Heat maps reveal where you feel emotions in your body onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Heat maps reveal where you feel emotions in your body

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Emotions are as much physical as they are mental, and it appears that people from a wide range of cultures feel their emotions in the same places on their bodies. This map shows where those places are — from the blush of shame, to that warm lower-belly feeling in love.

According to Gemma Tarlach, writing in Discover:

More than 700 participants in Finland, Sweden and Taiwan participated in experiments aimed at mapping their bodily sensations in connection with specific emotions. Participants viewed emotion-laden words, videos, facial expressions and stories. They then self-reported areas of their bodies that felt different than before they'd viewed the material. By coloring in two computer-generated silhouettes — one to note areas of increased bodily sensation and the second to mark areas of decreased sensation — participants were able to provide researchers with a broad base of data showing both positive and negative bodily responses to different emotions.

It's important that the researchers sampled such diverse populations, because that helps to eliminate cultural biases in how people interpret their feelings. Particularly remarkable is the way some emotions look similar, such as pride and anger. Also, you'll see that love is the only emotion (other than happiness) that includes a warm glow between the legs — wonder why that might be?

Read the whole article at Discover

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Heat maps reveal where you feel emotions in your body

This spidery spacecraft will be the first to soft-land on a comet onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com This spidery spacecraft will be the first to soft-land on a comet

The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft is preparing to wake up in January from a nearly three-year-long hibernation period as it prepares for a close encounter with Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

If all goes well, Rosetta should reach its destination in August and, after a couple of months in a mapping orbit, the probe will deploy a spider-like lander called Philae on the surface in November. That will be the first time anything has soft-landed on a comet.

Philae has a ream of scientific instruments on board, most notably a drill that can penetrate as far as 20 centimeters (eight inches) into whatever lies below it. It can then pick up the samples and analyze them right on sight. This will allow the lander to learn more about what the comet's surface and subsurface are made of, ESA says, and to figure out how its nucleus is constructed. (You can read more technical details here.)

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Artist's impression of Philae, the lander from the Rosetta spacecraft, descending to the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in November 2014. Credit: ESA–J. Huart, 2013

A big concern, of course, is keeping Philae anchored on the low gravity of the comet (as was covered extensively in this past Universe Today story).

"As Philae touches down on the comet, two harpoons will anchor it to the surface; the self-adjusting landing gear will ensure that it stays upright, even on a slope, and then the lander's feet will drill into the ground to secure it to the comet's surface in the low gravity environment," ESA wrote.

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Artist's impression of the Rosetta spacecraft releasing its lander, Philae, above the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in November 2014. Credit: ESA–C. Carreau/ATG medialab

But first comes Rosetta's reactivation. ESA is so excited about this forthcoming milestone on Jan. 20 that it's inviting the public to send in videos where people tell the spacecraft, essentially, to wake up after 31 months of hibernation. (The campaign is called "Wake Up, Rosetta", and more contest details are here.)

What's cute is that the official Rosetta Twitter account (@ESA_Rosetta) will become more exciting then as well. The last update, from Dec. 3, simply says "still sleeping" (as most of the updates do.) In response to someone asking the account to write something else this summer, the Twitter response was laconic: "A sleeping probe cannot tweet."

But keep your eyes peeled even after the landing. Rosetta plans to stay with the comet as the icy body moves closer to the solar system, watching as the sun's heat changes its surface. Read more about the mission here.

This article originally appeared at Universe Today.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com This spidery spacecraft will be the first to soft-land on a comet

Watch Dragonlance's Kitiara and Skie come to cosplay life onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Watch Dragonlance's Kitiara and Skie come to cosplay life

When I was a kid, the Dragon Highlord Kitiara Uth Matar from the DragonLance books was one of my favorite fantasy characters, so I appreciate the excitement and work that went into creating Tabitha Lyons' elaborate Kitiara costume, accompanied by the blue dragon Skie.

