Your Dreams Should Be Displayed on Your Bed Like This [Photography]

By Casey Chan Oct 16, 2011 7:00 PM 39,713 11

Photographer Jan von Holleben came up with a clever way to re-create his famous "Dreams of Flying" series by photographing a girl sleeping on her bed and having the girl's dreams fully displayed around her. I love it.

The whole series represents one girl's full night's worth of dreams, there's her sleeping on couds, her running away from a giant cat, her dancing, her shopping and her driving. The detail that Holleben put in creating these dream scenarios is incredibly creative: sheets can become cars, jeans can become collars, socks become fish, etc. Wouldn't it be so awesome to wake up and your bed has become a setting of one of your dreams? Check out the whole series at My Modern Met. [My Modern Met via Neatorama]

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The Apps You Should Download to Your iPhone 4S [Iphone Apps Of The Week]

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City Cyclists Should Be Wearing Respirator Gas Masks [Bikes]

Cyclists traveling the car-filled streets of a city have one more hazard to worry about - black carbon from air pollution.

A recent study looked at the the respiratory health of Londoners who bike or walk to work. The team collected sputum samples and measured the amount of black carbon each group inhaled. They discovered cyclists had inhaled 2.3 times more of the nasty stuff than their walking friends.

The team attributed this unhealthy increase to the biker's higher breathing rates. Though bikers could get to work faster and spent less time in the polluted air, they took in more air because of their exercising. They are also on the road, closer to the cars and their exhaust fumes. Just lovely. [European Respiratory Society via Scientific American]

You can keep up with Kelly Hodgkins, the author of this post, on Twitter, Google + or Facebook. Related Stories

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Should We Just Let Pandas Die Off Already? [Crossfire]

Pandas. Zoos want them, other bears want to be them (maybe?). But are they really worth all the trouble? Let's fight about it:

The panda bear, above all, is a survivor of the keenest degree. You might deride it for its sloth, for its listlessness, for its struggle to spread its seed. But what you call laziness, I single out as a sign of a fighter. The panda bear is slow, the panda bear falters—but the panda bear has defeated every obstacle thrown in its way by that Queen Bitch Mother Nature. It has survived in spite of its own genome. Let us consider the following:

• 99% of the panda's diet is bamboo, yes. It's extremely low in nutrients. But the bear's guts are built to process meat—it's a carnivore, at its foundation. But through millions of years evolutionary battling and environmental change, its found itself inhabiting bamboo-rich regions. What'd it do—give up on eating and perish? No. It just ate the fucking bamboo—up to 40 pounds of it every single day—and shut up about it. Would humans do the same? No, we'd complain that there weren't enough GroupOn deals for bamboo.

• Pandas are fucking adorable. They look like humans wearing bear suits—WHICH IS REALLY, REALLY CUTE. They have sharp teeth, but choose to use them only for peaceful purposes.

• They're a boon for the perennially tense US/Chinese relations—sharing pandas between our countries shows that we have more in common that we'd ever imagine. Namely, a love for pandas and a concern for their wellbeing.

• They're a boon for the local economy for Washington DC, our nation's capital, my hometown, and a city with unsung fiscal problems due to shoddy congressional policy.

• They're really cute. Scientists don't even know why they have black spots! C'mon!

Pandas are victims of their own tenacity. Where other species have been eliminated by the slow, dark hand of natural selection, the panda has stood up and said "O, ye forces of the cosmos—unhand me. I stand on my paws a Free Bear, unburdened by my genome. Behold my bamboo chomps and despair." Evolutionary excellence. The unbridled determination to live another day. To eat another shoot. The lethargic king of all furred beasts. -SB

I just want to get this straight right off the bat: I really don't hate pandas.* I just love nature. And nature has made it clear in no uncertain terms that pandas need to die. Now.

Here are the valid reasons for humanity's continued propping up of Ailuropoda melanoleuca:

• They are kind of cute.

And here are the reasons we should let them die out the way sweet Gaia intended:

• Female pandas can expect a solid 16 years of fertility, but they only ovulate once a year, and can only handle one set of offspring every two years. There's no clearer recipe for extinction. Even their ovaries are lazy!

