Nude #1, 2012. Courtesy of Shinichi Maruyama

New York–based photographer Shinichi Maruyama has a knack for capturing motion on film. His Water Sculpture series completed in 2009, for example, seems to turn dripping, splashing liquid into glass sculpture. But his most recent collection, Nude, has been getting some attention for an entirely different reason.

Nude #2, 2012. Courtesy of Shinichi Maruyama

In a magnificent blur of flesh and beige swirls, his nude subject becomes the opposite of a sculpture: motion embodied. By piecing together uninterrupted individual moments as a series of composite images and then putting them together to form one shot, the artist says, “the resulting image appears to be something entirely different than what actually exists.” According to the artist’s statement, “With regard to these two viewpoints, a connection can be made to a human being’s perception of presence in life.”

Nude #3, 2012. Courtesy of Shinichi Maruyama

Maruyama was born in 1968 in Nagano, Japan, and studied at Chiba University. After graduation, he spent some time traveling and working as a freelance photographer. Maruyama moved to New York City in 2003 and started working on what would become his critically acclaimed Kusho series. His other work has appeared in several museums including Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, as as part of the JapanNYC Festival, and the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts among others.

Nude #4, 2012. Courtesy of Shinichi Maruyama

Nude #4, 2012. Courtesy of Shinichi Maruyama

Nude #6, 2012. Courtesy of Shinichi Maruyama

Nude #8, 2012. Courtesy of Shinichi Maruyama

Nude #9, 2012. Courtesy of Shinichi Maruyama

More of the artist’s work can be found on his website.

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Artist Calvin Seibert has been carving amazing sandcastles on beaches for nearly 30 years. Image courtesy of the artist.

Calvin Seibert likes to play in the sand. He likes it so much that he has been sculpting sandcastles for the last 30 years. Images of his collection of castles and structures from the last six years have received attention on the web—for good reason too: These sculptures are not your average sand castle.

Seibert, 54, spends anywhere from four hours to a couple days on any given sculpture depending on his luck. He uses simple tools to craft the details: two plastic putty knives and a five-gallon bucket to fill with extra sand. Even if he doesn’t get to the beach as often as he’d like—sometimes only once during an entire summer—Seibert says one of the more accessible spots to sculpt is Jones Beach, right off of the train from New York City, where he’s based.

“I’ve spent all day on one castle if there are small enough details in the design. Sometimes I’ll spread it over two days if the castle is still there,” he says. “If it’s not the waves, it’s the children smushing it. If you turn your back on a seagull they will destroy the castle.”

This castle is an example of the Brutalist architectural influences in Seibert’s work. Image courtesy of the artist.

As far as planning goes, Seibert says he mostly goes with the flow. Despite his interest in architecture, there are no blueprints for these castles.

“I pretty much do it on the fly,” he says. “I have some ideas of what I want to accomplish but usually I build off of castles I have built before. If spirals worked last time, I’ll use more in the next sculpture. I don’t have narratives but sometimes I toy with that idea.”

 Seibert says one of his biggest influences is Brutalist architecture, a style that was popular in the 1950s to mid 1970s.

“Architects would design a lot of concrete structures,” he says. “A lot of the great ones don’t exist anymore because people think they’re ugly. I like them because they had this hard-edged quality that I use in my castles.”

Seibert says this castle shows his attention to detail. Image courtesy of the artist.

Seibert built the castle pictured above last summer. Its distinct spirals and mountain in the foreground, he says, make it memorable. “I built this piece over the course of two days,” he says. “I started part of it one day and got lucky that it was still there the next day. It’s a good piece because it shows my attention to detail.”

Image courtesy of the artist.

“I like when they become complexes—these vast structures that appear as if they were built over different reigns,” he says. “As if the Vatican took all the stones from the Colosseum and built the Cathedral. There is a false sort of history in my design.”

Image courtesy of the artist.

“There is one that has kind of a castle next to it.  It’s flat and feels industrial. The distribution of structures next to it speaks to my sense of humor where you’ve got this pretty castle and next to you’ve put a McDonald’s.”

To see more of Seibert’s castles below and on his Flickr page. 

