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A day may come when Sam and Frodo buy into a major "Lord of the Rings" fan theory, but it is not this day.

Many fans think it's a big plot hole that Gandalf didn't use the eagles immediately to get into Mordor, especially considering how easily they seem to show up at the end to save Frodo and Sam. But a popular fan theory seems to finally explain why that happens.  

The theory: Gandalf was planning on using the eagles the whole time. 

Image: Tumblr

Redditor VulcanDeathGrip (probably not a birth name), explains that Gandalf did secretly plan to use the eagles and was bringing the group to them until things were interrupted when the Fellowship was attacked by the Balrog: 

Just before falling with the Balrog, [Gandalf] tries to surreptitiously tell them the secret plan but was too surreptitious and they didn't understand. When he came back as Gandalf the White he had forgotten many things, including the plan to meet the eagles.

According to the Redditor, Gandalf's famous line, "Fly, you fools!" is actually him telling the Fellowship to go to the eagles. Then, of course, he forgets the plan and much of his past upon his return.

Seems like a solid theory, until you ask the guys who actually made the trip to Mordor, Sam (Sean Astin) and Frodo (Elijah Wood).

Image: Tumblr

"He forgot! That's always the best excuse," Wood said, laughing. 

The actor, who stars with Vin Diesel in the new movie "The Last Witch Hunter," tells The Huffington Post he isn't buying it.

"'Fly you fools,' right. I’ve heard this before. So that wasn’t about run away. It was, 'Get on the eagles, you idiots'? No, I think the plan wasn’t to get them on the eagles because that would’ve been the plan to begin with. No, I think they were meant to go on this journey to walk there, as illogical as that seems, considering the fact that the eagles swoop in at the end," Wood explained. 

"It also wouldn’t make for a very big story," he continued. "If you’re writing this story to be a grand adventure, it’d be a pretty short book if the eagles just swoop in."

While talking to HuffPost about his movie, "The Surface," Astin also weighed in on the theory and even offered an alternative.

"As Sam, I think it’s about time [the eagles] showed up," said Astin. "As a literary device, I never liked it in 'The Hobbit' when the eagles came and rescued them out of the trees because it just felt like they could whenever they wanted to. But I also have a theory that [the eagles] couldn’t make it that far when Sauron was there. It was only after the destruction of Sauron that, for whatever reason, they were allowed or capable or able. "

OK, so Wood and Astin aren't too into it, but don't get discouraged. There are good theories in the world, Mr. Frodo. And they're worth fighting for.

Image: Tumblr

"The Last With Hunter" hits theaters Oct. 23.

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Hey, just because you're an adult doesn't mean you have to grow up! 

Seriously, let's face it -- though many of us are attempting to adult, we all know that we're really just big kids at heart. So why not show off your fun and kooky side this Halloween with some costumes inspired by kids' shows, movies and books?

From "The Powerpuff Girls," to Darla from "Finding Nemo," these getups will make you feel like a kid all over again -- without the pain of braces or awkward school pictures. 

Check out the costumes below! 

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Ayham Ahmad has played his music amid the rubble of his Syrian hometown and at a transit stop while traveling by foot across Europe. On Sunday, Syria's beloved piano man performed his songs in front of thousands of people in the historic Konigsplatz arena in Munich, Germany.

Ahmad was one of the acts at the Danke-Konzert, or "Thank You Concert," a free show featuring a string of German artists welcoming refugees and thanking volunteers involved in the refugee effort. It was organized by nonprofit Bellevue di Monaco, German indie rock band Sportfreunde Stiller and Munich's city government.

Ahmad has gone through an extraordinary journey. In April, his neighborhood of Yarmouk, a Palestinian camp outside Damascus, was attacked by Islamic State members. And when Ahmad tried to move his piano out of the camp, an Islamist fighter poured petroleum on it and set it on fire. 

Ahmad left Syria in early September, crossing the Mediterranean Sea in a rubber dinghy and landing on the Greek island of Lesbos before walking across Europe. He finally arrived in Munich on Sept. 22.

On the Konigsplatz stage, Ahmad sang "Here Among The Nations Calling," a song he used to play with children in Yarmouk. 

"The lyrics are about Yarmouk, and Syria in general," Ahmad told The WorldPost in Arabic via Facebook. "Syria, here among the nations calling, the camp is our home. The words are a call to the world for Syria, that Syria needs help. No one is helping Syria. Everyone is just making war in Syria."

"It felt great to be in front of [an audience of] 3,000 people and I felt that I was representing peace for my country -- Syria and Palestine," he wrote.

Kerstin Picht Shamberg, Charlotte Alfred and Rowaida Abdelaziz contributed to this report.

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A hilarious parody Twitter account is calling out the inane advice working moms hear all the time. 

@manwhohasitall offers "top tips for men juggling a successful career and fatherhood" -- from beauty routines to clothing advice to ways to get some "me time" while doing housework late at night. 

The account launched in May 2015 and currently has over 5000 followers, many of whom have praised the eye-opening "gender-flipping" lifestyle advice.

As Twitter user Laura Cowen wrote, "Stuff we're used to hearing said to women suddenly sounds shocking/ridiculous/patronising when said to men..."

In an interview with The Huffington Post, the U.K.-based creator of @manwhohasitall -- who prefers to remain anonymous -- pointed to reviews like Cowen's when asked about the principal message of the account. By reimagining the "crap" that lifestyle publications and advertisements often spout at working moms, @manwhohasitall highlights the tired gender stereotypes used to characterize women in the workforce today. 

