Mental Floss host Elliot Morgan takes on the topic of crime in the latest episode of their "Misconceptions" series. Is violent crime on the rise? Is pleading insanity an effective defense? Is the prison population increasing? If so, why? How does the legalization of medical marijuana factor into the big picture? Mental Floss discusses these issues and more. -Via Laughing Squid
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This new advertisement for Android features animals of varied species enjoying each others' presence and obviously focusing on what unites rather than divides them. Perhaps humans could learn a lesson from such loving and tolerant behavior. The ad is set to "Oo-De-Lally," the song from from Disney's animated movie Robin Hood. -Via Tastefully Offensive
In a grand gesture to mark the launch of a crime drama with an arctic setting, Sky Atlantic and Taylor Herring built this fantastic, life-sized polar bear, which then took to the London streets, the Tube, and other locations where polar bears aren't frequent visitors. The crime thriller, called Fortitude, is to be thanked for such an arctically (I looked it up--it IS a word!) immersive experience.
Such a realistic bear began with a team of 19 designers, whose time was occupied for eight weeks to build him. See the construction process in the video below. -Via Design Taxi
Photographer Brad Wilson spent patient, painstaking hours photographing these owls housed at the World Bird Sanctuary in St. Louis and The Wildlife Centernear Española, New Mexico. Wilson described the difficulty in photographing such creatures,
“It’s hard to get animals to look at you like humans do. That shot became my holy grail.”
These shots are part of Wilson's series “Affinity,” which features 65 species, including a white rhino, a white tiger, an Arctic fox, and an Egyptian Vulture. Yet Wilson said that of all his animal subjects, the owls were the most challenging.
Read more about Wilson's experience photographing the owls at Audubon, and visit his website to see the stunning images from Affinity and Affinity II.
A British arts collective called Vital Arts, for a project in which the goal is to bring art to Britain's hospitals, has transformed London Royal Children’s Hospital into a visual feast for little eyes. Mural after mural, some embellished with parts affixed to give them dimension and life, meets the eyes of patients and their guests. What was once a grim, institutional paint job is now full of vibrant color. If the designs put one smile on the face of a sick child or parent in distress, the artists have made a positive impact.
See many additional pictures, each more charming than the last, in this post. Visit Vital Arts' website to learn more about the artists and their admirable mission.
James Gilfoy's cat Rudiger is shown here trying to make a dent in the massive snowdrift standing in between him and his ability to roam. While he did a good job pawing his way out, Rudiger may be hoping dad busts out the shovel next blizzard. -Via Tastefully Offensive
One story on this list of eight disappearances may correspond with the chilling photo above left. Tara Calico (shown above right in a photo from a police handout, and below in a comparison photo with the one above) disappeared in 1988 while on a bike ride near her New Mexico home. She was a 19-year-old college student at the time.
Bicycle tracks and pieces of a Sony Walkman believed to be Tara's were found on the route she would have been biking, but aside from that, no trace of her turned up during countless hours of searches by area volunteers and her family.
In June of 1989, a woman who had been shopping for groceries found the Polaroid photo at top left in the grocery store parking lot. According to authorities, the photo seems to be taken in the back of a van. The woman who found the photo described a white van leaving the parking lot when she looked up after finding it. The picture gave Tara's parents and others renewed hope that it was Tara in the photo and that she was still alive. Tara's friends said that V.C. Andrews was a favorite author of hers, and the book seen next to her in the photo is by Andrews.
It was further speculated at the time that the boy shown with the girl in the photo could be a missing 9-year-old New Mexico boy named Michael Henley. He disappeared in April 1988 while hunting turkeys in New Mexico's Zuni mountains with his father.
Yet Henley's remains were later found several years after his disappearance in a location near where he was last seen, a fact that weakened the theory that he was the boy in the photo. Tara's mother, who has since died, went to her grave believing that it was Tara bound and gagged in the Polaroid. The mystery has never been solved.
Learn more about Tara's story at Crime Library and read the seven other mysterious disappearances here.