Image courtesy of the artist.

Image courtesy of the artist.

Image courtesy of the artist.

Image courtesy of the artist.

Image courtesy of the artist.

Image courtesy of the artist.

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Competitors wait backstage during the first edition of the European Beard and Moustache championships on September 22, 2012 in Wittersdorf, France. SEBASTIEN BOZON/AFP/GettyImages

Last Saturday, more than 100 mustachioed and bearded participants gathered in Wittersdorf, a town in eastern France, to strut their scruff at the 2012 European World Beard and M0ustache Championships. The competition’s more than 20 categories cover everything from the Amish beard to the Fu Manchu. We’re talking looks inspired by Rip Van Winkle and Curly Q’s, some of which require sticky tape to hold up.

While the competition is unusual, it’s been going on since 1990. The first event was held in a small, German village in the Black Forest: a group called the First Höfener Beard Club thought those with excellent facial hair should have a venue where they could proudly display their whiskers, and the first-ever World Beard and Moustache Championships were born. The second event was held in the neighboring city of Pforzheim in 1995. Ever since, contestants—anyone who can grow facial hair fitting to one of the contest’s categories—get together every 2 years to compete.

A man competes during the first edition of the European Beard and Moustache championships on September 22, 2012 in Wittersdorf, France. SEBASTIEN BOZON/AFP/GettyImages)

Competitors get prepared to go on stage during the first edition of the European Beard and Moustache championships on September 22, 2012 in Wittersdorf, France. SEBASTIEN BOZON/AFP/GettyImages

It wasn’t until 2003 in Carson City, Nevada, that festivities were held in America—something founder and self-appointed Captain of Beard Team USA, Phil Olsen, organized and waited years to see happen.

Olsen’s mustache-mission began in 1999, when he was vacationing in Sweden and heard that the World Championships were being held in the town of Ystad:

“When I wandered in, I was immediately enthralled by the spectacle I had never seen before or imagined existed. It was exciting to see that people were celebrating facial hair. In the states at the time, beards and sideburns were not especially popular and were kinda for hippies, kooks and communists,” Olsen says. “These guys took their facial hair seriously and had made bearding not only into a sport but also an art.”

Captain of Beard Team USA, Phil Olsen. Image courtesy of Court Leve.

When Olsen returned from his trip that year, he realized that this was a “sport” Americans should be participating in.

“It was overwhelming to me that this international event was going on and America was underrepresented,” he says. “I immediately realized what potential there was for this event to become a phenomenon beyond the group of people who were there and it became my mission.”

Competitors wait backstage during the first edition of the European Beard and Moustache championships on September 22, 2012, in Wittersdorf, France. SEBASTIEN BOZON/AFP/GettyImages

A competitor gets prepared during the first edition of the European Beard and Moustache championships on September 22, 2012 in Wittersdorf, France. SEBASTIEN BOZON/AFP/GettyImages

Germany’s Gerhard Knapp prepares ahead of the World Beard and Moustache Championships in the northern city of Trondheim, on May 15, 2011. JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP/Getty Images

Historically, Olsen says, the event is German-dominated. There are between 10 and 12 beard clubs in that region alone and most of them are organized through the Association of German Beard Clubs (VDB). Until America got involved in 2003, members of the VDB always had the biggest representation.

“It’s crazy what people can do with their facial hair if they set out to do something with it,” he says. “America established itself as the premier power in world bearding at the 2009 event in Anchorage, but I have to say the Germans are still leaders in the freestyle category. It’s a whole art form these guys invented. There are a lot of Americans who are trying to discover their secrets, but the Germans are still the best at it no doubt.”

A competitor waits backstage during the first edition of the European Beard and Moustache championships on September 22, 2012 in Wittersdorf, France. SEBASTIEN BOZON/AFP/GettyImages

The next big beard-off will take place on a national level in downtown Las Vegas this November. So far, there are 130 competitors signed up from 34 of the 50 states, Olsen says. The winners of this competition may move on to next year’s World Championships which will take place on November 2, 2013, in Leinfelden-Echterdingen, Germany.

A fire tornado? If you had asked Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton back in ’96 if that could happen, they’d probably have said: “When cows fly.” But filmmaker Chris Tangey, the man who captured a 100-foot-high twister of fire on tape leaving a path of destruction across the Australian outback on Tuesday, will tell you otherwise.

The rare footage of the whirlwind has spread like—ahem—wildfire on YouTube and other media outlets this week. In case you missed it, the report from a local news station:

According to the video, the last rainfall in Alice Springs, Australia, where the video was taken, was April 24. Combine that with the build up of dry, old growth and you’ve got the perfect conditions for a tornado of this kind. “It was a dance of giants in front of me,” Tangey says in the video, “I had never seen anything like it.”

Tangey was scouting movie locations in the Northern territory when he spotted the swirl of fire, the Australian Times reports:

“It sounded like a jet fighter going by, yet there wasn’t a breath of wind where we were,” Mr Tangey told the Northern Territory News.

“You would have paid $1000 a head if you knew it was about to happen.”

The column of fire raged for about 40 minutes, Tangey said.

To call the event a “fire tornado” may be a misnomer, however. According to Mark Wysocki, New York’s state climatologist and a professor of atmospheric sciences at Cornell University, the columns of dust are more similar to a dust devil.  The Huffington Post reports:

“‘I would just call them fire vortices but that doesn’t sound so sexy to the public, so I would call them fire devils,’” he told Life’s Little Mysteries.

Like the dust devils that spring up on clear, sunny days in the deserts of the Southwest, a fire devil is birthed when a disproportionately hot patch of ground sends up a plume of heated air. But while dust devils find their heat source in the sun, fire devils arise from hot spots in preexisting wildfires.”

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This 1,600-year-old, 1.5-inch-by-3-inch, scrap of paper may be the only known text to depict a married Jesus. Image courtesy of Karen King.

Today, in Rome, researcher Karen King announced a discovery of a 1600-year old piece of papyrus, no bigger than an ATM card, that will likely shake up the world of biblical scholarship.

Smithsonian magazine reporter Ariel Sabar has been covering the story behind the scenes for weeks, tracing King’s steps from when a suspicious email hit her inbox to the nerve-wracking moment when she thought the entire presentation would fall apart. When Karen L. King, the Hollis professor of divinity, the oldest endowed chair in the United States and one of the most prestigious positions in religious studies, first translated the Egyptian language of Coptic on the scrap of paper, a few lines jumped out:

The fragment’s 33 words, scattered across 14 incomplete lines, leave a good deal to interpretation. But in King’s analysis, and as she argues in a forthcoming article in the Harvard Theological Review, the ‘wife’ Jesus refers to is probably Mary Magdalene, and Jesus appears to be defending her against someone, perhaps one of the male disciples.

‘She will be able to be my disciple,’ Jesus replies. Then, two lines later, he says: ‘I dwell with her.’

The papyrus was a stunner: the first and only known text from antiquity to depict a married Jesus.

But King is quick to pump the brakes on assigning any biographical importance to these words—the text was most likely written in Greek a century or so after Jesus’ crucifixion before being copied into Coptic a few centuries later. The author is unknown. King will also be the first to admit that her theories about the text’s meaning are based on the assumption of the document’s authenticity—something she is sure will be a hot topic of debate in the coming months. No chemical analysis has been run on the fragment and until then, King’s article, provocatively titled, “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife,” will operate under the assumption that the document is unaltered and genuine.

What’s most important about this discovery, King says, is not whether the historical Jesus was actually married, but what it tells us about early groups of Christians:

What it does seem to reveal is more subtle and complex: that some group of early Christians drew spiritual strength from portraying the man whose teachings they followed as having a wife. And not just any wife, but possibly Mary Magdalene, the most-mentioned woman in the New Testament besides Jesus’ mother.

The questions a text like this raise are where the revelation lies: Why is it that only the literature that said he was celibate survived?  Were texts written in Coptic by early Christians whose views had become less popular lost in the shuffle or were they silenced? And how does this factor into longstanding Christian debates about marriage and sexuality? The article continues:

“Though King makes no claims for the value of the ‘Gospel of Jesus’s Wife’ as, well, a marriage certificate, she says it  ‘puts into greater question the assumption that Jesus wasn’t married,’ she told [Sabar]. It casts doubt ‘on the whole Catholic claim of a celibate priesthood based on Jesus’ celibacy. They always say, ‘This is the tradition, this is the tradition.’ Now we see that this alternative tradition has been silenced.”

Read more from Smithsonian’s exclusive coverage: “The Inside Story of the Controversial New Text About Jesus“

Will the furry beasts roam the earth once more? Photo: Ag.Ent.

Last week, 16 to 20 feet below the frozen earth, scientists discovered the remains of a woolly mammoth in Yakutia region on Russia’s Arctic coast. The specimen, which includes fur and bone marrow, has some scientists thinking there may be a mammoth clone in the cards.

If living cells preserved by the Siberian permafrost are found, it may be possible for scientists to clone the beast. Reuters reports:

“‘All we need for cloning is one living cell, which means it can reproduce autonomously. Then it will be no problem for us to multiply them to tens of thousands cells,’ said Semyon Grigoryev, a professor at North-East Federal University (NEFU).”

While they have found nuclei “intact”—complete with a whole nucleus—the success of this Jurassic Park-esque endeavor is unlikely, Grigoryev says. Only if the remains stayed at a stable temperature between  28 and -4 Fahrenheit could any cell have survived over hundreds of thousands of years.

South Korean scientist Hwang Woo Suk will take on the task of determining whether the discovered cells are, in fact, clonable. Though Mr. Hwang’s ’breakthrough’ record with Sooam Biotech is fuzzy, in March, the scientist signed an agreement with Russia’s NEFU hoping to produce a living mammoth within six years.

Experts from the Russian Academy of Science doubt the likelihood of cloning the mammoth. In fact, some argue the word “cloning” may not even be an accurate term for the procedure scientists hope to carryout. Russia Today explains:

“Agadzhanyan [a Russian biologist] also said that “cloning” isn’t a proper term to use when speaking about bringing mammoths back to life.

Cloning is reconstructing an organism from a somatic cell, while what scientists want to do with mammoths is to add mammoth DNA to an elephant’s egg cell—a completely different procedure, he explained.”

Five years ago,  in the same region, a team discovered a 40,000-year-old  “pickled” female baby woolly mammoth, endearingly known as Lyuba by scientists. Though, the find was both astonishing and cute (kind of), the baby mammoth did not contain living cells—though her skin and organs were intact. National Geographic went into detail about Lyuba’s death and her state of preservation in this interactive CT scan.

Scientists have made several attempts at cloning the furry beasts since the 1990s, none of which have been successful.  Though, if you ask, Dr. Ian Malcolm, that may be a good thing.

Update: This post originally said that Hwang Woo Suk performed the first commercial cloning of a dog. It was a former colleague, Lee Byeong-chun, who was responsible. We regret the error.

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Photo: justinm

Nearly 4 million people from around the world stay in Yosemite National Park each year, and seventy percent of those visitors stake tents in Yosemite Valley, where Curry Village, a lovely hamlet of “Signature” tents, is located. Friday, the village became less appealing for travelers when park officials released a harrowing statement: Up to 10,000 people who stayed in Yosemite National Park between June and August may have been exposed to a deadly, mouse-borne hantavirus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the virus was most likely first transmitted in 91 of the National Park’s tent-style cabins in the Curry Village camping area, where officials found an infestation of deer mice, carriers of the disease. The virus kills one-third of the people it infects. What’s worse: There is no cure.

According to Reuters, U.S. health officials have sounded the alarm worldwide—citizens from 39 countries who stayed in Yosemite’s tent cabins may have been exposed to the rare and deadly disease:

“Four of those known to be infected at Yosemite this summer slept in the insulated tent cabins. One slept elsewhere in Curry Village, located in a valley beneath the iconic Half Dome rock formation, and the sixth case remains under investigation.”

