Remnant Knives

Remnant knives, that is, knives formed from scrap steel and old tools have been around for a very long time. Probably in one form or another since as long as people have been forging metals.
On the frontier, where metal was a precious commodity, every scrap was repurposed after its original usability had passed. Leaf springs and files, horseshoes and railroad spikes were common materials.
Most of that steel was untempered and would not hold an edge for very long but it would do.

These days, modern craftsmen such as Logan Pearce, Anton Malakhov, and Danny Robinson have taken this old form and transformed it into art. All use tools that they have found from various sources and re-temper the steel to make it stronger before fashioning these beautiful objects

Most of them are priced on the availability of the original materials and the amount of work put into them and sell for between $35 and $100 with the best/rarest going for up to $400.
Here are some links:

Logan Pearce:  http://shop.pearceknives.com/main.sc

Danny Robinson http://exfilesknives.com

Anton Malakhov (Russian) http://rock47.deviantart.com

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Lovejoy is Visible to the Naked Eye!

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Oh yeah, sorry.

Not that one. This one:

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Comet Lovejoy has become visible to the unaided eye. To see the comet, just go outside an hour or so after sunset and look for a fuzzy patch to the right of Orion’s belt.

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The Sun in X-rays

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The Sun in X-rays from  Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) 
Image Credit: NuSTAR, SDO, NASA

Explanation: Why are the regions above sunspots so hot? Sunspots themselves are a bit cooler than the surrounding solar surface because the magnetic fields that create them reduce convective heating. It is therefore unusual that regions overhead — even much higher up in the Sun’s corona — can be hundreds of times hotter. To help find the cause, NASA directed the Earth-orbiting Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) satellite to point its very sensitive X-ray telescope at the Sun. Featured above is the Sun in ultraviolet light, shown in a red hue as taken by the orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Superimposed in false-colored green and blue is emission above sunspots detected by NuSTAR in different bands of high-energy X-rays, highlighting regions of extremely high temperature. Clues about the Sun’s atmospheric heatingmechanisms may not only come from this initial image, but future NuSTAR images aimed at finding hypothesized nanoflares, brief bursts of energy that may drive the unusual heating.

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Beautiful Phytoplankton Poop

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Gunnison Bay, the north arm of the Great Salt Lake, is colored red like wine. The coloration of the water is caused by pigments such as carotenoids produced by two phytoplankton, the algae Dunaliella Salina and the bacteria Halobacterium.
The surfactants metabolized by the organisms create foam on the surface of the water. It first forms as lines parallel to the waves. The foam is then blown into streaks by the wind. This foam generation occurs more often in the north arm of the lake. Photo taken November 11, 2014 by  Brent Watson for the Earth Science Photo of the Day

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A sea of clouds

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A marine layer, similar to that found in the Bay Area, covers the Adriatic Sea, Monte Conero, Italy.
© Marco Cingolani

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Blombos Cave photo

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A lovely shot of the famed Blombos Cave, where artifacts and signs of abstract human thought dating back 100,000 years have been discovered.

Read more about this spectacular site here:
http://www.academia.edu/5095196/Blombos_Cave_Lair_of_Our_Ancestor_Shellfishers

And here:
http://www.nature.com/news/human-evolution-cultural-roots-1.10025

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From the Fabulous Gays in Apt. 611

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I really can’t think of a way to improve on the comments of blogger Scott Bixby:

“We regret to inform you that you completely failed to use glitter paint and/or sequins, your work looked rushed and your handwriting was positively atrocious,” the residents posted, with the words “glitter paint” rendered in rainbow colors in a useful example of what the slur-scratching douchebag might try next time. “It is for these reasons that we had to remove your work from our door with sandpaper,” the note concluded.

According to the person who posted the comeback on Imgur, a friend of one of “The Gays in Apt. 611” (which would make a fantastic reality show, by the way), the apartment complex later painted over the offending scratches — although nothing will be able to soothe the severe burn to the gay-basher in question.

“Fabulously yours.” The best way to combat the insecurity that drives someone to scrawl hate speech into a stranger’s door is to drown it out with your own confidence. By reclaiming commonly held stereotypes of gay men — top-shelf sartorial sensibility and artistic flair — as tools to take a homophobe down a peg, the couple showed to everyone walking in front of their door that they’re proud of who they are.

And that’s fucking fabulous.

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San Francisco’s Assassination Trail

This is my first Google map, San Francisco’s macabre 2 mi (3.2 km) long  ‘Assassination Trail.’ Starting at the Baker St end of the Panhandle and ending at 7th Ave & Lincoln way it traces a route past places and things associated with 6 people who were murdered in the US.
Follow it at this interactive map:
https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=z-wrLPRhxeo8.ksxxMO5WlnDY

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New non-invasive method can detect Alzheimer’s disease early

This seems to be a major breakthrough.

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This ability to detect the molecular toxins may one day enable scientists to both spot trouble early and better design drugs or therapies to combat and monitor the disease. And, while not the focus of the study, early evidence suggests the MRI probe improves memory, too, by binding to the toxins to render them “handcuffed” to do further damage.

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An Orbital Time Lapse of Earth

(I only lasted about 2 minutes before muting the sound track)
Published this week, the time-lapse shows stunning views of the Earth, sunrises, clouds, lightning, auroras, stars, and the International Space Station.

The video was made by European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst, who stitched together 12,500 images captured during his six-month stay on the International Space Station, which orbits 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the surface.

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