A New Forest In Paris

In 2014 this  will be the first forest in Paris.

The forest will be more of a wooded pathway, 350 metres long and around 30 metres wide. It will be made up of over 3,000 trees - oaks, ash, lime and maple, but also more exotic pines - but these will be planted as young saplings. The first explorers of this forest will feel like giants, strolling through the dwarf wilderness of 1 metre high trees.

Via Invisible Paris

Karen Hollingsworth's Oils

Weightless 48 x 48

Atlanta based artist Karen Hollingsworth's great big oil paintings of interiors exude calm. They often include open windows and one can almost feel the air moving the curtains. I would very much like to have one or two.

Airmail, 40"x50"

Clip-on Pouring Spout

If I had one of these I could stop using makeshift implements that allow the peas to pass through and go down the sink drain. Ingenious!

$14.90 at this Link
Via 

Make Your Own High-Fructose Corn Syrup

(Credit: Sam Dean)

Artist Maya Weinstein makes her own high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), that ubiquitous, often demonized sweetener that is in many of the processed foods we eat (Americans eat an average of 60 lbs of the stuff per person per year). The jury is still out on whether HFCS is more harmful to health than table sugar although like sugar it packs a caloric punch. It cannot be purchased as a stand alone sweetener so Weinstein set about making her own. This is her recipe:

Mix 10 cups of Yellow Dent #2 corn extract with one drop sulfuric acid, one teaspoon Alpha-Amylase, one teaspoon Glucose-Amylase, and one teaspoon Xylose, strain through a cheesecloth, and heat. Then, once the slurry has reached 140 degrees, add Glucose Isomerase, bring to a boil, let cool, and enjoy!

Doesn't that sound delicious? And it only costs $70-$80 to make a small jar. 

(Credit: Sam Dean)

This is an art project that is meant to make us take a closer look at the food we ingest. Weinstein has plans to make bleached, fortified white flour (cured in hydrogen peroxide) and also her own Red Dye #40.
Read more about Weinstein's process Bon Appetit

Thanks Bruce!

My Garden Today

tree peony

rhodo bud

Victor Demarchelier photographs Debbie Harry for Vogue Spain, May 2013

At 68 Debbie still has those great cheekbones!

Link

Old School Keyboard

I'm in love with this one of a kind Smith Corona Sterling USB Typewriter Computer Keyboard but at $846.04 CAD it's a little out of reach. Perhaps my readers would like to pitch in? No? I thought not :(

USB Typewriter rescues vintage typewriters and gives them new lives in the digital age, by transforming them into modern computer keyboards. They also function as regular typewriters. 

 If have an old typewriter they offer a DIY conversion kit that will allow you upgrade it to USB and put it to work again. 

Check out the Etsy Shop

Doug Stanhope Raises $100,000 for Atheist Tornado Survivor

Comedian and atheist Doug Stanhope has raised more than $100,000 for a woman whose house was destroyed in the Oklahoma tornado last week. When CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked Rebecca Vitsmun if she "thanked the Lord" for her family's decision to leave their house before it was destroyed by the tornado she told him that she is an atheist.

Why would Stanhope do this? He explains at the Atheists Unite website:

The impact of getting Rebecca and her family properly housed by the atheist community will do far more good than sitting in bars or chat rooms mocking people of faith. Like religion, free-thinking will be more easily spread through compassion and decency.

If you donate to the cause there are perks. They include a prayer from Stanhope -- "twice as valuable as a real prayer or your money back" -- for $10, a "get out of hell free card" for a $50 donation, or even a dishwasher-safe holy grail with "special powers" for your $10,000 donation.

Via  Phoenix - News 

Mary Gibney, Mugshot paintings

Minneapolis artist Mary Gibney's portrait series Mugshots is inspired by shots of criminals being booked from the 1920s to the 1960s.

Jane Fonda

Nick Nolte

Rosa Parks

Via Blort

Bullfrog Dad Digs Canal For His Kids

This big African bullfrog dad saves his little tadpoles. The video is part of the BBC's Life in Cold Blood documentary series.



Thanks Bruce!

'Time is money' in German café

A new café in Wiesbaden is charging customers for the amount of time they spend there, not for what they order. Apparently it works in Russia. I don't know how well this would go over in Paris where lingering over a café crème and watching the world go by is considered one of the city's great pleasures. I like to keep on the move and am not inclined to sit for hours over a cup of coffee. even in Europe, so this practice wouldn't affect me.

Via The Local
Thanks Bruce!

Creepy Face Swap

Actually the cat (if that's what it is) looks creepy in both photos.

Imgur

DAVID BOWIE Five Years (Documentary 2013)

   DAVID BOWIE Five Years (Documentary 2013) from Videodrome Discothèque on Vimeo.

