Deposed Ukrainian president Yanukovych's nude portrait could use a bit of enhancement

Probably safe for work, since the only potentially objectionable body part is really small. I assume that he didn't actually commission any of the portraits, because they would probably have been better done and more flattering. Donations from adoring fans, maybe?

KIEV: Giant crocodile skins, kitsch ornaments and a giant portrait dressed as a racing driver: just some of the items from deposed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych’s opulent palace that went on display in a new show in Kiev Saturday.

When Yanukovych fled in panic in February amid deadly protests against his rule, thousands of Ukrainian demonstrators overran his luxury private estate some 15 kilometers from Kiev and were shocked by what they saw.

Mansions dripping with gold and marble, a private golf course and a zoo boasting a collection of rare pheasants were among the sights that sparked awe and anger from the protesters in a country where the average monthly salary is around $250.

Now several hundred of the items, ranging from tasteless bling to the downright bizarre, have gone on show at the National Art Museum of Ukraine in central Kiev.

Here's his wife, in baroque (I think) costume:

I have no idea what this is supposed to be:

Larger set of images here (text in Ukranian)

via Daily Star, New Republic.

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Science! What the shape of your nose says about your quality as a mate

Compared to the noses of most other primates, the human nose is quite large and easily broken. Why have we evolved such a risky appendage? According to this study, it might be because of sexual selection — in other words, a nice nose acts as an indicator of an individual’s fitness as a mate. 

To test this hypothesis, the authors photoshopped either a man’s nose or mouth so that it looked slightly asymmetrical in some photos (see figure below) and then asked subjects to rate the photos for attractiveness. 

They found that only the nose manipulations made the faces more or less attractive, with centered nose tips being the most preferred. How this relates to fitness remains unclear, but you should probably get one of the devices shown to the right just in case.  Or this more modern version (below), available at Amazon for $1.74 plus free shipping - an excellent (and really cheap) Mother's Day present, if your mother (or wife, or baby mama) has a less than optimal nose: 

The full article, entitled, The spectacular human nose: an amplifier of individual quality? is available here.  From the abstract:

“Amplifiers are signals that improve the perception of underlying differences in quality. They are cost free and advantageous to high quality individuals, but disadvantageous to low quality individuals, as poor quality is easier perceived because of the amplifier. For an amplifier to evolve, the average fitness benefit to the high quality individuals should be higher than the average cost for the low quality individuals. The human nose is, compared to the nose of most other primates, extraordinary large, fragile and easily broken—especially in male–male interactions. May it have evolved as an amplifier among high quality individuals, allowing easy assessment of individual quality and influencing the perception of attractiveness?

We tested the latter by manipulating the position of the nose tip or, as a control, the mouth in facial pictures and had the pictures rated for attractiveness. Our results show that facial attractiveness failed to be influenced by mouth manipulations. Yet, facial attractiveness increased when the nose tip was artificially centered according to other facial features. Conversely, attractiveness decreased when the nose tip was displaced away from its central position. Our results suggest that our evaluation of attractiveness is clearly sensitive to the centering of the nose tip, possibly because it affects our perception of the face’s symmetry and/or averageness. However, whether such centering is related to individual quality remains unclear.

From the article:

Figure 1: A set of pictures used for attractiveness evaluation.
One set of pictures, in which the right side of the nose and the mouth were used to make the trait symmetric (A) unmanipulated face (B) right symmetric, centered mouth (C) right symmetric mouth, skewed 0.5 cm to the right (D) right symmetric mouth, skewed 1.0 cm to the right (E) right symmetric, centered nose (F) right symmetric nose, nose tip skewed 0.5 cm to the right (G) right symmetric nose, nose tip skewed 1.0 cm to the right.

via Discover.

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Bad news for May Day: Marxist Revolution Delayed Again, Due To Copyright Squabble

Due to a copyright squabble among our would-be overlords:

A radical publishing house, Lawrence & Wishart, which at one time was connected to Great Britain’s Communist Party, is demanding the removal from the Marxists Internet Archive of the Marx-Engels Collected Works — hardcover books that sell for up to $50 a pop…

“What they are doing is actually restricting the masses’ ability to get these writings because they found a potential revenue flow by digitising the works themselves and selling some product to universities,” [said David Walters, a marxists.org volunteer]. “We think it’s the opposite of a Marxist approach.”

