Hexup

Quiet week here, I’ve got some things I’ve been wrestling with, and I’m getting ready to speak at Ignite Waterloo next week about the unsung benefits of charity events. Preparing talks is hard. It was great to take a break and find six awesome human being things that are happening.

Inflicted art

I’m a bit of a Banksy fan because I love the magical properties of graffiti and I actually love inflicted art, which is why I love CAFKA so much. But what do you do when a famous graffiti artist paints up your building and it’s worth actual money? This is an actual problem people in New York are having. Oh, New York.

Going in 21 seconds

Physics is awesome, and has most recently proved that mammals everywhere take about 21 seconds to empty their bladders. They did this by collecting pictures of animals peeing on Youtube. That’s right, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have been carefully reviewing animal peeing videos and doing hard math to demonstrate a law of urination. Somewhere deep inside, my 4th grade self can’t stop giggling.

Sports are not good for you

Football players who have experienced head injuries are already more likely to experience neurodegenerative diseases, but a recent study also shows that even when they’re not suffering from those, their brains are doing strange things. The more hits to the head they’ve taken, the weirder it gets. Remember, exercise is good for you, sports are not.

Quilting gone viral

Technically bacterial, but I couldn’t resist. You know how it is. Artist Anna Dumitriu makes textiles using killer bacteria and antibiotics, giving her work a narrative on the cellular level. From the New Scientist, “Sometimes the bugs themselves mark the cloth; in other cases, such as the Staphylococcus varieties, she uses a patented agar jelly to stain them instead. She stitches them into Victorian-era cotton dresses, silk patchwork quilts and crocheted wool bedcovers, and then kills them using a high-pressure laboratory sterilisation technique.”

Let the light in

Researchers at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw have been successful in purifying water using little more than crystals constructed from common elements and solar radiation. From Science Daily, “In laboratory conditions the process takes only 15-20 minutes and consists in pouring powder with photocatalyst in water. Then, short exposure to solar radiation is sufficient to make disappear water polluting cellulose or phenol derivatives.” What’s more, the powder itself can be filtered off and reused. I’m always skeptical of science journalism, but this could be a big deal.

The power of curiosity

Finally, an awesome video from Hank Green this week. I love the vlogbrothers in no small part because they remind me of all kinds of awesome things that I forget all too often.