Lyons worked with Artyfakes Action-Props to bring Kitiara's armor and dragon companion to life. In a series of videos, Lyons takes us through the process, especially the grand Skie:

The final product is in the video up top, and Artyfakes will be releasing more photos of Lyons atop Skie in the coming days.

[via Geeks Are Sexy]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Watch Dragonlance's Kitiara and Skie come to cosplay life

PhD candidates describe their theses in a single self-mocking sentence onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com PhD candidates describe their theses in a single self-mocking sentence

"Summing up years of work in one sentence." That's the tagline for Lol My Thesis, where PhD candidates make fun of their own theses by reducing them to just a sentence or two.

Students in areas from accounting to aerospace engineering come up with absurd, obvious, and sometimes defeated descriptions of their research. Here are a few examples:

Don't be anxious about your decisions driven by anxiety. -Social Neuroscience, Beijing Normal University

When people have to pick stuff up with a robotic arm and can only see with onboard cameras, they're worse than infants; please pay me to make them as good as 5 year olds. -Integrated Systems Engineering, Ohio State University

We dug a lot of holes and still don't know if measuring beryllium in dirt is useful, but it does cost a lot of money. -Geology, Amherst College

Going into space is pretty dangerous, and the government should keep making rules about folks trying it -Aerospace engineering, MIT

A mathematical theory of discarding irrelevant crap when making a team decision. -Electrical Engineering, Stanford University

Turns out, you can make bacteria have sex! -Chemical Engineering, Rice University

So, colonialism. -History, Wesleyan University

If you want to snark on your own thesis, you can submit your one-sentence description to the site.

Photo by Mirko Tobias Schaefer. And yes, that's an actual thesis title.

Lol My Thesis [via Boing Boing]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com PhD candidates describe their theses in a single self-mocking sentence

Mars Express to Make Daredevil Flyby of Phobos onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Mars Express to Make Daredevil Flyby of Phobos

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In a daredevil flyby, the European Mars Express satellite will buzz Phobos, the red planet's largest of two moons. The orbiter will come within 45 kilometers (28 miles) of its surface. But there's a catch — this isn't a photo opportunity.

Coming so close to Phobos without taking photos may sound like forgetting to pack your camera before an expedition to the Serengeti, but as the flyby will be so low and so fast, any attempt at photography would look like a blurred mess. So the flyby will instead be used as a prime opportunity to accurately measure Phobos' gravitational field.

The Dec. 29 encounter with Phobos will slightly pull Mars Express off course, changing the satellite's velocity. The European Space Agency will be closely monitoring radio communications with the spacecraft so they can accurately measure the slight deviation. This, in turn, will reveal the gravitational oomph of the moon, allowing scientists to precisely deduce its mass and density.

In March 2010, Mars Express carried out a 67 kilometer flyby of Phobos, revealing the moon could be up to one-third empty space. This has led to the idea that Phobos is likely a "rubble pile" — an agglomeration of smaller pieces of debris that have collected under mutual gravity.

It is thought that Phobos, and its smaller sibling Deimos, are either captured asteroids that strayed into Mars' gravitational field or the debris from an ancient catastrophic impact event. Through precision measurements of the moon's gravitational field further clues as to the origin of Mars' natural satellites may be gleaned.

Also, as the satellite will be swooping so close to Phobos' dusty surface, a measure on the solar wind's interactions with its surface can also be acquired.

Interestingly, the flyby comes a decade after Mars Express arrived at Mars orbit.

"Mars Express entered orbit around the Red Planet exactly ten years ago this week — this close flyby of Phobos is certainly an exciting way to celebrate!" said Olivier Witasse, ESA's Mars Express project scientist.

This article originally appeared at Discovery News.

Top image: ESA.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Mars Express to Make Daredevil Flyby of Phobos

What's the most revolting TV show, book or movie you've ever seen? onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com What's the most revolting TV show, book or movie you've ever seen?

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The flipside of a sense of wonder is often a sense of total disgust and revulsion, when you see just how gross and awful things can be. But which science fiction, fantasy or horror story has grossed you out the most?

