Size Does Matter

This was pretty cool - art and the science combined.  Created by SumoScience and Aardman,

The animation was filed using a Nokia N8 smart phone equipped with a CellScope, a diagnostic-quality microscope that was invented by Daniel Fletcher at the University of California, Berkeley. The CellScope allows a doctor working anywhere there is a phone service to capture and transmit images of blood samples anywhere in the world. The technology could help diagnose disease in developing countries where medical doctors and labs are few and far between.
~ Discovery News

Be sure to watch the credits - they really bring the whole size issue into focus.

Thanks to Christopher for the link!

Superhero Saturday

He's such an expressive guy...

Rome Burns Part II

Rome is one of my all-time favorite cities. The art, the food, the people, the awesome sense of  history you get just from walking down the street...there is no place like the Eternal City.

And speaking of history, sometimes old is new: artists Thyra Hilden of Denmark and Pio Diaz of Argentina are planning to burn the coliseum next week...

The installation, titled “Coliseum on Fire,” is part of a wider project, City on Fire, to which the artists have devoted themselves to for some years, creating virtual fires in important institutions, monuments, museums, and churches throughout Europe.
~eternallycool

I think I hear fiddle music...

Read more about the project and see other monuments they would like to burn here.

Losing in the Wrong Place For the Wrong Reasons

From Joe Quinn via the Tom Ricks blog:
"Al Qaeda murdered my brother Jimmy nine years ago...My brother Jimmy worked on the 101st floor. Not a single remnant of my brother would be recovered.

...Due to my emotions (and engineering classes), I barely graduated West Point in the spring of 2002...Nine years after my brother's death..I am currently contributing to the fight here in Afghanistan.

I have recounted the last nine years of my life because my journey through these wars has been similar to yours. You were devastated by the events of 9/11. You wanted revenge, or at least some sort of justice, where you supported the invasion of Afghanistan. You were sidetracked by the Iraq War in 2003 and then again by the Iraq "Surge" in 2007. Nine years after 9/11, you are tired of war, but finally find your blood and treasure in Afghanistan.

My greatest fear is that we will lose the Afghan war because of the Iraq war. The American people are tired of war mostly due to the painful doldrums brought on by the Iraq campaign. Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) also siphoned resources and attention away from Afghanistan, allowing an insurgency to rise and for the U.S. to never fully realize a plan for winning. What is winning? Winning is achieving irreversible momentum towards a stable Afghanistan, free from Taliban control, which will never serve as a base for terrorism.

After nine years of neglecting the Afghan war, we finally have a plan for winning, with the right resources, the right leadership and the right programs. At the end of August, the last of the 30,000 additional U.S. troops are finally in place. Undoubtedly, these additional troops will clear and hold large swaths of Taliban strongholds.

In General Petraeus, we also have the right leadership to orchestrate the Afghan war. Saying that General Petraeus will not make a difference in Afghanistan is like saying Michael Jordan would not make a difference in Chicago after coming out of retirement in 1994. Eventually the team will improve.

The right programs in Afghanistan have only just begun. General Petraeus made an immediate impact by partnering with President Karzai to begin the Afghan Local Police (ALP) program that will leverage local Afghans to provide village-level security. The Afghan Peace and Reintegration Program (APRP) is another concept that has just been ratified, where the effects of the program will only truly be felt in the months ahead. The right resources, leadership and programs in Afghanistan have just begun. Winning the Afghan war has just begun.

So after nine years, why are we still in Afghanistan? For me it's still simple. The men that killed my brother on 9/11 were five of 20,000 terrorists trained by Al Qaeda in a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. The Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan will only embolden Al Qaeda even more to perpetrate terrorist attacks like on 9/11. It's easy to forget the connection between Afghanistan and 9/11 after all this time. For me, it's impossible to forget. Perhaps remembering is the luxury of my family's tragedy.

In the end, I do not want revenge anymore. The truth is that the perpetrators that murdered my brother died that same day. I now have a new goal: to leave Afghanistan. To leave Afghanistan as a stable country, free from Taliban control, which will never serve as a base for terrorism.

Joe Quinn currently works in Afghanistan as a Counterinsurgency Advisor for the International Security Assistance Force's (ISAF's) Counterinsurgency Assistance and Advisory Team (CAAT). He graduated in May from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government."


Ricks Foreign Policy

Superhero Saturday

The Spideycan...ha ha ha ha



And because Spiderman had such a swingin' theme song...

Floaters

Thought these were interesting - A series of 15 images by French photographer Denis Darzacq called 'Hyper'.   If you've spent any time outside the major cities in France or Italy lately, you've likely run across the Hypermarts - think Tesco or Walmart on steroids.  

Darzacq decided to use these monstrosities that are slowly but inevitably doing what Walmarts do, as backdrops for his images.  His subjects, young street dancers, were told to jump or leap into the air, twisting  and twirling.  He used high shutter speed photography to capture the dancers in mid-air. Apparently there was no photo-shopping done to the images.

I really like these two - the one on top looks like the dancer was just hanging or floating around.  Imagine seeing that when you turned your cart at the end of the aisle...

I like the one below if only in admiration of the dancer's commitment to the project - unless she really can levitate, that is one painful landing on the way.

The exhibit was at Laurence Miller Gallery in New York earlier this year.

Come Sail Away

I’ve never been a big fan of boats – I get seasick in the bathtub. But this just confirms my decision to avoid the whole cruise vacation: apparently, the Pacific Sun encountered a serious storm north of New Zealand.






I guess that’s why they nail stuff down on Navy ships.

Via Tywkiwdbi

Labor Day

click to enlarge

Breaker boys in #9 Breaker, Pennsylvania Coal Company mine at Hughestown Borough near Pittston in January 1911.  Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine via Shorpy

From a commenter:

If I recall my mining knowledge correctly, I think the breaker house was where the larger chunks of coal were broken down into smaller, more manageable sizes. This was accomplished using a series of augers and large rollers. I've heard stories of breaker boys falling into the machinery and being mangled. The companies didn't care. Common business mentality was that workers were just cogs in the machine to be replaced when they were of no further use to the Companies.

I saw a poll recently that asked the question, "If time travel existed, was readily available, and you were guaranteed to return to the present, would you prefer to travel to the past or to the future?"

61% of respondents said they'd go back to the past. Why does everyone always think that the past was such a great place?

Happy Labor Day!

Superhero Saturday

The Flash finally makes it in Hollywood...

Illustration by Joao Fonte

Morning Coffee

Drinking your coffee in one of these might just make the morning go a little easier:

The Milk Cup from Pension fuer Produkte
I'm not sure I get this one - is it supposed to look like your cup has leaked milk?

The Cookie Cup from the coffee company Lavazza and Venezuelan designer Enrique Sardi via PACKAGING | UQAM. Yes, you can eat the cup when you're finished with your coffee...

The Angel Cup from Sami Rinne.

She  He does Bats, too...

The Zero Gravity cup - by XU54.  I have no idea who this is (couldn't translate the site) but he spends a lot of time looking at his coffee.

I Laughed

My other bike is a donkey.

I'm sure the kids around here are getting a fine education.

One of these things is not like the other...

One word: scary.