• It's cool, though, because they won't have sex. That's the most popular charge leveled against pandas, and for good reason! They have no libido, no interest in repopulating the species. They'd rather sit and chew, chew and sit, even when there's panda porn shoved in their faces (which is a real thing that actually happened).

• Not only do pandas not procreate, they have fake pregnancies, presumably to get zookeepers off their backs about having all that free casual sex.

• When they do bother having sex, it's generally with family members. That's right: the one kind of sex pandas can't get enough of is incest.

• And when they manage to have babies? It's usually twins. One of whom is raised to be a good panda adult, the other of whom is left to die. Seriously. They almost always actively let one of their children die.

• Pandas are technically carnivores, but they chose to subsist almost entirely (we're talking 99% of intake) on bamboo, which is terribly difficult for them to digest. But they still spend 16 hours a day eating it. That's like if you decided to chew on styrofoam for 90% of your waking hours.

• There are accredited professional animal people out there who feel the same way! BBC wildlife expert Chris Packham recently—and rightly—noted that "giant pandas should be allowed to die out." Expert opinion! Expert British opinion!

• We fetishize them to an unhealthy degree. Do you know how much this Banquete Chair made of panda stuffed animals costs? $75,000. Gross. Pointless. Pandas.

• We spend millions—seriously, millions!—of dollars every single year propping up a species that has no discernible will to survive. Money which could go towards other, more ambitious species. Like homo sapiens! Or emu or whatever. Anything but these these giant depressive raccoons.

And so on. This is not an animal that wants to survive. This is the overstuffed, lobotomized Hamburgler of the animal kingdom, desperate to go lazy into that good night. And we simply won't let them.

Look, I'm not saying let's go kill some pandas, or let's kick them out of our zoos. I'm saying let's stop interfering with them, even if it's just for a little bit. Let's spend our conservation energies on species that actually give dodo about being conserved.

*Okay maybe I do hate pandas a little. A lot. I hate pandas a lot and so should you. -BB

Photo: Life

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All Boarding Passes Should Look Like This [IPhone Apps]

Airlines no longer have excuses. They need to get off their asses. They need Flight Card. What's Flight Card? It's an iPhone app that simply and beautifully tracks flights. It also should be the future of boarding passes.

Flight Card displays all the pertinent flight info, the flight number, airports, flight status, etc. in an absolutely beautiful package. One screen, and you have all you need to know. If you need to share your flight with another person, you can easily do that. All the information is using Flightstats (which has long been my go to flight tracking website), so you know it's good.

I see higher hopes for this though. I littttttrrrrally want my boarding pass to look exactly like that. I'm done with the days of airplane tickets, I'm even done with printing tickets at home or at a kiosk too, it doesn't make any more sense. I know some airlines have jumped to smartphone "tickets" but none have done it as elegantly as Flight Card. JetBlue, Virgin America, someone good, please make this your boarding pass. [iTunes]

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Top 5 Smelly Things That Should Be Banned In Airplanes [Smoking]

The U.S. Department of Transportation wants to ban electronic cigarettes, even while they only produce water vapor that doesn't contain any cancerous chemicals. They say this will increase the comfort of other passengers. Perhaps they should ban other things first.

The logic is that the vapor from the e-cigs would bother other passengers, according to U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood:

Airline passengers have rights, and this new rule would enhance passenger comfort and reduce any confusion surrounding the use of electronic cigarettes in flight.

Do you know what really confuses me, Ray? Do you know what really gets in my nostrils and my bloody nerves?

5. Perfumes, colognes and scented deodorants. Why do people insist on dousing themselves on perfumes when they come into a plane? Aren't they aware that smelling like a walking whorehouse can bother people as much as a real cigarette? At least, it bothers me to the point of nausea.

4. After-shaves. These are even worse than perfumes. I don't even like scented after-shaves in the open. There should be a worldwide ban on them, but airplanes would be enough for now.

3. People wearing socks and sandals. I remember that flight in which the passenger behind me was wearing these, probably after a long day of walking around the terminal, waiting for his flight to board. I had to hold my vomit for an entire intercontinental flight.

2. Not showering. Of course, the smell of sweat is even worse than numbers 4 or 5 combined (actually, quite often 4, 5, 3, and 2 come combined). The Department of Transportation must install showers on each gate, and any passenger who smells of sweat should be made to take a shower. Some passengers should also be disinfected. Or, if they want to avoid showering because it's against their beliefs, just put them inside hermetic full body suits.