Please include a (work-safe) picture or clip of this revolting spectacle. And let us know the title, and why it was so nasty. Thanks!

Top image: Slither (2006).

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com What's the most revolting TV show, book or movie you've ever seen?

The building blocks of life may form in exoplanet atmospheres onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The building blocks of life may form in exoplanet atmospheres

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Before there was life as we know it, there were molecules. And after many seemingly unlikely steps these molecules underwent a magnificent transition: they became complex systems with the capability to reproduce, pass along information and drive chemical reactions.

But the host of steps leading up to this transition has remained one of science's beloved mysteries — until now.

Image: Artist's conception of an exoplanet with an atmosphere, via NASA/JPL.

New research suggests that the building blocks of life — prebiotic molecules — may form in the atmospheres of planets, where the dust provides a safe platform to form on and various reactions with the surrounding plasma provide enough energy necessary to create life.

"If the formation of life is like a jigsaw puzzle — a very big and complicated jigsaw puzzle — I like to imagine prebiotic molecules as some of the individual puzzle pieces," said St. Andrews professor Dr. Craig Stark. "Putting the pieces together you form more complicated biological structures making a clearer, more recognizable picture. And when all the pieces are in place the resulting picture is life."

We currently think prebiotic molecules form on the tiny ice grains in interstellar space. While this may seem to contradict the readily accepted belief that life in space is impossible, the surface of the grain actually provides a nice hospitable environment for life to form as it protects molecules from harmful space radiation.

"Molecules are formed on the dust surface from the adsorption of atoms and molecules from the surrounding gas," Stark told Universe Today. "If the appropriate ingredients to make a particular molecular compound are available, and the conditions are right, you're in business."

By "conditions," Stark is hinting at the second ingredient necessary: energy. The simple molecules that populate the galaxy are relatively stable; without an incredible amount of energy they won't form new bonds. It has been thought that life could form in lightning strikes and volcanic eruptions for this very reason.

So Stark and his colleagues turned their eyes to the atmospheres of exoplanets, where dust is immersed in a plasma full of positive ions and negative electrons. Here the electrostatic interactions of dust particles with plasma may provide the high energy necessary to form prebiotic compounds.

In a plasma the dust grain will soak up the free electrons quickly, becoming negatively charged. This is because electrons are lighter, and therefore quicker, than positive ions. Once the dust grain is negatively charged it will attract a flux of positive ions, which will accelerate toward the dust particle and collide with more energy than they would in a neutral environment.

In order to test this, the authors studied an example atmosphere, which allowed them to examine the various processes that may turn the ionized gas into a plasma as well as determine if the plasma would lead to energetic enough reactions.

"As a proof of principle we looked at the sequence of chemical reactions that lead to the formation of the simplest amino acid glycine," Stark said. Amino acids are great examples of prebiotic molecules because they are required for the formation of proteins, peptides and enzymes.

Their models showed that "the plasma ions can indeed be accelerated to sufficient energies that exceed the activation energies for the formation of formaldehyde, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide and ultimately the amino acid glycine," Stark told Universe Today. "This may not have been possible if the plasma was absent."

The authors demonstrated that with modest plasma temperatures, there is enough energy to form the prebiotic molecule glycine. Higher temperatures may also enable more complex reactions and therefore more intricate prebiotic molecules.

Stark and his colleagues demonstrated a viable pathway to the formation of a prebiotic molecule, and therefore life, in seemingly common conditions. While the origin of life may remain one of science's beloved mysteries, we continue to gain a better understanding, one puzzle piece at a time.

The paper has been accepted for publication in the journal Astrobiology and is available for download here.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The building blocks of life may form in exoplanet atmospheres

Just for the record, beatboxing is good for your health onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Just for the record, beatboxing is good for your health

Specifically, the health of your vocal cords. To demonstrate this finding, researchers performed experiments like the one in the video above, which allowed them to record the movement of muscles in the vocal tract as beatboxers did their thing.

Whatever else might be learned from this study, the resulting videos are somewhere between mesmerizing and completely disgusting, depending on how one feels about extreme close-ups into people's mouths.

