My son, Liam, was diagnosed at ten weeks with a rare liver disease named Biliary Atresia. He has been doing well, but it has become clear that he needs a new liver as soon as possible. This is very expensive, even though we have very good health insurance (something I wish for everyone!). Liam loves zoos, Yo Gabba Gabba, being hilarious, incredibly smart and stubborn. He’s pictured with his equally awesome twin brother, Finn.
Liam’s the bravest person I’ve ever met. He’ll have a long full life, with some medical issues and medication side effects, but we need to get him through this. Thanks for even taking a look.
Let’s help out our fellow Tumblrer’s son, guys and gals. It’s got plenty of reblogs but could stand a few more.
The Most Astounding Fact by Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Astrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was asked by a reader of TIME magazine, “What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?” This is his answer.
When you take something great, like the musings of the mind of Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, and combine it with something else great, like stunning images of life and wonder on and off of Earth … you get this.
It’s the sort of video that makes you prop your chin up in your hand, with your head tilted just so (yeah, like that), as you stare at your computer screen mumbling things like “Ahhh“ and “Wooahh” and other unintelligible noises that mean “I approve of this, and it makes me feel good.”
Watch it once, then twice, then with a friend.
This is how I would die into the love I have for you. As pieces of cloud dissolve into the sunlight Rumi
Science is an inherent contradiction — systematic wonder — applied to the natural world. In its mundane form, the methodical instinct prevails and the result, an orderly procession of papers, advances the perimeter of knowledge, step by laborious step. Great scientific minds partake of that daily discipline and can also suspend it, yielding to the sheer love of allowing the mental engine to spin free. And then Einstein imagines himself riding a light beam, Kekule formulates the structure of benzene in a dream, and Fleming’s eye travels past the annoying mold on his glassware to the clear ring surrounding it — a lucid halo in a dish otherwise opaque with bacteria — and penicillin is born. Who knows how many scientific revolutions have been missed because their potential inaugurators disregarded the whimsical, the incidental, the inconvenient inside the laboratory?
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From Systematic Wonder: A Definition of Science That Accounts for Whimsy via Brain Pickings (via jtotheizzoe) |
Technique Enables Fast Mass-Production of Microbots
A new technique inspired by elegant pop-up books and origami will soon allow clones of robotic insects to be mass-produced by the sheet. Devised by engineers at Harvard, the ingenious layering and folding process enables the rapid fabrication of not just microrobots, but a broad range of electromechanical devices.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Technique-Enables-Fast-Mass-Production-of-Microbots-022112.aspxI, for one, welcome our new pop-up microrobot overlords.
Also check out these DNA nanobots that target cancer cells and this awesome collection of computational origami.
Jtotheizoe is right. Welcome.
Winds from stellar-mass black hole clocked at 20 million mph
The event is ‘the cosmic equivalent of winds from a Category 5 hurricane’ and is blowing in many directions at once.
Rising Table
Intricate yet minimal approach to table design, using only one flat piece of wood and cut latticework. By Robert Van Embricqs:
The Rising Table ignores the cliched notion that a table is little more than a flat surface that is held up by four separate legs. The result is a surprising mixture of fluid design that blends the multifaceted tabletop with the latticework of wooden beams that function as the center of the construct. From there, the table sprouts four wooden beams that hold up the entire construct.
Not only does this design approach rid itself of every single predictable feature when one imagines a table, it also emphasizes that the Rising Table is indeed made from a single piece of wood.
More information and images can be found at Robert Van Embricqs’ website here
(via prostheticknowledge:)
Yes.
Yves Tanguy, Never Again, 1939
From the National Galleries of Scotland:
‘Never Again’ was painted shortly before Tanguy left France for New York in November 1939. He took this painting with him to sell to an art dealer in America. The small, individualised amoeba-like forms in the foreground are typical of the shapes Tanguy included at that time in his paintings. It is difficult to determine what these shapes are intended to represent; however, the idea of metamorphosis, of one shape changing into another, is central to Surrealism. The meticulous style of the abstract forms contrasts with the illusionistic background, in which it is difficult to determine depth.
