$30m of gems that were Elizabeth Taylor’s lasting love go up for auction

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8 September 2011
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There was jewellery for the eight wedding days, the numerous film premieres, the table tennis victories and of course Tuesdays. Who among us does not get an it’s Tuesday and I love you gift?

The woman who certainly did was Elizabeth Taylor and it helped her build up one of the most remarkable and dazzling private collections of jewellery ever created.

Following her death in March aged 79, Christie’s announced on Wednesday it is to sell nearly 300 of the star’s jewels over two sessions in New York. There will be diamonds, pearls, emeralds, rubies and sapphires; rings, earrings, necklaces, brooches, tiaras and more in a sale expected to make over $30m (£19m).

The chairman and president of Christie’s America, Marc Porter, said the sale promised to captivate the auction world. He added: This is without a doubt the greatest private collection of jewellery assembled in one place. — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Green Mountain of Housing Cubes / Bjarke Ingels Group

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8 September 2011
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The architect for this green housing is the playful and green-minded Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), which has just completed a ski slope-cum-municipal-incineration project for the city of Copenhagen — by making it into an unlikely combination of green energy and alpine sport, and recently we covered BIG’s imaginative new gallery space for Greenland.

The brief here was to create 1/3 housing atop 2/3 parking space. The result is this sweet idea of creating a mountain out of the gigantic parking space and then planting green cubes on the mountain’s slopes. — via Home Design Find

Nazis, needlework and my dad

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8 September 2011
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After six months held by the Nazis in a prisoner of war camp, Major Alexis Casdagli was handed a piece of canvas by a fellow inmate. Pinching red and blue thread from a disintegrating pullover belonging to an elderly Cretan general, Casdagli passed the long hours in captivity by painstakingly creating a sampler in cross-stitch. Around decorative swastikas and a banal inscription saying he completed his work in December 1941, the British officer stitched a border of irregular dots and dashes. Over the next four years his work was displayed at the four camps in Germany where he was imprisoned, and his Nazi captors never once deciphered the messages threaded in Morse code: God Save the King and Fuck Hitler.

This subversive needling of the Nazis was a form of defiance that Casdagli, who was not freed from prison until 1945, believed was the duty of every PoW. It used to give him pleasure when the Germans were doing their rounds, says his son, Tony, of his father’s rebellious stitching. It also stopped him going mad. He would say after the war that the Red Cross saved his life but his embroidery saved his sanity, says Tony. If you sit down and stitch you can forget about other things, and it’s very calming.

Tony should know. The 79-year-old picked up his father’s stitching habit after a lifetime at sea serving in the Royal Navy, and from 6 September two of his pieces will feature in a new exhibition opening at the Victoria and Albert Museum called Power of Making. Tony is thrilled, but the relationship between father, son, needlework and suffering is complex and occasionally ambiguous — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Oncilla Cub / Mata Ciliar

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8 September 2011
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Oncilla Cub / Mata Ciliar

Today ZooBorns is proud to showcase our first Oncilla cub and first submission by Brazil’s Mata Ciliar conservation organisation. On 16 August, the Mata Ciliar Association received a call about an orphan Ocelot cub found near a controlled fire area (fire belt) in Brazil. Although the cub’s mother most likely escaped the fire, she did not return for her cub. When staff arrived, they realized the cub was actually an Oncilla, a smaller relative of the Ocelot, and brought the cub back to their rehabilitation facility for hand-rearing. Only two months old, the cub is a healthy male. Staff named him Tost. Controlled burns for agricultural lands are one of the main causes of injured animals throughout Brazil.

The Mata Ciliar Association operates the largest feline conservation centre in Brazil and focuses on conservation of the eight native species of felines in the region. The centre provides research, education and conservation support in Brazil and twenty other countries — via ZooBorns

Yamaha XS650 / Chappell Customs

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7 September 2011
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Chappell Customs‘ most recent build, a 1982 Yamaha XS650, started out as a rolling chassis with two different wheels and a pile of parts. The frame and engine were retained; everything else was taken off and replaced or rebuilt, says Chris. Rattle can paint was stripped back to bare metal, cylinders were honed, and new rings, seals, gaskets and filters fitted. The front end was rebuilt with progressive springs, and a new rear frame hoop was welded in — via Bike EXIF

Speed Up Your SSD By Correctly Aligning Your Partitions

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7 September 2011
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We’ve covered proper solid state drive maintenance before, but one of the most overlooked factors in proper SSD care is partition alignment. Here’s how to make sure your partitions are aligned correctly and that you’re getting the most out of your SSD.

We talked about partition alignment in our SSD migrating tutorial, but if you’ve already migrated to an SSD, you might not have realised that you’re sacrificing performance with misaligned partitions. A regular hard drive usually starts its first partition after 63 empty blocks, while SSDs require 64 blocks of data for optimal performance. This means that sometimes, if your SSD was formatted by something other than Windows’ installer, it can be aligned incorrectly and will transfer data much slower than intended — via Lifehacker

Texas wildfires torch 1,000 homes

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7 September 2011
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Dozens of wildfires raging in rain-starved Texas are now reported to have engulfed more than 1,000 homes.

