Skeletor!

This is epic!

‘I’ve got AIDS. Beastman AIDS!‘  Yeah. Try to get that out of your head.

Nasty Ukranian

There are a few things that scare me. Snakes and butter top my terror list while werewolves, Mormons and masturbating with cheese-graters pretty much cover the rational fears. There are a few other unmentionables that get under my skin, but I’ve yet to meet a human being who truly terrifies me (despite scaring the shit out of me, Satan’s Spawn doesn’t qualify as human in my books).

Igor Vovchanchyn could be such a person. A retired Ukranian mixed martial artist who left the MMA circuit with a record of 49-2-10, Igor seems as pleasant as a tiger wearing a testicle clamp – and probably more dangerous. With seven of his ten losses coming well into the twilight of his career, Vovchanchyn embarked on a dominance of MMA that was purely staggering (this included a 30 fight winning streak!!!).

Arguably the best MMA fighter of his era, his highlight reel is as about as delicate as Apocalypse Now:

Little Red Riding Hood by infographic

Flash-based infographics have become extremely popular over the past couple of years. Not only do they tend to be aesthetically pleasing, but they also present data in such a way that intense information dumps are made possible through visual (and sometimes audio) narratives, resulting in both pleasant and informative experiences for viewers.

The following, by Tomas Nilsson, is a somewhat unusual example – Little Red Riding Hood like you’ve never seen it before (hint: switch the vid to full-screen mode):

In case the style or the idea seem somewhat familiar, you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Nilsson was inspired by Röyksopps Remind Me:

Nature by Numbers

For millennia, architects and artists (and even some musicians) have been using mathematical elements such as the golden ratio in the belief that these proportions are inherently aesthetically pleasing.

Startlingly, some of the properties have also been found throughout nature. Whilst further investigations seem to indicate that these proportions aren’t as constant as once thought, and that variations are sufficient to disregard the common claim that the golden ratio is present within nautilus shells, their approximation and presence in other entities are nevertheless bewildering.

Made by Cristóbal Vila, Nature by Numbers highlights the mathematical properties hidden in organic beauty. Starting off with the Fibonacci series, it then moves on to the golden ratio and the Delaunay Triangulation and Voronoi Tessellations.

And no – I didn’t know what the heck those last two were either until I clicked on the link.

Tesseract

Let the following bewilder your eyes:

To find out more about tesseracts (or hypercubes) – the four dimensional analog of the cube, of which the above is just a 3D shadow performing a rotaion – either head off to the Wikipedia entry or watch Carl Sagan’s lecture on Flatland:

The Earth’s history in 60 seconds

4.6 billion years of history are condensed into one minute in this clip showing the evolution of life on Earth. Keeping the time-scale in proportion shows just how far we have come in such a short space of time.

The Cambrian explosion occurs about 55 seconds in (or roughly 530 million years ago). See if you can spot humanity:

At this rate who knows where we’ll be in a few million years? (assuming we don’t get hit by a comet before leaving the Earth or piss off some tribe of war-mongering interstellar Ewoks)

Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot

The following is a reading by Carl Sagan from his book Pale Blue Dot (which takes its name from the famous Voyager photo).

In it, Sagan takes a look at our own existence on this planet while offering a wealth of perspective:

Specimen of the week

It’s pretty late on a Thursday, I’m f’ing tired as I just realised today that I have to move out of my house by tomorrow morning, I’ve spent the whole night packing, I still have work to do before leaving for the office at 6:30 tomorrow, and I can’t be bothered to type out a post.

So I’ll just let this image speak for itself:

Yes, she is about to violate a LARP enthusiast.

Bring on Friday.

On my shelf

When I’m not hanging out with Armenian cage fighters and shooting up on A-grade heroin in Plaistow, my seldom seen but famously appreciated refinement tends to emerge. Admittedly, you’ll never find me sipping on a Johnnie Walker Blue while reading 100 Years of Solitude but that’s as much due to paucity as it is a reflection on my tastes and inclinations.

However, I do have drinking and reading lists lined up for the next month or so that I thought I would share with you. I debated dropping the former for fear of losing any street-cred or respect that I might have garnered so far, but I thought that the latter may prove to be a more useful reflection on my current interests.

On my shelf for the next month:

• Killing Rommel - Steven Pressfield
• A Quantum Murder – Peter F. Hamilton
• Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts
• For a Pagan Song: In the Footsteps of the Man Who Would be King – Jonny Bealby

Honestly, as entertaining as that list is, the chances of me getting through it within the next month are likely next to zero. Within a few weeks I will be in Cape Town visiting friends and family and I intend to get quite stuck into the other list. Sadly, as I’ve found out recently, I don’t so much suffer from hangovers anymore as I do decompose for prolonged periods of misery.

Whether it’s a sign of my advancing age or of my decreased drinking habits (thanks in no small part to the UK’s astronomical booze prices), the fact remains that a good night out these days is likely to reduce me to a physical and emotional wreck with all of the charisma and mental capacity of a damp squid.

Me. The morning after.

Knowing some of those with whom I’ll be spending time in Cape Town (namely the German and the Barman), I’m likely to resemble little more than a drooling lump of compost by the time I make my return to the Grey Smog.

Luckily, both of the above-mentioned individuals have some decent / effective taste in drinks. The former works at a brewery. The latter practically is a brewery. Between them I feel that my pallet, if not my health, will be in good hands.

Unfortunately there are other individuals in the land of sun who are likely to insist that a taxi violence (a nasty South African version of the Irish car bomb) is the only drink for the / any occasion. Including breakfast.

Given that I have lost about 7kg in the seven months that I have been in London, and have drunk as much in those seven months as I used to drink in a week, I am debating whether the enjoyment of boozing it up in Pirates’ at 4am every second day is worth my life.

I am seriously considering the merits of making a stealth visit to Cape Town. What I currently envision is a single day of drinking (most likely Christmas), followed by a week of trying to forget what random memories I have left and striving to feel vaguely human again.

During this time perhaps I’ll read a Cormac McCarthy book to cheer myself up and give me hope of climbing up from the dank, rock bottom, demon-infested pits of despair that are the inevitable follow-up to any night of decent drinking.

Fuck me but I hate hangovers.

Harder Better Faster Stronger

The grooviest chick on the planet: