Mad Quickies 8.30

It’s the Friday Quickies! Pencils down- surf’s up!

• Makoto Murayama creates botanical blueprints. It’s an arduous process but the results are stunning. More at Inorganic flora.
• Deliciously clever- Flags Created From the Foods Each Country Is Commonly Associated With. {via nowoo}
• Neville Page created some damn sexy Klingons for Star Trek 2 and J.J. Abrams rejected them.
• Turns out people have been capturing sound for centuries. 7 Sound Recordings Made Before Thomas Edison. Sound included.
• Did you know that NASA began a commissioned art program in 1962? Read more about NASA/Art: 50 years of exploration. A host of stunning images included.
• Let’s get small! The imaginary factories inside all our gadgets. Scientifically whimsical.
• The 1929 Parisian Alphabet Musical coloring book is just as charming as you would imagine.
• My new favorite site: The Tools Artists Use where artists are interviewed about, well, the tools they use.
• We both surfaced in the same year, Hurricane Donna and I. So as someone who shares the same moniker as a Category 5 event so devastating that the name was retired, I’m totally down with this petition to the WMO to name hurricanes after climate change deniers.
• And because it’s Friday, I’m going to share this hilarious thing. Liquored-up performers are rarely really funny… unless it’s you’re watching Star Drunk.

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GE compiled a great bunch of science Vines…
Science in 6 Seconds

Found at boing boing.

http://youtu.be/iNdBHmZAOr4

from the page
On August 15th, GE launched the world’s first #6SecondScience Fair, a week-long celebration of science on Vine. By the time the week ended, over 600 projects had been submitted. From frog dissection to dry ice explosions, here’s a compilation of some of our favorites.

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10 Years of Weather History in 3 Minutes

http://www.lostateminor.com/2013/08/29/10-years-of-weather-in-3-minutes/

After several years of service, the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-12) is being taken out of commission. It will no longer capture important weather information from above. So as tribute to its career, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) put together this fast motion video compilation of all the footage it ever took. That’s a full ten years of weather in three minutes. Yeah, this is what the satellite saw as its life flashed before its eyes.

from the page
NOAA’s GOES-12 satellite was decommissioned on August 16th, 2013 after 3,788 days in service. From April 2003 — May 2010, GOES-12 served as GOES East, providing “eye in the sky” monitoring for such memorable events as the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season and the series of blizzards during the winter of 2009-2010. After suffering thruster control issues, GOES-12 was taken out of normal service and moved to provide greater coverage of the Southern Hemisphere as the first-ever GOES South. During that time it provided enhanced severe weather monitoring for South America.

This animation shows one image from each day of the satellite’s life — a total of 3,641 full disk visible images.

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Monsters of the Cosmos – Symphony of Science

Read more by Dr.Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy

from the page

mp3: http://melodysheep.bandcamp.com Symphony of Science returns! Morgan Freeman and a choir of scientists sing to you about the science and freakiness of black holes.

Video sources:

NOVA – Mystery of the Milky Way
Through The Wormhole: The Riddle of Black Holes
Who’s Afraid of a Big Black Hole (BBC)
Swallowed by a Black Hole (BBC)

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The Mating Dance of the Peacock Spider

Found at WTF, Evolution?
And here is all you need to know about the Peacock Spider.

from the page

An unnamed species of Peacock Spider from the Stirling Ranges in Western Australia. Slowing down the moves and cutting out moments where the spiders remain stationary brings out the tremendous elegance of their moves. I will put together a more comprehensive version showing other other aspects of the courtship display, but for now enjoy this one. Filmed with Canon 60D digital SLR and Canon 100 mm macro objective

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Featured image is “Lily” by Makoto Murayama.

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