The man behind this research — though not this particular bit of beatboxing — is University of Illinois associate professor Dr. H. Steven Sims. He says the lack of existing scientific data on beatboxing spurred him to investigate just what muscle movements and vocal tract contortions goes into this particular artform. To that end, four very understanding volunteers agreed to have what is described as "a flexible fiber optic endoscope threaded through the nose and positioned just above the vocal apparatus" while they beatboxed.

In a statement, Dr. Sims explained that beatboxing appears to be beneficial for the vocal cords:

"While there are lots of data on how the voice is used and can be injured in singers, little is known about the structures involved in beatboxing and if it poses a risk of injury to the vocal tract... Keeping the glottis open means that beatboxing may actually be protective of the vocal folds... Singers rely almost exclusively on the vocal cords themselves to produce their sounds. So all the energy involved with singing is concentrated on these structures, which can develop scar tissue with overuse."

Beatboxers, on the other hand, are able to avoid such damage because they also use the pharyngeal muscles to create sounds, which takes stress off of the vocal cord. Indeed, Dr. Sims says it might be possible for singers to borrow some beatboxing techniques, similarly elongating their vocal tract before they hit high notes.

Via Journal of Voice.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Just for the record, beatboxing is good for your health

You just don't understand cryonics onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com You just don't understand cryonics

Max More, CEO of the cryonics company Alcor, has produced a video in response to physicist Michio Kaku's surprisingly weak critique of cryonics.

In all fairness to Kaku, he kinda had this coming.

First, he couldn't even get the terminology right, describing the practice as "cryogenics." As More points out in the video, that's the branch of physics addressing the production and effects of very low temperatures. Cryonics, on the other hand, is the act of storing tissue at low temperatures in the hopes of eventual reanimation.

Kaku also describes cryonics as something only millionaires can afford (not true), he completely fails to account for the application of cryoprotectants (though he perplexingly talks about it as theory), and makes the claim that cryonics companies are fooling people by promising them immortality (also not true). Watch Alcor's response to these claims:

Here's Kaku's original Big Think video:

Top image courtesy Christopher Barnatt/ExplainingTheFuture.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com You just don't understand cryonics

A trainee Grim Reaper is no match for a wily prospector in this cartoon onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com A trainee Grim Reaper is no match for a wily prospector in this cartoon

If you want to thwart the Reaper, you better be prepared. And when Death (or rather Death's agent-in-training) comes for the last denizen of a gold-rush town, he finds the prospector more than ready for a game of roadrunner and coyote.

Jonas Martin Larsen, Øyvind Fiksdal, Eilef Sandnæs, Eskild Carlsen, and Yvonne Engbråten made Reaping for Dummies as their graduation project the the 3D design and animation course at Idèfagskolen in Tønsberg, Norway. It's a neat little nugget of cartoony fun.

[via Vimeo Staff Picks]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com A trainee Grim Reaper is no match for a wily prospector in this cartoon

The Science Behind the Quest to Bake the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The Science Behind the Quest to Bake the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie

Serious Eats Chief Creative Officer J. Kenji Lopez-Alt baked 1,536 cookies in his quest to find his personal perfect chocolate chip cookie, and he has been kind enough to share the results of his baking experiments in a fascinating longread that explains the chemistry behind these classic cookies.

Seriously, if you have any interest in the science of baking—or just want to tweak your own cookie recipe—go read Lopez-Alt's Food Lab post, which explains how to achieve different textures and flavors using different ingredients and techniques. He has even included photos comparing various test cookies, and his explanations of the science are pretty entertaining:

If there's one single thing you can do improve the flavor of your cookies, it's to let the dough rest. They bake up darker and more flavorful. That butterscotch note that was barely hinted at when you baked the dough right after mixing? It'll blow you away with its intensity and complexity by the second day.

So how does it work? Harold McGee explains it in Keys to Good Cooking. Turns out that during the resting process, both flour proteins and starches break down a bit. How does this help improve flavor?