More at Ars, via David Thompson.

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Tuesday links

Video of UK tax dollars at work: scientists create 3-D glasses for a praying mantis.

Lingering effects of the Cold War: 25 years later, deer on the Czech/German still avoid the Iron Curtain.

Gallery: 36 Of The Most Ironic Moments Ever.

City Crows Build Nests Out of Coat Hangers.

Animated close-up view of the world at the bottom of the carpet - the world of dust mites. Sort of related - Chernobyl’s Bugs: The Art And Science Of Life After Nuclear Fallout.

Every day of the year has been declared the national day of some food. What's yours? (I was born on National Cashew Day!)

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include an Arabic-speaking chicken, how to drink without getting drunk, and some rather amazing real size comparisons.

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Duke Ellington was born 115 years ago today

When it sounds good, it is good.

~Duke Ellington (program notes to Such Sweet Thunder, 1957)

I have a mistress. Lovers have come and gone, but only my mistress stays. She is beautiful and gentle... She is a swinger. She has grace. To hear her speak, you can't believe your ears. She is ten thousand years old. She is as modern as tomorrow, a brand new woman every day, and as endless as time and mathematics. Living with her is a labyrinth of ramifications. I look forward to her every gesture. Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to none. 

~Ellington (Music is My Mistress, 1973)

Leopold Stokowski: You and I should go to Africa and hear that music.

Duke Ellington: The only thing I could get in Africa that I haven't got now is fever. 

~(quoted in Jewell, Duke) 

The three greatest composers who ever lived are Bach, Delius, and Duke E Ellington. Unfortunately, Bach is dead, Delius is very ill, but we are happy to have with us today the Duke. 

~Percy Grainger* (quoted in Bird, Percy Grainger)

Today is the 115th anniversary of the birth of American jazz pianist and composer Edward Kennedy ("Duke") Ellington (1899-1974) (wiki) (official website) in Washington, DC. One of the most influential figures in the history of jazz, Ellington established his reputation at the Cotton Club in New York City between 1927 and 1932 and toured Europe with his band in the late 1930s, setting an unprecedented standard for jazz performance and improvisation. Over the course of a 50-year career, he wrote more than 6,000 compositions which span the spectrum from jazz to "serious" and sacred music and include such standards as Mood Indigo, Sophisticated Lady, Solitude, and Black, Brown, and Beige. 

Often credited to the Duke but actually a couplet by Irving Mills from one of Ellington's favorite numbers, is a phrase that well describes his philosophy of music-making:

"It don't mean a thing
If it ain't got that swing."

Here he is playing that song:

* N.B. Quirky Australian-born composer Percy Grainger (1882-1961) is remembered largely for popular light-classical works such as Over the Hills and Far Away and Handel in the Strand. His ranking of watery English composer Frederick Delius (1862-1934) - whose music never rises above mezzo forte - with Bach and Duke Ellington boggles the mind.

If you're looking for a good biography of the Duke, I highly recommend Terry Teachout's excellent Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington.   Here's a short (4 minute) bio from the Biography Channel:

And here are the Duke and John Coltrane in Ellington's "In A Sentimental Mood": 

Much of the above is taken from Ed's Quotation of the Day, only available via email.  Leave your email address in the comments if you'd like to be added.

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Animated close-up view of the world at the bottom of the carpet - the world of dust mites

You may never look at a carpet the same way again after watching this animated short entitled Mite: we start in a hotel corridor and work our way down, down, down to the kingdom of the mite where everything in this tiny world becomes monstrous and huge.

By the way - Father's Day is coming, and you can buy a container of 1,000 live predatory mites here - makes a great gift!

via Kuriositas.

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WTF video du jour: The Iron Man 3 striptease

Footage from Iron Man 3:



via Geeks Are Sexy.

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Excellent Big Government as Godzilla cartoon

via Legal Insurrection:

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This is fascinating: 25 years later, deer on the Czech/German still avoid the Iron Curtain

The deer who don't know the Cold War is over: animals still fear crossing the electric fences of the Iron Curtain (wiki) 25 years after they were switched off.

