joey and bruin. the best friends ever.

Passer-by Saves the Suicide by Kiss

Ok, so this is mind expanding. Magnifying Universe.

Copyright 2012. Magnifying the Universe by Number Sleuth.

Furgee the chug teaches baby Roen to crawl

Talking Parrots

So interesting to see the slow, arduous process of making a Rolling Stones song. Rolling Stones "Sympathy For The Devil" ~ FULL Studio Sessions ~ Beggars Banquet Via Everlasting Blort

Breath-taking, death defying construction of scaffolding in India

Quetzal, one of my favorite birds

Cool thing to know about, Crackle. Watch movies free online.

Now that's a handy way to carry a cellphone.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi - Trailer

JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI is a quiet yet enthralling documentary that chronicles the life of Jiro Ono, the most famous sushi chef in Tokyo. For most of his 85 years, Jiro has been perfecting the art of making sushi. He works from sunrise to well beyond sunset to taste every piece of fish; meticulously train his employees; and carefully mold and finesse the impeccable presentation of each sushi creation. Although his restaurant Sukiyabashi Jiro only seats ten diners, it is a phenomenon in Tokyo that has won the prestigious 3-Star Michelin review, making him the oldest Michelin chef alive. JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI chronicles Jiro's life as both an unparalleled success in the culinary world, and as a loving yet complicated father of two.

Skin swap

Magic meerkat moments - Planet Earth Live - BBC One

Visiting the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. No fun.

Odd, random factoid. Both JFK and his malignant narcissist, father, Joe, had affairs with Marlene Dietrich.

Jack Kennedy had always remembered the glamorous woman in the South of France who had massaged him seductively when she wasn’t off in her bungalow with his father. Dietrich was a grandmother and past 60 when she brought her sold-out one-woman show to Washington, D.C., in September of 1963 and was flattered by Jack’s phone call inviting her to the White House. She was given directions for arrival at the south entrance and was shown upstairs to the family living quarters, where she found the president alone and expecting her. She later regaled friends such as Kenneth Tynan and Gore Vidal with her tales of that early-evening visit, saying the tour consisted of the West Sitting Room and a bedroom where Jack made a “clumsy pass.”

In Vidal’s recounting, her initial protest of “You know, Mr. President, I am not very young” soon gave way to “Don’t muss my hair. I’m performing.” After an “ecstatic three to six minutes,” Jack fell asleep. Marlene pulled herself together and, already running late and not wanting to just wander the halls, woke Jack. He rang for his valet, who was clearly “used to this sort of thing.” With a towel around his waist, the president led her to the small elevator across the hall from the bedroom and “shook her hand as if she were the Mayor of San Antonio,” but something else was on his mind.

Soldier falling off camel

Wish this had dates with the pics but still way cool.
Epic Time-Lapse of Europe --HistoricalAtlas.com

The hole is in Austria at the bottom of lake Feldsee, and it is a part of a hydroelectric power plant. During the day, when the price of electricity is higher, a lake will be emptied, producing 70 MW of electricity. During the nighttime when the electricity is cheaper, the generator will be used as a pump, refilling the lake. The pump will have a capacity of 11,3 cubic meters per second. The total drop height will be 524 meters, where this hole is 450 meters deep.

Celebrating Sunday. From MetaFilter, one of many marvelous posts by flapjax at midnite

kickass Jesus music, y'all
May 19, 2012 10:14 PM Subscribe

The Rev. Charlie Jackson of Louisiana (1932–2006) was a purveyor of some of the rawest,grittiest

blues music

about Jesus

that you've ever heard. In a TV variety show appearance on his one and only concert tour of Europe, the Reverend maintained a warm and friendly manner through a somewhat condescending interview, and went on to performWrapped Up, Tangled Up in Jesus

with some backing vocal help from the legendary El Dorados.
posted by flapjax at midnite

How Corporations and Local Governments Use the Poor As Piggy Banks

"The trick is to rob them in ways that are systematic, impersonal, and almost impossible to trace to individual perpetrators." Via MetaFilter

Earth sunset

Whoa. Kodak, wtf? Kodak Had a Secret Nuclear Reactor Loaded With Enriched Uranium Hidden In a Basement

Eden greenhouse, Hveragerdi, Iceland

The Lost Gardens of Heligan

From Elfleda's photostream In the Garden of Dreams.

The sculpture was made by brother and sister team Sue and Pete Hill. There best known works are the series of earth and plant sculptures they made for the Lost Garden of Heligan and for the Eden Project.

