Phro turned me on to this YouTube channel. Do I really need to say anything more? Continue reading »
Oct 022012
Sep 232012
How the fuck are you today? Are you in the mood for some images, videos, and news items that are metal even though they’re not music? Well if so, you came to the right place. Here’s what I’ve got for you in this installment:
A human hovercraft, a skull flower (accompanied by a weird coincidence), a flight through the universe, cigarette magic, a tornado of fire, a musical prodigy from Hong Kong (okay, this one is music, but it’s not metal, except it’s metal), and Singapore “in miniature”.
ITEM ONE
A little over a week ago, the Lake Union Boats Afloat show started on — where else — Lake Union in Seattle, where I live. On the opening day of the show, a dude named Brandon Robinson put on a demonstration of a device called the “FlyBoard”. It’s a water-powered contraption that allows the “pilot” to hover 20-30 feet in the air and do assorted acrobatic tricks, with the propulsion supplied by a jet ski.
Our local paper ran an eye-catching series of photos of the demonstration, one of which you can see above. You can see a couple more of the pics at this location.
The FlyBoard was invented last year by two-time world champion jet skier Franky Zapata from France. After seeing these photos I had to see if I could find some video of this thing in action, and I succeeded. I found a promotional vid by Zapata’s company, which is selling these FlyBoards for $6,500. A lot of the video consists of Zapata and others speaking in French. I don’t understand French, but I sure as hell got a charge watching the parts of the video that show Zapata getting a workout on his invention. Watch it next . . . Continue reading »
Sep 032012
It’s time for another edition of “THAT’S METAL!”, in which we collect images, videos, and news items that we think are metal, even though they’re not music (though sometimes we include music that’s not metal, but it’s “metal”, if that makes any sense, which it probably doesn’t, but we only make sense about half the time around here on a good day anyway).
We have a slug of items for you today, but it’s Labor Day, in which we Americans commemorate the labor movement and the value of hard work by fucking off, drinking copious amounts of beer, and grilling dead animals, so I figure you’ll have time to wade through everything — and it’s all worth the wading.
ITEM ONE
As usual, Item One relates to that pic you see at the top of the post. That lovely young lady with the flowing tresses is Sue Austin. She’s a British multimedia performance and installation artist who has been wheelchair-bound since 1996 and has devoted much of her art to challenging notions of disabled people as “the other”. She developed an underwater wheelchair with help of diving experts, who installed two dive propulsion units on the chair as well as a clear fin that helps with steering. More details about the development of the chair can be found here.
Undoubtedly, there are more efficient ways for a disabled person to scuba dive than being strapped to a self-propelled wheelchair — in fact, Ms. Austin learned how to dive in 2005, long before this chair became a reality. But there’s a point being made here, and the chair is part of a performance designed to drive the point home — because, as you’re about to see, Ms. Austin also assembled a film crew to create a beautiful documentary of her dreamlike journey through an ocean world. Continue reading »
Aug 262012
Greetings to one and all and welcome to the 61st installment of THAT’S METAL!, in which we pause from our headbanging long enough to hunt through the slimy bowels of the interhole for images, videos, and news items that we think are metal, even if they’re not music (or at least not metal music). Today we have 7 items for you.
ITEM ONE
As usual, our first item is staring you in the face at the top of this post. But to understand why it’s metal, you have to stare back at it. You may have to stare at it a long time. I did (though I tend to stare blankly at all sorts of things for a long time, usually with a sagging jaw and a slow stream of drool leaking out my gob).
At first glance (and at second, third, and fourth glances) you will see coffers, which is a term for sunken decorative door panels. But there are in fact 16 circles in that image, set against the background. I’m not sure why our brains’ first impulse is to tell us we are seeing rectangles, instead of to see the circles first and then the rectangles. But as illusions go, this one is pretty fuckin’ cool.
