The Independent Eyes and Visual Processing of Rats

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Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, using miniaturised high-speed cameras and high-speed behavioural tracking, discovered that rats move their eyes in opposite directions in both the horizontal and the vertical plane when running around. Each eye moves in a different direction.

An analysis of both eyes’ field of view found that the eye movements exclude the possibility that rats fuse the visual information into a single image like humans do.

Instead, the eyes move in such a way that enables the space above them to be permanently in view – presumably an adaptation to help them deal with the major threat from predatory birds that rodents face in their natural environment.

Via Max-Planck-Gesellschaft for the full article.

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What If Earth Had Saturn’s Rings?

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In fact, the earth did once have a ring—as part of the formation of our moon, ironically enough. When the planet Thea crashed into the earth, a titanic amount of material was blown into space. This went into orbit around the earth, forming a ring until it all eventually coalesced into our present-day satellite.

If we had rings in the same proportion to our planet that Saturn’s are to it, it is pretty easy to figure out what they would like like from different places on the earth.

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Top: From the Polynesia around the Tropic of Capricorn. Middle: Ecuador. Bottom: Arctic Circle.
Illustrations by Ron Miller via io9 for more illustrations and the full article.

The Louvre Voodoo Doll from 300-400 A.D.

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Voodoo dolls (or kolossoi as the Greeks called them) were also quite popular in the Greco-Roman world.

Voodoo dolls were commonly made of lead or bronze. The dolls were placed in a variety of places, with graves being the most popular. They are often represented as bound and twisted into violent positions. Occasionally, the dolls were mutilated (hands, legs, head, etc chopped off) or if wax, melted.

Dolls were often associated with curse tablets in that they were often inscribed with the name of the curse victim. Additionally, some dolls were crafted specifically for erotic attraction spells, as in the Egyptian entwined couple type depicting a male and female in an erotic position.

Found in a jar along with an inscribed tablet, this is currently in the possession of the Louvre in France.

Photo via Cult of Weird.
Text via DeliriumsRealm.

The Turquoise Ice of Lake Baikal

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Lake Baikal is a rift lake in the south of the Russian region of Siberia, between the Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast.

Lake Baikal is the most voluminous freshwater lake in the world, containing roughly 20% of the world’s unfrozen surface fresh water, and at 1,642 m (5,387 ft), the deepest. It is also among the clearest of all lakes, and thought to be the world’s oldest lake at 25 million years.

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Photos by Alexey Trofimov via 123 Inspiration.
Text via Wikipedia.

30 Seconds

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In the next 30 seconds, your body will, on average:

  • Take 8 breath
  • Produce 0.3 grams of carbon dioxide
  • Your heart will beat 36 times
  • Produce 72 million red blood cells
  • Your blood will travel 4 miles (6.4 KM)
  • Shed 174,000 skin cells
  • Blink 7 times
  • Have 25 thoughts
  • Generate 100 watts of power

Though, some of those numbers seem skewed to me. I mean, who has only twenty-five thoughts every thirty seconds? Seems a little on the low side.

on YouTube via Geeks are Sexy.

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Anatomically Appropriate Armchairs

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Taking inspiration from the cabinet of curiosity, museums and personal collections alike. Using them as a source of reference, visually, conceptually and historically.

Containing a degree of nostalgia the work harks back to a time when knowledge was craved and a desire to understand the world was paramount.

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On the market for some decidedly not-cheap Victorian-style whimsies in the form of anatomically accuarate…armchairs?

Fancy that…me too!

Via Cavaliero Finn, where you can pick up these for about £595.00.

Vintage Australian Mugshots from the 1920s

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When ‘Harry Leon Crawford’, hotel cleaner of Stanmore was arrested and charged with wife murder he was revealed to be in fact Eugeni Falleni, a woman and mother, who had been passing as a man since 1899.

In 1914, as ‘Harry Crawford’, Falleni had married the widow Annie Birkett. Three years later, shortly after she announced to a relative that she had found out ‘something amazing about Harry’, Birkett disappeared.

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Edith Ashton was a backyard abortionist who also dabbled in theft and fencing stolen goods.

Described in the media as a ‘social somebody’ and an ‘equestrienne’ she was, however, not adept at performing abortions and was suspected of contributing to the deaths of at least two women. Aged 37.

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Albert Stewart Warnkin is listed in the NSW Police Gazette of 10 November 1920, as charged with attempting to carnally know a girl eight years old. No entry is found for Beutler, whose picture is inscribed ‘wilful and obscene exposure’.

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An entry in the Supplement to the NSW Police Gazette Sydney for Skukerman, (alias Kukarman, alias Cecil Landan) is captioned ‘obtains goods from warehousemen by falsely representing that he is in business’.

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Alice Adeline Cooke was convicted of bigamy and theft. By the age of 24 she had amassed an impressive number of aliases and at least two husbands.

The Sydney Justice & Police Museum via Twisted Sifter, which has many, many (many) more photographs from the era along with some of the background.