This sculpture was created as a sister to the Mud Maid which can be found at the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall.

I was at Eden in Feb 08 and saw the beginning of another sculpture that will I am sure look as great as this one.

I returned to Eden in Feb 10 and the new sculture is settling in well -here.

FromElfleda's photostream

In looking up images of the Eden garden, where that grasswoman is, I came across other images, related to the term, "eden". This was an odd and interesting one.

Hotel Eden, La Falda, Argentina. December 2004. This hotel was founded in 1897 as a playground for the Argentine and international elite. In its prime, its guests included Albert Einstein (as part of an international scientific delegation in the 1920s), Rubén Darío (the Nicaraguan poet, arguably Latin America's greatest literary figure), and various Argentine and Brazilian presidents, including Juan Perón. Its German owner made the mistake of supporting the Nazis a little too overtly during World War Two, and was stripped of his possession after the war, until the Argentine government had a change of heart and restored it to him a few years later. (A popular local myth has it that Hitler himself spent some time here, in one of the outlying cabañas, after faking his death, fleeing Germany, and emigrating to Argentina along with Adolf Eichmann et al.) The town of La Falda grew up around the hotel, and eventually crowded it out with competition; the Edén was maintained through the mid-1960s, until it fell into disrepair and was abandoned. (More pics on Flickr).

Date	23 July 2009
Source	Own work
Author	Adam Jones Adam63

Fifth Avenue on a foggy night

It's the Ninth Avenue International Food Festival this weekend. Perfect weather for it.

Carmichael Collective

So I learned about this bizarre disease, Valley Fever, caused by the spores of the Coccidioidomycosis immitis . People who travel through deserts, like death Valley, or in the South West of the United States, may pick up a fungus that grows in the soil, then infects the lungs as well as in other parts of the body and can be fatal.

The disease is usually mild, with flu-like symptoms and rashes. The Mayo Clinic estimates that half the population in some affected areas have suffered from the disease. On occasion, those particularly susceptible may develop a serious or even fatal illness. Serious complications include severe pneumonia, lung nodules, and disseminated disease, where the fungus spreads throughout the body. The disseminated form of valley fever can devastate the body, causing skin ulcers, abscesses, bone lesions, severe joint pain, heart inflammation, urinary tract problems, meningitis, and often death.

Hope

Cat trains puppy to roll over

Now this is fascinating! The stomach has it's own brain and influences everything we do!

Think Twice: How the Gut's "Second

Brain" Influences Mood and Well-Being

The emerging and surprising view of how the enteric nervous system in our bellies goes far beyond just processing the food we eat.

Huh, there is a "nascent field of neurogastroenterology". Considering the stomach as a much more significant organ in the well being of a human, that's something Chinese medicine has understood in ways that Western (allopathic) medicine has not.

An 80 year old, British man secretly saved 669 children during WW2, never telling anyone. When his wife found the documents years later in his attic and submitted them to the BBC. They then organised this... Sir Nicholas Winton is a true hero.

Contemporary techno jazzy rock music. Cool. Thriftworks. It's mentally stimulating. Try it.

More on SoundCloud. It's kind of trance like too.

Wow, BB King still looks great. this pic was taken last night. Last time I saw him play was in the late 80's.

BB King, pic by SpaceMarines

Found Art: Serbian Groom Trolls for Bride via MetaFilter

Animaniacs sing the world's countries' names. But that was the old world.

They'll have to make a new song. :)

Name Changes Since 1990: Countries, Cities, and More

Who knew that Greenland is now named Kalaallit Nunaat (cap: Nuuk [Danish: Godthab])?

Anne Lemanski's art

A 1938 Phantom Corsair

Rap Song in 11 Different Accents (lots of obscene language, but amusing)

Huh. Cool ecology idea. Paint your roof white. White Roof

Beautiful kid singing. Not Over You - Gavin DeGraw (Acapella Contest)

There are marvelous free courses on the web from reputed universities. Here is a course in psychology, free online, from Yale
Introduction to Psychology with Paul Bloom

At Berkeley
An area of interest to me, destructive personality disorders, as it impacts others.
What I come away with it that the university courses are not especially informative, except at the higher level of study and that there is more substantive information to be read on the web. This last professor at Yale, Professor Bloom, makes sweeping, simplistic statements, like "Dahmer killed people to eat them". Not especially thoughtful or intelligently taught, imo.
This East Carolina University lecture on personality disorders is not bad.