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storyboard: The Creators of NYC: Tattoo Artist Virginia...

Sat, 22 Dec 2012 12:33:14 +0100

The Creators of NYC: Tattoo Artist Virginia Elwood

Josh Wool spent a decade as an executive chef, opening restaurants across the south. But all that changed in 2010, when the carpal tunnel in his hands meant he could no longer work. To keep from going stir crazy, he picked up a camera and found his next calling. Two years, thousands of portraits, and a move to New York later, Wool is documenting the people who inspire him on a daily basis. Welcome to Creators of NYC.

Virginia Elwood

Tattoo artist Virginia Elwood has been plying her craft for the last 12 years and has made a name for herself at New York Adorned as one of the top talents in the industry. I first saw her work several years ago, and I bumped into her on the G train in Brooklyn shortly after I arrived in New York. After almost a year of exchanging emails, we finally sat down in her Carrol Gardens home.

When did you figure out that tattoo art could be an actual career?

When I was a little kid, I remember wanting to be either a scientist, a ballerina, or a garbage man. I don’t think I had a definition or reference for “art as a career.” I set out on my own at a really young age and drifted from one random job to the next … a career in fine arts was not a realistic or practical goal at that time. The idea that a person could actually get paid to draw didn’t occur to me until I fell head over heals for tattoos as a teenager in the 90s.

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sciencenote: No Star Left Behind Contrary to expectations, the...

Sat, 22 Dec 2012 12:32:50 +0100

sciencenote:

No Star Left Behind

Contrary to expectations, the brightest supernova in recorded history left no star in its wake, say astronomers who have searched the celestial wreckage (shown). In 1006, observers watched a star explode in the constellation Lupus that shone about a dozen times more brilliantly than Venus ever does. The explosion was a Type Ia supernova, the most luminous variety, which occurred when a small, dense star known as a white dwarf blew up about 7000 light-years from Earth. Such a supernova is supposed to result when a larger companion star dumps material onto the white dwarf, triggering a runaway nuclear reaction that annihilates the small star. However, as astronomers will report in The Astrophysical Journal, a thorough search for the companion, which should have survived the explosion, has turned up nothing. This finding dovetails with a similar nondetection in a nearby galaxy and suggests the explosion arose instead when two white dwarfs that were in orbit around each other merged and blew up—hinting that more Type Ia supernovae may stem from double white dwarfs than astronomers had thought.