It helps to think of proteins and starches as large LEGO structures. During the process of browning, those large structure are broken down into smaller parts and individual pieces and subsequently rearranged. Sort of like destroying that LEGO castle so you can build a dozen spaceships. Now, both of these phases—the breaking down and the reconstruction—take time.

By resting the dough, you give the deconstruction phase a head start. It's as if you left your LEGO castle sitting out over night and your annoying little sister came by and smashed it all, King of Tokyo-style. With the pieces separated, building your spaceships is much faster.

It's really the same thing, except instead of LEGOs, you've got proteins and flour. Instead of an annoying sister, you've got enzymes. And instead of awesome spaceships, you get awesome cookies. How awesome? We're talking, oh, a million puppies on the moon wearing superhero underpants under their little doggie spacesuits levels of awesome.

Lopez-Alt's wife apparently grew weary of his constant cookie baking. If he's looking for a (admittedly tiny) kitchen for his next culinary experiment, send him my way.

Top photo by Jamison Judd.

The Food Lab: The Science of the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies [Serious Eats via MetaFilter]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The Science Behind the Quest to Bake the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie

Yes, electrons are perfectly round -- and that's a problem onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Yes, electrons are perfectly round -- and that's a problem

Bad news, everyone! New measurements show that electrons are perfectly round. This is a problem because it means something's still seriously wrong with a critical theory that's supposed to tell us why the universe exists.

Last year, Harvard and Yale physicists conducted an experiment to measure the "lumpiness" of electrons. The researchers were hoping to find abnormalities within the electron's negative charge.

Such an observation could have pointed to the existence of undiscovered heavy particles — evidence to support theories beyond the Standard Model of physics, such as weak-scale Supersymmetry. As it stands, the Standard Model — a description of the universe's fundamental building blocks — is incomplete; it fails to account for cosmological mysteries like dark matter and gravity.

But if the electron were found to be, say, egg shaped, it could hint at the existence of shadow particles — companions to regular subatomic particles. Scientists are hoping to find some of these conjectured particles of matter by measuring their effects on the shape of the electron, or more accurately, the negatively charged subatomic particle orbiting within every atom.

But the new measurements, performed by instruments with improved sensitivity, show that the electron is in fact a perfect sphere. The experiment failed to expose problems with the Standard Model — a frustrating result, indeed. We know problems have to exist at some level.

Undaunted, the researchers are hoping to make their instruments 10 times more sensitive. The hunt continues.

Read the entire study at JOURNAL: "Order of Magnitude Smaller Limit on the Electric Dipole Moment of the Electron."

Image: Shutterstock

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Yes, electrons are perfectly round -- and that's a problem

Researchers simulate a worm's internal muscle sensations with code onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Researchers simulate a worm's internal muscle sensations with code

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Developers working on the OpenWorm Project, an effort to create a virtual nematode worm in a computer, have attained an important milestone after successfully creating a software engine that drives worm body motion.

OpenWorm is one of the more fascinating artificial life initiatives. By using the open source channel, this team is trying, among other things, to crack the long term memory code of the C. elegans nematode worm, an animal with just 302 neurons and roughly 6,000 synapses. But if they're going to create a completely functional nematode worm, they'll also have to get it to move and respond to it's environment — even if it is virtual.

In the latest breakthrough, the developers created a simulated worm body with muscle segments that resemble an actual C. elegans. Speaking to New World Notes, OpenWorm team member John Hurliman said, "Each muscle segment can receive a contraction signal, and although the current setup just has a hardcoded algorithm driving the muscles, its movement closely resembles published literature on how C. Elegans swims."

Video: Swimming locomotion simulation of a prototype of C.elegans.

Essentially, the developers artificially recreated internal muscle sensation — a building block for worm locomotion — using algorithms alone. And to create an environment for the virtual worm to swim in, they used a smooth particle hydrodynamics simulator.

To be fair, they computed one-third of a second of movement, which took 72 hours to compute. Ideally, they'd like to extend this length of time and attach a synthetic 302-neuron brain to it.

