Swinging Through a Canyon on a 400 Foot Rope Swing

Filmmaker Devin Graham (aka “Devin Super Tramp“) captured a group of his friends on film as they take turns swinging through a canyon on a 400 foot rope swing. You can watch the behind-the-scenes video by Devin and video blog shot on sight by ShayCarl below to get a better look at how deep the insane drop actually was

knee Defender, Jamming Devices to Stop Airline Seats From Reclining

Slate recently ran an article titled “The Recline and Fall of Western Civilization,” a piece that talks about the evils of reclining your seat on an airplane. In it, they mention the Knee Defender, a set of pocket-sized jamming devices that snap onto your open tray table and prevent the seat in front of you from reclining fully. The Knee Defender site quotes The Washington Post as reporting, “FAA spokesman Paul Takemoto said the clips were not against federal aviation rules as long as they weren’t used during taxiing, takeoffs or landings.” These set of clips are available to purchase at Gadget Duck, the company who invented them in 2003.

A Look at New York City’s Vibrant Chess Culture

“The Subculture of Chess” looks at New York City’s vibrant chess community, from old chess clubs to aspiring young chess players. Directed by Matt Porter, the short documentary is the latest in the Subculture Club series by Thrash

How Hash Oil Is Blowing Up Across the U.S. — Literally

Photo:Symic / Flickr

Last week, FEMA posted a rather unexpected alert in its emergency services bulletin titled “Hash Oil Explosions Increasing Across US.” Alongside more quotidian warnings of cyber terrorism and industrial vapor clouds, it described an uptick in explosions at apartments and hotel rooms involving “a process using butane to extract and concentrate compounds from marijuana,” destructive incidents that FEMA warned could even be mistaken for pipe bomb or meth lab explosions.
Wait, marijuana-based explosions? When did cannabis products start sounding like something out of Breaking Bad?
A clear, golden brown cannabis derivative also known as honey oil, shatter, wax and (disgustingly) “earwax,” butane hash oil (BHO) has some distinct advantages over traditional marijuana: It has very little smell, either in its solid form or when vaporized, is very portable, and can achieve intense effects with small amounts. (That’s because BHO is also highly concentrated; according to one Oregon-based hash oil producer — a Cannabis Cup award winner who goes by “Ganja Jon” — a pound of marijuana typically generates 1/10 to 1/5 of a pound of hash oil.)
“BHO has been gaining in popularity in the past three years,” High Times senior editor Bobby Brown told Wired. “It’s been done for decades, but it was only done by a few people and it was very underground. Even at High Times we didn’t really talk about it or cover it because it was so rare.” No longer. At the High Times series of Cannabis Cup competitions, which take place in states where medical marijuana is legal (and Amsterdam), Brown says the once-marginal hash oil entries have not only increased over the last several years but “pretty much eclipsed traditional hash at this point.”
But as its popularity grows, so do the number of hash oil enthusiasts eager to attempt their own homebrew BHO, a process that usually involves the highly flammable solvent butane. The result in a number of cases, as the FEMA bulletin notes, has been “fires and explosions [that] have blown out windows, walls, and caused numerous burn injuries.”
Local media reports often describe hash oil explosions as the result of “cooking hash” or “cooking hash oil,” but that isn’t strictly accurate. There are no Breaking Bad Bunsen burners or chemistry sets involved, and the process of producing hash oil is a relatively simple one, albeit one that ill-informed stoners can still manage to screw up.
Hash oil is typically produced by filling a cylindrical glass or stainless steel canister with pot (Bed Bath and Beyond’s metal turkey basters are a popular choice), and flooding the canister with a solvent — usually butane — that strips the plant matter of its cannabinoid-containing oils. The resulting mixture of psychotropic plant oil and chemicals is then purified to remove traces of the solvent. One common method of butane removal includes boiling it off in a hot water bath, while another involves the use of a vacuum pump and vacuum chamber to lower butane’s boiling point, pulling butane from the oil.
What makes it dangerous is not so much the extraction process itself, but rather the problem of improper butane ventilation. Butane is highly flammable and it tends to sink, meaning that if you use it indoors or don’t ventilate well, you’ll run into serious trouble. Let some butane puddle in your living room, throw in a thoughtless spark from a cigarette, stove, or — dare I suggest — bong hit, and suddenly your apartment is missing a wall.
That’s allegedly what happened in January, when three people were injured after a hash oil extraction gone wrong blew through the walls of a San Diego hotel. A few months earlier, an Oregon man suffered burns in a similar explosion that blew out the windows in his apartment and sent him to the hospital. Although it’s perfectly possible to make hash oil safely, such explosions are the result of a relatively small number of hash oil producers who fail to take even the most basic precautions. (The number one precaution according to everyone I spoke to for this article: Never make oil indoors.) 

