Scientific Evidence for Popular Supplements

Courtesy of, Information is Beautiful . net

Feel free to discuss.

Post-Edit
I installed a new feature that lets you email an article to your friends and family. It appears on the bottom of each post. So if there is someone you know, that you think may find any of my posts interesting, please shoot them an email.

A photographer can dream

Just a quick post. Someone sent me an email with this photo and my mouth dropped and began to excrete a lot of drool at the same time. I quote Alex from A CLoCKWorK OrANGE, "Oh bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now."

Unfortunately, this is just a concept and is not being sold...but a photographer can dream. It's almost the weekend and I need to get ready for the Open House this Saturday. Well me fellow frontier photographers, I wish you well and I shall see you all...well, you shall see me on Sunday.

Peace,

Serg

Post-Edits

Leaving some room for post-edits of various links I will probably put up.

51 Words - Tomorrow

So I thought I would slowly kick this challenge into gear. One of the things that I used to do back in the ol' days, was create desktops. I figured that I was was gonna stare at a monitor all day, I should at least be staring at something I made. Well here is a desktop I made, from a photo I took.

Here I was trying to teach myself color selection, cropping and font selection. I would say this is probably work from 3 years ago.

Sunday Vlog Episode #1

TED Tuesday - Jamie Oliver

Going back to TED Tuesday; I want to share a video with you about food eduction. Hopefully this motivates you to eat a little bit better if you aren't already. While watching this, an idea popped into my head: apple a day self-project. Just for no reason whatsoever, I am gonna pledge to eat at least one apple a day.

Its a little under 22 minutes long, but really easy to watch.

http://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_oliver.html

I am aware the I had done a TED video regarding food before, but some of the statistics mentioned here are amazing.

Feel free to discuss,
Serg

Pyrography - an interesting form of art

I would like to share a guest written blog by, Meagen. She has a blog at: http://artistmeg.blogspot.com/

The best way to begin talking about what exactly pyrography is would be to define it. According to dictionary.com pyrography is the process of burning designs on wood, leather, etc., with a heated tool. Its more common name is simply wood burning, but I think pyrography sounds flashier, which is probably why the word was invented in the first place. I first learned about pyrography when I kid and it had always been a “forbidden” creative outlet since my parents really didn’t want me burning myself on the tool! Now that I’m older (but certainly not more mature) I decided to take up this art form as a new hobby and in the process I learned a bit about the history of it as well.

Pyrography itself has been around for a while. In Lima, Peru’s Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology and History, there is a cup from the Nazca culture that dates back to pre-700 AD. While this is the earliest piece found, there has been some speculation that cave men would use their own form of pyrography on cave walls. Unfortunately charcoal does not withstand the weather and passing of time overly well so this has remained only a speculation without tangible proof. Pyrography does not show up again in recorded history until about 1910 where the art was referred to as “pokerwork” or “fire etching” and often was used to decorate picture frames, spines of books or pieces of furniture. From my understanding of it the name “pokerwork” was used for pyrography as people would the poker from their fireplace to etch designs on different objects.

So now that you have a brief history and definition of pyrography I bet you’re keen on learning more about how it’s done and where to get all the supplies. I think the best way to do this is a quick “how to” guide.

The two main things you need in order to do pyrography are wood and the heated tool. Now the wood is easy enough to come by you can either go chop up your own tree, or if you’re a city slicker (like myself) you can go to your nearest craft store and purchase it. The wood itself comes in any shape and size you can think of so you should have plenty to choose from. For the purposes of this project I’m choosing to burn the lid of a wooden box.

(side view of box)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v460/kahlanamnell_rox/Pyrography/BoxProject012.jpg
(top view of box)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v460/kahlanamnell_rox/Pyrography/BoxProject011.jpg

Now comes the more complicated decision, which type of tool to purchase. There are in fact two types of tools to choose from, and there are pros and cons for both.
Tool A
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v460/kahlanamnell_rox/Pyrography/BoxProject008.jpg

Tool B
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v460/kahlanamnell_rox/Pyrography/BoxProject010.jpg

Tool A you as you can see is a far more simple design and as such is far cheaper than Tool B. You can usually find Tool A for around $30 including 4 or more interchangeable tips whereas Tool B I recently purchased for $150 and only includes one tip. As for purchasing these tools I suggest going to your local craft store or purchase them online. If you do purchase the cheaper tool, be aware there is no temperature gauge so it heats up to its maximum temperature (which varies by device) and stays there, and it also takes longer for the tip to heat up. Tool A takes approximately 1 minute to heat whereas Tool B heats in about 8 seconds. Each tool burns a little different as well. The piece in the how to guide is an example of how Tool B, and below is a couple examples of how Tool A burns.
Whichever tool you choose just remember to stay within your means.

i. (the “gone fishing” piece) http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v460/kahlanamnell_rox/Pyrography/DSCN0696.jpg
ii. (Lo Shu Turtle Box) http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v460/kahlanamnell_rox/Pyrography/momanddadcheckinoutthezoo062.jpg
iii. (Celtic cross and doves) http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v460/kahlanamnell_rox/Pyrography/momanddadcheckinoutthezoo075.jpg
As you can see in these examples Tool A usually causes your piece to come out dark which can be good depending on the design you are creating.