It was created by Anthony Norcia, and was a finalist in the 2006 Best Illusion of the Year contest I’ll give you a hint at the end of this post that may make it easier to see the circles if you get stumped. (via TYWKIWDBI) Continue reading »
Aug 122012
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, to all our metal brethren and sistren of all time zones, and welcome to another edition of THAT’S METAL!, in which we take a rare break from hammering our heads with extreme music and instead root around like truffle-hunting pigs in search of delicious images, videos, and news items that we think are metal, even though they’re not music. I have eight items for you today.
ITEM ONE
Our first item is metal on almost too many levels to count. It involves an unusual advertising agency based in Sweden by the name of Studio Total. They work for clients, but their philosophy is not to pay anyone for advertising space. Instead, they do things designed to get people talking, for free. To draw attention to whatever brand, product, or cause they promote, they’ve pulled some . . . out-of-the-box stunts. This is a story about their most recent adventure.
Studio Total decided to work, without charge, for an organization called Charter 97, which is a pro-democracy news site located in Belarus. Belarus is a country to the west of Russia, north if the Ukraine, and east of Poland. Since 1994, it has been run by an autocratic asshole named Alexander Lukashenko, often referred to as “Europe’s last remaining dictator”. Belarus’ Democracy Index rating continuously ranks the lowest in Europe, and it’s labeled as “Not Free” by Freedom House.
To highlight Lukashenko’s repressive policies against free speech, Studio Total chartered a small private plane, and the agency’s co-founder Tomas Mazetti and another employee, Hannah Lina Frey, illegally flew it into Belarus air space on July 4, dropping 876 teddy bears by parachute on the capital of Minsk and the small town of Ivyanets. The teddy bears each held small signs reading, “Belarus freedom” and “We support the Belarus struggle for free speech.” Continue reading »
Aug 052012
Here we go again — things that are metal even though they’re not music.
In today’s installment we’ve got seven items, ranging from elephant fetuses to dudes standing below the detonation of a nuclear bomb to a monster-tractor demolition at a police station, and a lot more fun.
ITEM ONE
Back in 2006, the National Geographic channel aired the first of several specials that focused on the development of life in the womb. Apparently they used a combination of 3-D and 4-D ultrasound imaging along with computer graphics to create the imagery. I never saw those specials, but I recently came across still photos from them that are pretty amazing. One of them is above. That’s a computer-enhanced image of an Asian elephant fetus.
More photos are after the jump, showing the fetuses of a dolphin and a Golden Retriever. I’m not sure how much the CGI is contributing to this, but it still looks very cool. Continue reading »
Jul 292012
It’s time to venture forth from the cozy, hermetic confines of our metallic island and see what the outside world has to offer. We do this timidly and with trepidation, because the outside world often seems like an unpleasant place, full of selfish, disgusting, cruel, and stupid creatures known as human beings. This generally seem to be the condition of human beings when they are not making or listening to metal.
However, for your entertainment, we are willing to risk exposure to these ugly creatures in order to find images, videos, and news items that are metal even though they are not music.
ITEM ONE
Item One is the photo above. Sometimes, when you’re livin’ right, you’re in the right place at the right time and the shit just jumps into your mouth and all you’ve got to do is be alert enough to open wide and savor life’s unexpected delicacies. That’s what that lucky American alligator up there is about to do. On the other hand, you get those days when you’re moving with the current, free and easy, you think you’re on the right course, you decide to make a big leap ahead — and you land right in the toothsome jaws of some big fuckin’ catastrophe, like that Florida gar. Ain’t life great?
That photo (taken by Marina Scarr) is metal. So are dozens of others that have been submitted in the 2012 edition of The National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest. All of the thousands of submissions can be found here, but I came across a site that has collected 45 of the best ones. Seven more of my favorites are right after the jump. Continue reading »
Jul 232012
Happy Fucking Monday to one and all. Yes, it’s time for another edition of “THAT’S METAL!”, in which we collect pics, videos, and news items that we think are metal, even though they’re not music. We have a fuckload of items for this installment, so I’m gonna cut short the normal long-winded intro and get right to it.