1. Farting. Only solution: Just install buttplugs in all passengers.

(Extra bonus: Ban all things that make crunchy noises when eaten, like chips).

All those things should be banned in planes, subways, buses, submarines and space stations. Air marshals should tase anyone who doesn't abide to these rules. Don't protest. This all makes sense following the perfect logic of the Department of Transportation. Good travels and God bless the United States of America. [LA Times]

What would you ban from airplanes? Tell us in the comments.

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These "Photographers" Should Be Judged For Crimes Against Humanity [Photography]

A reminder to some "professional photographers" out there: give it up already. Just because you own a camera you are not a professional photographer. Stop with your horrible wedding ideas, your avant-vomit pregnancy photomontages and birth announcement atrocities at once.

I tried to pick some particularly horrible examples for this gallery, but I couldn't. They are all so incredibly bad that they make want to put a fork perpendicular to the table and slowly press my eye against it until it reaches the back of my skull.

It's too bad the site didn't leave the name of the photographers on the images. That way the Hague Tribunal could have prosecuted them for crimes against humanity. [You Are Not a Photographer] You can keep up with Jesus Diaz, the author of this post, on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.

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Motion Controlled Remotes Are a Stupid Idea and Should Be Destroyed [Video]

Movea thinks it has a good idea. It thinks the Move TV remote, which uses Wii-like gestures to flip through channels, is something that should be in our lives. It's not. The Move TV is a premise beyond idiocy.

Motion controls make sense in some contexts. With your Wii, you can swing the controller like a baseball bat, aim it like a gun, or putt it like a club. It's fun, because it helps you pretend you're doing the virtual activity on the TV. You're tricking your brain a little bit! Kinect functions (well) along these same lines. You can't replicate the experience of punching someone with buttons as well as you can with your arm.

But a TV remote is simple. You're only going in two directions. Up or down. Left or right. Make something louder, or make it softer. Type in a channel. These are little tiny actions that are perfectly suited for little buttons moved with your little fingers. Remotes can be innovated—beautiful, even—just look at Apple TV's. But converting these actions to wild arm flappings, hand jerkings, and various wrist bobs isn't just stupid looking—it makes it harder to watch TV. What a great quality in a TV remote!

Look at the video. What requires less effort: shaking your wrist to move from one channel to another, or applying slight pressure to a button you're holding in your hand? Do you want to have to memorize different hand gestures for everything you might want to do to your TV? How could this possibly make your life easier?

The Move TV is the most absurd, shameless trend cash-in I've seen in some time. It makes using your TV harder. It makes motion controls alienating. It makes me want to throw it into a lake. Movea: burn this idea. [Engadget]

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What Should Yahoo-AOL's Logo Be? [Imbeciles]

The assclowns running Aol and Yahoo! think that merging their two sinking companies into one is a great idea. They may have their own dicks into their ears because they can't hear the whole internet screaming how stupid that is.

But fear not. We are not going to sit still as these two companies decide to self-destruct together into a huge explosion of poop. No, we are going to help them designing their incoming corporate image. And you can help too: What's the best logo for Yahoo-Aol? Decide from the gallery or post you own in the comments or in Twitter. Every new logo will get added to this gallery along with your byline. Yahoo running clown logo by Chris Madden. Chris is a New York-based illustrator and designer. You can see his work here, follow him on Facebook and Twitter. You can keep up with Jesus Diaz, the author of this post, on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.

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Amazon Should Buy WebOS [WebOS]

If there was one company that could rival Apple, Google and Microsoft, it's Amazon. It has devices; it has a content marketplace. But what Amazon doesn't have is its own platform. webOS could be the final piece in its puzzle.

webOS has largely been a dud of an OS, but that's not because of the product itself. It's because the people who control it have no idea what to do with it. HP says it wants to hold on to webOS, but who knows how truthful that is. Samsung raised a few eyebrows in the past few weeks when rumors claimed the Korean tech giant might license, or flat out acquire, webOS. Those rumors quickly fizzled when Samsung declared it would never use webOS in any capacity. But rumors like that suggest HP is at least open to talking to other companies about unloading the OS.

