Photograph by Nicolas Gayet of the Paulo Bonifacio lab was a 2015 FEI contest winner.
Polychaetes worms are fascinating. One species are called “Zombie Worms” and includes the Osedax mucofloris, discovered in 2005. Its name translates to “bone-eating snot flower.”
[Image found here.]
1 November 1918
On the Front
Mom and Dad:
Well a few lines. I received two letters from you last evening, and they made an excellent way for me to spend “Halloween.” Reading and rereading them.
A new drive started last night. The fellows called the start, “Holly even”, the Kaiser. Some noise. I suppose our kids tore off the usual stunts didn’t they.
You mentioned in one of you letters that you wanted to know the happenings for a while. Well, here is my diary for a day. And since almost every day is the same, you can get an idea from this: Continue reading “Armistice Day – The 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month 1918”
The Only Authentic Photograph of Mr. Edison’s Hands Ever Taken Publisht Here for the First Time. The Spots on the Hands Are Chemical Stains Which Could Not Be Washt off at the Time the Picture Was Taken.
IF THE WORLD WERE CALLED UPON TO MAKE AN INVENTORY OF WHAT MR. EDISON’S HANDS ACTUALLY WROUGHT IN ENRICHING THIS PLANET, THERE WOULD NOT BE GOLD ENOUGH TO PAY HIM.
Copyright by E. P. Co., 1919 All rights reserved.
[Image from Electrical Experimenter Magazine, December 1919, p. 20.]
According to the U.S. Patent, the machine was described as a Device For Obtaining Intimate Contact With Engaging, Or Clamping Bodies Of Any Shape, or DFOICWEOCBOAS for easy. It contained 30 nested rotating jaws.
Application filed March 21, 1912.
Serial No. 685,288.
The invention purposes to effect by means of rotatable and oscillatable cheeks, an intimate contact, engagement with or clamping of bodies of any shape, the contact being effected at as many points as possible, Whereby owing to the reactions or the automatic adjustment to the position of equilibrium of all the cheeks, if the latter are symmetrically arranged, the pressure is uniformly distributed over all points of contact, while if the arrangement is unsymmetrical there is a greater pressure to one side.
Inventor Paulin Karl Kunze was a “subject of the Emperor of Austria-Hungary, residing at Vienna.”
The term fractal was coined by French mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot in 1973 and is defined as “never-ending pattern.” Jump to 34:00 for a silly but cool demonstration of the completed restoration.
[Found at BustedNuckles & the U.S. Patent Office. Images of Mantle & Co. vise found here and here.]
Erasure- Art inspiration: Zhang Huan (Chinese, born Anyang, 1965). Family Tree, 2001. China.
A series of nine photographs in which the artist Zhang Huan’s face gradually becomes covered in ink and traditional calligraphy.
The text on the artist’s face consists of words, names, and stories related to his cultural heritage—words with personal meaning to him. The dots on his face in the first photograph represent moles and their connection to one’s fate. In Chinese cultures, it is said that having moles in certain areas on the face symbolizes good luck and fortune.
By the last picture, Huan’s face is completely covered in ink. Though the words on his face are about his character and fate, they ultimately obscure his entire identity. The piece seems to say that traditional words and ways of thinking can erase the things that make us individuals.
[Image and description found here.]
Updated: Corrected spelling of performance artist’s name Zhang Huan & added link: https://www.theartstory.org/artist/zhang-huan/
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Mr. Machine is a once popular children’s mechanical toy originally manufactured by the Ideal Toy Company in 1960. Mr. Machine was a robot-like mechanical man wearing a top hat. The body had a giant windup key at the back. When the toy was wound up it would “walk”, swinging its arms and repeatedly ringing a bell mounted on its front; and after every few steps emit a mechanical “Ah!”, as if it were speaking. The toy stood about 18 inches tall (roughly 46 cm).
The gimmick of Mr. Machine was that one could not only see all of his mechanical “innards” through his clear plastic body, but one could also take the toy apart and put it back together, over and over, like a Lego toy or a jigsaw puzzle.
Mr. Machine was one of Ideal’s most popular toys. The company reissued it in 1978, but with some alterations: it could no longer be taken apart (owing to the tendency of very young children to put small pieces in their mouths which could be accidentally swallowed or present a choking hazard), and instead of ringing a bell and making the “Ah” sound, it now whistled “This Old Man”.
This later version of Mr. Machine was brought back once more in the 1980s. In 2004, the Poof-Slinky Company remanufactured the original 1960 version (using the actual Ideal molds whenever possible), which made the original sounds and could be disassembled, and with the intention of being marketed to nostalgic adults as a collectible.
[U.S. Patent image found here. Unfortunately it’s only a single page, but it refers to related patents. Description and more found here.]
SALESMATE
New Portable Audio-Visual Selling tool.
Automatic Sound Slidefilm Viewer in an Attache Case. Self-Winding, Self-Contained, Ready to Use. Just:
1) Open the screen
2) Plug it in
3) Push the red button, and The Show is On!
The 1961 Beseler Salesmate Projector included a built in cassette player for sales presentations. The Charles Beseler Co. was founded in 1869 in Germany as a manufacturer of a variety of products including inhalers, magic lanterns with oil lamps and stereopticons.
[Postcard with caption found here.]
The larva of the Pacific fruit-piercing moth eat leaves and are usually kept in check by Trichogramma, tiny parasitic wasps.
The moth stage does the real damage. The adult moth flies at night and sucks out the juices of ripe mango, banana, tomato, melon, citrus, guava, papaya and other fruit through its nose, and is considered an economic pest in the Pacific Basin Area.
Destroyer Squadron 15 is based in Yokosuka, Japan, and is embarked on the carrier. U.S. 7th Fleet has not fully specified the escorts accompanying USS Reagan on its patrol, but the CSG includes the USS Halsey (DDG-97), homeported in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
[Photo and caption via USNI News.]
Tacky Raccoons 