Speaking in character, the account's creator added, "Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely fine with dads who work. It boosts their self-esteem and gives them an identity beyond just 'dad.'"

Keep scrolling and visit @manwhohasitall on Twitter and Tumblr for more brilliant advice for all those frazzled working dads out there.  

H/T BabyCenter

 
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Until recently, majority opinion designated men responsible for the masterful early paintings adorning cavernous walls around the world. There wasn't much science behind the assumption, just that general air of androcentrism that presumes men play a central role in just about everything.

Things changed a little, however, in the 1970s and '80s, when male and female archaeologists began challenging the many male-centric inferences throughout science and history.

"The point that was made was quite simple," archaeologist Dave Whitley of ASM Affiliates explained to The Huffington Post. "How do we know that the cave artists were males? Frankly, we don’t! The presumption that somehow they must be was just that -- it was speculation, and there was no real data one way or the other that told us which gender was responsible."

Whitley is a California-based archaeologist specializing in prehistoric rock art and cave art, working primarily with North American caves as well as caves in South Africa, France and Spain. While Whitley isn't sure that women are responsible for the first cave paintings, he certainly won't rule out the possibility. "The main point is: we have no clear point of knowing for sure," he said. 

The most convincing evidence positing women as the first cave artists, Whitley believes, are the shapes of the hands imprinted onto the cave walls -- the shapes of women's hands. According to National Geographic, archaeologist Dean Snow of Pennsylvania State University analyzed hand samples from eight cave sites in France and Spain, three-quarters of which were deemed female. 

Snow's study incorporated the findings of British biologist John Manning, who found that while women often have ring fingers and index fingers that are the same length, men primarily have longer ring fingers. And while the ratio isn't completely consistent when looking at contemporary hands, prehistoric hands are far more sexually dimorphic.

After reading Manning's study, Snow pulled a book from his shelf with a cover featuring a hand stencil in France's Pech Merle cave. "I looked at that thing and I thought, man, if Manning knows what he's talking about, then this is almost certainly a female hand," Snow told National Geographic.

In Whitley's perspective, the hand stencil argument presents the strongest evidence that women could be the artists responsible for the cave paintings. However, he isn't convinced that the women leaving their handprints are the same women creating the artworks. "We don’t know for sure, but it’s certainly possible." 

Snow hypothesized the handprints were an artist signature of sorts, a way of saying "This is mine, I did this." Whitley, however, isn't so sure. "Another explanation might be that these were women coming in to see these great works of art and leaving the signs of their visits. They were touching the cave walls and, by that fact, touching essentially the sacred realm."

In Whitley's opinion, there is strong data suggesting that much cave art was created by shamans who entered an altered state of consciousness when inside the caves, serving as proto-sensory deprivation chambers. "What we know ethnographically is that most shamanistic societies -- at least in the more recent past -- had male shamans. And I say most carefully because not all did. Some certainly had female shamans."

It's also possible, Whitley explains, that the handprints were left during initiation rituals led by formal shamans -- male or female. "We certainly have ethnographic examples of shamanistic rituals which involve young women," he said. "Puberty rites, essentially." 

While Whitley is hesitant to deem men or women as primarily responsible for cave art, he's well aware of the overwhelming feminine symbolism that populates so much cave imagery. "When we look at paintings and engravings, there are images and compositions that point straight at female symbolism of some kind. Chauvet Cave, which has our oldest art at 36,000 years old, is a great example. There we have, in two places, two paintings of horses in these niches in the cave wall that can only be described -- it’s pretty obvious and simply can’t be denied -- as vaginally shaped. Also, in that same cave, there’s a painting of what’s obviously a woman’s pubic area."

Yes, lady parts are all over prehistoric caves. But are these artworks empowering self-portraits, odes to female beauty, or something else entirely? 

"The relationship between what art portrays and what it symbolizes can be very complex," Whitley explains, channeling his inner art critic. "This is getting into fairly complex issues, but it recalls what we call symbolic inversions -- examples where males use female symbolism. This tends to occur because of the ideological structure of the society. For example, an androcentric view of society where men are controlling women’s reproductive rights, if you will. This is the Republican party today. They don’t do it symbolically, like perhaps the cave artists did, but they’re still trying to do it."

So, prehistoric cave artists could have been early feminist art makers, painting their vulvas in vaginal cave niches and slapping their handprint proudly aside them. Or they could have been cavemen predecessors of Richard Prince, appropriating the female body for their own artistic purposes.

Either way, a giant looming question mark remains: We may never know what shamanistic rituals or artistic rites went down in those caves some 36,000 years ago. But just because men dominate the art world narrative now, let's not presume prehistoric people were so predictable.

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Relative to other awards seasons, book award season is slightly less concerned with who wore what. Instead, each autumn various committees clue readers in to what to read -- a means of culling through the stacks and stacks worth of reads to select a few deemed outstanding.

Below, we’ve selected a few of our favorite nominees and winners of prizes such as the Man Booker Prize, the National Book Award, the Kirkus Prize, the Hugo Awards, and the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 list.

Note: While our selections are decidedly woman-centric to account for the disproportionately male bent of most awards, we couldn’t help but include a few stunning books by men such as Marlon James, the first Jamaican recipient of the Booker.

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

James’ novel isn’t easy to read -- the author said so himself when accepting the Booker Prize earlier this week. But, the dense plot and shifting narration is worth navigating -- if you do, you’ll find yourself lost in the middle of an emotionally gripping narrative, swirling around an assassination attempt against Bob Marley in 1976. The novel careens forward through the early '90s, using the voices of both gang members and journalists to tell the story of violence in Jamaica today.

