If Looks Could Kill - Graphic Art & Design

The ancient coelacanth fish was thought to have died out with the dinosaurs, a 4-foot, 110-pound fish… yet one was found ALIVE in Indonesia.

WTF do they do? They don’t release it, but keep it to ensure death. It lived 17 hours after being caught, instead of the 2 marine biologists would anticipate, further adding to how fucking amazing this very fish was.

Why would you snuff a rare creature? Surely more can be learned while it’s alive. It will eventually die, then you can study it more in depth.

However, in this case, I get the impression that it was more of a novelty, caught by a regular fisherman.

(Source)

In Japanese culture, they focus on eyes to determine the mood of others. In America, they look at mouths, according to tests. It even plays out in the emoticons favored.

Japanese Happy Face (^_^)

American Happy Face :)

Theoretically, it’s because the Japanese are more guarded with emotion, less apt to smile. One side note, is that Americans are more prone to prolonged eye contact, which is considered very rude and intrusive in Japan, yet this is how they read one another.

I am amazed that Americans would gauge mood based on lips. That would never occur to me. Explains a lot of gullibility in this country, if all it takes is a smile. Suckers!

(Source)

Related:
Face Reading
Understanding Facial Expression

Continuation of a prior post, here are some of the lesser known consequences, all broken down into succinct bulletpoints for those with limited attention spans.

How are we really affected?

• Soybean production could go up 15%
• Poison Ivy grows 2½ times faster
  • More potent skin irritant chemical
• Honeysuckle, woody vines and other hardier plants may run rampant
  • Could smother trees, even forests
• Flourishing Plants = Tons of Pollen
  • Antagonizing Allergy Sufferers and Asthmatics to entirely new levels
• Fewer frosts to kill off invasive species/pests
  • Mosquitoes
  • Rodents
  • Lice
  • Ticks
  • Fleas
• All Potential Transmitters of Infectious Disease:
  • SARS
  • Avian Flu
  • West Nile Virus

Source: Di Silvestro, Roger. “GLOBAL WARMING: COMING TO YOUR BACKYARD?.” National Wildlife 45.2 ([2007]): 14-17. Academic Search Premier. 11 February 2007. http ://search.ebscohost.com.

According to this article, arousal is triggered by the subconscious before the brain decodes the desire. In other words, we are not in control of what turns us on, so much as how we react.

Controlling these areas of the brain are “two basic and distinctively operating pathways - one that promotes sexual enthusiasm, another that inhibits it,” likened to a gas pedal and a brake. Everyone drives differently.

Men are not moved by images outside of their own orientation, while women’s test results revealed their desires to be less exclusive.

I get pissed when people suggest that someone can choose to be gay, heterosexual or otherwise. As this article supports, individuals do not determine their own desires so much as whether they repress or pursue it. So, Nyah! ;p

(SOURCE) - free registration required

On the opposite end, there are those that claim asexuality. Now that’s *fucking wild. *fucking being an adjective, rather than a verb, in this context. >;)

I’ve got global warming on the brain, have just endured a semester-long exercise in discomfort that was a Speech class, where I spoke on this. Here are some things I found striking, from Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth:

• Over 650,000 years, the Earth has endured 7 ice ages and subsequent warming periods - the temperatures and carbon dioxide levels have NEVER been this high. What we are experiencing is NOT cyclical.
• Liken it to ice cubes melting in a glass of water. 1 cube melting is insignificant, but if several melt, your cup runneth over. With accelerated melting of glaciers, you’d better hope you’re not terribly attached to coastal cities or lower-lying areas!
• American cars are so piss-poor on emission standards that we cannot sell them to other countries because they have HIGHER STANDARDS than the US does
• A White House memo leaked reveals their strategy on Global Warming, and it is, “to reposition global warming as a theory, instead of a fact.” Well played, gentlemen! ;p

Rant on the vegetational & pestilence effects to follow. Also, were our “representatives” truly interested in our best interests, they could do so much by means of regulation.

In turn, the developments required could jump-start the economy - creating the means, advancing, enhancing, improving… Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be as personally lucrative to them or their corporate bedmates.

Amorphophallus rivieri

• It emits a corpse-like smell when in bloom, to attract flies for pollination.
• The flower contains both male and female flowers that open at differing durations to avoid self-pollination.
• Varying names for this pungent plant: devil’s tongue, voodoo lily, leopard palm, snake palm. Those are the best names ever.

Georgia O’Keefe &/or Robert Mapplethorpe would have dug this flower. ;)

One must pardon the hickboy editorial tone from the source, it’s the info I’m after.

Isolated and tweaked the photo a bit, to better suit my aesthetics. Everything always looks washed out to me, I LOVE saturation, the intensity of color - the more, the better.