Campers who stayed in the tents this summer risk developing the hantavirus in the next six weeks, the CDC says. The virus begins its work with flu-like symptoms, including headache, fever, muscle aches, shortness of breath and cough, all of which can lead to severe breathing difficulties, then death. Five hundred eighty-seven cases were diagnosed nationwide from 1993 and 2011, meaning thirty-six percent of reported cases are fatal.

There is some hope if the symptoms are detected early enough. Through blood tests, and proper treatment, victims may survive, reports Reuters:

“Early medical attention and diagnosis of hantavirus are critical,” Yosemite superintendent Don Neubacher said in a statement. “We urge anyone who may have been exposed to the infection to see their doctor at the first sign of symptoms and to advise them of the potential of hantavirus.”

The park set up an emergency phone line Tuesday that drew 900 calls its first day, Yosemite spokeswoman Kari Cobb said. The LA Times reports:

“The final guests were moved from the cabins Tuesday, Gediman said. By Friday, all tents had been cleaned and retrofitted to repair gaps in the walls that allowed virus-carrying deer mice to get inside.

Officials are still waiting to see if the efforts are successful at keeping the mice out — if not, Gediman said, the cabins could be moved or closed permanently.”

Yosemite National Park Public Health Service officers are conducting rodent surveys, monitoring deer mouse abundance and virus activity in the parks mouse populations. Call the CDC’s hotline number (404-639-1510) for information about HPS or visit their Hantavirus website.

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George Costanza may never walk into a beauty parlor and say “Give me the Larry Fine!” but, if you ask LA based commercial photographer Tim Tadder, bald is beautiful. Or, at least his collection of images called “Water Wigs,” that has made its way around the web, makes it so.

The collection captures men with receding hairlines with mohawks, halos and top hats made out of water—literally. Tadder describes the idea behind the images he created using laser and sound triggers:

“We found a bunch of awesome bald men and hurled water balloons at their heads, to capture the explosion of water at various intervals. The result a new head of of water hair! Our favorites are “The Don King,” “The Conquistador,” “The Jesus” and “The Friar.”

So if these aqua-wigs aren’t giving Rogaine a run for their money, why do it? In an interview with Wired, Tadder, who has created highly-stylized images for big-name brands like Adidas, Budweiser and Gatorade, says he “got tired of repeating the same thing all the time,” that he “wanted to find a visual concept that [he'd] never seen before.” He was right—most of us hadn’t seen it before either. And it’s probably because of  how technical the process was from idea to final product. Wired explains:

To do this, however, he had to make his studio completely dark and freeze the action with a high-speed flash firing at one ten-thousandth of a second. Not surprisingly, it took a while to get things right.

“You can only throw a water balloon at [a model's] head so many times,” he says.

To make it work, Tadder had an assistant up on a ladder with the balloon in hand. The assistant would then shine a flashlight on the model’s head, figure out their aim, turn the flashlight off and get ready to throw.

The team used skinny balloons for the odder shapes, like “The Jesus” but the task was two fold: In addition to popping the balloon off-camera, members of the team would also need to time the explosion of several other water balloons in the frame.

Despite all of this time playing with water (He’s got another series titled Fish Heads), Tadder, explains on his website, he still finds time to raise his kids and be a good husband—in between Baltimore Ravens football games that is. In case you were wondering if Tadder is bald too, the Huffington Post found out that answer and few others for you:

HP: Out of curiosity, are you bald?

TT: I am not bald, but thought of shaving my head for a self portrait. I did participate but I am far too hairy!

HP: Who would be your dream bald icon to hit with a water balloon?

TT: Natalie Portman when she was bald, or George Foreman, cause he would be hysterical. All the subjects have to be good sports and great with expression!

This afternoon at 12:41 p.m. EST, a package that was sealed in 1912 in a small town in central Norway, was finally opened after 100 years of mystery during a ceremony to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Kringen. The parcel, which read, “May be opened in 2012,” was left in the council’s care by Johan Nygaard, Otta‘s first mayor, in 1920 and no one knew what it contained until today.

So what’s in the package?

Another package.

