Nature News & Comment

Probably the best known scientific journal is Nature, however probably only few have ever really read an article in the Journal. Of course this is since the primary audience are research scientists, and not for a broad general audience. But Nature is trying to do its best to also many of the most important papers understandable for scientists in other fields and the educated general public. This is why nature has a great section on their website called Nature News & Comment, on this page the most interesting research developments are described in a readable manner. I have been following this page now for a few weeks and it often happens when I read an article, a few days later it is adopted in general news websites. This page really is a must know for science interested people!

Traditional Drawing - 50 Tuturials

Nowadays everybody can make great drawings using photoshop and other digital software programs. That is since traditional drawing is way harder than digital and you can make much faster progress. But if you can make great traditional drawings you can make more distinct and "real" drawings, as is it also a great foundation and techniques learned in the traditional drawing can be a great help whilst using software.

Smashing magazine collected FIFTY (!) tutorials and techniques to make your traditional drawing much better, even for the people who never made drawings before (like me) there are some great tutorials from the real beginning. So if you want to know how to draw lips, cars, optimus prime, dogs, hair, eyes, hands, roses and so go have a look!!  

How to draw a hand:

Outer Space - 15 things you didn't know

Outer space has always caught the imagination of people. The fascination is rooted in the inherent curiosity people have for the unknown. But, the truth is, we have learned a great deal about outer space. While that great deal of knowledge may only be a speck in the cosmic sense because there’s so much more to know, some of what we are cognizant of is illustrated below to give you a primer as to what’s really out there. 

Via: OnlineSchools.org

BBC's Horizon - Rubber Hand Illusion

A great video about how your brain "adopts" a fake hand for being your own:

This is video is part from the BBC program called Horizon, it is a program that explores the strange and wonderful world of illusions and reveals the tricks they play on our senses and the way they fool us. More on BBC's Horizon page

Full Length Documentaries - On Youtube!

Everybody likes to watch a good full length documentary now and then. Mostly due to the fact that documentary are there about all kind of subjects, so for everybody's interest. But for a documentary most times you are not taking the effort to buy or download it, for a good movie you would, but a documentary needs to be really good before you want to download it. Youtube documentaries solves this problem, although youtube video's are normally restricted to 10 minutes. This website sticks together the several youtube parts and creates one full length documentary video from it. In their collection are virtually 100's of documentaries. One of the documentaries they have is shown below, the documentary "Men of Rock":

Men of Rock (BBC)

Broadcast (2011) Professor Iain Stewart traces the story of how the landscape of Scotland revealed to the world how the planet works. A band of pioneer geologists in Scotland were the first to work out the true age of the Earth, measure earthquakes, understand supervolcanoes, discover the ice ages and explain how continents move around the surface of the planet. This new three-part series takes us through the latest science about the Earth and shows how these early mavericks and visionaries came up with revolutionary ideas that changed scientific understanding of the world forever. Deep Time: Iain Stewart follows in the footsteps of the founding father of geology, James Hutton. This Scottish rogue was a profound and original thinker who, 250 years ago, overturned ancient beliefs about how and when the world was formed. His ideas clashed with those of the most eminent scientist of his day. Lord Kelvin was determined to prove Hutton wrong. Moving Mountains: Iain finds out how gung-ho geologist Edward Bailey discovered Scotland was once home to super volcanoes. And how unsung hero Arthur Holmes solved the mystery of what makes continents move across the surface of the globe. Iain takes a close look at the Old Man of Stoer, one of the highest sea stacks in Britain, and we learn how the Victorians came up with an ingenious device to show how mountains can be made. The Big Freeze: In the final episode, Iain finds out about daredevil scientist Louis Agassiz, who first imagined the world had been gripped by an ice age. Plus, the story of humble janitor James Croll, who used the planets to work out the natural rhythms of the earth's climate, and discovered the causes of ice ages. Iain climbs down a crevasse, echoing the actions of daredevil scientist Louis Agassiz, who almost died from his experiment.

TED - Ideas Worth Spreading

TED is short for: Technology, Entertainment and Design. All three of them incredibly important in our modern world. The mission of TED is to spread ideas, this is done by the so called TED talks; talks from the most brilliant minds in their subject. With a TED talk the speaker wants to convince you about his idea, how we could change things, on all kind of subjects from: schools to sixth sense and from music to barefoot movements. In many countries TED talks are organised and broadcasted live on national telivision, but might you have missed go have a look at www.TED.com

An example of Ken Robinson showing how modern schools are killing the creativity of nowadays children.

Hollow Face Illusion - How to make it?

Below is one of the best optical illusions I have seen. It is a paper dragon and it is like the head of the dragon keeps following you, all of this is just an illusion, as seen when you cross a certain angle. After some search I found a PDF file that explains how to make this great illusion, you can realy suprise your friends with this litte do it yourself project. Good luck: Hollow Face Dragon Illusion