Ryan Andrews wrote and illustrated this wonderful web comic about an older woman named Sarah, her husband, and the seed she gave birth to. Read ‘Sarah and the Seed’. His other comics are really great too!
Archives for category: look over here!
Artist Lisa Nilsson makes gorgeous anatomical cross-sections…out of rolled strips of paper. The technique is called ‘quilling’ and is used with particularly striking effect in Lisa’s work. From her website:
These pieces are made of Japanese mulberry paper and the gilded edges of old books. They are constructed by a technique of rolling and shaping narrow strips of paper called quilling or paper filigree. Quilling was first practiced by Renaissance nuns and monks who made artistic use of the gilded edges of worn out bibles, and later by 18th century ladies who made artistic use of lots of free time. I find quilling exquisitely satisfying for rendering the densely squished and lovely internal landscape of the human body in cross section.
photography by John Polak
click to embiggen
Tsuneaki Hiramatsu has taken some beautiful time-lapse photographs of lightning bugs in the wild. Lots more in the previous links.
To preface:
In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdan Anderson, and requested that he come back to work on his farm. Jourdan — who, since being emancipated, had moved to Ohio, found paid work, and was now supporting his family — responded spectacularly by way of the letter seen below (a letter which, according to newspapers at the time, he dictated).
by bbyrd
Aurora Borealis by Billy Idle
Over at McSweeney’s: In Which I Fix My Girlfriend’s Grandparents’ WiFi and Am Hailed as a Conquering Hero.
[The warrior] accepted the quest and strode bravely across the beige shag carpet of the living room.
Deep, deep behind the recliner did the warrior crawl, over great mountains of National Geographic magazines and deep chasms of TV Guides. At last he reached a gnarled thicket of cords, a terrifying knot of gray and white and black and blue threatening to ensnare all who ventured further. The warrior charged ahead. Weaker men would have lost their minds in the madness: telephone cords plugged into Ethernet jacks, AC adapters plugged into phone jacks, a lone VGA cable wrapped in a firm knot around an Ethernet cord. But the warrior bested the thicket, ripping away the vestigial cords and swiftly untangling the deadly trap.
via Eric
In more Psychic Bunny/Lead Balloon news – the super-secret 360° shoot I worked on a few years ago has also been posted (probably awhile ago – apologies for not being more on top of this!). Social Animal‘s camera rig…was amazing. The SA9 has nine HD cameras pointed straight up at a mirrored rig, all connected to nine MacBookPros. It made for some pretty intense equipment moves/hides and cable wrangling, not to mention the challenges of directing actors in360°. It was a really awesome shoot and I’m glad I can finally talk about it!
You can watch the demo we shot, and a behind the scenes featurette at the Qualia site. Be on the lookout for me! I’m wearing a teal hoodie.
So remember that ‘Dr. Bonesaw’ shoot I worked on way back when (photos here)? Psychic Bunny/Lead Balloon took that footage and rolled it into a short about…well…aftermath, is the best way I can put it – starring the delightfulLaurel Vail! Scroll down the Lead Balloon projects page to ‘Still Beating’.
(Also I am way way late in posting this. Apologies!)
So many amazing things in this io9 post. Highlights below:
Worf and Data with Spot the cat – custom-painted Little Fatty figures from FatCatStudio.com
My Little Worf Pony by Kipperfrog
Eric directed me to this post over at Brain Pickings about the 11 best illustrated children’s books of 2011. They’re all pretty cool (check out the Edward Gorey and the Brothers Grimm!) but these illustrations of Hindu deities by Pixar animator Sanjay Patel really caught my eye:
Today’s Google doodle commemorates Nicolas Steno‘s 374th birthday. Steno pioneered the concept of superposition, which is one of the fundamental principles of geology.
Via the Atlantic:
A cloud of ash billowing from Puyehue volcano near Osorno in southern Chile, 870 km south of Santiago, on June 5, 2011. Puyehue volcano erupted for the first time in half a century on June 4, 2011, prompting evacuations as it sent up a cloud of ash that circled the globe. Claudio Santana/AFP/Getty Images
Lightning bolts strike around the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcanic chain near southern Osorno city, on June 5, 2011. Reuters/Ivan Alvarado
Volcanic activity in the sea off the Canary island of El Hierro, seen in this aerial photo taken on November 5, 2011. The regional government of the Canary Islands ordered the evacuation of homes and road closures near the southern tip of El Hierro after two earth tremors and increased offshore volcanic activity caused a buildup of malodorous debris floating on the sea. Seismic activity began in the area on July 17 and residents have since been rocked by more than 10,000 tremors, while underwater fissures have released an almost continuous flow of sulfurous gases, smoke and hot debris. AP Photo/Canary Islands Government
Tungurahua Volcano is seen from the town of Guadalupe, Ecuador, on November 28, 2011. Pablo Cozzaglio/AFP/Getty Images
The spiral Antennae galaxies are one of the nearest and youngest examples of a pair of colliding galaxies.
NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA-ESA/Hubble Collaboration – click to embiggen
During the course of the collision, billions of stars will be formed. [...] Nearly half of the faint objects in the Antennae image are young clusters containing tens of thousands of stars. The orange blobs to the left and right of image center are the two cores of the original galaxies and consist mainly of old stars criss-crossed by filaments of dust, which appears brown in the image. The two galaxies are dotted with brilliant blue star-forming regions surrounded by glowing hydrogen gas, appearing in the image in pink. The Antennae galaxies take their name from the long antenna-like “arms” extending far out from the nuclei of the two galaxies, best seen by ground-based telescopes.
via the Atlantic’s Hubble Telescope Advent Calendar. More info about the Antennae Galaxies