Science Art: A Real-Life Space Jam + Opening a Soda Can On the Ocean Floor.

Space. The final frontier. Nearly every sci-fi thing involves space in some way, shape, or form, in part because aliens are cool and One day, after our planet is destroyed, we may have colonies on the moon. For now, we have one guy playing a guitar. 



Yes, that video was edited. Commander Chris Hadfield still went up in space, filmed himself playing the guitar, and probably lipsynched just to get the song absolutely right. He had a glider scholarship since 15 years of age. In short, he is a solid badass who does more awesome things than you...and puts them on YouTube for your convenience.

Or how about crying in space?



Basically, anything mundane that you have ever thought of doing in space? This guy's done it. Then he put it up on YouTube to sate your nerdy curiosity.  Who would ask about nail clipping in outer space? I don't know, but you're probably looking it up on YouTube right now. You're welcome.

The fun does not stop in space. Commander Hadfield has also been to the bottom of the ocean, where he opened a soda can.



Yeah, you'll never see soda the same way again. Or Atlantis, for that matter.

Creature Feature: Lambeosaurus.

It seems that filmmakers have decided on a "set" of dinosaurs that must always make it into every dinosaur movie ever. T-Rex is pretty much a given. Triceratops is also popular. If there is a pterosaur, and there usually is, it's either a Pteranodon or some bastardization thereof. Miscellaneous herbivores include Stegosaurus and Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus, with Brachiosaurus being almost too distinct to be generic. They also usually include this one:

For those of you wondering what this bizarre-looking creature is, it's called a Parasaurolophus and is one of the many duck-billed dinosaurs (hadrosaurs) out there. It seems to have become the "default" duckbill. I'm not quite sure what "modern parallel" people see in Parasaurolophus and other hadrosaurs (ancient water buffalo?), but I digress. Point is, as with pterosaurs, there's always that one hadrosaur that popular culture falls back on.

Maybe it's about time we looked at some of the other hadrosaurs on this blog, yes?

Lambeosaurus probably should be the strange duckbill everybody knows. It has a very good fossil record from Canada, Montana, and Baja California. There is some debate over exactly how many species there are in the genus, but specimens are nonetheless plentiful. It is named for the guy who discovered the first few fossils, Lawrence Lambe. Like most of the cool dinosaurs, it is from the Late Cretaceous. It is also the largest hadrosaur, getting up to 50 feet long from head to tail.

As with many hadrosaurs, the most distinguishing feature about Lambeosaurus was its crest. This crest was hatchet-shaped, making the dinosaur look like a cassowary and a unicorn at the same time.  It's hard to get more awesome than that, yet here hadrosaurs are stuck with the goofy Parasaurolophus as their representative. Kinda sad, really.

Nobody is 100% sure what these crests were for. Snorkels and salt glands are also on the table. Maybe they could even make noise; again, people love shilling Parasaurolophus for this ("it's a dinosaur with a built-in trumpet!"). There is adequate evidence that hearing and sight were a Lambeosaurus's strongest senses, so all of the above are possible. We've never seen hadrosaurs in action, or in color, for that matter, so the purpose(s) of these crests will remain a mystery until we invent time machines.

I cold get into more about what makes a hadrosaur a hadrosaur, but that is best saved for another time. Hell, I should just make a "Hadrosaur Week." They're really rather interesting, albeit not my favorite dinosaurs.

GreenFest 2013 Coverage.

And now for what you all really wanted to see: The stuff all set up!



Pop tab fashion. Now I'm really glad I save every pop tab I get. I got a bracelet from these people, simply because the idea is awesome.

This is a blanket for the homeless made out of plastic bags. That is what I call creative. 

Bumper stickers! So many bumper stickers! This isn't my favorite; the other two I got involved humans being hunted/food. Otherwise, it was pretty usual, PETA-esque merchandise.

Cobra Corn? Not sold at the Fest except as samples by one person. In short, it's popcorn coated in Indian spices. Not my thing, but if that sounds appetizing to you, Asian grocers might carry it. I had to take a picture of it regardless.

Clif Bar people almost always make it to GreenFest. For those of you who have not heard of Clif, they're amazing little health bars that are lifesavers for hikers and supercommuters alike. I personally like them quite a lot. Unfortunately, all the "Kit's Organic" stuff had almonds in it. Bummer.

Kefir! It's like drinkable yogurt, and is now available as frozen yogurt. Definitely good stuff. If you're into Greek yogurt, you will probably like frozen kefir, too.

The ad campaign against GMO's with the mouse was adorable. Plus, there really is nasty stuff in most things at your local supermarket. It works.

Ford had a HUGE presence. They're major sponsors, it seems, and have some of the most...reusable cars on the planet? Wow, this seems like a cheap attempt to compete with hybrids. OUR CARS USE CORN!

There was more where that came from, but the pictures either sucked or I didn't really take snaps. There were a lot of home improvement things that I did not bother with.  It might, however, be worth covering what makes something LEED-certified in a future entry.

Event Coverage: GreenFest Pre-Show Setup.

So yes. I am slowly starting to have a life outside of this blog. On Friday, I volunteered a good chunk of my day at Green Festival Chicago. Nobody truly awesome was there, yet, but here's what America's most eco-friendly fest looks like before it's set up. Just because stuff isn't completely up doesn't mean it isn't worth writing about.

For those of you unaware, Green Festival is the U.S.'s largest ecologically-friendly festival. It features fair trade items, organic food, and helpful information about why we're so not Earth-friendly right now. More on that in Saturday's entry. For now, know that you get in free if you volunteer, so next time one rolls around take a shift and have fun. Here's what I did and saw:

The lights along this thing? My doing.

