Just in case you thought the North Korean outpouring of grief after the death of the Dear Leader was something new, heres some pictures of the chinese mourning Mao Zedong’s death in 1976 (via ChinaSmack) …

There are untold creatures we, as a species, are destroying before ever having had the chance to know… some of them in the most unlikely of places… This story from Nat Geo this week is a case in point:

An unnamed new species of Yeti crab swarms near hot, mineral-rich hydrothermal vents in the oceans off Antarctica—a newfound “lost world” of strange deep-sea species.

“A camera-equipped submersible robot filmed species such as barnacles, crabs, anemones, and even an octopus, all of which are mostly colorless and live in utter darkness at depths of 7,875 feet (2,400 meters), according to a new study.

About 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) east of the southern tip of South America, “this is a new province of deep-sea life, something like a new continent, and it’s a place we’ve been trying to [reach] for a long time,” said study co-author Jon Copley, a marine biologist at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom.

“It harbors some of the lushest abundance of life I have ever seen in the deep ocean,” he said.

An abundance of life in supposedly the most inhospitable of places! In utter darkness, at incredible pressures andfacing intense heat gusts!

Scientists are discovering that the ocean floor may teem with the same variety and diversity of life as a tropical rainforest!

As seen in this startling report (via Wired)  which shows how a mere handful of seafloor mud may contain as many species as are found in a square meter of tropical rainforest. The fantastic assemblage seen above was gathered from a single scoop of mud, about 2 inches deep and 5 inches across.

“It’s easy, when you get away from the coast, to think of the oceans as a homogeneous blue. It’s a lot more complex than that,” said biologist Craig McClain of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center.

McClain and colleagues collected the mud while surveying distributions of seafloor organisms, the lives of which are shaped by “marine snow” — a slow, steady, shower of organic particles that drift down from high in the water column.

Like terrestrial snow, the deep-sea-life-sustaining version doesn’t collect uniformly but gathers in drifts and eddies. In a paper published last year in Marine Ecology, McClain and others showed that, depending on snowfall, seafloor communities could vary wildly in the space of a few feet. In terrestrial terms, it was a bit like finding deserts and swamps separated by footsteps.

In a December Proceedings of the Royal Society B paper, the researchers again looked at seafloor distributions — but this time, rather than surveying one small seabed plot, they took samples from across the Atlantic Ocean.

They found large-scale, trans-Atlantic patterns, somewhat reminiscent of the vast and elegant patterns seen in blooming plankton, but not measured before on seafloors.

“The oceans are not as uniform as we have a tendency to think of them,” said McClain. “When you actually look at the ocean, you find that it’s a mosaic.”

On the other side of the globe….this video from Miljøstatus i Norge (State of the Environment Norway) gives you a front row seat to the impact of climate change on arctic sea ice.

So, in the same week, scientists at one pole are discovering new life forms, while at the other, another group are discovering just how quickly we are eradicating the chance of their survival.

To learn more about climate change or to help take action, click here:

During the month of June 2009, The Art of Manliness ran a series of posts called “30 Days to a Better Man.” Each day they created a task for Art of Manliness readers to complete that would help them improve in different facets of their lives such as relationships, fitness and health, career, and personal finances.

You may have missed the first round, but there’s no reason not to give the 30 day challenge a bash right now at the start of 2012. Below, to help you on your quest, is a summary of the entire month’s tasks, with links to each individual day.

Day 1: Define Your Core Values

Day 2: Shine Your Shoes

Day 3: Find a Mentor

Day 4: Increase Your Testosterone

Day 5: Cultivate Your Gratitude

Day 6: Update Your Resume

Day 7: Reconnect with an Old Friend

Day 8: Start a Journal

Day 9: Take a Woman on a Date

Day 10: Memorize “If”

Day 11: Give Yourself a Testicular Exam

Day 12: Create Your Bucket List

Day 13: Declutter Your Life

Day 14: Write a Letter to Your Father

Day 15: Make a Meal

Day 16: Create a Budget

Day 17: Talk to 3 Strangers

Day 18: Find Your N.U.T.s

Day 19: Schedule a Physical Exam

Day 20: Perform Service

Day 21: Write Your Own Eulogy

Day 22: Improve Your Posture

Day 23: Learn a Manual Skill

Day 24: Play!