From our review: “James’ long, sprawling, masterfully woven together novel finds its redemption in the indomitability of the human will to live, and its light in a sly, sardonic humor that finds its way in amongst the horrific violence and grinding, Sisyphean cycle of misery.”

Read our review here.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

Yanagihara has been shortlisted for both the Booker Prize and the National Book Award, and for good reason. A Little Life is a fable-like novel that follows four friends over decades' worth of personal tumult, ambitious pursuit, and unrelenting friendship. What the book lacks in plausibility (the four friends each soar to great heights in their respective pursuits) it makes up for in a close read of grief, as protagonist Jude relates each prosaic detail of his fraught inner life.

From our review: “Emotionally harrowing yet full of rather implausible sources of comfort, A Little Life somehow throws readers between the most unlikely extremes of horror and joy that life holds, making for a compulsively readable if artistically flawed sophomore effort.”

Read our review here.

The Turner House by Angela Flournoy

An earnest family man, Francis Turner, moves to Detroit full of dreams of owning a home that will last generations. He works to build such a family, and rejects any concept of mysticism or a past coming back to haunt him. But, despite his best efforts and those of his family, the house crumbles along with the rest of the city, lessening in value as time wears on. Turner’s family reassembles to discuss the fate of the house in Flournoy’s stunning novel, which has been nominated for the National Book Award. Flournoy has also been named a 5 Under 35 honoree by the National Book Foundation, joining the ranks of such writers as ZZ Packer and Tea Obreht.

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

Groff’s book is likely to elicit polarized responses. On one hand, her portrayal of a marriage held together not by closeness or communication but by the things that aren’t said may seem unrealistic to some couples. On the other hand, her artful construction of a pair of characters whose opposites complement one another so exactly that their union, while fairy tale-like in the mind of theatrical Lotto and taxing for his wife, the quiet and hardworking Mathilde, seems meant to be. Select it for your next book club pick, and lively discussion will be unavoidable.

From our review: “A saga of secrets, Fates and Furies examines the conjoined perspectives that make up a mostly happy -- if at times tragic -- marital relationship.”

Read our review here.

The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin

At this year’s Hugo Awards, Liu Cixin became the first Chinese author to win the prize for Best Novel, beating out a lineup of U.K. and U.S. authors. Published in Chinese throughout 2006, the book was translated into English last year by sci-fi writer Ken Liu. The novel confronts a classic conflict in science fiction, which is how humanity would respond to impending alien invasion. Would you prepare to defend yourself and your home from the intruders, or work with them to wipe out a flawed society and start anew? That Cixin’s book is set amid the Chinese Cultural Revolution makes it that much more fascinating.

The Hopeful by Tracy O’Neill

Another recently awarded 5 Under 35 honoree, O’Neill is the author of a debut novel that examines the darkness and obsession underlying the measured, lovely sport of figure skating. At only 16, protagonist Alivopro Doyle has a great deal of pressure resting on her shoulders and nimble feet. She’s a wizard at figure skating -- so much so that her career could thrust her onto the Olympic stage. Under such pressure, Ali falls hard, fracturing her spine and her ambitions. O’Neill’s personal story about the detrimental pressures of sports is ultimately both a beautiful narrative and a political statement worth listening to.

The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli

As the back of Luiselli’s weird and wonderful new novel will tell you, it was “written in collaboration with the workers at a juice factory.” This fact may seem like fiction -- how could an author pull off such a feat? -- but blurring the lines between real and unreal is sort of the point. The protagonist of The Story of My Teeth is named Highway, and, late in his life, he’s taken up traveling, afforded by his collection of teeth, which he erroneously leads people to believe belong to the likes of Virginia Woolf and Plato.

From our review: “Luiselli prompts us to consider the uneasy relationship between fact and fiction, and whether the two can ever truly meet, or even become one and the same.”

Read our review here. 

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Few cultural icons have inspired as much adoration -- and obsession -- as Steve Jobs.

The late Apple CEO has been celebrated in dozens of books, documentaries and feature films, including a new biopic starring Michael Fassbender. 

But why do we remain obsessed with this computer visionary and corporate executive, even several years after his death? 

"What sets Jobs apart from most earlier celebrity CEOs ... is that he emphasized passion, creativity, a kind of artistic sensibility, and a kind of rebellion against common ways of thinking," said Thomas Streeter, professor of sociology at the University of Vermont and the author of a new paper about Jobs' legacy, in an email to The Huffington Post. "Jobs was a romantic, a kind of Byronic character."

In other words, we love Jobs for his rebelliousness. He took LSD. He traveled through India. He practiced Zen meditation. He studied calligraphy. And above all, he showed us that passion really can change the world.

"I think the reason is in our culture: we love the story of Jobs because we love the story of the guy who bucked convention, pursued his passions, and got rich doing so," Streeter said in an interview for the University of Vermont. 

In his email to HuffPost, he elaborated:

We’re generally taught that work life is a realm for calculation and suppression of emotions, that we should save the emotions for our therapists and our personal lives. The story of Steve Jobs represents passion as central to, of all things, the manufacture of computers. That touches a nerve. To people who feel constrained by their work lives, who feel they have to put their inner feelings on hold when they enter the office or the factory, the story of Jobs offers a glimpse of an intriguingly different way." 

In his iconic 2005 Stanford University commencement address -- which has now been viewed 23 million times on YouTube -- Jobs advised graduates to be relentless in the pursuit of their passions.

The key, he said, is remembering that you're going to die one day, and therefore, you really have nothing to lose. 

"You are already naked," Jobs told the audience. "There is no reason not to follow your heart."