And within the package within the package, are several letters, newspaper clippings and documents. Some of the papers are dated “1919”, which is baffling as the package was supposedly sealed in 1912. As Kjell Voldheim, who works at Gudbrandsdal museum where the parcel has been held, sifted through the delicate papers, a translator narrated:

 ”There are telegrams from the big celebration in 1912. It is sealed but we will have to wait for it “

And wait we did.

If you missed the unveiling of the package’s contents—which was both elaborate and suspenseful—we thought it might be nice to hit the highlights in the following play-by-play:

12:01 p.m.: As commentators whisper, a murmur falls among the crowd. The lighting dims to a dark blue.

12:03 p.m.: A lady with a tiara is introduced. Lacking an English translation at this moment, we gather she is a princess and most likely very important.

12:05 p.m.: A costumed soloist sings a cappella. The eerie tune may represent the mysterious contents of the package.

12:15-12:30 p.m.: Instruments are played in a series of movements, which may or may not have something to do with the Battle of Kringen.

12:32 p.m.: One of the emcees dressed in stockings and other “historical” garb, jokingly describes himself as “world famous in Otta, Norway.” He reveals that this is the moment “some of us have all been waiting for.”

12:35 p.m.: Emcee reminds us that this moment, is actually the one we’ve been waiting for. Otta’s current mayor has the honor of cutting the “strapping on the package and the ropes that have been sealed for 100 years.”

12:41 p.m.: Crowd is silent; Voldheim reveals that the package is actually a package within a package.

12:42 p.m.: Within the package in a package is a letter wrapped in fabric that reads “From the King” in Norwegian.

12:45 p.m.: After much shuffling of newspaper clippings, letters, and documents, Voldheim says almost in exasperation: “Oye yoy yoy.”

After the historians decipher what is written on the various letters and clippings a more specific summary will be offered. Watch the rest of the live coverage on Verdens Gang Online.

——————————————–

In 1912 in a small town in central Norway, Johan Nygaard, Otta‘s first mayor, scribbled a note on a package. In a lovely cursive scrawl he wrote the words: “May be opened in 2012.”

Tomorrow, a roughly 7-pound, secret parcel will finally be opened after 100 years of quiet existence. Not one person alive knows what’s inside—though some have their guesses. Kjell Voldheim who works at Gudbrandsdal museum in the Norwegian county of Oppland where the package is held, is one of two people who will get to open it. He shared his theories on what’s inside with the Norwegian newspaper, VG Nett:

“We have no idea what’s in it! It is incredibly exciting! There may be historical documents in it. Or maybe it’s “The Blue Star” diamond from the Titanic, which sank in 1912″

Voldheim asks a group of children what they think in the video embedded above. Their answers, as you might expect, are as good as ours:

“A knife that’s packed inside a large piece of paper”

“An ancient scripture”

“Imagine if it is a pea!”

The package has made it through two world wars and exchanged many hands in the last century moving from vaults to archives to the museum. It was practically forgotten and nearly thrown away in the ’50s, during a renovation at the local council hall, according to the Daily Mail. “100 years is a long time,” Voldheim says in the video, referring to its wayward journey to the museum where it lives today. Somehow, the secret, left in the council’s care by Nygaard since 1920, has stayed safe, whatever it is.

The opening ceremony will be broadcast live at 7 p.m. GMT 4 p.m. GMT (12 p.m. EST) on Verdens Gang Online.

According to the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, after parcel post service was introduced in 1913, at least two children were sent by the service—literally. Stamps were placed onto their clothing and they were shipped off to their final destination. Talk about precious cargo!

A New York Times article from 1913 includes a letter to the Post Office asking whether or not they could send an infant through the mail. And, if permitted to do so, how they might go about “wrapping so it (baby) would comply with regulations.” The Post Master General issued a regulation soon after forbidding the sending of children via mail.

But check out the similarities to the The Atlantic‘s July/August issue cover story, “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All,” which has taken the Internet by storm, full of both cheers of agreement and rebuttals. The Associated Press reports that the article attracted more visitors to the magazine’s site in a 24-hour period than any magazine story the site has ever published.

As we indicated to the Atlantic over Twitter, we caught them red handed.

Photo via the Postal Museum’s Flickr page as seen on Retronaut.