ITEM ONE
Look, I know that other Europeans are just as capable as the Finns of ingesting mass quantities of hooch without losing their shit, so don’t scorch my ass in the comments, please. I just thought that pic up there was funnier than an echidna’s penis. Also, I have this pic of what happens to Finns when they die, displaying the natural embalming effects of a lifetime of “next bottle, please”. The Finn is on the left. Or the right.
I know what you’re thinking now. You’re thinking about an echidna’s penis. Continue reading »
Jul 112012
Nope, this isn’t about a Gojira song, despite the confusingly similar title of this post. It’s part of our continuing effort to transform ourselves into The Blog of Particle Physics, Cosmology, and Extreme Metal. It’s also about an occurrence that’s so profoundly mind-blowing on so many levels that it could not be ignored: the first observation of Dark Matter — the material that’s theorized to make up 96% of all matter in the universe and that provides the “scaffolding” of the cosmos.
To appreciate the full explosive weirdness of this event requires a bit of back story.
On July 4, 2012, humankind reached a milestone not only in the history of science but also in our understanding of all nature. As we reported in this post, that was the day when the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced the discovery (at a 99.999% confidence level) of the Higgs boson (a/k/a the “God particle”), a subatomic particle that’s responsible for giving mass to electrons, protons, and neutrons — the fundamental components of all visible matter in the universe.
The existence of the Higgs boson had been predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics in its finalized form since the 1970s, but the boson’s existence had never before been proven and verified. The Standard Model is a theory (though not quite so theoretical any more) about the interaction of three of the four basic forces known in the universe — the forces that describe the interaction of those particles described above. The one fundamental force omitted from the Standard Models’ unification is gravitation, a force described in the general theory of relativity.
I ended that earlier post with a quote from CERN’s press release about the discovery of the Higgs boson — a quote which emphasized that the Standard Model only explains the interaction among the particles that make up all the matter that we can see — and that we can’t see 96% of the matter (or more precisely, “mass-energy”) that makes up the universe; that remaining 96% is the stuff called Dark Matter and Dark Energy.
Most experts in this field believe that stuff mainly consists of undiscovered types of particles that are different from those that make up all the matter we’re able to observe. We can’t see it because it apparently doesn’t emit or absorb light or any other electromagnetic radiation at any significant level. But if we can’t see it, how do we know it’s there? Continue reading »
Jul 042012
Okay boys and girls, it’s time to nerd the fuck out . . .
July 4, 2012. It’s a date you should remember, and not because it happens to be the 236th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence from Great Britain. No, that’s far too parochial an event compared to the announcement that’s the subject of this post. What was revealed today is a genuine milestone in the history of humankind’s quest to understand the structure of matter in the universe and to develop an overarching theory of nature.
To state it simply, what was announced today is the near-certain confirmation of the existence of the Higgs boson, which is often popularly referred to as “the God particle” because, in the words of Leon Lederman, who coined the term in the title of his popular science book on particle physics, it is “so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive.” (Lederman also explained that he chose the term because “the publisher wouldn’t let us call it the Goddamn Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing.”)
There’s an even larger narrative in which this news plays a pivotal role. You might wonder what could be larger than understanding the fundamental rules by which the universe exists and functions, but to my way of thinking this is further vindication of the idea that nature can be understood through the rational working of ever-questioning human minds, that our curiosity about the universe can be answered through the scientific method — and that’s metal.
To understand the importance of this announcement requires more than a bit of background information. I’m no scientist, of course, but I’m going to do my best to sum up the key info based on what I’ve been reading today (instead of listening to metal). The explanation involves the “Standard Model” of particle physics (sometimes called the “theory of almost everything”), the world’s largest machine, and a 25-year quest to confirm a theory about what gives all matter its mass (the quality we feel as weight). Continue reading »