After all, it might just lead you to invent the next iPhone. 

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Elif Shafak is a Turkish novelist and essayist whose celebrated works include “The Bastard of Istanbul" and "The Architect's Apprentice." The WorldPost spoke with her in the aftermath of the Ankara terror attack about the crisis of democracy and polarization in Turkey.

Orhan Pamuk has said that Turkey is a country of “two souls” -- meaning secular and religious, traditional and modern, all mixed together in one community and often even one person. “That is the way people really are,” he has said.

As a novelist and someone who has written about cosmopolitanism and hybrid identities, you have said similar things. But now in Turkey, those two souls are being polarized as never before. The democracy and modernization from below that replaced the authoritarian, Kemalist modernization from above not only enabled the AKP rise to power by opening influence to conservative rural Anatolia while putting the military in its barracks, but it also allowed a flourishing of plural constituencies in Turkey -- secular youth, feminists, Kurds and gays among others. Those constituencies showed their strength in the last election by denying Erdoğan his parliamentary majority. What is the cause of this polarization between the “two souls” that once coexisted?

This is a cultural and political schizophrenia. It is a loss of collective reason.

What we are experiencing now is a completely new stage in Turkey’s political and social history. The ground beneath our feet has fractured. The increasing turbulence in Turkey’s domestic politics merged with the instability in international relations and, particularly, with what’s happening in the Middle East. Such a dangerous fusion of domestic and international turmoil had never happened before. So I do not think that the classic duality of East versus West or tradition versus modernity or Kemalist versus conservative is explanatory enough in the face of today’s dramatic events. What we are experiencing is more complicated than that.

This is a cultural and political schizophrenia. It is a loss of collective reason. It is the erosion of empathy. And, therefore, the erosion of the culture of coexistence. I am critical of several things at once, but in particular, I am critical of the government because they have alienated themselves from at least half of the society. Instead of using a calm and constructive language of bridge-building and compromise, they have been using an incendiary rhetoric of polarization and “otherization” for too long. The gaps in the Turkish society today are so deep and wide it will be very hard to bridge them in the short run. 

How can it be mended over time?

Often the solution is hidden in the problem. We need to focus on the problem from a different angle. We need to understand the social psychology behind the events because too often people, especially in Turkey, are being guided by their emotions, not necessarily by principles or ideologies. Emotions fly high in Turkey at the moment. Like matryoshka dolls, almost every “oppressed” has a tendency to give birth to a new “oppressor” in the long run. This is the crux of the problem. We have the ballot box, but we do not have the culture of democracy, which requires separation of powers and rule of law, and most importantly, respect for differences of opinion. The only way to mend it is by strengthening pluralistic democracy. If democracy is further curtailed -- which is what I am worried about -- the quagmire will deepen, and we will tumble into a spiral of violence, conflict and vengeance. Tit-for-tat. This is very scary.

Part of the problem is "the misperception of victimhood." The conservatives felt like they had been silenced in the past decades, whether rightly or wrongly is another debate, but this is what they believe in. But after they came to power, increasingly they began to silence others -- the Kurds, the army, women, the sexual minorities, the journalists etc. But if you talk to the AKP people, shockingly, many of them think they are still the victims! How can a government that has stayed in power for 13 years and monopolized power still retain the psychology of a victim? How can they think they are surrounded by enemies on all sides? But they do. 

If democracy is further curtailed, the quagmire will deepen and we will tumble into a spiral of violence, conflict and vengeance.

Turkey’s quagmire is deep because those who are powerful feel fragile. Those who are in control act as if they can at any moment lose control. As a result, no one is willing to let go of their power. No one is willing to compromise.

I am pessimistic when I look at the male-dominated political system and the politicians, but I always feel hopeful when I focus on the people instead. Turkey is not a typical Muslim country. It has a robust civil society, a relatively long experience in Western democracy. A better future will arrive, but until then, the road ahead will be brutal and bumpy.

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When Reed Morano first attended the American Society of Cinematographers' open house as a college student, she was the only woman in the room. A decade and a half later, as one of fewer than 15 women (out of about 340 total active members) in her chapter and the ASC's youngest ever inductee, she's become a role model for the growing number of young female DPs (directors of photography) who come to the event.

After more than 15 years in the industry, including work on "The Skeleton Twins," "Frozen River" and "Vinyl," she understands the importance of visibility. Looking up to the likes of Amy Davis and Ellen Kuras, she learned firsthand that simply seeing another woman working as a cinematographer can make the career seem like a more viable option.

Yet, knowing all that, Morano still doesn't want to be a great "female filmmaker." She just wants to be a great filmmaker.

With her directorial debut of "Meadowland," out in theaters this Friday, The Huffington Post spoke to Morano about her work behind the camera, how she's seen things shift during her time in the industry and what other changes we need to see.

"Meadowland" centers around the loss of a child. It's heavy, to say the least. Why did you choose such intense subject matter for your first directorial effort?

I wanted to take a risk. I had been given other scripts before it, but I thought, “What’s the point of making this movie? Is it going to make an impact in some way?” I felt like the biggest way I could test myself, to figure out, "Can I do this? Can I be a director?" was to try to bite off something hard to chew. I had friends that said to me, "Why would you do this? This is gonna be a disaster." I said, “I know it seems hard, but I just really connect to the material." I wanted to make a film that's going to to be hard for people to forget.

Is that how you pick scripts, or how you plan to pick them moving forward?

Yes, I want to make films that stay with you. I don’t want to just make the safe, easy commercial films. I want to make the movies that move people in a way they’ve never been moved before.