The busts were my doing, too. Now the whole cafe's set up!

An arrangement of Buddha heads near the theater area.

For whatever reason, one of the volunteers brought his dog along. Poodles are a lot fiercer-looking up close than they are on fashion accessories. 

A lot of the media booths were starting to get set up on this day, too. While not particularly eco-conscious, it was still awesome to see big shots like CBS and the New York Times. There was a political debate going on while I watched the poodle.

Finishing touch: this globe was a moon bounce.

"They Actually Eat That:" Sweet Sue's Canned Whole Chicken.

Along with apparently having fetishes for everything, humans will also put anything into a can. The idea of having food last almost forever is very tempting. However, there are some instances when the question is not can you, but should you, can this thing? This is one of the things that you should not can:

This is Sweet Sue canned whole chicken. As in, somebody took a chicken, stuffed it into a can, and pretended that it was done by somebody named Sue. I don't even know where they sell these. The 6th Ring of Hell is a fair enough guess. It seems to be a food made for foodies to try once, blog about, then promptly call disgusting.

Why do I say this? Because:

Sweet Sue, by which I mean Satan, does not lie and knows how to label hellish edibles. It's literally as if they stuffed a (small) chicken into a can. Not everything stays in tact, but there is undeniably a whole chicken in there. It also looks like it rose from the chickeny grave, only to die again, but nobody would ever be so desperate as to attempt chicken necromancy. At least it isn't false advertising.

So, how does it taste? In a word, bad. According to this blogger, it has a metallic taste, even after being cooked, along with being roughly like chicken soup in flavor. I will not touch this can, and if I do, I'm taking it to an exorcist. Or the Ghostbusters, whoever wants to deal with canned zombie chicken.

Morbid curiosity says that somebody, somewhere finds this appetizing. Alas, I do not know where these people are.  The rest of the world finds it the single strangest canned food in existence. Homestyle goodness indeed.

Newsflash: The Birds and the...Hornets?!

Tuesday was going to be a Creature Feature. I haven't done habu yet, except as a weird food. It would be awesome to get back into the swing of things. Then, however, a close friend of mine had to show me one of the weirdest articles I had ever read.

Without spoiling anything, this newsflash covers a fetish. This is the internet- you can't even look up Pokemon stuff without getting into fetishes. If weird fetishes disturb you...yeah, this one most likely will, too. I have never encountered a fetish as odd as this one. This was just so mind-blowingly dumb and astounding in other ways that I cannot help sharing it with a blog dedicated to weird things. 

"A man in Sweden has died after trying to have sex with a hornet's nest on his farm outside Ystad.
The 35-year-old, known only as Hasse, had 146 sting marks on his body, including 54 to his genitals, News Sweden said.

His body was found by a neighbour, who said Hasse was so swollen he initially mistook him for a whale carcass.

Hasse was unconscious when he was found but died an hour later from the injuries he sustained.
Neighbour Bertil Ståhfrääs said he called over to his neighbour to ask what he was doing: "At first [I thought he was lying there by] of choice, so I called 'Hasse' to ask what the hell he was doing.

"I walked up to the body and then I recognised his tattoo on his neck. I have never in my life seen such a swollen pelvic bone. It hid the whole package [and] the scrotum was enlarged. Right now it feels heavy and unreal. We did not talk very often, but he was still my neighbour."

An autopsy of Hasse's body showed semen on some of the dead wasps and a number of the victim's pubic hair was found at the entrance of the nest. His fingerprints were also found on the nest, leading the police to believe he had been trying to have sex with the hornet's nest when he was stung to death.

"To attempt to have intercourse with a hornet's nest is a very bad idea," Siv During Livh, a psychologist and expert on sex fantasies told the news website. (No, really?)

"I don't even think about the pain he must have suffered both within himself [from his fetish] and incurred by the wasp attack."

Hornet stings are more painful than typical wasp stings because of their venom. They can also sting multiple times.

The stings are not normally fatal to humans unless a person is allergic to their venom, in which case they can go into anaphylactic shock."- Source, because this really is a thing.

Holy carp. I thought poking a hornet's nest was a bad ides. Fapping to one sounds even worse. Of all the fetishes I have seen on the internet, this one has to take the cake.

Bio-Art: The Human Race Machine.

If somebody isn't white as bread, then it's usually easy to tell where somebody comes from based on things like skin color, eye color, facial shape, etc. I'm willing to bet that somewhere, in some bar, someone has asked, "hey, I wonder what I'd look like as a black person?" Well, wonder no more.

Enter the Human Race Machine by Nancy Burson. The tagline is "There's No Gene For Race," and indeed, there isn't. It was originally developed as a commission for London's Millennium Dome in 2000, but several copies have been made. They have since appeared on CNN, Oprah, and other major media outlets.

The Human Race Machine creates realistic images of how one would look if one was a different race. The machine has black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Indian, and Middle Eastern variations on your own face waiting to be produced. It's certainly a neat device, and should you find one in a museum near you, please try it out. It's not necessarily revolutionary software (similar "morphing" programs have been around for ages), but definitely a good use of computer graphics.



As her site puts it, "the concept of race is not genetic, but social."Indeed, the concept of race is not genetic, but the traits leading to race are. Things like hair, skin, and eye color can all be genetically mapped. The site details the discovery of exactly one gene that coded for the amount of expressed melanin in Homo sapiens. We are indeed 99.9% alike beneath the skin.

This is another one where I feel pressed to ask, "is this really bio-art?" Considering how many things I have considered bio-art on this column, it'll count, but the only real science to this one is that race does not have a single gene. Also, it feels more warm and fuzzy than most of the entries here. Still, if it's good enough for the course I took on bio-art, it'll cut it here.