February 26, 2015
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory Year 5 February 11, 2015 marked five years in space for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which provides incredibly detailed images of the whole sun 24 hours a day. Capturing an image more than once per second, SDO has provided an unprecedentedly clear picture of how massive explosions on the sun grow and erupt ever since its launch on Feb. 11, 2010. The imagery is also captivating, allowing one to watch the constant ballet of solar material through the sun's atmosphere, the corona.
February 24, 2015 ...meanwhile... ..Meanwhile... is a shrt film by Sandro Bocci that shows the world of marine animals like corals and starfish at high magnification and during long time span through the timelapse.
February 23, 2015 Blake Little — Preservation Fascinated with honey as a symbol and an artistic medium, Blake Little asked his subjects to strip naked and pose in front of a monochromatic backdrop while his assistants doused them in gallons of the sticky, viscous substance. The experiment yielded a striking photo series in which people with a diverse array of body types and aesthetics appear transformed into statues. Little will exhibit the results in is solo show, “Preservation,” opening March 7 at Kopeikin Gallery in Culver City, CA.
February 19, 2015 A Briefer History of Time From smartphones to smartwatches, clocks are everywhere these days. But have you ever wondered what life was like before we could measure time? Video essayist Adam Westbrook delves into the story of the clock, and discovers that when we learned to mechanize time, we accidentally mechanized something else.
February 18, 2015 Digital Dark Age — Revolution Preview Imagine a future where humans are unable to access the data, literature, art, photographs, discoveries, and vital records of previous generations. That bleak future may be on the horizon! Learn how our fragile, rapidly obsolete systems of storing data could lead to a digital dark age. This video, from the Computer History Museum's new exhibition: "Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing" explores the surprisingly fragile nature and longevity of the huge volumes of digital data we create.
February 17, 2015 Richard Ankrom — Guerrilla Public Service 2011 In 2001, Los Angeles-based artist Richard Ankrom disguised himself as a Caltrans worker and installed a highway sign. Ankrom scaled an overhang on the 110 Freeway near the 3rd Street onramp and — without permission — installed a directional North sign and an Interstate 5 shield to indicate the 5 North Interchange two miles ahead. Caltrans had never put in any signage for the interchange and the spot was legendarily confusing to motorists.
February 16, 2015 Understanding Boko Haram In which Vlog Brother John Green discusses Nigeria, its complicated history, and how that history has shaped the region from which the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram emerged. Also discussed is the history of Boko Haram itself and its recent atrocities.
February 13, 2015 Birdie In Flight: The Science of Badminton The badminton birdie many Americans hit around their backyards can fly faster than 200mph in professional games! The key to the birdie's speed is its unique aerodynamic shape and materials combined with a complicated kinetic chain of movements by players.
February 12, 2015 What Gives the Morpho Butterfly Its Magnificent Blue? What does it mean to be blue? The wings of a Morpho butterfly are some of the most brilliant structures in nature, and yet they contain no blue pigment — they harness the physics of light at the nanoscale.
February 11, 2015 Greenland's Ice Layers Mapped in 3D Peering into the thousands of frozen layers inside Greenland’s ice sheet is like looking back in time. Each layer provides a record of not only snowfall and melting events, but what the Earth’s climate was like at the dawn of civilization, or during the last ice age, or during an ancient period of warmth similar to the one we are experiencing today. Using radar data from NASA’s Operation IceBridge, scientists have built the first-ever comprehensive map of the layers deep inside the ice sheet.
February 10, 2015 Elgin Park Elgin Park is a lot of things: a 1950’s utopia, a fantastical world, and an optical illusion. Artist Michael Paul Smith’s imaginative town – composed entirely of miniatures – delighted audiences worldwide when his photo series went viral. For the first time, the documentary Elgin Park dives into the life of this charming, reclusive artist to reveal the dark inspiration behind his work.
February 9, 2015 Middle Fork — MadArt The Middle Fork project began in April 2014 in a forest near the middle fork of the Snoqualmie river in the Cascade foothills. The sculpture is currently in progress and on view at MadArt in Seattle, WA. through April 25, 2015. The sculpture will travel to venues around the US and internationally for two years. After being exhibited, the sculpture will be returned to the base of the standing old-growth Hemlock it was cast from to gradually moss over and disintegrate into the ground.
February 6, 2015 B.B. King on The Blues "I don't like to feel that I owe anything. I like to feel that I pay my own way, no free lunch."
- B.B. King on September 5, 1986, as told to Joe Smith
February 5, 2015 Everything Happen for a Reason "I just need rocks. It's all what I need." Manuel Cisneros is an artist working and living on the beach in Ventura California. Video By Ross Harris.
February 4, 2015 Ocean Gravity Ocean Gravity is the second collaboration between free diver Guillaume Nery and filmmaker Julie Gautier. The short film was shot underwater at the Tiputa Pass in Rangiroa at the Tuamotu Archipelago in French Polynesia.
February 3, 2015
Planet Earth in Infrared A timelapse of planet Earth in infrared light, showing the fluid motion of water vapor in the atmosphere. This animation was produced from images taken by the geostationary GOES 13 and GOES 15 satellites. The images are from the IR3 channel, which is sensitive to wavelengths of 6.5 um. 700 frames with a resolution of 3600x3000 were downloaded from each satellite over a period from November 30th, 2014, to January 26th, 2015. The frames were processed to remove image artifacts, played at 7fps and interpolated by a factor of four. The resulting animation plays at a speed of 21 hours/second.
February 2, 2015 The Problem with American Sniper American Sniper is breaking box office records. The movie tells the story of the late Navy SEAL Chris Kyle and the sacrifices his family made as he served four tours in Iraq. But it deeply misrepresents why America went to war in Iraq and how the war actually went down.