I wanted to take a risk ... I thought, 'What’s the point of making this movie? Is it going to make an impact in some way?'

"Meadowland" is certainly moving, though it achieves that without the more hysterical scenes we might expect to see given this premise. Did you set out planning to avoid that?

Yes, I had it in mind from the start that I didn't want to see [the characters] cry until the end of the film. You know, when a kid goes missing, that usually means the procedural elements of fighting or crying. But I looked back to when I experienced loss. My father passed away when I was 18. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but it is not like that all the time. Not every moment is dark. So I thought, "Could you give the audience a cathartic experience that could perhaps make them feel like you’ve justified for them what they’re going through?" More interesting than a film about this terrible thing is seeing people get through it and asking the question of how they keep it together.

Back in February, you wrote a piece for Indiewire about letting go of the "female thing" in filmmaking. Can you speak to that a bit? 

You know, Olivia [Wilde] is really good about reminding me of that. She says people ask her all the time, “Well, how is it working with a female director?” And she says, “Well, it’s just working with a director." I think I feel the same way, especially going through the whole thing of being a DP and going through this boy’s club of the ASC. There are not many female DPs and people always refer to us as “female DPs." It's the same with female directors.

Why do you think saying "female director" or "female DP" versus just "director" or "DP" makes a difference?

You know, there is a difference. The thing that’s difficult is young guys coming out who just directed a feature that was moderately successful, go on and get a second film and [are] offered a $100 million feature. That just doesn’t happen for women, and everybody knows it. The studios are going to more readily put their trust in a man over a woman. We just need to change that stigma, that statement attached to being a woman. 

The exposure and the idea of seeing women behind the camera, of seeing them controlling the set in a way that’s the same as any dude, we need more of that, and we need people to make a conscious choice to hire women.

How should do you think we should talk about women in the industry? How can talking about women differently create change?

Well, for example, I got an award last year. It was really nice because I went to NYU and I got to come back for their Fusion Film festival, which is a woman’s film festival, and they presented me with this Woman of the Year Award. I hadn’t really prepared a speech but I did manage to babble something out and at the end I kind of said, “This is such an honor to be recognized, but the one thing I hope for us as a group is that an award like this doesn’t exist one day.”

Oh, definitely. Although, before that ideal future, what kind of changes do you hope for on a more short-term basis?

I think, if there are lists, there just needs to be women on them. I know sometimes it’s harder to find the hot female director or the hot female DP, but I think people need to be a little more conscious of that. You need to make it known to all the women coming that you can do this job and it’s not weird. The exposure and the idea of seeing women behind the camera, of seeing them controlling the set in a way that’s the same as any dude, we need more of that, and we need people to make a conscious choice to hire women. I don't like to complain about it, to say, "We're special because we're female," but I think things will start to improve and eventually not needing that [special status] will become the norm. It may take a long time.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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This tech startup's latest creation will have kids feeling tougher than iron and cooler than ice.

Open Bionics, a U.K.-based technology company, has taken inspiration from blockbusters to create prosthetic hands for kids who lost or were born without limbs, the Independent reported. Based on "Iron Man," "Frozen" and "Star Wars," the bionic hands aim to let kids take on the super stellar powers of their favorite characters, build confidence and feel like heroes.

“The power of these prosthetics is that the public perception is completely different,” Joel Hibbard, Open Bionics founder, told the news outlet. “What might have been perceived as their greatest weakness is seen as their greatest strength.”

A chief mission of Open Bionics is to develop affordable prosthetics that are more widely accessible to people with disabilities. These 3-D-scanned and printed, superhero bionics will cost $500 and be available for sale in 2016.

The custom bionics were revealed at the Disney Accelerator Demo Day, in Burbank, California, on Oct. 7, Tech Times reported. Open Bionics was one of the participating companies in the program, which supports innovation for growing technology start-ups. At the event, the the company showcased three designs of youth prosthetics: a hand modeled like Queen Elsa’s glove in "Frozen," a "Star Wars" lightsaber hand and a shiny red powerful hand inspired by Iron Man, according to Engadget. All are equipped with LED lights that monitor the wearer’s muscle signals -- a pretty cool feature for both youngsters and their parents.

“They won’t have to do boring physical therapy,” Open Bionics wrote on its website. “They’ll train to become heroes.”

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After growing up near the wild and rugged central California coastline, Chris Burkard became convinced that there was much more beauty to be found in the world. 

Since picking up a camera in high school, Burkard has traveled to Iceland, India, Norway, Russia and many other countries in pursuit of nature's wonders. In his photographs, human figures are often lost in the vastness of icy mountain ranges or thunderous waterfalls. A member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he said it's his faith that helps him connect with the places he visits. 

"Every time I go somewhere, my soul is stirred and I feel drawn closer to my creator," Burkard told The Huffington Post.

Bukard said some of his favorite moments are when he's able to connect with people and cultures on a spiritual level. During his travels, he said, he makes it a point to go to a church and pray with the people -- an experience that he said adds to his own spirituality.

"I want people to see the beauty in creation in some way, whatever their own way is, and glorify God in that," he said. "You can find spiritual experiences in a lot of different places, not just at church on a Sunday."

Burkard agreed to take over HuffPost Religion's Instagram account on Friday, and he shared six reflections about his faith journey. Scroll down to see photos from his travels and head over to Burkard's Instagram page for more images.

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These men are helping to shape the dialogue around what it means to be black with a bold new statement. 

Photographer Justin Fulton, 28, and artist-educator André D. Singleton, 29, are the creators of The Very Black Project. It's a celebratory pro-black initiative that they started nearly a year ago which celebrates the beauty and diversity of blackness through social activism and selling T-shirts with the project's name. 