Via

Chinese Farmer Makes His Own Bionic Hands

Sun Jifa, a Chinese farmer who lost both his hands, was forced to make the decision between saving for expensive prosthetics from the hospital or using barely functioning cheap ones. He decided to make his own. Now he's building and selling them to other amputees at a tenth of the cost charged by hospitals, and has already sold over 1,000.

Read more at Geekologie

Bike Wheel Light Animation Kits

I love the Monkey Light Wheel Display System.  I could light up the streets of Niagara on the Lake with these wheels. Unfortunately the price is a wee bit out of my range - $500 for the four light bars required for one wheel animation and $1,000 to get both wheels animated.



Via Geekologie

Adding Aliens to Thrift Shop Paintings

Artist Thyrza Segal paints aliens into thrift shop paintings. She assures us that "No original paintings were harmed in this series. I only use prints.”

See more at TwistedSifter

Presidential Pin-Ups

The Founding Fathers as you've never seen them!

More at FUCK YEAH HISTORY CRUSHES
Via

Young Gladys Knight

What a sweetie!

IRock JAZZ

What Jane saw

On 24 May 1813, Jane Austen visited the British Institution in Pall Mall, London to see a retrospective of the works of portrait painter, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792). Two centuries later, an e-gallery offers the modern visitors the opportunity to see the art show through Jane Austin's eyes.

Click here to enter 

More at ikono

Where should you post that?

So you know:

See larger image here

Via The Curious Brain 

Abandoned Republic

Abandoned Republic is an easily browsable archive of vintage Banana Republic catalogs for collectors and resellers, as well as to celebrate and document the history of Banana Republic of the 1980s.

The company has undergone a complete transformation over the years. For those of you who are not familiar with the brand and its history:

The original Banana Republic was founded by Mel and Patricia Ziegler in 1978. It was a two-store safari and travel themed clothing company. The majority of sales came from its eccentric, hand-illustrated catalog, which presented high-end and unique items with chatty, usually fictional backstories from exotic locations. - Wikipedia

Via TMN

Bad Advice Tumblog

Here's that bad advice you were hoping for: Telling advice column letter writers what they actually want to hear. For example:

What Kind Of Ignorant Shitbag Eats ‘Dinner’ At Night?
Annie’s Mailbox, 13 May 2013:

Dear Annie: Would you please address the distinction between “dinner” and “supper”? I’ve heard many people refer to the evening meal as dinner, but the definition of an evening meal is supper. I even heard a prominent newscaster refer to the president as sitting down with a guest at the White House for “dinner” tonight, but if they are sitting down at night, it is clearly supper. — Stickler in the South

Dear Stickler in the South:
You are right and everyone who doesn’t agree with you is wrong! Your cultural norms are truer than everyone else’s. Things you think and do are real and authentic and things other people think and do which are not the same things that you think and do are aberrant and incorrect.

Via MeFi 

How Life is Different For Lefties

Mr. Nag and my younger son are both left handed. This came in handy when Patrick was learning to tie his shoelaces and knot a necktie.



Via Laughing Squid

Yet Another Reason to Adopt a Cat

Via Miss Cellania

Crescent Soul, 1990

An evocative image by American photographer Chester Higgins Jr

Point of Order

Here are the NDP Members of Parliament for Timmins-James Bay (Charlie Angus) and Davenport (Andrew Cash)  in their days with the band L'Etranger.

Via

The Incredible Nina Simone

Recording session: November 3, 1969 in Rome at Teatro Sistina

World’s Most Unique Movie Theaters

There are some very unique cinema venues in this post at MovieMorlocks.com . The one that caught my fancy was the 8 seat Sol Cinema in Wales that is a mobile theatre powered entirely by the sun. It has all the amenities including a uniformed usherette who guides patrons to their seats via a red carpet. It's got to be the cutest cinema ever!

Thanks Bruce!

Can You Hear Me Now?

StoneCrop Gallery's new show Can You Hear Me Now?, a juried exhibition of cell phone photography, is on now. Today's featured photo on their Facebook page is mine.

Niagara Roses

TONG ALL CATTES!

A Tumblog dedicated to the art and science of cat tonging? This is so silly I had to post it.

Sadie, by Shifty Pony.

Via MetaFilter

Stanley Kubrick's Flying Padre

This film was directed by Stanley Kubrick in 1951.

T

A Spanish Roadtrip

Basque Country, to Galicia, Andalucia and finally Barcelona. This makes me want to return to Spain immediately!



Via The Presurfer

Grain Fed Bread

"I only eat free range bread," said The Nag self-righteously.