"Our simulation doesn't look like the real worm yet as this was just a first test of the engine driving worm body motion, but our goal is to reproduce real world behaviour and validate it against experimental recordings," noted team member Giovanni Idili.

They're also hoping to hook it all up in Geppetto, which would allow them to run the simulation and let people play and interact with the worm from their browsers.

Read more about this breakthrough at New World Notes and OpenWorm.

Top image: Caltech.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Researchers simulate a worm's internal muscle sensations with code

Immaculate Conception: NOT SO RARE, AFTER ALL onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Immaculate Conception: NOT SO RARE, AFTER ALL

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Nearly 1 percent of young women who became pregnant in a recent U.S. study claimed to have done so as virgins, according to findings published in the Christmas edition of the British Medial Journal.

Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk via flickr

Writes Amy Herring, a professor of biostatistics at UNC's Gillings School of Global Public Health and first author on the paper (emphasis added):

Of 7870 eligible women, 5340 reported a pregnancy, of whom 45 (0.8% of pregnant women) reported a virgin pregnancy. Perceived importance of religion was associated with virginity but not with virgin pregnancy. The prevalence of abstinence pledges was 15.5%. The virgins who reported pregnancies were more likely to have pledged chastity (30.5%) than the non-virgins who reported pregnancies (15.0%, P=0.01) or the other virgins (21.2%, P=0.007).

The upshot, as Herring and her colleagues explain, is that "researchers may still face challenges in the collection and analysis of self reported data on potentially sensitive topics." Sensitive topics like, oh, we don't know, sex, obesity and penis size, perhaps?

[BMJ via Reuters]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Immaculate Conception: NOT SO RARE, AFTER ALL

How being "Bummed and Ugly" helped Alice Sola Kim find Philip K. Dick onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com How being "Bummed and Ugly" helped Alice Sola Kim find Philip K. Dick

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Science fiction writer Alice Sola Kim has a terrific personal essay over in Buzzfeed about how she discovered Philip K. Dick when she was 15. And even though you can be totally well-adjusted and fall in love with Dick's vision, being "bummed and ugly" helped her get into his work.

Honestly, you should just go read the entire essay, which is fantastic and heart-rending. Talking about how insecurity and unhappiness made her connect more deeply to Dick's work when she was a teenager, Kim writes:

When I found Philip K. Dick, he was no big secret. He was in a partial state of rediscovery — there were a bunch of nice paperback reissues from Vintage, plus a five-volume set of collected stories on which I systematically placed holds at the library. Everything — I placed holds on everything. Why'd I get it so bad for Philip K. Dick?

I first loved the twists. The showmanship! The pulpy excitement of it all! The first PKD book I ever read was Eye in the Sky, about eight visitors to a particle accelerator who get trapped in each others' subjective realities. Back then, it was so easy to wow and surprise me, and each time the world as we knew it turned out to be a construct, false, somehow not right — it knocked me over. Imagine PKD typing in a Benzedrine tap dance thinking that this would really get them. Did it ever. If you pet a dog in a PKD novel, get ready for the dog to melt and in the puddle will be a slip of paper that reads "SOFT-DRINK STAND."

Of course, there was more to it. Knowing that reality could be up for grabs, manipulated, and twisted gave me a prickly, shivery joy. But this would be a shallow pleasure without the deep sense of sadness in the best of PKD's work. When the world you knew was ripped away from you, even if in that world you had a shitty job and couldn't get a date, he recognized that you had to mourn. You mourned for the false world that you missed, you mourned that any kind of true, real world was elusive or else completely lost and that nothing would ever be the way it was meant to be, whatever that was.

Check out the whole essay over at Buzzfeed.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com How being "Bummed and Ugly" helped Alice Sola Kim find Philip K. Dick

​This week's DVDs wants to help with your last-minute shopping onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com ​This week's DVDs wants to help with your last-minute shopping

Still haven't found gifts for all your loved ones? This week's DVDs and Blu-ray releases are here to help. You'll find plenty of last-minute gift ideas, that range all the way from Matt Damon in a cybersuit to Bronies!