The Brooklyn-based duo said that the initiative started with "kitchen talks," conversations between the two, where they would reflect on their own personal experiences of growing up black and gay in America. Fulton and Singleton told the Huffington Post in an email interview that Very Black was born in 2014 when they began to include others in those conversations as a way to encourage people to share their stories and learn from other's unique experiences. 

As artists by trade, in March 2015, Fulton and Singleton started selling T-shirts with the words "Very Black" largely printed on the front at black venues and community events such as the MoCADA Soul of Brooklyn Festival and AFROPUNK Music Festival. At these events, they would also ask people what being "very black" meant to them while also spreading awareness about their cause.

"We ask people how they experience the statement. The T-shirt. Us. Their experiences. Their non-experiences. That's if they care, comment or inquire. It's really engaging and no pressure," Singleton said.

For both men, there's no single definition for the phrase "Very Black."

"It is for sure empowering, relatable, vast, inclusive and real," Singleton said. "It means a lot of things to a lot of people. We are learning as we go just as we have our entire lives."

Since their start, they've gained a huge following online with more than 15,000 followers on Instagram and are active on Tumblr and Twitter. The hashtag #veryblack has also picked up steam. According to Fulton and Singleton, the response has been mostly positive. "Nothing but love," Singleton said.

Even though their initiative promotes social awareness about the various representations of black culture, Fulton and Singleton are reluctant to call themselves activists. They said they simply want to use their experiences as black gay men to inspire others and each other.

"It's funny that because we talk about black topics we're automatically considered activists," Fulton said. "I actually never viewed myself as so in the past, but recently realized that what I'm doing creatively in and of itself is activism at its core."

Singleton, who is also a cancer survivor, echoed Fulton's sentiments. "I feel like before I had the language to identify as an activist I was already doing it simply by asking questions, supporting groups and movements that interested me," Singleton said. "I think my diagnosis and battle really fleshed a lot of things out for me."

The shirts, which now come in a variety of colors, and other products are available for purchase online. Very Black recently partnered with 14+, a New York City based non-profit that builds and operates schools in Africa, to use proceeds from a special edition T-shirt and tote bag to build a school in Zambia.

 
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Asking a wedding photographer to pinpoint the best photo they've ever taken is a tall order -- but that didn't stop us from asking anyway!

Below, see the photos photographers say they are most proud of and find out what made these shots in particular so special. 

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This article first appeared on QuietRev.com

Artists often need to inhabit a dual personality in order to succeed. They need to be comfortable spending time in an inner, introspective space, but they also need to be willing to go out in the world and promote their art. I was really curious about how artists manage these often antithetical roles and the different skills that come with them. How can the introvert—to put it crassly—become more comfortable being the salesman without feeling inauthentic? I talked to artist Michael De Feo to get his perspective and advice.

I first met Michael at the end of January 2015. It was one of those winter days that was neither cold enough for snow nor warm enough for rain. The sky was a dishwater grey. I was wet and cold and over it. And then I walked into Michael’s studio, and the day instantly changed. It was like spring had arrived early, and there was real beauty in the world even if I couldn’t see it outside.

For those who aren’t familiar with Michael’s work, he’s best known for his iconic flower image and his bright, blooming colors. The flower is such a versatile symbol. We use it in our culture to express almost every emotion at almost every occasion. Some of Michael’s work is inherently cheerful, but other pieces have a more poignant, contemplative quality. For Michael as an artist, it’s important to have an image or an idea to focus on. “I find when you have something you can focus on and repeat, it helps you grow because you keep making variations on the same theme.”

One thing that is clear when looking at Michael’s work is that he’s making art for himself first. “Some artists, they think about their audience and even what might sell, which is such a bad thing to do. You might as well go into advertising…I honestly believe that if I focus on making what I love to make, other people will see that too.” He believes that one of the most destructive things an artist can do is worry about people’s reactions to their work when they’re making it. “Being true to yourself and being true to your heart and not letting any of the other bullshit get in the way. We live in a time where we have so many distractions and so many things begging for our attention, which can unfortunately steer your work one way or another.” In his work, Michael will give himself a problem to solve and then see where it goes. “I sometimes start by creating a problem that has to be solved. I make myself uncomfortable and have to find my way out via my own path in paint.”

Over 20 years ago, Michael started his career as a street artist. One of the uniquely wonderful things about street art is that the work evolves as the city changes. There’s a cycle of life with street art: it’s created and gradually, over time, destroyed, which so beautifully mirrors the lifespan of the flower. “In fact,” he tells me, “the most important part for me [is] that the work disappears.”

For Michael, there’s a difference between making art for the street and making art for a gallery. Many street artists enjoy a degree of anonymity that artists can’t get in a gallery space. Street artists can create and share their work with the public without necessarily having their name attached to it. “What’s hard is that I’m pretty private. When I do art in the street, I get to put up my work and run away. When you have a show, the feeling is exhilarating, but it’s also nerve-racking.”

But the more exposure Michael got, the more comfortable he became with the art scene. “Years ago, at the very beginning of my career, I became more comfortable showing and selling my work by doing it as often as possible. The more frequently I exposed and discussed my art with others, the more confident I became. I’ve always been proud of my work, and that made it easier.”

Michael has always wanted to share his work with a wide audience. “I’ve found that I’m constantly forced to learn new skills and get into experiences that take me out of my comfort zone.” He believes that in order for artists to feel comfortable sharing their work with others, they first need to learn to trust themselves and have faith in their own work.

