Screw those regular old boring flowers you can see sticking out from the bottom of your front garden: these liquid flowers are much more interesting, and some would say even more gorgeous. Using a combination of high speed photography and painstakingly precise splashes of falling paint, Wisconsin-born artist Jake Long is able to capture these utterly stunning floral figures, some of which are even standing in pots (also constructed from fast-moving droplets of paint hurtling through the air).
The paint itself is made of water mixed with thickeners, pigments and dyes, and is used to construct leaves, stems, petals and pots. Long is tight-lipped about his exact methods of capturing these blooming marvelous liquid flowers, but he has stated that they take months of planning and testing until the final result is ready to be photographed. I think you’ll agree all those months have paid off in spectacular, jaw-dropping fashion.
Let’s face it: if a zombie plague were to arise, and one probably will in the near future, we’d all be screwed. Think about it: an outbreak of reanimated corpses would spread throughout the nation like wildfire, with the infected slaughtering millions and turning the bitten into their own: the walking dead, fond of the taste of flesh and always, relentlessly hungry. Never mind how many baseball bats or sawn-off boomsticks are in your possession, nor if the zombies are the moaning shufflers of George A. Romero’s “Dead” trilogy or the snarling Olympians of Danny Boyle’s “28 Days Later” and Zack Snyder’s “Dawn of the Dead” remake: they’ll find you, they’ll get you and, if you’re lucky, they’ll eat you dead.
That is, if you’re not the proud owner of this zombie-proof abode, ingeniously designed by Polish architect Robert Konieczny of KWK Promes. Built specifically to withstand an unwanted horde of braindead brain-nibblers, “The Safe House” stands in a small village located on the outskirts of Warsaw, Poland. It is an awesome piece of architecture and, more importantly, looks super-effective. It has a draw bridge, concrete window shutters, movable walls, only one entrance (on the second floor, accessible through the bridge), and a retractable metal gate. Upon closing up, the house looks like nothing more than a concrete box – unsightly perhaps, but completely protective.
All its lucky occupant needs is a shotgun and a flamethrower, and a fridge full of food, and they’re set to survive the zombie apocalypse. Well, unless the zombies outside work out how to operate a bulldozer: zombie smash!
For those unfamiliar with murderous computer system HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick’s science-fiction masterpiece “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Siri is a totally cool, totally handy and totally unterrifying piece of artificial intelligence. Launched in October 2011 as part of the iOS 5 system for Apple’s then-new iPhone 4S, Siri (Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface) is a personal assistant that fits right in your front pocket. With speech recognition software built into its noggin, Siri has the ability to perform multiple tasks for its user with just the utterance of a few brief commands. Among many others, these tasks include making phone calls, sending text messages, surfing the net, recalling stored information and even recommending nearby restaurants – yes, Siri knows where to wine and dine.
It all seems very helpful, but some iPhone users are not so satisfied with Siri’s system, or perhaps don’t trust it as much as Apple may wish them to. This is shown in a new infographic from OnlineDegrees.com, who take a look at statistical data, opinion polls and interesting facts surrounding Siri and its users, as you can see below. The results are fairly mixed, but it looks like Siri is nonetheless here to stay, and may even take over human society to become our vicious technological rulers – all hail Siri!
Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for the most useful belt in the history of humankind! You can always count on Zeke Mahogany for a mid-afternoon chuckle.