• Seven-year study found red deer on Czech-German border do not cross electrified fence dividing West from communist world taken down in 1991
• None of current deer population were alive when the barrier was up
• Czech and German biologists predict behavior will last for generations

The Iron Curtain fell 25 years ago, but it seems that nobody told the deer.

A new study has found that a quarter of a century on, red deer on the border between the Czech Republic and old West Germany still do not cross the divide.

The red deer were tracked via GPS-equipped

 collars that sent data to computers

After tracking 300 deer, researchers said the animals are intent on maintaining the old boundaries.

One of the scientists involved told the BBC the deer are not ideological, "they are just very conservative in their habits."

During the Cold War, electric fences made the Czech-German boundary impossible to pass.

Czechoslovakia, where the Communists took power in 1948, had three parallel electrified fences, patrolled by heavily armed guards.

Nearly 500 people were killed when they attempted to escape. 

This reconstruction in the Sumava National Park

 in the Czech Republic shows the 

Iron Curtain's electrified fence

The researchers followed the movement of the 300 Czech and German deer via GPS-equipped collars, which sent data to computers.

Biologist Pavel Sustr, who led the seven-year project: "It was fascinating to realise for the first time that anything like that is possible," Mr Sustr said. "But the border still plays a role for them and separates the two populations."

He said that was remarkable because the average life expectancy for deer is 15 years and none living now would have encountered the barrier.

Scientists believe that fawns tend to follow mothers for the first year of their lives and develop a pattern in their movements, so the same area remains the habitat for each new generation.

From Daily Mail and BBC, via Tyler Cohen, who refers to the deer's status quo bias:

Status quo bias is a cognitive bias; a preference for the current state of affairs. The current baseline (or status quo) is taken as a reference point, and any change from that baseline is perceived as a loss. Status quo bias should be distinguished from a rational preference for the status quo ante, as when the current state of affairs is objectively superior to the available alternatives, or when imperfect information is a significant problem. A large body of evidence, however, shows that status quo bias frequently affects human decision-making.

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Flush the lights on with your new hydro-electric toilet

Researchers in South Korea have devised a way to harness the motion of water, including from raindrops or from a flushing toilet, as a sustainable energy source.

Devices that renewably generate electricity in an uncomplicated manner are in demand. Now, Youn Sang Kim and his team at Seoul National University and Korea Electronics Technology Institute (KETI) have adapted a transducer to convert the mechanical energy from water motion into electrical energy.

When dielectric materials are in water, an electrical double layer forms around the outside of the material. Variations between water and a poly (4 vinyl phenol) dielectric layer were shown to induce electric charges at an electrode. The team demonstrated that in such a system the motion from a 30μl water droplet generated enough electricity to power a green LED. 

‘We hope our work can be applied to everyday life,’ says Kim. This is a realistic possibility as the electrodes are flexible and transparent so could coat windows, roofs and even toilet bowls, to generate electricity from raindrops and water flow.

‘The researchers have taken advantage of the contact electrification between a polymer and water droplets in motion to design a simple energy harvester,’ says Andreas Menzel, who develops semiconducting nanodevices at the University of Freiburg in Germany. ‘There is plenty of water motion like rain, sea waves or wastewater, in our environment where these kinds of power generators can find application.’

The team are working on determining the charging mechanism and the detailed operation of their water motion active transducer. Furthermore, they are hoping to enhance the output conversion power of the device.

From Chemistry World, via DVICE.

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Friday links

Panic in Nigerian town after chicken suddenly started speaking in Arabic.

It's Oliver Cromwell's birthday - here's his speech throwing out the corrupt Parliament, with bonus Monty Python.

Haagen-Dazs Launches Tomato and Carrot-Flavored Ice Cream in Japan.

That Time Cleveland Released 1.5 Million Balloons and Chaos Ensued.

Some rather astonishing Real Size Visual Comparisons.

News you can use: how to drink all night without getting drunk.

Pictures of 200 Calories of Various Foods.

ICYMI, Thursday's links are here, and include H.G. Wells' interview of Stalin, the 1976 Spider-man/Planned Parenthood comic, and a calculation of how fast you would have to drive for rain to shatter your windshield.

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