Category: Stuff

Posted on Posted in Health & Med, Stuff

From CogNews:

“Colour is a product of our nervous system–it is a pigment of our imagination. The colours that we see are more related to the materials that things are made of than the light reflected from them into our eyes. Making this happen involves many complex processes. One of the earliest involves seeing contrast between pairs of colours. We have found that this important step of seeing colour contrast happens much earlier in the brain than we had realised up to now.”

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The passing of a truly amazing and inspiring woman.

New York Socialite Brooke Astor Dies at 105

Her words to live by: “Power, for me, is the ability to do good things for others,” she once told Harper’s Bazaar magazine. “I have the means to do it, thanks to Vincent’s money, and the act of giving makes me powerful inside. I would tell anyone, if you have enough money for three meals a day and you’re not too busy, you ought to do something for others.”

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Posted on Posted in Artsy, Stuff

via washingtonpost.com – World News and Analysis From The Washington Post by Molly Moore on Aug 06, 2007
PARIS, Aug. 6 — Five armed, masked thieves sprinted into an art museum on the French Riviera during opening hours Sunday afternoon, snatched a Claude Monet and three other masterpieces off the walls, stuffed them in bags and made their get-aways by motorcyle and car, French authorities said Monday. Visit the original item

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via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow on Jul 23, 2007

Cory Doctorow: A Flickr user named Subspace visited Kentucky’s Ventriloquism Museum and documented the results in this chilling photoset — these dummies all seem poised to take on independent life and begin pronouncing oracular doom. Link

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from Cincinnati.com

“A Hamilton County Municipal Court judge told an angry defendant “F— you,” an almost unheard of breach of courtroom etiquette.

Judge Ted Berry was responding to the same phrase that was uttered at him by Ivan Boykins, a defendant Berry had just sentenced to spend 30 days in jail after Boykins complained that he didn’t want probation because it would prevent him smoking marijuana.”

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there are no words to say…the subject line said it all.

via Slashdot by CmdrTaco on Jul 09, 2007

Gary writes “NASA has paid $19 million for a Russian-built international space station toilet system. The toilet system, similar to the one already in use in the station’s Zvezda Service Mdule, is scheduled to arrive at the space station in 2008 and will offer more privacy for a crew expected to double from three to six by 2009. The space station toilet physically resembles those used on Earth, except it has leg restraints and thigh bars to keep astronauts and cosmonauts from floating away. NASA says purchasing the multi million dollar toilet is a bargain compared to developing one from scratch.”Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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via Slashdot by Zonk on Jul 02, 2007

Bert de Jong writes “The Daily Mail reports that thousands of rubber ducks who have traveled the seas of the world since 1992 are about to end their journey. After escaping out of a container fallen off a Chinese freight ship in a storm, scientists have been followed them on their fifteen year trek. This has turned out to be an invaluable source of information for studying ocean currents. Now it seems inevitable though that they will finally land on the shores of South-West England. ‘[Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer] correctly predicted what many thought was impossible – that thousands of them would end up washed into the Arctic ice near Alaska, and then move at a mile a day, frozen in the pack ice, around their very own North-West Passage to the Atlantic. It proved true years later and in 2003, the first Friendly Floatees were found, frozen and then thawed out, on the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and Canada. So precious to science are they that the US firm that made them is offering a £50 bounty for finding one.'”Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Elderly Pa. Women Pose for Risque Photos

http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=456&sid=1164642

2 Pittsburgh-area women recently posed at Monongahela historical sites, baring it all _ or almost all _ to create a charity-driven calendar. The catch?

The nearly nude ladies are all in their 70s and 80s, driven to adventure by a desire to raise money for a historical society in Monongahela, a small community 17 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

Overcoming fears the priest would walk by during a photo shoot or embarrassing their children and grandchildren, the women _ all well-known members of the tight-knit community _ are now eagerly awaiting the calendar’s debut next month. The money it generates will go to the Monongahela Area Historical Society.

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