If this is true—and I really do think it is—it means that the strength to share your work has to come from an inner source rather than something external. Which means that anyone can have the courage to put their work out there once they have faith in themselves and in their work. And once one’s trust is built and fortified, it means that rejection, though painful, shouldn’t cause that trust to crumble.

That doesn’t mean making art gets easier. “I’ll always be struggling—it will always be a challenge,” says Michael. “It’s not an easy thing to make art, especially art that I’m happy with. More times than not, I’m totally dissatisfied with what I make, which I think is a good thing because if I was always pleased, that would be a terrible position to be in. I wouldn’t grow as an artist.”

To learn more about Michael and his work, check out his website and follow him on Instagram.

This article originally appeared on QuietRev.com.

You can find more insights from Quiet Revolution on work, life, and parenting as an introvert at QuietRev.com.

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It's as if the man himself stopped by to check on his work. 

A photo shows someone who looks a lot like artist Claude Monet standing over an oversized image of the French impressionist at the Cleveland Museum of Art last week -- an image that had just been put into place. 

“Monet himself would be proud of this," Jeffrey Strean, the museum's director of architecture and design, said as he hung the image, according to WKYC.com.

Then, Strean snapped a photo of his work -- the final touch in a new exhibition on garden-themed art -- and spotted the mystery Monet. 

The museum wrote on Facebook that the image is untouched. 

WKYC reports that some museum employees spotted a man dressed as Monet in the museum, although they don't know who he is or where he came from. 

"What are the chances someone looks like that and happens to be at the museum the day we are finishing installation?" Caroline Guscott, the museum's communications director, told The Plain Dealer. 

The website reports that the museum has at least one resident ghost already: that of William Milliken, who was director from 1930 to 1958. The museum also has a page on its website detailing supposedly paranormal activity in the facility over the years.

The exhibition, "Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse," featuring 107 impressionist works -- and possibly one ghost -- runs through Jan. 5.

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It's hard not to be captivated by a puddle reflecting a huge skyscraper and pull out your phone to capture the moment. It seems that around every corner there's a whole other world reflecting right back at us. 

No one seems to know this better than the photographers who contribute to our #worldpostgram hashtag or @TheWorldPost on Instagram. 

Take a look at their stunning pictures below, and remember to tag your instagram images #worldpostgram or #huffpostgram. We might feature them in our next post! 

Paris, France

Beijing, China

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Snæfellsnesvegur, Iceland

Athens, Greece

Tasman Glacier, New Zealand

Lake Burley Griffin, Canberra, Australia

Francisco de Sá Carneiro Airport, Portugal

Paris, France

Matsumoto Castle, Japan

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Brooklyn-based Gideon Jacobs has been writing letters to his imaginary friends for a while now -- friends he's had since he was a kid. The relationship, as you might expect, is complicated. "I’m not a nut who believes imaginary friends are real," he explained to The Huffington Post, "but I might be a nut who thinks that there is usually great value to be found in the unpopular and the invisible."

"I'm pretty certain I had many imaginary friends, but the only one I remember vividly was named Gogo, and he sort of inspired this whole project," Jacobs continued. "Gogo lived in my parents' bathroom and kept me company when I was first learning to go No. 2 without a chaperone. My mom would overhear me through the closed door having these long conversations with him. I have this memory what he looked like, but what's strange is that my image of him has kind of calcified over time instead of fading. Gogo looks a bit like Super Mario, but more haggard. And he's got no feet -- his bottom half is sort of just a stump."

Throughout the month of October, Jacobs is inviting others to enter his imagination and record their findings in what he dubs a literary performance project, "Letters to Imaginary Friends." Specifically, Jacobs will pen letters to his favorite childhood characters, and visitors will draw what figures populate their minds' eyes. 

"I didn't want to be the only one getting real value out of these imaginary friends," Jacobs said. "I hoped others could too, even in some very small way. Drawing portraits seemed like the lowest-barrier-to-entry way of getting folks to engage with the characters."

Eventually Jacobs hopes to compile all letters and drawings into a zine, which will be free for participants and very affordable for everyone else. The community-wide project aims to loosen up the lines separating categories such as the real and the pretend, innocence and insanity, nonsense and value. 

"We are all faced with a barrage of competing narratives everyday," Jacobs said. "We look in the mirror and wonder, 'Do I look good today, or do I look OK today or do I look bad today?' I guess I believe all those scenarios to be equally 'real,' but the one that is 'true' is the one you end up investing in. That is, I think, in a super fundamental way, we have a bit more choice when it comes to truth than we tend to think. I wonder if this project will remind those who encounter it that, as humans, we are empowered with agency when it comes to constructing our realities."

"Letters to Imaginary Friends" runs through the month of October at Hand & Detail Projects, located at 644 Lorimer Street in Brooklyn. Stop by to bring Gogo and his friends to life on your own terms, and see some of the drawings already created below. 

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What was it to be American in the 1950s? Alive in post-war Germany? Portraiture, more than abstract, people-less canvases, forces us to weigh these questions. Picasso, Warhol, even Gerhard Richter, with his smudgy landscapes, understood the power of a face staring out of a canvas. Confronted with one, the sensitive viewer must throw her empathy across time, perform a new kind of ventriloquism where the dummy sits in another room. 

“It’s defining,” the painter Justin Bower recently told The Huffington Post over the phone. We were discussing the bounds of portraiture as they apply to Bower's solo show "The Humiliations," closing this week at Unix Gallery in New York. Bower, a West Coast tech art staple, name-checked Warhol's famed portraits of Marilyn Monroe as a specific water mark, a series that, as he puts it, "can’t define an age any more clearly." 

