Figurative sculptor Gabriel Rufete works with a number of different materials to create delicate, fractured, and often incomplete interpretations of the human form. Among my favorite pieces are his works with welded euro cent pieces. See more on his website. (thnx, perez)

Carved by one Gig Goldstein, this Giger-inspired piece is wickedly cool.  If you got a couple turntables shaped like the eggs, with little facehuggers as the “discs” or “albums” or whatever, you’d have…well you’d have two-fifths of a gothed-out nineties rap-rock group, I guess.  Or you could just hang this on your wall.

[Via Geekologie]

Carved by one Gig Goldstein, this Giger-inspired piece is wickedly cool.  If you got a couple turntables shaped like the eggs, with little facehuggers as the “discs” or “albums” or...

WANT!!!

WANT!

Fine purveyors of GEEK WEAR

Artist Candy Chang has teamed up with the Chicago Urban Art Society and youth-run art gallery Good News Only to bring her interactive public art project Before I Die (previously) to various Chicago neighborhoods. Passersby are confronted with a spray painted canvas bearing the repeated prompt “Before I die…” and can use provided chalk to complete the sentence, creating a public space for spontaneously shared dreams, hopes, fears and aspirations. The piece was installed yesterday in Edgewater and will be making stops in Pilsen, Wicker Park, Chinatown and elsewhere. You can follow the works progress at Before I Die Chi, and if you have a site where the piece can be installed you should get in touch.

A British scientist has become the first human to be infected with a computer virus.

Dr Mark Gasson, a cybernetics expert at the University of Reading, has had a computer chip implanted in his hand.

The chip is programmed to open security doors to his lab - and ensure only he is able to switch on and use his mobile phone.

But Dr Gasson deliberately infected the chip with a computer virus, which was then automatically transmitted to affect to the lab security system.

"Once the system is infected, anybody accessing the building with their passcard would be infected too," he told Sky News.

The virus on his chip is benign. But malicious computer code could give criminals access to a building.

Dr Gasson says his experiment also exposes the vulnerability of chips now routinely implanted in patients.

Heart pacemakers contain mini-computers that control the heartbeat, and communicate with doctors via a special reader held against the skin.

But if a virus was transmitted to the device which stopped it working properly, the consequences for the patient could be fatal.

"The devices will have to start to use security encryption," said Dr Gasson.

"Medical devices should have some kind of password protection as well. They're basic security precautions. It's surprising these devices don't have them already."

One day in 1918, a supply ship, the S.S. Makambo from Britain, ran aground at Lord Howe Island and had to be evacuated. One passenger drowned. The rest were put ashore. It took nine days to repair the Makambo, and during that time, some black rats managed to get from the ship to the island, where they instantly discovered a delicious new rat food: giant stick insects. Two years later, the rats were everywhere and the tree lobsters were gone.