“We are as concerned as anyone about the dangers involved in making it,” said Brown, who also cited safety issues that go beyond explosions to the quality of the product itself. If you’re purchasing hash oil from a source besides a reputable dispensary, for example, you may not know whether it contains high levels of butane, or if it was created using poor materials — like PVC pipe instead of stainless steel — that can leech chemicals into the product. “It’s really a kind of bathtub gin situation,” says the High Times editor.
It’s not easy to regulate the safety of an industry whose legal status varies from state to state, particularly regarding concentrates like BHO that often land in a regulatory gray area even in places where recreational or medical marijuana is legal. And as interest grows in both consuming and making hash oil,  so too do the number of YouTube tutorials and forum threads that spread misinformation and fail to emphasize proper safety – an explosive combination that suggests we’ll be seeing more attempts at DIY hash oil that end with a very dangerous bang

robotic rat terrorizes rats into depression

PopSci: "In order to create a workable model of a human mental disorder like depression, anxiety or schizophrenia, rats are often genetically manipulated or have their nerve system surgically altered. Sometimes they are forced to swim for long periods of time. Now, researchers at Waseda University in Tokyo have created a new method: Let a robotic rat terrorize the rats into depression."

Bubble Bursting in Extreme Slow Motion by The Slow Mo Guys

The Slow Mo Guys capture bubbles bursting in super slow motion (18,000 frames per second) using a Phantom v1610 camera. It’s the slowest slow motion video they have ever created

cardboard Iron Man suits

Redditor royal_dump makes eye-poppingly great Iron Man suits out of cardboard. He also sometimes sells ones he makes from foam

Giant Melting Popsicle Ice Sculptures

 

“Calamidad Cósmica” (“Cosmic Calamity”) was a 2011 installation of giant popsicle ice sculptures that were allowed slowly melt in front of viewers. The installation was created by Argentinian artist Luciana Rondolini.

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Paperchild Revolution, Tiny Cartoon Kids Put Into Real-Life Scenes

 

For her “Paperchild Revolution” collection, French artist Lowra makes cartoons of small kids with paper (a meme known as “paper child“) and creatively photographs them into real-life scenes. The results are clever and cute.

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Robert Crumb comments on celebrities and artists

