You can spice up your Twitter feed by following characters from movies, TV, and literature! Twitter is full of people who don’t exist, but have plenty to say anyway. Buzzfeed searched for the most entertaining of those feeds and listed them for your convenience. Link
Michel Lefaivre is a gunsmith who makes miniature, functional firearms. Pictured above is one example of his work, a 1/4 scale Gras rifle model 1874. Lefaivre writes about how he does it:
Each part starts from a raw piece of material, reduced in size with a milling machine or a precision lathe. The biggest part of the work is made with a file in the fitting vice. At a quality of manufacture and finish equal to the full size, it is more difficult to make a functioning piece reduced to 1/3 scale. The more minute the detail, the more time it takes, and the more risk of making a mistake. Few pieces were successful the first time round. All those not strictly in conformity were scrapped without pity.
To perfect the work and to give it its final touch, the best specialist of our country have been called upon for the engraving, inlaying, gilding, checkering and the wood carving.
Mandatory tooling includes a toolmaker’s lathe, a clockmaker’s lathe, a precision milling machine and hundreds of needle files of all shapes and grades. Burrs and polishing tools of all shapes, pertaining to clockmakers, jewellers, dentists, chisellers and sculptors are used. Very good eyesight and an infinite reserve of patience, tenacity and elbow grease are also required.
Link via Hell in a Handbasket | Photo: The Craftsmanship Museum | Previously: The World’s Smallest Gun
Photo: RaboDirect Australia [Flickr]
Money doesn't grow on trees. Or does it? As a publicity stunt, RaboDirect of Australia sponsored a stunt where a tree in a park in Sydney is festooned with real $5 bills:
An Overview of Responses:
Lost Opportunity
In the early stages, almost 100 people passed the tree without noticing that anything was different. Even when a group of joggers noticed, they were too busy to stop. The first groups who eventually stopped to interact couldn’t believe it. They inspected the notes and took pictures, but left empty handed.Follow the Crowd
Only once one brave participant started taking the money, did momentum gather. Legitimised by the crowd, a wide spectrum of behaviour ensued.Frugality
Some took just one or two notes, satisfied by their modest and unexpected gains.Opportunist
Consumed by the fantasy, a group of braver participants made the most of the opportunity by filling their pockets.Employing Tools and Working Together
When the low hanging $5 notes were depleted, participants employed tools such as swinging coats and umbrellas, to help them reach higher branches. Teamwork also came into play as spectators formed human pyramids to reach the notes seemingly out of reach.Altruism
Perhaps the most comforting observation from the participants was that of altruism. Taller participants shared their earnings with shorter spectators, while one gentleman on identifying the undercover observation team, requested his money be donated to charity.
Link [with video clip] - via Marketing Alternatif
Archaeologists have found something at Stonehenge that is so exceptional that they’re calling it the most exciting find there in fifty years: a second, Neolithic henge.
The new "henge" – which means a circular monument dating to Neolithic and Bronze Ages – is situated about 900m (2,950ft) from the giant stones on Salisbury Plain.
Images show it has two entrances on the north-east and south-west sides and inside the circle is a burial mound on top which appeared much later, Professor Gaffney said.
"You seem to have a large-ditched feature, but it seems to be made of individual scoops rather than just a straight trench," he said.
"When we looked a bit more closely, we then realised there was a ring of pits about a metre wide going all the way around the edge.
"When you see that as an archaeologist, you just looked at it and thought, ‘that’s a henge monument’ – it’s a timber equivalent to Stonehenge.
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The Star Thrower (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
The olm, a foot-long salamander nicknamed “the human fish†because of its fleshy skin and tubular shape, is certainly a strange-looking animal. But beneath the surface, they’re even weirder: Olms can live for 100 years, far longer than any other amphibian.
Scientists have no idea why.
“This species raises questions regarding aging processes,†write researchers led by biologist Yann Voituron of France’s Université Claude Bernard in a July 21 Biology Letters study.
The olms studied by Voituron’s team are part of a population established 48 years ago to help conserve the rare amphibian, which is found in caves in Croatia and Slovenia.
When the project began, the olms were about 10 years old, making them nearly 60 now. Yet they “do not show any time of senescence,†write the researchers, who estimate the olm’s average lifespan to be 69 years, with an upper limit at the century mark.
Living in a stable environment without predators has made it possible for olms to have long lives, but the mechanisms underlying their longevity are unknown. In general, long life correlates with a large body size, but the half-pound salamanders are pipsqueaks compared to the next-longest-lived amphibian, the 50-pound Japanese salamander, which clocks in with a 55-year lifespan.
Voituron’s team thought olms might have extremely slow metabolisms, but they proved metabolically similar to other amphibians, including African bullfrogs and European toads that live for about 40 years.
The researchers also wondered if olms might have special tricks for cleaning up oxygen-free radicals, the DNA-damaging molecules produced when cellular mitochondria turn nutrients into energy. Free-radical accumulation is linked to aging, but the olm’s antioxidant activity is nothing special.
“The olm presents a paradox,†wrote the researchers. “Neither its basal metabolic rate nor its antioxidant activity, the two most cited mechanisms that should be involved in enhancing lifespan, differ from species with a more reduced lifespan.â€
Voituron is now testing whether the olm might have extra-efficient mitochondria that emit fewer free radicals to begin with. “If you manage to produce more energy with less free-radical production, then you can avoid aging and increase lifespan,†he said.
Image: Olivier Guillaume.
See Also:
Citation: “Extreme lifespan of the human fish (Proteus anguinus): a challenge for ageing mechanisms.†By Yann Voituron, Michelle de Fraipont, Julien Issartel, Olivier Guillaume Jean Clobert. Biology Letters, online publication, July 21, 2010.
Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes; Wired Science on Twitter. Brandon is currently working on a book about ecological tipping points.
