When Is the Brain Dead?

Interesting. Last year, a bizarre experiment showed that human brains can be restored to a life-like electrochemical state after death, raising questions about what exactly constitutes life, consciousness, and whether or not there is a ‘soul’. Now, a recent publication by a team of Canadian doctors has shown that significant brain activity can continue long after patients are declared “dead,” adding mystery to the search for the exact moment consciousness ends during death.
According to their published study, doctors in a Canadian intensive care unit observed cardiac and brain function in four terminally ill patients in the moments just before and after clinical death was declared. All four patients showed vastly different electroencephalographic (EEG) activity, or brain waves, in the moments before and after death, indicating that death might be experienced differently by each individual.
Great pics of hippies in the 1960s and 1970s by the photographer, Garofalo

Tampopo is one of my favorite films. Marvelous to watch on YouTube how to make the Tampopo ramen.

And ooh, it's been restored in high definition. Sweet!

THE PLANETARIUM CLOCK FROM 1770, PARIS

This beautiful art piece is called Pendulette de table avec Planetarium (Planetarium Table Clock). The planetarium clock pictured below is an absolute work of art made in 1770 in Paris. It keeps time, the earth rotates around the sun in perfect real time. The other five planets rotate as well(see: The timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their natural satellites), up, down, around, in relation to the etched constellations of precisely positioned stars on the crystal globe, which if you are smart enough will reveal what season it is.

The planetarium clock can be found at the Beyer Museum of Time(Bahnhofstrasse 31, Zurich 8001, Switzerland). The Uhrenmuseum Beyer (Beyer Watch and Clock Museum) is located in the heart of the city of Zürich, Switzerland and is one of the world’s leading private museums dedicated to the horology.

HORLOGERIE ANCIENNE COLLECTIONS

A marvelous website covering old, beautiful, fabulous clocks. In French but the pics are stunningly wonderful.

Videos on the site of marvelous automata

Mini biographies of famous clock makers

Exquisite watches of the 18th Century

Images and videos of incredible table clocks of the 16th Century

A cool modern wristwatch, orrery by

. An orrery is a mechanical model of the solar system, or of just the sun, earth, and moon, used to represent their relative positions and motions.

Such fun roaming around this excellent website, Museum of Artifacts, which has pics and histories of amazingly cool stuff.

Whoa. The horned helmet of King Henry VIII
It formed part of a magnificent armour, commissioned in 1511 by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I as a gift for the young king, who would have worn the armour for court pageants rather than in combat.

The Horned helmet is technically called an armet, with protection for the skull, hinged cheek pieces, and a face defense. An armet is a type of helmet which was developed in the 15-th century. It was extensively used in Italy, France, England, the Low Countries and Spain.

Whoa. THE ZWEIHÄNDER SWORD THAT BELONGED TO GRUTTE PIER (1480-1520), FRIESIAN PIRATE AND WARLORD.
According to legend, Pier was around 7 feet (around 2.13 m) tall, and was so strong that he could bend a coin using just his thumb and forefinger.

Grutte Pier's helmet

Another very cool site: 3Otiko blogspot

The Atacama Desert in northern Chile is the most liquid part that is not in one of the two poles of the Earth. Somewhere in the desert, the Pan-American Highway, there is a small road that leads to a huge concrete hand, which has a height 36 feet. Called La Mano del Desierto, the Hand of the Desert.

nifty pic of the Statue of Liberty, taken in the 1930s from the torch flame. Circa-1930 tourists peer out of the Statue of Liberty's crown at a photographer on the torch, which has been closed to the public since a 1916 explosion on a nearby island. From the flame's tip to the ground is 305 feet (93 meters).

Cradled in the statue's left arm is a tablet bearing the date of U.S. independence in Roman numerals: July IV, MDCCLXXVI. Independence Day 2009 will see the reopening of the Statue of Liberty's crown.

—Photograph from Fox Photos/Getty Images