The biggest of the blazes — 16 miles (26km) wide — in rural Bastrop County, is burning out of control for a third day, having destroyed 600 homes.

Two people were reported to have died in the Bastrop blaze, a local sheriff said, amid hopes for calmer winds to help control the fires.

Texas has been suffering its worst drought since the 1950s — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Sharper view of footprints, landing site, rover tracks on moon

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7 September 2011
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NASA announced that its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) — which has been orbiting the moon since 2009 — has captured the sharpest images ever taken from space of the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 sites on the moon. The images show tracks from the lunar rover used in the last Apollo mission, Apollo 17, as well as the last footprints left on the moon by astronauts in the year 1972 — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Lost Great Escape tunnel is pinpointed

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7 September 2011
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British archaeologists have discovered a missing tunnel at one of the most infamous German prison camp of the Second World War and unearthed a wealth of escapers’ tools and equipment sealed underground.

The tunnel, named George, was shut down in 1945, when the Prisoners of War of Stalag Luft III were led off at gunpoint by their Nazi guards as the advancing Red Army closed in.

Its location at the camp, immortalised in the Hollywood blockbuster The Great Escape starring Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough and Donald Pleasance, remained a mystery until experts arrived in August and spent three weeks excavating the relics — via redwolf.newsvine.com

California lawmakers pass bill banning shark-fin trade

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7 September 2011
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California’s Legislature sent Governor Jerry Brown a bill seeking to ban the sale, trade or possession of shark fins on Tuesday, over the objections of two senators who called the measure racist because the fins are used in a soup considered a delicacy in some Asian cultures.

The bill has split the Asian delegation in the Legislature. It was introduced by Assemblyman Paul Fong, D-Cupertino, and was supported by Senator Carol Liu, D-Pasadena, who said it is needed to protect endangered shark species — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Digital Realty nabs Melbourne site

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7 September 2011
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Global data centre provider Digital Realty Trust has paid $4 million for a 3 hectare development site in Melbourne.

The company plans to build two data hubs on the Paramount Industrial Park development to support a total of six 1440 kilowatt data centres PODs or performance optimised data centres.

The buy marks the company’s second acquisition in the past seven weeks following an $11 million investment on a 3.48 hectare Western Sydney site — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Light speed research nets Eureka prize

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7 September 2011
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A world-leading researcher in photonics, a globetrotting plant biologist and the creator of a popular climate change website were some of the winners announced at Tuesday’s Eureka Prizes held in Sydney.

The prizes, awarded by the Australian Museum, recognise the work of Australian scientists, engineers and science journalists.

The Leadership in Science Prize was awarded to Professor Ben Eggleton for his work in the field of photonics.

The 40-year-old leads a team of more than 130 scientists at the University of Sydney, and is the founding director of the Centre for Ultrahigh Bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS).

One of the technologies the group is developing is a photonic chip for use in computing and telecommunications that is faster, smaller, and more energy efficient than electronic chips — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Cheetah Cubs / Colchester Zoo

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7 September 2011
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Three Cheetah cubs were born to female, Uria and male, Jack in July at the UK’s Colchester Zoo. Male Cheetah, Jack, joined the Colchester Zoo’s collection in March 2011 to pair with Colchester’s resident female Uria on a recommendation from the EEP breeding co-ordinator for this species, which has resulted in a successful mating and birth of three healthy cubs — via ZooBorns

Harley-Davidson Model U with Art Deco Sidecar / Abnormal Cycles

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6 September 2011
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This is one of the more unusual motorcycles that appeared in the recent AMD Championship. Unusual because it’s perfectly rideable, and also because it was the first time a sidecar outfit has competed in Sturgis. ‘Union’ was built by Abnormal Cycles of Italy, a workshop that has come a long way since we featured its BMW café racer over a year ago. The Bernareggio-based company created an Art Deco-inspired sidecar—complete with wood trim—and hooked it up to a 1942 Harley-Davidson Model U. The leaf spring fork is inspired by an Indian design—beefed up to cope with the extra weight—while fellow Italians Kustom Tech built the three chrome-and-brass drum brakes. The wheels are JoNich 18-inchers and the tires are from CEAT, two brands that are new names to me, but look pretty good. There’s something reminiscent of Flash Gordon about this machine: like the movie, it somehow hangs together, when logic says it shouldn’t — via Bike EXIF

Capsule Hotel / Denis Oudendijk

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6 September 2011
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These pods are moored in a canal in The Hague. They used to be oil rig life rafts, but now they serve as hotel rooms. Except for an exterior lock and a chemical toilet, they remain in their original state. This way, you can get the true life raft-in-a-canal experience!

Denis Oudendijk, the owner, established this business in 2004 as an art project. He plans to expand it to include pods in Amsterdam and Nantes — via Neatorama

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