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A bad neighbor can make everyday life extremely difficult. It's easy to take your goofy, bathrobe-and-curlers-in-the-front-yard neighbor for granted until you have another who seems truly malicious. The referring article briefly tells the stories of celebrities accused of being bad neighbors. Some tales are much worse than others. For instance, one is a complaint that Robert Downey Jr. passed out in their home. To me, that's more like a daydream neighbor than a nightmare one. But to each their own.
One celebrity neighbor with a (non) shockingly bad rep is Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose. When a neighbor in a condo unit near his went to him with her complaint of his music being too loud, Axl grabbed her car keys, threw them out a sliding glass door to the ground below, then took a wine bottle out of her hands, poured out its contents and hit her over the head. Appetite for Destruction indeed!
Read the remaining 26 celebrity bad neighbor stories here.
In the footage above, Lucy Cooke, a filmmaker and founder of the Sloth Appreciation Society, discusses humans' positive reaction to seeing sloths. What is it abourt the ability of the species to charm us? The video below, also made by Cooke, focuses on the the squeaky sounds of baby sloths, featuring orphaned babies filmed at sloth sanctuaries in Colombia and Costa Rica. -Via Laughing Squid
This Pet Collective compilation of golden retriever puppies being roly poly, inquisitive and playful is fun to watch, but these pups have a lot to learn about life. There's far more to being a puppy than just looking absolutely adorable... oh, wait... -Via Tastefully Offensive
Over the Mountain, 2014 | Image: Andrew Fladeboe
Andrew Fladeboe is a multicultural American photographer, having been born in California yet being raised in Japan, Russia and Austria. He received his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2006.
These lovely images are from Fladeboe's series on working dogs entitled “The Shepherd’s Realm." The series consists of three parts: Volume I, with shots from various geographic locations, Volume II, which is shot exclusively in Norway and Volume III, shot exclusively in New Zealand. As evidenced by the photos featured here, Fladeboe's location choices make for stunning scenery.
See the links to each volume of the series above, and also Fladeboe's photoblog of The Shepherd's Realm, which includes descriptions and background information on the photos. Follow the artist on social media via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Via Slate | Images: Andew Fladeboe
This is Chand Baori, a 13-story deep step well located in India in a village called Abaneri, approximately 60 miles from Jaipur. The well was named for King Chanda, who controlled the area in the late eighth and early ninth centuries.
Also part fort — designed with openings in the walls for muskets and with four corner watchtowers — the well has 3,500 steps descending to the cool water below. Chand Baori is one of the deepest and largest structures of its kind.
See a video on Chand Baori below, and learn about six other lesser-known architectural wonders of the world at BBC Travel.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
A TransAsia Airways ATR-72 turboprop plane has crashed into a river in Taiwan, tragically killing at least 19 people. This dashcam video shows the plane clipping a bridge after rapidly descending soon after it took off from Taipei airport.
The plane, which was less than a year old, had 58 passengers aboard, most of whom were Chinese tourists. The accident marks TransAsia's second crash with fatalities in under a year. The crash of TransAsia flight 222 last July killed 48 people.
Read more on this story at The Wall Street Journal.
Images: @Missxoxo168 on Twitter
Machinations mesmerize in this video of a robotic xylophone, marimba and glockenspiel playing "Flight of the Bumblebee" by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The robots have names: MarimBot, XyloBot and GlockenBot. Their creator is Eric Singer, who is developing this robot group for a show in a Paris nightclub. What fun! -Via Laughing Squid
Colorado single father Greg Wickherst works as an admissions representative for a local college. After he and his wife divorced, Greg found that, concerning the care of his three-year-old daughter Izzy, he was woefully unprepared when it came to hair styling. As many parents know, any young daughter who wears her hair long has a seemingly unlimited number of options when it comes to styles, blingy barrettes, hair ties, ribbons and the like. It's enough to make a father's head spin!
But Greg didn't panic -- he enlisted the help of the cosmetology department at the college for which he works. As one can imagine, the cosmetologists there were more than happy to lend a hand. The pictures here show how Wickherst picked up stylin' skills with no problem. Now, Izzy is likely setting toddler hair trends wherever she goes. Great job, Papa! -
See more photos of Izzy' and her new styles here.
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