Paul Nicklen, photographer for National Geographic, has just finished his new book called Polar Obsession. His run-in with an enormous leopard seal proved to be one of his most exhilirating experiences ever. The leopard seal seemed to believe that Paul was a predator unable to catch prey and, scared that he might starve, attempts to teach him how to catch and consume penguins. Absolutely amazing images! Paul explains it himself in the video below:

Via Huffington Post

I love classic pseudo futuristic ramblings that are supposed to have a hint of scientific genius. The August 1956 issue of Mechanics Illustrated asks anthropologists, physiologists, engineers and industrial designers how they would go about improving the human body, and here’s what they came up with:

The spine – should be replaced by “a solid column, with a greatly increased load-carrying capacity”

The brain – should be situated in the chest cavity, near the heart, making the chest bigger in size and the head cylindrical

The ribs – rather than individual ribs, organs should be encased in a giant clamshell device, which can be opened easily for surgery

The eyes – add an extra set in the back of the head for a 360 degree perspective

Antennaes – could be concealed in head to pick up low frequency sounds from behind

The teeth – remove 35% of them to give more space to the remaining 65%

The toes – little toes and toenails serve no purpose and should be eliminated

The nose – replace it w/ a short trunk so that the air doesn’t have to make a hairpin turn before going down into the lungs, avoiding “several kinds of sinus trouble and what-have-you.”

Other suggestions included: wings, UV contact lenses, built-in marsupial-style pouches, a food storage compartment, 360 degree neck mobility, an eye in the tip of the finger, a hook on the head so you can hang yourself up and be hands-free on bumpy subways, extra fingers behind the ears to keep hats from blowing off, and folding ears to catch low-pitched sounds.

Via Modern Mechanix via Gizmodo

These postcards, handed out by a German chocolate company at the turn of the century, attempted to predict what life might have been like in the year 2000 based on the developing technology of those days. I think my favorite is either the city with a ceiling or the weather machine… But wouldn’t they have been mutually exclusive?

X-Ray Surveillance Machine

Weather Machine

Aqua Train

Walking on Water

Broadcasting Sound & Images

Underwater Boat / Submarine

Escalator / Moving Walkway

Movable City Blocks

Flying Contraptions

City w/ Ceiling

Hot Air Family Zeppelin, pre-Hindenburg

Arctic Vacation Fly-By

Via The Card Mine

Remember Big Dog? Well now its developers are introducing a quieter, bipedal version they’re calling Petman. Boston Dynamics says Petman will be used to test military clothing while “walking, crawling and doing a variety of suit-stressing calisthenics during exposure to chemical warfare agents.” Petman can also mimic human physiology by sweating inside the clothing if the test were to call for it. And remember how Big Dog couldn’t be pushed over? Well, neither can this two legged version. Only a year and a half between the two prototype releases…wow…quite remarkable. What are we gonna see by spring 2011?

Via Wired

New Yorkers love their dogs and this past weekend the 5th annual Times Square Dog Day Masquerade raised awareness for homeless and abandoned pets. These two pirates mentioned that people who abandon their pets are gonna have to walk the plank!

More pics at Telegraph.co.uk

World transport and freight companies have been dreaming of this for a long time. Now it will become a reality within ten years (without a doubt) according to Arctic explorer and ice expert Pen Hadow. Hadow is just finishing a three month expedition to gather statistics on ice-depth and age. The results are worse than had been expected.

“The future is here,” says Hadow, and the situation can no longer be reversed. The Arctic ice-caps are comprised almost exclusively of first-year ice “considered too thin to survive the next summer’s ice melt.” The subsequent climate change could be drastic, as we’ve all been hearing, and even Hadow’s team believe that the loss of the Arctic ice-caps could have dire effects on one-fourth of the planet’s population.

Via Catlin Arctic Survey

Spreeder is a new free internet service which lets you test your speed reading skills and then improve them! Paste in the text of your choice in the language of your choice, the amount of words per minute to be displayed, and how many words to be thrown at you at one time.

Thanks spreeder!

Two physicists have come up with a theory as to why the Large Haldron Collider can’t seem to get the ball rolling…or the electrons crashing:

…the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

In the early 90s, the US built the supercollider, which was also out to find the Higgs particle. After spending billions, the project was canceled, “an event so unlikely that [physicists call] it an ‘anti-miracle’” and claim this as further evidence of the future sabotaging efforts to find the Higgs.

On a sidenote: French police arrested a CERN physicist last week on suspicion of working with the N. African Al Qaida.

Via NYTimes Online

Wow, nicely caught on film! Amazing clouds formed over Moscow and scared the bujezzus out of folks. I suppose you see why. According to a Russian weather forecaster, “this is purely an optical effect” caused by several fronts, arctic air and sun from the west.

Via Telegraph.co.uk

Last week Boing Boing posted this controversial Ralph Lauren ad because the designer thought it appropriate to portray women as ultra-sickly-thin. The model doesn’t even look like this – she’s been photoshopped! Ralph Lauren obviously didn’t like the negative attention, nonetheless it keeps coming. The ad was recently crashed by a photoshopped-thin Crasher the Squirrel.