• Elysium

In the future, rich people really, really hate poor people, and Matt Damon tries to break into the rich people's space station to save his kids and, to a lesser extent, the world. The extras are mostly divided between the DVD and the Blu-ray, so if you want them all, you have to buy the combo pack.

• Kick-Ass 2

A.k.a. Kick Harder. A group of new heroes join Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl, but the Crimson Mist returns with his own group of supervillains. Comes with your standard array of extras.

• Predator 3D

The scifi classic gets 3d-ized. To be honest, you haven't lived until you've seen Jesse Ventura's "Sexual tyrannosaurs" speech in 3D.

• Indiana Jones

The three Indiana Jones movies will be re-released tomorrow for people who need quick gifts with very little thought behind them.

• Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters

Percy and pals quest for the Golden Fleece in this movie you long ago decided whether or not to give a shit about.

• The Lone Ranger

More like The Groan Ranger, amirite? Huh? Huh? Oh, hush, it's not like the movie deserves any better.

• The Beast Within

An 18-year-old is surprised to discover his dad is an unholy swamp beast, and he's about toi become one too.

• Greek Gods, Heroes & Monsters

The History Channel's three-disc documentary on the tales of Greek mythology, using period art, writings and archaological footage. Has anyone seen it to tell us if it's any good? I'm skeptical.

• Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony

Actr John de Lancie's Kickstarted documentary about the adult fans of Friendship Is Magic. As fair a representation as Bronies are likely to get.

• Alien Uprising

Jean-Claude Van Damme earns a paycheck for a brief cameo in this terrible film that sounds like it should be a generic videogame from the early '90s.

• TimeSlingers

A cheap family movie designed to cash in on the massive critical and commercial success of Cowboys Vs. Aliens. I'm sure that worked out great for them.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com ​This week's DVDs wants to help with your last-minute shopping

Luminous time-lapse celebrates death and life in a record-cold winter onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Luminous time-lapse celebrates death and life in a record-cold winter

Paul Klaver's simply titled film Winter mixes time-lapse and real-time footage to evoke the chill of one of the coldest recorded winters Holland has ever seen. Sit back, turn up your speakers, and meditate on the beauty of ice forming, sunlight dancing over the snow, and even the bodies of creatures who didn't survive to see spring.

Klaver also did a similarly styled video examining Alaska's nutrient cycle.

[via Vimeo Staff Picks]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Luminous time-lapse celebrates death and life in a record-cold winter

Fabulous Batman graffiti found in an abandoned building onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Fabulous Batman graffiti found in an abandoned building

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Redditor sneakylawyer and his girlfriend were doing a bit of urban exploration in Ronse, Belgium, when they came across an unexpected sight: a bevy of Batman graffiti, featuring a variety of Jokers.

According to sneakylawyer, the building was originally a nursing school that has been abandoned for roughly ten years. Now, however, it has some colorful two-dimensional residents.

Went urban exploring, found some Batman graffiti I wanted to share [reddit via GeekTyrant]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Fabulous Batman graffiti found in an abandoned building

Your oldest living relative is a jelly, not a sponge. onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Your oldest living relative is a jelly, not a sponge.

Your oldest living relative is a jelly, not a sponge. An active debate among zoologists as to which ancient creature is the first true animal was just settled after an analysis of the comb jelly genome. Turns out we are descended from these ctenophores — an extant species that emerged 700 million years ago — and not sea sponges.

Image: Stefan Siebert/Brown University.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Your oldest living relative is a jelly, not a sponge.

Starpocalypse is coming! onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Starpocalypse is coming!

Starpocalypse is coming! You chipped in over $76,000 in the Kickstarter for Starpocalypse, the zany science fiction webseries from the sketch-comedy masters SMBC. Now at last, it's coming out this Christmas. Rejoice!

[Thanks for the heads up, Danny.]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Starpocalypse is coming!