Wes Ball, a graphic artist best known for his work with HBO and his award-winning student short A Work in Progress, has spent the last two years working with his company, OddBall Animation, on a “passion project” called Ruin, described as “an animated short set in a post-apocalyptic universe.”TDW
 |
| The letters “A”and “B”on the shield of the knight represent Aryan Brotherhood. |
 |
| Military insignia and epaulette tattoos are often used to signify criminal accomplishments or some other aspect of a prisoner's history. The epaulette design can mean that a prisoner was a high-ranking criminal or had some special status as a criminal before his/her incarceration. Skulls generally designate murderers. [Russian] |
 |
| The “Bloody Orcs” were a one-time puppet club of the Hells Angels. Subjects bearing this tattoo may have criminality and may still be involved with the Hells Angels. |
 |
| This symbol represents the Aztec War God and signifies honour and respect earned by a warrior. When worn by a Sureño, this symbol means that he is a warrior or foot soldier for EME (the Mexican Mafia). Sureños wear the War God symbol as a badge of honour and to pay homage to EME. |
Tattoos are useful indicators to identify individuals who are members of a gang or a criminal organization. It is important to note that an image may have several different, occasionally innocuous, meanings, depending on the interpretation of the individual or gangs using it.Via Gawker
The Organized Crime Section (OCS) is providing the following tattoos and their definitions as a tool to assist officers in detecting gang members or members of a criminal organization. It is important that Border Services Officers contact their Regional Intelligence Officers to assist in determining a subject’s admissibility to Canada.
Can you speak monkey? Well if you hang out with them long enough you’re bound to pick up a few words. After more than thirty years in the Amazon, Dr. Sara Bennett can talk some monkey, which, with a little encouragement on my part, she demonstrated for me one sweltering morning on Mocagua Island in the Colombian Amazon. One wooly monkey in particular also had a lot to say to Sara. I’m sure what he was saying was the same thing most of the monkeys on this island adjacent to Amacayacu National Park probably say to her, “Thank you. Thank you for saving us and for starting the rescue center that takes in orphaned and captive monkeys in this part of the Amazon.Maybe Dr. Bennett can rescue the little monkey being "trained" to pose for pictures with tourists.
Dr. Sara Bennett got a grant from National Geographic to study trees when she first went to the Amazon, but she soon fell in love with the creatures that live in the trees, and began working with local tribes helping them understand the importance of altering their hunting and fishing practices so they would be more sustainable. On Mocagua Island which is shared by four different tribes she got them to agree to stop the hunting of wooly monkeys which were in danger of being wiped out. It was here that she also helped establish Maikuchiga, a small non-profit that operates a rescue center for orphaned animals.
Most of the rescued animals are monkeys that were in either in captivity or were orphaned after hunters killed their mothers. Sara now uses the rescued monkeys as educational ambassadors. We talk about my visit to the monkeys this week on National Geographic Weekend. This video shows Sara and some of her rescued monkeys jumping in her arms and climbing on her head. It also shows some of the monkeys trying to help me with the filming.
It recently came to Stephen Colbert's attention that the Mormons have a habit of baptizing dead Jews; even though the Church claimed to stop this practice, Anne Frank was apparently baptized for the tenth time last week. So Colbert only had one sensible choice, retaliation-wise: to convert all the dead Mormons to Judaism.Gawker
 |
| Equality Maryland Twitpic |
[These images are] from an Edo period (1603 to 1868) Japanese scroll depicting what is called he-gassen or “farting competition.” The images show people happily expelling their gasses at cats, horses and even at each other. Apparently no one is safe from he-gassen. According to the website Naruhodo, “similar drawings were used to ridicule westerners towards the end of the Edo period, with images depicting the westerners blown away by Japanese farts.”Dangerous Minds
In mid-October 2011, NASA scientists working in Antarctica discovered a massive crack across the Pine Island Glacier, a major ice stream that drains the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Extending for 19 miles (30 kilometers), the crack was 260 feet (80 meters) wide and 195 feet (60 meters) deep. Eventually, the crack will extend all the way across the glacier, and calve a giant iceberg that will cover about 350 square miles (900 square kilometers).The size of the expected iceberg will likely exceed the combined area of New York City's five boroughs.
My friend and I once joked that toilet paper should have instructions printed on them for certain people. One day, the conversation grew from there and turned into a wager that I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) be able to type out a novel on toilet paper. Yes, we did have some time on our hands but, as you can see by the following photos, I won the bet. There are four full rolls, one roll (epilogue) is about one-fifth of a roll and one-half roll. All of the rolls of tp came out of a brand new – clean – package of two-ply Cottonelle. They’ve been handled very gingerly and infrequently. As you’ll see in the following photos, one or two rolls have a tear at the beginning. This is where I was trying to pull the paper through the typewriter. I’ve kept this mod oddity in a box in a cool, dry place for the last ten years and have only broken it out to prove to doubters that I actually did it. Considering what it’s been through, it’s in amazing condition. I will ship these securely in a plastic storage bin with plenty of padding so it won’t be damaged during shipping.Link
In The Stanley Parable, you inhabit the body of Stanley, a man who, despite working a monotonous office job, is completely content with his life. One day, everybody in Stanley’s office disappears. Guided by a disembodied narrator — voiced impeccably by British actor Kevan Brighting — Stanley ventures off to find out why nobody is there.Read the rest of the Wired article here. Click the link to play the game. Mac users need HL2.
It’s impossible to say much more without ruining the game’s brilliantly disjointed story, which takes around an hour to experience in its entirety. There are multiple choices, paths and endings, all of which will leave you with many questions and absolutely no answers. But The Stanley Parable will leave you thinking, and that’s what Wreden is aiming for. “The whole point of the game is that there is no answer,” Wreden said in a phone interview ... “The entirety of the game is realizing what the question is in the first place.”
The Stanley Parable breaks the fourth wall constantly, acknowledging that it is a videogame, limited by the medium’s constraints. It also presents hypothetical questions about the nature of choice, posits a debate about reality and contradicts its own rules constantly.
 |
| Actress Maureen O'Sullivan and Cheetah. Source |
A 25-year-old chimpanzee named "Panzee" has just demonstrated that speech perception is not a uniquely human trait. Well-educated Panzee understands more than 130 English language words and even recognizes words in sine-wave form, a type of synthetic speech that reduces language to three whistle-like tones. This shows that she isn't just responding to a particular person's voice or emotions, but instead she is processing and perceiving speech as humans do.Link via Monkeys in the News
"The results suggest that the common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans may have had the capability to perceive speech-like sounds before the evolution of speech, and that early humans were taking advantage of this latent ability when speech did eventually emerge," said Lisa Heimbauer who presented a talk today on the chimp at the 162nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in San Diego.
Heimbauer, a doctoral candidate and researcher at Georgia State University's Language Research Center, and colleagues Michael Owren and Michael Beran tested Panzee on her ability to understand words communicated via sine-wave speech, which replicates the estimated frequency and amplitude patterns of natural utterances. A few of the test words were "tickle," "M&M," "lemonade," and "sparkler."
