Chart Porn | Should You Work For Free?

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From Jessica Hische:

Who's ready to stop working for free? Hopefully you are! If you have any doubts, consult this handy chart. Start in the middle and work your way to your answer!

Thanks, Claire

Loch Ness Monster = Dinosaur = Darwinism Is Flawed

From The Herald [Scotland]:

School children in Louisiana are to be taught that the Loch Ness monster is real in a bid by religious educators to disprove Darwin’s theory of evolution. These private schools follow a fundamentalist curriculum including the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) programme to teach controversial religious beliefs aimed at disproving evolution and proving creationism. One tenet has it that if it can be proved that dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time as man then Darwinism is fatally flawed. The textbooks in the series are alleged to teach young earth creationism; are hostile towards other religions and other sectors of Christianity, including Roman Catholicism; and present a biased version of history that is often factually incorrect. One ACE textbook – Biology 1099, Accelerated Christian Education Inc – reads: “Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence. Have you heard of the ‘Loch Ness Monster’ in Scotland? ‘Nessie’ for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur.” Another claim taught is that a Japanese whaling boat once caught a dinosaur. It’s unclear if the movie Godzilla was the inspiration for this.

Via Dangerous Minds

Jason de Caires Taylor | Underwater Sculpture

Silent Evolution

Unstill Life at installation

Unstill Life after submersion

Underwater Gardener

In 2006, Jason de Caires Taylor founded and created the world's first underwater sculpture park. Situated off the coast of Grenada in the West Indies it is now listed as one of the Top 25 Wonders of the World by National Geographic. His latest creation is MUSA (Museo Subaquatico de Arte), a monumental museum with a collection of over 450 public sculptural works, submerged off the coast of Cancun, Mexico; described by Forbes as one of the world's most unique travel destinations. Both these ambitious, permanent public works have a practical, functional aspect, facilitating positive interactions between people and fragile underwater habitats while at the same relieving pressure on natural resources.

Vicissitudes

Vicissitudes detail

"Like Venus Hot" In Baltimore

What is a "2 degree guarantee"?

Via David Hughes' FB

Thanks, Tim

First Day Of Summer | 100 Degrees On The Deck

Instagrammed

Slugs | Survival Of The Fittest

Link via BoingBoing

Slugs are the nastiest, most disgusting, vile, icky, awful, useless, horrifying, and heebie-jeebie-inducing creatures ever. The idea that they can ooze into someone's house and ooze all the way to his bedroom door is shudderingly goosebumpy and full-body-spasmy. This creative solution is pleasing but it NEEDS MORE SALT if slug jerky is the goal.

Salon | "Frat-Boy" Conservatism

Daily Caller reporter Neal Munro interrupts President Obama as Obama speaks

about immigration at the White House on Friday 15 June. 

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)

Joan Walsh writes:

... I’m not one to revere the imperial presidency, but it’s unbelievable how wingnuts treat [President Obama] with such unprecedented and bullying disrespect: from Rep. Joe Wilson screaming “You lie” during Obama’s 2009 speech to a joint session of Congress, to Speaker John Boehner denying him his choice of dates for another congressional address (for the first time in history) last fall, to Donald Trump’s persistent, humiliating demands for the president to show him his papers (with no rebuke from ally Mitt Romney). And for right-wingers who insist Democrats are too quick to cry racism: Really, what else explains this constant, in-your-face (literally) contempt for a president?

... Conservatism has always been associated with deference to authority, but lately it’s only for authority they respect. The Romney campaign has been glorying in this new form of frat-boy conservatism, first sending campaign supporters to heckle Obama adviser David Axelrod during a press conference, and yesterday sending its bus to circle and disrupt an Obama event, honking its horn. It reminds me of the famous “Brooks Brothers riots” in Miami during December 2000, when supporters of George W. Bush threatened to physically prevent county officials from recounting votes in that heavily Democratic stronghold. Of course, it also harks back to Romney himself in prep school, tackling a gay classmate and cutting off his long blond hair while he cried and asked for help. 

Read the full article here.

Monkey Monday | Gorillas Use Infant-Directed Communication

A baby lowland gorilla rides on his mother's back at the primate sanctuary run by the 

Cameroon Wildlife Aid Fund in Mefou National Park, just outside the capital Yaounde.

REUTERS

... older gorillas have been found to use a modified system of gestures when communicating with infants. Much like "motherese", the baby talk human parents use when talking to their children, the gorillas' special gestures may help the infants to develop their own communication skills. Eva Maria Luëf and Katja Liebal of the Free University of Berlin in Germany monitored 24 captive lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) for four months, focusing on the gestures they used to start and stop play. Typically, gorillas might encourage play by slapping others while making a "play face", for instance, or somersaulting, and end bouts by placing a hand on the other gorilla's head. With infants, every older gorilla used more touch-based gestures and repeated their gestures more. No other apes have been seen modifying their signals for infants, although rhesus macaques do change one call when directing it at infants. But Luëf suspects that all great apes can do it. The adults could be encouraging the infants to develop their gesturing, says Richard Byrne of the University of St Andrews, UK. Gorillas have to learn how best to use their repertoire of gestures. That takes practice, and possibly help from older gorillas. "I think it's very likely that's what's going on," Byrne says.