PETER MAX
Robert: Peter Max [laughs]... he's a totally fucking jive character. I read an article about him about ten years ago and he was doing these really bad, sloppy paintings, knocking 'em out as quickly as possible and trying to sell them based on his name. But you know, in the psychedelic era, his stuff was all over the place. He was way better known than I was, back in like '68, '69, '70 period. Yeah, Peter Max capitalized on the whole psychedelic art scene in that period; completely jive character. I wonder if he's still alive.
PETE SEEGER
Robert: Seeger… he's a saint. Pete Seeger's a fucking saint, but I never found his music very interesting. You know, musically he can play the banjo, but he's so political, so deeply, vehemently political — and I agree with his politics completely — but it made his music political; the message was more important than the quality of the music to him. He's a literary musician, you know? But he dedicated himself to getting out there an playing these left-wing, rousing songs to labor unions and strikers, it's amazing they never put him in jail. Well, actually, I think he was in trouble for a while but he never went to jail. Is he still alive? I think he is. I think he's still going! I know someone who recently talked to him and I guess Seeger is very inspirational. He's still very lucid and he talked about the old days. You know, he started all that political campaigning in the '30s, and he started very young with that. He's from an upper-class family with money. I think it was the Seeger family whose maid was Elizabeth Cotton, and one day they found her playing guitar and singing and they went, "Oh my God! This woman is a talented singer/musician!" Somebody, years ago, gave me, as a gift, a huge box set of ten LPs of all of that left-wing folk music done by the folknics, not by the real folk, but the folknics of the '50s and early '60s: the Almanac Singers; Joan Baez and Pete Seeger. It's just totally uninteresting. Real country hillbilly music by deeply ignorant, racist people is much more interesting than that stuff. As I said, I agree totally with their politics, but musically it's really uninteresting. The whole folknic scene, even when it was happening in the late '50s and early '60s, I was never moved by it. I preferred rockabilly.

LEGO Candle Lighting Robot

YouTuber Pasquentmax built this candle lighting robot out of LEGO Mindstorm. The robot can automatically light five tea candles and drop them into candle holders.

When cultures collide

Two Canadian exchange students in Japan tried a popular local treat: ice cream in a rubber balloon. Seems they let the ice cream thaw a bit too much and raucous hilarity ensues.

Adam Savage Built a Carrying Case from Scratch in One Day for his Blade Runner Gun Prop Replica

Mythbusters host and Tested scientist Adam Savage built a custom “stylized” carrying case for his Blade Runner gun prop replica in only one day. Adam talks about the build process in greater detail with Tested editor Norman Chan. You can view more behind the scenes photos of the box build on Tested.com.

We spent seven hours in Adam’s shop watching him transform pieces of wood and metal into a beautiful carrying case for this beloved Blade Runner Blaster prop replica. The completed box is an amazing creation to behold!

photos and video via Tested

Tickle Me Elmo frozen in carbonite

Todd Blatt and the fun-loving weirdos at the Baltimore Node hackerspace froze a Tickle-Me-Elmo in carbonite because of (awesome) reasons:

I was at my hackerspace one evening and we got to talking about crazy ideas, like normal. We have a full size Han Solo in Carbonite at the space, and someone mentioned that it'd be funny to encase old toys in a smaller carbonite box. So I did. I used the ShopBot CNC router at the MIT FablLab at CCBC in Catonsville, MD to cut the box, an arduino to copy code to an attiny85 to run the randomization script for the LED lights, and my MakerBot to 3d print the side panels I'd previously designed for a different project. The side panels are posted here on Thingiverse and I just drilled out holes for the lights

This insectile "Green Art Gas Mask"

This insectile "Green Art Gas Mask" is quite a departure for Ukrainian leatherworkers

When The Zombies Come, Documentary About Teens Prepped For the Zombie Apocalypse

“We have fuel, we have fire, we have that which they desire

LED Mushroom Desk Lamps


By EDW Lynch on February 14, 2013





Japanese designer Yukio Takano makes humorous little mushroom lamps that look like wild mushrooms growing on logs, but are actually LED-powered desk lamps. It’s unclear whether the lamps are available for purchase. It is, however, clear that Takano is quite the mushroom enthusiast—in addition to the lamps, he has other mushroom-inspired designs, mushroom photography and a mushroom blog on his site, Great Mushrooming.















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Thank You by Jason Chen, Music Video Features 500 Rubik’s Cubes That Create Images

By Rusty Blazenhoff on February 13, 2013

The music video for “Thank You” by Jason Chen features moving images made with 500 Rubik’s Cubes. It was directed, written, and edited by Ross Ching.