Meanwhile, Amazon is ready to start offering products of its own. No, it needs to start offering products of its own. While Apple, Google and Microsoft all first made their marks by creating products, Amazon made its own by selling products. Yes, Amazon has flirted the idea: It has the Kindle reader and the Kindle store. It has the MP3 storage locker and the video streaming service. It is chasing down Hulu. But Amazon is shoehorning these software services onto other people's platforms. Now, it's about to release a tablet. Amazon needs an OS of its own where it can seamlessly integrate all of these offerings into a single, coherent interface. webOS is a fully-realized OS (or damn close, at the very least) that can quickly give that to Amazon.

For those doubting the importance of platforms and/or the willingness to evolve, look at Facebook. It started as a social networking site in the most literal definition of the term. Then it launched the f8 platform which attracted developers to take advantage of the millions and millions of people using Facebook, which in turn made Facebook an even bigger company offering games and web apps and video rentals for $$$. Realizing that people visit Facebook for the sole purpose of playing Farmville, Facebook entered into a long-term deal with Farmville developer Zynga that will funnel a bunch of exclusive games into the social media site. For a company like Google, Android spotlights all the latest and greatest mobile technologies that the search giant has to offer. And Apple, who dominates the mobile apps world, takes a share of every app sold on iOS. Amazon has the user base to do what these companies do, but without a platform of its own, it's tough for Amazon to reach this level. Amazon turned itself into a book/eBook giant by acquiring startups years ago. It could turn itself into a consumer product giant by following that same strategy.

So why acquire a fading mobile OS? Well Amazon could create its own OS, but you've seen the previous UI work up until now. It's ugly. Trying to watch on Amazon Instant Video, a service that was crammed into the UI of an online store, is an exercise in pulling teeth. Amazon lacks the chops to develop a mobile OS on its own. The company could base its strategy around a customized version of Android as rumors suggest it will for the tablet, but a) blah, b) the tablet is rumored to be running a version of Android older than the tablet-friendly Honeycomb or even Gingerbread, and c) any customization comes with the consequence of not being able to offer the latest Android updates.

And this would be the beauty of acquring webOS. Amazon would absorb a product that's already battle-tested and made for the future. It can build the OS around its own services and technologies. It can push updates whenever it wants. It would have control. So suppose Amazon aggressively pursues webOS, possibly pays more than it should for the OS knowing it can make recoup the investment in hardware and app sales, and acquire the webOS team with it. It now has the product it needs, and a team of engineers who are properly qualified to improve on it.

Amazon obviously has the money to turn webOS into a winner. And if Amazon is willing to offer upwards of $2 Billion for Hulu, why can't it make make a concerted effort for webOS? It's not like it's scared of showing up late to the proverbial party, or taking a risk on a product/service similar to one it already offer. This year, Amazon spent $200 million on LoveFilm, a Netflix-type service that operates in the UK, and may eventually end up in the U.S.. Amazon also owns and operate the shoe retailer Zappos, despite being a retailer itself.

Obviously, acquiring webOS in real life wouldn't be so easy. HP doesn't seem particularly eager to unload the OS (despite its plans to run it into the ground), and there's probably an endless collection of charts and figures to show why webOS would be a poor investment for Amazon. But from a conceptual standpoint, it's enticing. And even if it doesn't acquire webOS specifically, it's time for Amazon to realize it's primed to become the next big thing in tech should it desire to be.

Chris Madden is a New York-based illustrator and designer. You
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Why You Should Never Save a JPEG as a 7 in Photoshop [Factoid]

We've been told for years that file size doesn't necessarily mean higher quality, though it's usually regarding megapixel counts on camera sensors. But did you know that there's a point in Photoshop where increasing the quality setting—and file size—actually decreases the image quality? That point is 7.

When saving JPEG files, Photoshop uses chroma subsampling—which hacks off color data because your brain doesn't register it at the same rate as brightness—up to 6. But after that it saves all color information. To keep the file size progression linear, rather than having a humongous size bump moving from 6 to 7, files are more heavily compressed at the 7 setting than they are at 6. The quality scale should right itself if you move to 8, though; it's just the abrupt change in the amount of color data at the 6/7 gap that causes the muck up. See? Less really is more, except when it's less, or when more is also more. [ImpulseAdventure via PetaPixel]

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