Via everlasting blort

A more accurate dog year calculator

Working out your dog's true age used to be a case of simply multiplying it by seven. But it's more complicated than that, and here's a handy calculator to do it for you

Check it out at BBC News 

Anti-Crack Ad Slowly Eaten By Bugs To Show You The Damage Drugs Do

This public service ad by Talent, a Brazilian ad agency, shows a face getting eaten by mealworms, a none too subtle warning that if you do crack you will be consumed (I think). The posters were actually made of thin sheets of dough instead of paper, to encourage the larvae to thoroughly nibble on them.

Here is a video of how it was done:

Crack Consumes from Malabar Filmes on Vimeo.

Someone should show this to Toronto Crack Mayor Rob Ford.

Via Geekologie

The History of the Tulip

Did you know that tulips originated in a mountain range in the Himalayas? I didn't. I did know about tulip mania in the Dutch Golden Age. It's a fascinating tale.



Via  Kuriositas

CROWN Vase

The CROWN vase arranges rigid stem flowers in a free-standing and decorative structure.

Lambert Rainville Via Notcot

The Village at the End of the World

Image credit:Dogwoof Films

The picturesque village of Niaqornat in Northwest Greenland has 15 houses, a population of 59 and a whole lot of dogs. Lars is the only teenager living there and his only access to other young people is through Facebook.
What must it be like to live in such an isolated community? Filmmaker Sarah Gavron and her family lived amongst the Inuit people of Niaqornat and produced a documentary called Village at the End of the World.

Almost the entire ice cover of Greenland has experienced some melting at its surface this year (2012), usually only half of the ice sheet melts naturally during an average summer. This further highlights the precarious existence of Niaqornat and makes it clear that Greenland is now the heartbeat of our planet. -Sarah Gavron

Read more at Messy Nessy Chic

'Hadfield at Home'

Canadian celebrity astronaut Chris Hadfield has returned from his space odyssey. Parody Twitter account @HadfieldAtHome recreates some of his famous space moments with a decidedly more down to earth twist.

Arms of green reach against an endless sea of white, striving toward infinity.
 http://pic.twitter.com/FGmVfcDO9C

HADFIELD AT HOME@HADFIELDATHOME
·7 DAYS AGO

The comedian behind the parody, New Yorker Sean Ireland, recreates some of Hadfield's viral zero-g experiments. Here's @HadfieldAtHome wringing out a cloth in his sink at home. Somehow it lacks the cachet of a towel wrung out in space.

 

See much more here 

Why Did You Lose Him?

Click here to enlarge.

This article appeared in Stitch magazine in March 1963. This was long before I started dating but magazines continued to publish this sort of nonsense for many years beyond 1963. I took lots of similar quizzes and failed them all miserably but that didn't  seem to negatively influence my dating life. In fact I was able to lure several men into my loveweb and keep them there despite my obnoxious behavior. Mr. Nag has been snagged in my web for decades and hardly ever tries to escape.

Via The Hairpin

Convos With My 2-Year-Old

Matthew Clarke has launched a new series called "Convos With My 2-Year-Old" where he takes actual conversations he's had with his daughter and reenacts them with an adult man standing in for her.
The conversation is cringe inducing.

The James Bond Of Swimming Pools

This versatile yard feature transforms into a swimming pool and reverts to a patio when you require space for entertaining or need to keep the kiddies safe. Ingenious.
See more here.

Thanks Donald!

View of Oklahoma Tornado From a Storm Shelter

Charles Gafford III took refuge in a storm shelter as the May 20th tornado approached and found a gap in just big enough to stick his smartphone through. He captured some amazing footage of the EF5 tornado as it passed directly overhead.
What a force of nature! It came a little too close for comfort.
More at Petapixel

Toronto's Crack Mayor On The Daily Show

What an embarrassment this guy is! His only response to this story has been "That's ridiculous". If I were being accused of smoking crack with Somali drug lords I'd have a lot more than that to say.

'Do Not Resuscitate' tattooed on Norfolk pensioner

An 81-year-old woman from Norfolk has had "Do Not Resuscitate" tattooed across her chest to make sure doctors are aware of her wishes in the event that she falls ill and attempts are made to revive her.

"If I'm found lying about and can't say something, I want [medics] to accept that," she said.
"I'm 81 and don't need any more use. What do you think I'm going to do with the frightful thought of getting to 100? I hate it.

More at BBC News 
Via

Teeny Tinies

Wasted too much time playing around with my $5 elastic banded cell phone macro lens. It's harder than it looks. The lilac flower is about twice the actual size.  I had to crouch down very close to the mini blossoms, control my trembling hands and ensure that there was absolutely no wind. It's fun but I need more practice.

Lilac

Lily of the Valley

Lily of the Valley bud

Lily of the Valley

Creeping Phlox

Forget Me Not

Winter Aconite Seed Pods

Bleeding Heart

Bleeding Heart