Day 25: Start a Debt Reduction Plan

Day 26: Take the Marine Corps Fitness Test

Day 27: Start a Book

Day 28: Write a Love Letter

Day 29: Conquer a Fear

Day 30: Get a Straight Razor Shave

(via The Art of Manliness)

2012 is three days old and I’m already drooling over this year’s upcoming releases. A lot of these are still up in the air: at this time last year, Watch the Throne was allegedly dropping in February. But my fingers are still crossed for these, the most anticipated albums of 2012. I will gladly die in the Mayan apocalypse if I finally get to hear D’Angelo’s follow-up to Voodoo.

1. Leonard Cohen, Old Ideas (January 31)

Seventy-seven-year-old Leonard Cohen might have a few years on Tom Waits in their battle for the title of “Most Grizzled Literate Old Man Chronicling the Human Condition,” but they’re not weighing on him at all. Some of the songs on Old Ideas (his first album since 2004′s Dear Heather) have been circulating in Cohen’s repertoire since his 2008 comeback tour, and the title track has been online for a while — it’s vintage Cohen, featuring his velvet-grit baritone and stirring imagery.

2. Sleigh Bells, Reign of Terror (February 14)

Sleigh Bells were either awesome or grating in 2011, depending on your particular taste and how much your could stand their “BOOM BOOM *girl vocals* SUPER LOUD GUITAR” formula. But there’s no denying their impact, and Reign of Terror is definitively one of the most anticipated sophomore efforts of 2012. The band will be touring with “hipster black metal” (an obnoxious if semi-accurate term) band Liturgy and Diplo in Florida in support of the album. Stock up on earplugs now.

3. Dr. Dog, Be the Void (February 7)

Dr. Dog have been churning out solid, ’60s-sounding indie rock since 1999, and though they’re not exactly the most avant-garde or extreme band making the rounds, they’ve steadily racked up a pretty great discography in that time. (My personal favorite is 2010′s Shame, Shame.) New tracks “Control Yourself” and “Warrior Man” show that the band’s quirky, hooky sensibilities are still firmly in place.

4. The Magnetic Fields, Love at the Bottom of the Sea (March 6)

The Magnetic Fields’ ambitious 69 Love Songs was followed by a “no-synth” trilogy; Love at the Bottom of the Sea promises to reunite Stephin Merritt’s acerbic baritone with any number of squalling electronic noises. With song titles like “I’ve Run Away to Join the Fairies” and “All She Cares About is Mariachi,” Love at the Bottom of the Sea will at least maintain the streak of romantic absurdism that first brought the band attention.

5. The Shins, Port of Morrow (March)

The first Shins album in five years, Port of Morrow should mark a return to form for Epileptic Natalie Portman’s favorite band from that movie about Jersey. Leader James Mercer spent recent years collaborating with Danger Mouse under the Broken Bells name, and it’ll be interesting to see how that collaboration may have affected his main band. Not that 2007′sWincing the Night Away was a departure, exactly, but I’m excited to hear what five years off did for The Shins.

6. Tyler, the Creator, Wolf (May)

Tyler has stated that Wolf will be a departure from the uber-dark violence, misogyny, and homophobia that characterized Goblin. ”Talking about rape and cutting bodies up, it just doesn’t interest me anymore… What interests me is making weird hippie music for people to get high to. With Wolf, I’ll brag a little more, talk about money and buying shit. But not like any other rapper — I’ll be a smart-ass about it… People who want the first album again, I can’t do that.” It’ll be interesting to see if Wolf will alienate Tyler’s fans, or earn him some new ones.

 

7. Santigold, Master of My Make Believe (Spring)

Santigold’s first album, Santogold (the name change was precipitated by a lawsuit) dropped in 2008 and quickly developed a lot of buzz over skittering, danceable tracks like “L.E.S. Artistes” and “Creator.” She’s since spent time collaborating with everyone from GZA to Julian Casablancas, and hopefully that wildly eclectic spirit will continue to animate her long-awaited follow-up. (And maybe let her finally shake all those pesky M.I.A. comparisons.)