So now you have your new toy, your piece of wood and the design or image you plan on burning into the wood. The design can be as simple or as complicated as you want. If it is your first time playing around with pyrography I suggest purchasing a couple cheap scrap pieces to practice on before you begin your actual piece, just so you can get the feel and limitations of the process itself.

I find the process of creating a piece of artwork from wood to be an all encompassing Zen like experience. In a stressful world where we are always running around and moving too fast, taking the time to sit and only think about the task at hand is a rewarding and rejuvenating experience in itself. Hopefully this article helped shed a little light on the subject of pyrography and maybe it even convinced you to give it a try, who knows you may even like it.
~Meg

“Principles for the Development of a Complete Mind: Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses - especially learn how to see. Realise that everything connects to everything else. “
-Leonardo DaVinci

For more tips and advice from Meagen on Pyrography, visit her blog at http://artistmeg.blogspot.com/, or shoot her an email at artistmeg@yahoo.ca

Milgram Experiment

One of my goals that developed for this blog was to spread knowledge. Ignorance is an excuse that we turn to very easily when mistakes happen. I want to present to you, my fellow readers, an interesting experiment that was done in the 1960's by Professor Milgram. He was conducting an experiment on authority. How far would an individual go to obey an authority figure if it went against their personal conscience? As you watch this, it may be easy for you to say, "oh, I'd stop" but shockingly about 60 - 65% continued to do so.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

What does this show? Why is this important? This study has been used to compare to the infamous Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse. Soldiers took their power and the lack of responsibility a little to far when they were asked by the higher ups to get any information possible. Even if it meant they would be doing this to innocent civilians. Of course, another way to look at this would be not when it comes to physically hurting people directly, but indirectly. The Enron scandal comes to mind where people continued to lie about numbers, following the orders from their authority figure because they thought the blame would be shifted to them.

Thank you for reading.

More info at wiki

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous then a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

-Martin Luther King Jr

Xander in the Snow

We had quite the snowfall recently and it provided a good chance to take some photos on one of Xander's walks.

I am a bit of a gamer. I especially love the Fallout series, because the whole post apocalyptic scenario fascinates me. I stumbled upon these set of stock video game photos with some funny captions. If you need a quick laugh, take a look: http://www.gamespy.com/articles/106/1066150p1.html

Enjoy your weekend folks,

Serg

An Interview with Serg - I

I sat down today to ask myself some questions.

Sergey: "You seem to be getting a lot of questions about your passion for photography. Tell me, when did you first discover photography?"

Sergey: "I got my first digital camera in late May of 2003. My friend owed me some cash at the time, and rather then paying me back I asked that he get me a digital camera. Digital cameras were becoming rather hip and in order to maintain a "cool" status I thought it would great to have one.

Sergey: "So the moment your camera, you were hooked?"

Sergey: Laughs* "Honestly the first real photo I took with it was not until the first of June...I mean took the camera out of the box and was a little intimated by it so I charged the battery

and took some shots that were greatly underexposed...I felt a little disappointed with it at first but then I went to a museum with two friends and photographed their sneakers. For some reason I still wasn't feeling it. I didn't touch the camera for about two weeks, until I went out again and decided to bring it along for the ride. It was at that moment that I started to really develop a relationship...heh...develop...eh, not funny; ok stick and move, Serg, stick and move. So, as I was saying...I started to enjoy carrying the camera with me and taking photographs of whatever I found interesting. Over the summer, when I worked as a freight elevator operator, I would bring it to work with me everyday. The job was lonesome, but my camera kept company. I recall exploring and photographing every inch of that building...there were even times when I would sneak up on the roof and just be mesmerized by the buildings.

S: "So what kept going? Were you taking any photography classes in college?"

S: "I wanted to so badly...but beginners photography class was an easy A class in college. And any easy A class gets filled up quick. Sure there were some people who genuinely enjoyed the subject, but others took it to bump up their GPA. But looking back at...I'm glad I didn't take the class. I took the time to explore the path of photography they way I wanted to do it. It was healthy outlet for me. Looking back, I think it helped me appreciate life."

S: "What were some things you enjoyed photographing?"

S: "At the time I was photography whatever came to my mind. I didn't really have a subject, I just grabbed my camera wherever I went. If I was going for a hike, I would bring me camera; sometimes I would drive in my car at odd hours...exploring every inch of a small town....I recall photographing some fog on a field at nighttime and then thinking...how creepy would it be if I saw someone out there. So I did it. I set my camera on a timer and ran into the field to take a picture of my thought."

S: "Well I know we are out of time, thank you for answering a few questions. I would love to have you back to continue our discussion."

S: "It was no problem at all..hey I love talking about photography so lets definitely continue this."

Some photos Sergey decided to share with Sergey

first photo I took

sneaking on to rooftops

sometimes I would have to jump from one rooftop to the other

here we are discussing photography at the freight elevator job

another rooftop pic

Erie gave me a chance to get away from the city and explore nature

the shadow figure

Lake Erie was amazing during the summer and winter

i recall chasing this squirrel until it finally told me to bugger off

From SpaceAvalanche.com