadie (primordial dwarfism) w Jake Petruzzelli (Achondroplastic Dwarfism) Both age 2

According to littlekenadie.com:

Kenadie Jourdin-Bromley … was born Feb.13, 2003, weighing just 2 lbs, 8 ounces. Doctors were at a loss as to why she was born so small … at the age of 8 months, Kenadie was finally diagnosed with primordial dwarfism, a genetic condition that is believed to affect only about 100 people in the world. She isn’t expected to grow past about 30 inches or weigh more than 8 pounds…. Nearing the age of four, Kenadie now walks, runs, laughs, smiles and is beginning to talk.

This is the most amazing family portrait! As I see it, Kendie raises the possibility that WE are the hobbits, angels, leprechauns , etc. from our own legends! The right two people getting together who carry these rare genes will have this amazing result… which happens about once for every 3 million kids born.

If Kendie were to meet a male with primordial dwarfism, and if they were to have children, would the odds be 50% that they would have children of their same stature? Or… is it possible that two people with the genes for primordial dwarfism to have a human child as small to them as they are to us?

Meanwhile, back down to Earth, as you can imagine raising Kenadie presents special challenges. If you’d like to help you can donate on littlekenadie.com (PayPal accepted).

Some history:

Caroline Crachami was the first recognized individual with primordial dwarfism. She was born in Palermo, Italy in 1815. The exact history is unclear, but she traveled with a “Dr. Gilligan” with whom she did many appearances and exhibitions in London. Various descriptions arose from these exhibitions. She reportedly knew enough English to express herself fluently and her voice was described as thin and high-pitched.

Shortly before her death in 1824, a journalist named William Jerdan published her measurements. Her height was 19 ½ inches, the length of her foot, 3 1/8 inches and the length of her forefinger, 17/8 inches. Her head circumference was measured at 123/8 inches and her waist circumference, 11 ¼ inches. He wrote:

“Only imagine a creature about half as large as a new-born infant; perfect in all its parts and lineaments, uttering words in a strange, unearthly voice, understanding what you say and replying to your questions. Imagine I say, this figure of about 19 ½ inches in height and 5 pounds in weight, and you will have some idea of this most extraordinary phenomenon.” - pd

This is part of 100 Weird facts about the human body by Christina Laun found here.

The Brain

The human brain is the most complex and least understood part of the human anatomy. There may be a lot we don’t know, but here are a few interesting facts that we’ve got covered.

1. Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 170 miles per hour. Ever wonder how you can react so fast to things around you or why that stubbed toe hurts right away? It’s due to the super-speedy movement of nerve impulses from your brain to the rest of your body and vice versa, bringing reactions at the speed of a high powered luxury sports car.
2. The brain operates on the same amount of power as 10-watt light bulb. The cartoon image of a light bulb over your head when a great thought occurs isn’t too far off the mark. Your brain generates as much energy as a small light bulb even when you’re sleeping.
3. The human brain cell can hold 5 times as much information as the Encyclopedia Britannica. Or any other encyclopedia for that matter. Scientists have yet to settle on a definitive amount, but the storage capacity of the brain in electronic terms is thought to be between 3 or even 1,000 terabytes. The National Archives of Britain, containing over 900 years of history, only takes up 70 terabytes, making your brain’s memory power pretty darn impressive.
4. Your brain uses 20% of the oxygen that enters your bloodstream. The brain only makes up about 2% of our body mass, yet consumes more oxygen than any other organ in the body, making it extremely susceptible to damage related to oxygen deprivation. So breathe deep to keep your brain happy and swimming in oxygenated cells.
5. The brain is much more active at night than during the day. Logically, you would think that all the moving around, complicated calculations and tasks and general interaction we do on a daily basis during our working hours would take a lot more brain power than, say, lying in bed. Turns out, the opposite is true. When you turn off your brain turns on. Scientists don’t yet know why this is but you can thank the hard work of your brain while you sleep for all those pleasant dreams.
6. Scientists say the higher your I.Q. the more you dream. While this may be true, don’t take it as a sign you’re mentally lacking if you can’t recall your dreams. Most of us don’t remember many of our dreams and the average length of most dreams is only 2-3 seconds–barely long enough to register.
7. Neurons continue to grow throughout human life. For years scientists and doctors thought that brain and neural tissue couldn’t grow or regenerate. While it doesn’t act in the same manner as tissues in many other parts of the body, neurons can and do grow throughout your life, adding a whole new dimension to the study of the brain and the illnesses that affect it.
8. Information travels at different speeds within different types of neurons. Not all neurons are the same. There are a few different types within the body and transmission along these different kinds can be as slow as 0.5 meters/sec or as fast as 120 meters/sec.
9. The brain itself cannot feel pain. While the brain might be the pain center when you cut your finger or burn yourself, the brain itself does not have pain receptors and cannot feel pain. That doesn’t mean your head can’t hurt. The brain is surrounded by loads of tissues, nerves and blood vessels that are plenty receptive to pain and can give you a pounding headache.
10. 80% of the brain is water. Your brain isn’t the firm, gray mass you’ve seen on TV. Living brain tissue is a squishy, pink and jelly-like organ thanks to the loads of blood and high water content of the tissue. So the next time you’re feeling dehydrated get a drink to keep your brain hydrated.

See more and the answer on funis2cool.

ttownbeast said in May 14th, 2008 : “it’s an old yogi trick from India that’s been around for thousands of years adapted to a modern setting. In the old trick the yogi would appear to defy gravity sitting cross legged holding a cane to the side which would be the only thing touching the ground and this yogi would appear as if he was floating. In truth the guy would be held up by a bent pipe he is seated upon running through the cane and buried deep in the ground.”

Some bacterial cells can swim, morph into new forms and even become dangerously virulent - all without initial involvement of DNA. Yale University researchers describe July 18 in the journal Science how bacteria accomplish this amazing feat - and in doing so provide a glimpse of what the earliest forms of life on Earth may have looked like.

To initiate many important functions, bacteria sometimes depend entirely upon ancient forms of RNA, once viewed simply as the chemical intermediary between DNA’s instruction manual and the creation of proteins, said Ronald Breaker , the Henry Ford II Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale and senior author of the study.

Proteins carry out almost all of life’s cellular functions today, but many scientists like Breaker believe this was not always the case and have found many examples in which RNA plays a surprisingly large role in regulating cellular activity. The Science study illustrates that - in bacteria, at least - proteins are not always necessary to spur a host of fundamental cellular changes, a process Breaker believes was common on Earth some 4 billion years ago, well before DNA existed. …  Bacterial use of RNA to trigger major changes without the involvement of proteins resolves one of the questions about the origin of life: If proteins are needed to carry out life’s functions and DNA is needed to make proteins, how did DNA arise?  - read the full article on science daily