 

8. D’Angelo, James River (TBA)

I am so fucking excited about this album it makes me want to stand naked on my specially-constructed rotating platform and sing “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” for days. According to Questlove, the long-awaited follow-up to D’Angelo’s modern-soul masterpiece Voodoo is “99% done.” It’s doubtful that James River will live up to the backstory surrounding Voodoo and D’Angelo’s subsequent meltdown, but man, I hope it will. D’Angelo deserves it. We all deserve it.

 

9. MGMT, MGMT (TBA)

Wesleyan University’s favorite alumni (sorry, Michael Bay) took a slight hit with their sophomore release, Congratulations, though nothing could have matched the hype that surrounded their debut, Oracular Spectacular. Founder Benjamin Goldwasser hinted at songs “that can easily be extended or have sections that could turn into a really trance-y, repetitive thing live” in an interview, but that was in November of 2010, so who the hell knows what they’ve been at in the interim. Personally, I’m hoping for a sequel to Congratulations’ hyper-caffeinated “Brian Eno.” Maybe “Robert Fripp?”

 

10. The Mars Volta, TBA (TBA)

After their disappointing “acoustic” album, Octahedron, the Mars Volta scrapped the album they’d already recorded, and leader Omar Rodriguez-Lopez backed away from what he called his “benign dictator” approach to composition and moved towards a more collaborative approach. Vocalist/spaz Cedric Bixler-Zavala took to his surreal YouTube channel last year to report the following on the sixth album: “Sorry no Spanish on this record, no Zeppelinesque voyages, no Santana-like flourishes or Vishnu accuasations. No congas, no Hammond organ stabs, no thirty-minute songs, no drums that sounds like mosquitos buzzing in your ear. Just future punk. That’s the only way to describe it from my point of view.” Got that?

(BY ALEX HEIGL via Nerve)

Turkish Red Lentil Soup

Serves 6

Lentil soup, made with the bright pink legumes, is on many menus in Turkey. Sometimes it’s a thin broth, sometimes thick, often a little hot, and very aromatic. The soup can be served with a swirl of dried mint sauteed in butter or topped with Turkish red peppers (which are smokier and more intense than crushed red pepper). It’s a vegetarian bowl, quite nutritious, that begins with dried chickpeas, whose texture adds a pleasing crunch to the pureed soup. Turkish cooks use rice or bulgur to thicken the mixture, and mint they dry because it grows wild. Here the soup is thickened with long-grain white rice and garnished with fresh mint and more red peppers (called Maras or Urfa peppers at Formaggio Kitchen, 617-354-4750).

1/2 cup chickpeas, soaked overnight

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 large onion, finely chopped

2 stalks celery, finely chopped

1 jalapeno or other hot pepper, seeded and chopped

Salt, to taste

1 tablespoon ground cumin

1 tablespoon paprika

1/2 teaspoon Turkish red peppers or crushed red pepper, or to taste

2 cups dried red lentils

1/4 cup long-grain white rice

2 1/2 quarts water

1/4 cup chopped fresh mint (for garnish)

Extra Turkish red peppers or crushed red pepper (for sprinkling)

1. Drain the chickpeas and set them aside.

2. In a soup pot, heat the oil. When it is hot, add the onion and celery. Cook, stirring often, for 8 minutes. Add the jalapeno and salt. Continue cooking, stirring often, for 2 minutes more.

3. Add the cumin, paprika, and red pepper. Cook, stirring, for 1 minute or until the spices are aromatic. Add the chickpeas, lentils, and rice. Cook, stirring, for 30 seconds or until they are coated with spices.

4. Add the water and bring to a boil. Stir in the foam on the surface of the liquid. Lower the heat, cover the pot, and simmer for 30 minutes or until the chickpeas are tender and the lentils have almost turned into a puree.

5. Ladle into bowls. Garnish with fresh mint and red pepper.

(via Boston Globe)

Experimental and slightly mental. The D*Face spray paint skateboard interface. What better way to paint the pool then letting everyone get involved? With high-tech remotely controlled spray can apparatus mounted to the underside of skateboards…every line a skater took became the paint job of the pool.

Some legends never die. The computer Generation X’ers grew up using is going to be reborn!”Commodore is making a Windows PC that fits inside a boxy beige shell that looks exactly like its original C64.” Obviously, its gonna be a whole lot more powerful and what not, but its major draw is always gonna be it’s nostalgic feel. Hipsters worldwide just creamed their pants.

via BBC News – Classic Commodore 64 lives again.