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What Ockham really said

 

In the arsenal of eternal skeptics there are few tools more dramatically and more commonly used than Ockham’s razor. It is triumphantly applied to resolve arguments about ghosts (more parsimoniously seen as misperceptions by distraught family members or the suggestible), UFOs (evidently hoaxes and mistaken observations of natural phenomena) and telepathy (a “delusion” of wishful thinking and poorly-constructed tests). Born in England, Franciscan monk William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347) is among the most prominent figures in the history of philosophy during the High Middle Ages. The Skeptics Dictionary quotes the Razor as Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate, or “plurality should not be posited without necessity," while Wikipedia defines Ockham's razor as follows:

“Among competing hypotheses, the one that makes the fewest assumptions should be selected.”

And it gives the following example of its application:

“It is possible to describe the other planets in the Solar System as revolving around the Earth, but that explanation is unnecessarily complex compared to the contemporary consensus that all planets in the Solar System revolve around the Sun.” Another often-quoted formulation of the principle is that “one should not multiply entities beyond necessity.”

Brother Ockham, however, said nothing of the kind. Later philosophers have put these words into his mouth for their own convenience. Here is what he wrote, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

“Nothing ought to be posited without a reason given, unless it is self-evident or known by experience or proved by the authority of Sacred Scripture.”

So let’s come back to the planets, and apply Ockham’s razor–as formulated by the man himself–to a comparison between two different hypotheses about their motion. The contemporary consensus states that they revolve around the sun according to the Copernican system, Kepler’s laws of motion and Newton’s model of gravity, as demonstrated by complex observations and significant mathematical underpinning. Our alternative hypothesis simply states that they are moved around the sky by angels, as illustrated in this beautiful painting from the Breviari d’amor of Matfre Ermengaud, where a convenient gear mechanism is gracefully activated to regulate planetary motion. Ermengaud was a contemporary of Ockham and, like him, a Franciscan friar. Were we to apply Ockham's formulation of the razor literally, the choice between these two hypotheses is clear. It does not favor the first hypothesis, the standard scientific interpretation. The Scriptures clearly state that angels do exist, and their reality was re-affirmed by Pope John Paul II as recently as August 1986. Since they manifest through their actions in the heavens, the second hypothesis appears far more parsimonious and elegant than the complicated rationalizations used by mathematicians and astronomers, which involve unseen entities such as the acceleration of gravity, centrifugal force, and mass, which - to this day - raise issues that science is yet to resolve. If you seriously believe in angels, then the contemporary consensus about planetary motion is a case of “plurality without necessity.” The second hypothesis is also more powerful since angels can just as easily move the planets around the earth as around the sun. They can do whatever they like—and thereby explain any phenomena. Perhaps we should be more careful when we quote ancient authors out of context, or twist their words to fit the convenient modern tenets of skepticism in the name of Reason. The Scriptures are full of ghosts, UFOs and examples of telepathy - which means that such phenomena cannot be dissected and thrown out using Ockham’s razor anyway. We know, of course, that the planets revolve around the Sun, an idea that would have shocked Ockham. And I firmly believe that, in philosophy and in science we should go on selecting the hypothesis that makes the fewest assumption when confronted with competing explanations, and one should not multiply entities beyond necessity -- even if Brother William never said so. But we should also remember that nature is not parsimonious at

Amazing Ocean Facts, A Comic Series for Nat Geo Wild That Turned Out to be a Prank

 

Amazing Ocean Facts was an entertaining series of comic strips created by Cyanide and Happiness artist Rob DenBleyker (Dr. Byron Beekle) to help celebrate the Nat Geo Wild television series DinoFish. The comic strips turned out to be a clever April Fools’ Day joke on the Nat Geo TV Blogs. Rob disguised his real name with the alias Dr. Byron Beekle and started the comics off by clearly focusing on fun facts about ocean life. As the series progressed, he gradually displays the information and illustrations in an increasingly personal and disturbed manner.

