San Francisco-based illustrator Bill Robinson created Palace of Fine Squids in appreciation of the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Prints of this friendly pink squid are available at Bill’s Etsy shop, Flimflammery — via Laughing Squid
A Minnesota man violated a restraining order obtained by his ex-girlfriend by blogging about her mental health and sexual issues, and sending links to posts on the blog to her family, friends, and co-workers. The judge then extended the restraining order by 50 years, ordered the guy never to write about his ex on the Internet and ordered him to delete the blog he created. Even though there was no evidence that what he had written was false, the judge said the ex-girlfriend’s right to be free from harassment
outweighed the guy’s right to free speech
. I believe it’s rare, if not unprecedented, for a court to order an entire blog deleted,
says technology law professor Eric Goldman — via Slashdot
A trawl of Chinese crowd-sourcing websites — where people can earn a few pennies for small jobs such as labelling images — has uncovered a multimillion-dollar industry that pays hundreds of thousands of people to distort interactions in social networks and to post spam.
The report’s authors, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, also found evidence that crowd-sourcing sites in the US are similarly dominated by ethically questionable jobs. They conclude that the rapid growth of this way of making money will make paid shills a serious security problem for websites and those who use them around the world. A paper describing their results is available on the Arxiv pre-print server — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Endo Shuhei has designed a new building at the Port of Fukura in Japan — via CONTEMPORIST
The world’s smallest working steam engine
has been built in Germany, according to a team of researchers.
The microscopic model was based on a 195-year-old design by the inventor Robert Stirling.
Changes included the replacement of the original pistons with a laser beam.
The physicists said they were astonished
by how efficiently the machine converted heat into power — but said it did not run smoothly
and had no practical use in its current form — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A lone gunman with extreme rightwing sympathies has gone on a shooting spree in Florence, killing two Senegalese street vendors and wounding three others before killing himself.
Gianluca Casseri, 50, an accountant, first shot dead two vendors and wounded a third with a .357 Magnum at the crowded Piazza Dalmazia street market on the outskirts of the city on Tuesday morning.
He then fled in a car after threatening to shoot a stall holder who attempted to stop him, reappearing later in the day at the central San Lorenzo market where he fired at two African vendors, wounding both.
Police officers found Casseri back in his car in the car park of the market, where they fired warning shots before he reportedly shot himself dead — via redwolf.newsvine.com
This Yamaha XS500 custom was built by Philadelphia-based Ted Cichocki. Ted discovered a crippled Yamaha XS500 only a few miles from his house, and bought it for $200. The bike’s performance has been upgraded with a steering damper, pod filters and a re-jet, but it’s impossible to list everything else that’s been done: it’s loaded with custom parts from fork ears to clubman bars to a Rocket Four seat from Carpy — via Bike EXIF
Police with no leads can now predict the eye colour of their suspect from DNA recovered at the crime scene. It’s the first time such a tool has been available.
Manfred Kayser at Erasmus University Medical Centre in the Netherlands and colleagues have developed IrisPlex, which can predict with 94 per cent accuracy whether a person has blue or brown eyes from a sample of DNA.
The Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice is expected to approve the kit in the coming weeks, while the UK could use it immediately — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A wandering baby fur-seal wriggled through the cat-door of a Bay of Plenty house — and made himself at home on the couch.
A stunned Annette Swoffer thought she must have been hallucinating when she found the young pup hanging out with her cats in her kitchen on Sunday night.
The seal had made its way from the Welcome Bay waterfront, through the suburb’s residential area, across busy Welcome Bay Rd, up a slip road, along Ms Swoffer’s long driveway, under a gate, through the cat door and up some stairs before he was found in the kitchen about 9.30pm
School Portrait (2011) from Michael Berliner on Vimeo.
I was traveling in Italy last year when I had an idea about a school photographer who was having a bad day – seemed like a great excuse to work with Jonathan Rhodes. Producer Michael Berliner came on board and together we found Shirley High School and Stuart from Stagecoach, who introduced us to a wonderful group of kids who were excited about being involved — via Nick David Scott
A mysterious epidemic is sweeping Central America — it’s the second biggest cause of death among men in El Salvador, and in Nicaragua it’s a bigger killer of men than HIV and diabetes combined. It’s unexplained but the latest theory is that the victims are literally working themselves to death — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Jonas and Wyatt Maines were born identical twins, but from the start each had a distinct personality.
Jonas was all boy. He loved Spiderman, action figures, pirates, and swords.
Wyatt favored pink tutus and beads. At 4, he insisted on a Barbie birthday cake and had a thing for mermaids. On Halloween, Jonas was Buzz Lightyear. Wyatt wanted to be a princess; his mother compromised on a prince costume.
Once, when Wyatt appeared in a sequin shirt and his mother’s heels, his father said: You don’t want to wear that.
Yes, I do,
Wyatt replied.
Dad, you might as well face it,
Wayne recalls Jonas saying. You have a son and a daughter.
That early declaration marked, as much as any one moment could, the beginning of a journey that few have taken, one the Maineses themselves couldn’t have imagined until it was theirs. The process of remaking a family of identical twin boys into a family with one boy and one girl has been heartbreaking and harrowing and, in the end, inspiring – a lesson in the courage of a child, a child who led them, and in the transformational power of love — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Di van Niekerk shares a nice tutorial for making 3D french knot hydrangeas to add extra depth and texture to your embroidery — via CRAFT
Former prime minister John Howard has lent his support to a book aimed at school children which argues the theory of human-induced global warming is a scam.
Last night, the former prime minister launched the publication, the latest from controversial geologist Professor Ian Plimer.
The book, called How to Get Expelled From School, rejects the predominant scientific opinion on climate change.
The book is billed as an anti-global warmist manual for the younger reader
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
A record 80 per cent of sniffer dog searches for drugs resulted in false positives
this year, figures show.
The figures obtained from the state government in response to parliamentary questions on notice show 14,102 searches were conducted after a dog sat next to a person, indicating they might be carrying drugs. But, in 11,248 cases, no drugs were found.
Only 2854 searches — 20 per cent — in the first nine months of this year, resulted in drugs being found, the figures show.
Last year, of the 15,779 searches conducted after police-dog identification, no drugs were found in 11,694 cases. Drugs were found in 4085 cases, resulting in a false positive
rate of 74 per cent, said the Greens MP David Shoebridge, who obtained the figures — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Vespa GTS 300 Super, originally uploaded by Red Wolf.
— via It’s Tactical
If you want to know the quickest route to a restaurant or hotel, a taxi driver may be your best bet. And new research suggests their savvy skills are imprinted in their brains.
Turns out, the intensive training required of London taxi driver candidates may alter the drivers’ brains, changing the part of the brain in charge of memory and spatial navigation, the new study suggests — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Magic Carp-pet
Rug. Winner of Red Dot Design Award: Best of the Best 2011. There is no electricity, monitor or projector required to make the print on the rug animate. The animation is achieved through an optical illusion effect called Moire Animation
by John Leung
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