“So my amazing daughter, Emma, turned 5 last month, and I...
In honor of Children’s Book Week, here’s a photo of an awesome kid.
“Maid Maleen” by R. Leinweber (1912)
A couple of unused designs for the last month’s BPAL Lunacy tee. These were fun to make, but I...
Sticking hundreds of small denomination coins into tree...
Red Beach, China
Red Beach is located in the Liaohe River Delta, about 30 kilometers southwest...
British Library - England, London
“Mountain of the Gods” - Poster - By Ron Guyatt
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Made to Inspire and Teach people about Space Exploration.
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Naala - 29 October 2011 (2) (by *Arctic Fox*)
Scottish wildcat be all “I’m-a play with this feather thing, but I’m not gonna like it.”
(This is a critically endangered species, undomesticated and ancient. They believe less than 100 pure wildcats remain in the wild. www.scottishwildcats.co.uk)
Medieval animals made out of words
This is a special book from the early Middle Ages (France, 9th century). Not only does it contain a high volume of very attractive images, but these images are also not what you would expect: they are drawn, as it were, with words. They illustrate Cicero’s Aratea, a work of astronomy. Each animal represents a constellation and the written words in them are taken from an explanatory text by Hyginus (his Astronomica). His words are crucial for these images because the drawings would not exist without them. It is not often in medieval books that image and text have such a symbiotic relationship, each depending on the other for its very existence.
Pics (BL): London, British Library, Harley 647 (France, 9th century). The manuscript is available fully digitized here. More about illustrated Aratea manuscripts here. English extracts from Hyginus’ texts are found here (including the swan).
Red Sprite Lightning with Aurora
Explanation: What’s that in the sky? It is a rarely seen form of lightning confirmed only about 25 years ago: a red sprite. Recent research has shown that following a powerful positive cloud-to-ground lightning strike, red sprites may start as 100-meter balls of ionized air that shoot down from about 80-km high at 10 percent the speed of light and are quickly followed by a group of upward streaking ionized balls. The above image, taken a few days ago above central South Dakota, USA, captured a bright red sprite, and is a candidate for the first color image ever recorded of a sprite and aurora together. Distant storm clouds cross the bottom of the image, while streaks of colorful aurora are visible in the background. Red sprites take only a fraction of a second to occur and are best seen when powerful thunderstorms are visible from the side.
Gorgeous photography, full of colour!
For an art installation entitled Ballroom Luminoso, artists Joe O’Connell and Blessing Hancock created and hung six awesome chandeliers from a concrete underpass in San Antonio, Texas. The chandeliers were custom-made using structural steel, recycled bicycle parts, and custom LEDs that project a field of silhouettes of sprockets, gears, and other shapes onto the blank slate of an otherwise unremarkable industrial surface.
From the artist’s statement about the project:
“Ballroom Luminoso references the area’s past, present, and future in the design of its intricately detailed medallions. The images in the medallions draw on the community’s agricultural history, strong Hispanic heritage, and burgeoning environmental movement. The medallions are a play on the iconography of La Loteria, which has become a touchstone of Hispanic culture. Utilizing traditional tropes like La Escalera (the Ladder), La Rosa (the Rose), and La Sandía (the Watermelon), the piece alludes to the neighborhood’s farming roots and horticultural achievements. Each character playfully rides a bike acting as a metaphor for the neighborhood’s environmental progress, its concurrent eco-restoration projects, and its developing cycling culture.”
[via Colossal]
Sometimes when I’m feeling down I look up Bob Ross videos on YouTube.