The series ended on April 1,2012 with a message from Nat Geo Wild:

“We have unfortunately ceased production of “Amazing Ocean Facts” due to artistic disagreements with Dr. Byron Beekle. We appologize to his fans.“

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Amazing Ocean Facts, A Comic Series for Nat Geo Wild That Turned Out to be a Prank

Amazing Ocean Facts was an entertaining series of comic strips created by Cyanide and Happiness artist Rob DenBleyker (Dr. Byron Beekle) to help celebrate the Nat Geo Wild television series DinoFish. The comic strips turned out to be a clever April Fools’ Day joke on the Nat Geo TV Blogs. Rob disguised his real name with the alias Dr. Byron Beekle and started the comics off by clearly focusing on fun facts about ocean life. As the series progressed, he gradually displays the information and illustrations in an increasingly personal and disturbed manner.

The series ended on April 1,2012 with a message from Nat Geo Wild:

“We have unfortunately ceased production of “Amazing Ocean Facts” due to artistic disagreements with Dr. Byron Beekle. We appologize to his fans.“

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Scan of 1960s novelty catalog

Karswell

Footage of the 2013 Edwardian Ball & World’s Faire by Mark Day

By Rusty Blazenhoff on February 7, 2013

Mark Day filmed highlights from the 2013 Edwardian Ball and World’s Faire (and “elegant out takes“).

Nuclear Sub, yours for $6.98 (I had one..)

"Polaris Nuclear Sub," offered in the Spiderman Comics March 1967 Issue. As shared on Flickr by SenseiAlan. I love those old

two-faced Cthulhu

The wonderful Ukrainian horror/fetish/steampunk mask maker Bob Basset has produced a two-faced Cthulhu mask; on one side, the betentacled visage; on the other, a lecterine horror

Rolled, Film About an LA Secret Society Dedicated to Toilet Papering

Rolled by Whit Scott is a documentary about a secret society of Los Angeles high school students that has been toilet papering houses for more than 32 years. We first wrote about the film while Scott was raising funds for the project on Kickstarter (the project was funded). The finished film is available for download on a pay-what-you-can basis.

Dog Eat Dog, The True & Funny Story About Zachary Quinto Adopting a Dog From a Shelter

Petsami produced “Dog Eat Dog,” a true (though humorously exaggerated) story about how actor Zachary Quinto adopted his first dog from a Los Angeles animal shelter. It’s described as a “twisted, fun, morality tale about the lengths to which some of us will go in order to get what we want.” It co-stars Philip Baker Hall and Sharon Wilkins and was directed by Sian Heder. Quinto says, “…The story of the film is an exaggerated account of how I eventually found my rescue dog Noah, but it still reflects a bit of the reality I faced when I was looking to adopt a shelter dog

Trailer for season 2 of Black Mirror, scariest/best sf on TV

Here's the trailer for the new season of Charlie Booker's Channel 4 science fiction series Black Mirror. The first season was the best science fiction TV I've ever seen, better even than The Twilight Zone. The trailer itself is so gloriously creepy and wonderful in every way that it makes me want to hide under the bed until the episodes start airing.

Aether Opens San Francisco Clothing Store Made of Three Stacked Shipping Containers

Last week, outdoor apparel company Aether opened a San Francisco concept store that is made out of three stacked shipping containers. Designed by Thierry Gaugain, the store features a glass-enclosed cantilevered lounge and a trick laundromat-style clothing conveyor system. It is the small LA-based company’s first standalone store—they also have a traveling Airstream trailer store.

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wearable Sculptures that Make the Wearer Perform a Gesture

 

Artist Jennifer Crupi makes wearable interactive sculptures that encourage the wearer to hold a specific pose or gesture. Some sculptures are jewelry-like, such as the sterling silver “Ornamental Hands” which creates a dancer’s hand gesture. Crupi has also made gestural furniture—the “Empathy Table” fits on the laps of two people and has indentations that invite the participants to regard one another thoughtfully. Crupi’s sculptures are intended to highlight the role of body language in communication.

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