American Journal of Primatology via New Scientist

Awkward Family Photos | Father's Day

AFP Father's Day Slide Show

Best Of Criggo

Women In Media | Miss Representation

YouTube

Directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Miss Representation explores how mainstream media contribute to the under-representation of women in influential positions in America and challenges the media's limiting and often disparaging portrayals of women, [making it] difficult for the average girl to see herself as powerful. In a society where media is the most persuasive force shaping cultural norms. The collective message that our young women and men overwhelmingly receive is that a woman's value and power lie in her youth, beauty, and sexuality -- and not in her capacity as a leader. While women have made strides in leadership over the past few decades, the United States still ranks 90th in the world for women in national legislatures, depression rates have doubled among teenage girls, and cosmetic surgery on minors has more than tripled in the last ten years.

Stories from teenage girls and provocative interviews with politicians, journalists, academics and activists like Condoleeza Rice, Nancy Pelosi, Katie Couric, Rachel Maddow, Margaret Cho, Rosario Dawson and Gloria Steinem build momentum as Miss Representation accumulates startling facts and statistics that will leave the audience shaken and armed with a new perspective.

Take the pledge [I pledge to use my voice to spread the message of Miss Representation and challenge the media’s limiting portrayal of women and girls.] and show your support at the Miss Representation website. The DVD is available at Amazon for about $15.

Thanks, Linda

Our Brains Are Getting Bigger

New measurements of hundreds of skulls of white Americans born between 1825 and 1985 suggest that their typical noggin height has grown by about a third of an inch (eight millimeters). It may not sound like much, but the growth translates to roughly a tennis ball's worth of new brain room.

"I can't guess the implications of this jump in cranial size, but other research shows a bigger cranium doesn't necessarily mean more intellect," said University of Tennessee biological anthropologist Richard Jantz, who presented the findings with colleagues at an American Association for Physical Anthropology meeting in April.

Beginning with the dawn of the first Homo species, human skulls evolved to be increasingly bigger until about 30,000 years ago, when head size plateaued. And about 5,000 or 6,000 years ago, when agriculture took off in earnest, skulls began shrinking. The cause of the shrinkage is a mystery, but scientists have tentatively fingered more efficient brain wiring and easier access to food and safety—the idea being that people no longer had to be especially smart to survive (aka the Idiocracy theory).

About ten years ago Jantz and colleagues were measuring skeletons and saw signs that the shrinking trend may be reversing. Since then, they've amassed data on 1,500 skulls spanning 160 years. The specimens came from three collections to which only adult skeletons could be donated. And since mostly adult Caucasian Americans regularly donated to the collections, the researchers' conclusions so far are known to apply to that group alone.

Jantz cautioned that American life has changed in too many ways to pinpoint a single cause for the skull growth. "I am absolutely certain, however, that it's due to the unparalleled environment that we now live in," he said. "Americans drive cars, vaccinate their children—and an excess of food is now a bigger problem than undernutrition, among many other things. It's almost as if we're conducting an experiment on ourselves to see how we'll respond to a totally new environment."

University of Texas demographer Corey Sparks said the new conclusions seem to be valid but was equally cautious not to suggest an exact cause. "I grabbed a ruler to physically see the changes they describe, and eight millimeters is not much change at all. An inch? That'd be huge," said Sparks, who helped Jantz with skull-measuring scientific work many years ago but was not involved in the new research. As for the possible causes, he added, "We like to infer things outside of our data to try and explain a story—a pattern—but there is no smoking gun for what is causing these changes."

National Geographic

Periodic Table Of Dangerous Elements

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Planet POV via Daily Kos

Freyja Sewell HUSH | The Uterus Chair

From Freyja Sewell's website:

... The ‘womb’ shape inspires very different feelings in different people; to me it is a warm, cosy space, for contemplation and rest. There are now 21 cities with populations larger than ten million, and it is predicted that there will be many more in the future. Soaring property prices and lack of available space are causing more and more people to seek alternatives to owning their own home in the city, for example sharing your room with your partner, brother or friend. It is essential to continue to develop new ways of allowing people to comfortably co-exist in these increasingly densely populated environments. By creating an enclosed space HUSH provides a personal retreat, an escape into a dark, quiet, natural space, or state of mind. HUSH can also be transformed to provide more traditional open seating. HUSH was recently selected for Grand Designs Live as one of Kevin McClouds 'Green Heros'.

Via Jezebel

Introverted Wife | Monster Barbies

Cthulhu Barbie

Zombie Barbie

Get step by step instructions for creating your own monster Barbies at Introverted Wife.

Monkey Monday | Baby Orangutan's First Climb

YouTube via The Presurfer

First Veggies Of The Summer

3" zucchini

1" cucumber