techyum ::

I just got an email from a friend in LA who is part of the ongoing photo show Automolove, depicting cars and babes at Antebellum (weird popup warning). On a whim I looked up a show participant, the auto-obsessed Brett Barris (sound alert). In his gallery there are several dozen gems, especially the incredible Kargoyle. It’s a hearse that’s been chopped, lowered, painted purple, and most appropriately, it was given suicide doors. So very cool. If you cruise around Barris’ site check out some of the weirder cars, and if you’re like me, you’ll enjoy the old models as much as the — models. Like the one below.

I sincerely hope that the bacon bra does not cause cancer, no matter how much nibbling one does. Mystery of the meat-eaters’ molecule explores the recent revelation that humans, unlike all other primates, do not produce the molecule Neu5Gc and that when we eat certain animal products, our bodies attack the introduction of the molecule (in the meat) like it’s an invader. Not good. Check it out:

The story began in 1984, when Prof Varki was working at the University of California, San Diego. When treating a woman with bone-marrow failure, he injected her with horse serum. The treatment carried the risk of a side effect called “serum sickness”, in which the patient’s immune system launches an attack on a molecule present in the serum called Neu5Gc.
Sure enough, her skin erupted with an itchy red rash. Investigating further, Prof Varki found that Neu5Gc was foreign to humans, even though we carry a very similar version of the same molecule – which may be one reason why animal-to-human organ and tissue transplants do not work well.
But in recent years, he has come to believe that the implications of this molecular difference are much wider. He has built up a range of evidence that potentially links Neu5Gc, a so-called sialic acid, to chronic disease.
This is because the animal version is absorbed by humans as a result of eating red meat and milk products, and there is evidence that the body views it as an invader.
Eating these foods could trigger inflammation and, over the long term, heart disease, certain cancers and auto-immune illnesses. Prof Varki stresses, however, that “we have not proven any link to disease, just suggested that it is something to explore”.
This sialic acid plays a number of roles: it helps us recognise cells and helps cells stick together (this stickiness is also exploited by microbes, which latch on to the sugary molecule to invade our cells). It also helps regulate our immune response, which may influence the progression of diseases and even play a part in human evolution. (…read more. Thanks, Eve!)

I insist that you click right over to the exclusive Engadget gallery and video that’s up right now, featuring the steel robotic sculptures of machine art mastermind Choe U Ram. The pieces are from the now-closed show Anima Machines — and are like Arthur Ganson‘s larger works after a forced infusion of H. R. Geiger’s thick blackened alien blood and midwifed from a screaming CNC mill into the hands of a very evil horticulturalist. Just sayin’. I’m in love.
* Video: Choe U Ram’s creepy robotic art (engadget.com)

This is so exciting! Few films have been as important to me as Metropolis, and now it looks like some missing scenes have been recovered, changing the narrative. Guardian UK writes,

The cinematic world was today celebrating the rediscovery of missing scenes from German director Fritz Lang’s legendary silent film Metropolis – thought lost for 80 years, until they were found in the archive of a museum in Argentina.
Key scenes cut from the science fiction picture – either because they were considered to be too brutal or too long – will now be available for the first time since May 1927, when the original version was last shown in Berlin, where it flopped badly. The head of the Berlin film museum Deutsche Kinematik, Dr Rainer Rother, called the find a “sensational discovery”, adding that one of the most famous films of all time “can now be seen through new eyes”.
Metropolis, which is set in a futuristic city state and explores the clash between workers and their capitalist exploiters, was at the time one of the most expensive films ever made. Produced in the Babelsberg studios on the outskirts of Berlin, it cost around 7m Reichsmarks, but was hated by critics and the public alike. It was shortened by the American company Paramount Pictures, who considered it impenetrable for the US market, leading to an oversimplification of the plot, the disappearance of key scenes and the sidelining of significant characters.
But the restored version, which has so far been seen by only a handful of film experts and critics in Berlin, is said to throw light on key questions that have puzzled and tantalised generations of film buffs.Link.