Internet friendly and disorienting all at once, Bower’s portraits shift with stripes of color and shape. It’s possible to see decades of art history and pop culture in the interplay: from Salvador Dali’s trick painting of his lover Gala, built in blocks to look from afar like an image of Abraham Lincoln, to that oddly beautiful television warning screen from the 1990s -- the bars of color slotted crazily together like an Ellsworth Kelly painting gone berserk.

Other influences hit closer to home. Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat -- living is now a kaleidoscopic affair. Bower works in LA, ground zero for the fragmented life. Kim Kardashian may exist vividly on Instagram and differently on TV, but as a human being, she’s still a mystery to us. (Even perhaps, to herself.)

This “hall of mirrors” filter on everyday life has never really existed until now, Bower argues. What he calls an endless "reproducibility" and malleability of subject and personality is, he believes, singular to our era, and thus to his work.

Of course, countless philosophers have deemed man unrecognizable since the Enlightenment. Their reasons vary, but the gist is the same, whether uttered by Foucault or Derrida. It's a line of thinking Bower sees as fodder. “I often wonder, why declare it anymore?” he says, of the “man is dead” trope. His scrambled subjects reference this force too, the constant attacks on the very concept of human existence at all.

Bower uses what he calls a “code" to create, in reference to computer programming. His models are anonymous, translated to the canvas as huge, destabilized faces. He sets up rules on thickness and space between lines, as well as color harmonies. His aim is for a "visual manifestation of the code that we experience all the time,” he says.

At first glance, the final result seems tailor-made for a glitch art show. But the glitch world, in which artists reconstitute accidental digital errors into visual compositions, can too easily be seen as a creation of its time. Bower likens the genre to the silkscreen works that came to define the 1960s.

Whereas he hopes to make paintings that outlast him, forcing empathy wherever they go. “I want them to be more than just the signifier of today,” he says of his portraits. “I want to dig into who we are.”

"Justin Bower: The Humiliations" will be on view at Unix Gallery in New York until Oct. 17.

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Ah, female virginity. For most women, there's a moment where they become hyper-aware of their own virginity, suddenly realizing that they're in that so-called in-between of being "not yet a girl, not yet a woman."

Virginity is something we are told, alternately, to either obsess over or not acknowledge at all. You should safeguard it, but give it away to the right person, but make sure not to hold onto it too long.  The biggest myth about virginity is that it's something easily defined when, in fact, it has a myriad of definitions and they all depend on how you feel about it. 

And yet, so much about how young women feel about virginity is dictated by society and pop culture at large. Below are just a few of the biggest pop culture lies women are taught about what happens when you finally lose your so-called V-Card:

1. You will die. 

There are countless scenes in countless horror movies (see: "Cherry Falls," "Nightmare on Elm Street," "Friday the 13th," "Halloween") where the innocent, virginal teen girl finds herself the target of a boogie men right after -- or during -- getting it on. If a girl manages to keep her virginity intact by the end of a movie, she's rewarded with being the Final Girl. It's a silly and predictable trope, but it also speaks to general, subliminal horror that surrounds the concept of teenaged sex, and specifically that of the virginal teenage girl. Women are implicitly taught that their sexuality is dangerous, possibly even life-threatening, and that to lose your virginity under "less than honorable" circumstances is to meet your certain doom. Yawn. 

 2. You will get pregnant, instantly. And then your baby will break your spine and eat you from the inside out. 

OK, that second part is a plot point from Stephenie Meyers's "Breaking Dawn," the final installment of the "Twilight" franchise, where Bella Swan is effectively killed by her unborn child before being turned into blood-thirsty vampire in order to save her life. But the pregnancy-right-after-sex thing isn't something that only exists in the "Twilight" universe. We see it across movies, books, and television, from '80s classics like "For Keeps" where 17-year-old Molly Ringwald gets preggers after losing her virginity to her high school boyfriend, to every Lifetime movie ever. This narrative further adds to the anxiety that surrounds teenaged sex. And the idea that no matter how safe and responsible you are, you're definitely going to get "knocked up" and ruin your life, is as ridiculous as it is false. 

3. You will be a clingy, sappy mess. 

There's a scene in season two of "Girls" where Shoshanna is rejected after revealing to a guy she's about to have sex with that that she's a virgin. "Virgins get attached," he says. "Or they bleed. You get attached when you bleed." While the scene is played for laughs, turning the narrative we usually see about "clingy virgins" on its head, the idea that female virgins get "clingy" after losing their virginity is a concept that's reiterated and reinforced all the time. A prime example is in the movie "Cruel Intentions," where Selma Blair's character becomes obsessed with Sebastian after losing her virginity to him. Yes, emotions may get involved for some women (and that's totally normal and OK), but the myth that all women are emotional messes who can't possibly separate sex from love is patently untrue. Plus, it puts unnecessary and unfair expectations on young women who feel ready to lose their virginity. 

4. It will change everything. 

Speaking of ridiculous expectations, the event of losing one's virginity has been built up to enormous, unrealistic heights. Pop culture teaches young women that losing their virginity will be the most momentous thing that ever happens to them in life ever. Teen movies like "American Pie," "Little Darlings," and "Sex Drive" center on the loss of virginity as a pivotal, profound turning point. To be clear, this isn't to say that having sex for the first time is absolutely no big deal, but the reality is that losing your virginity doesn't have to be a monumental moment if you don't think it is. How you feel about your virginity -- and sexuality in general -- is not a one-size-fits-all sort of deal, no matter how many teen movies would have you believing this. 

5.  If you don't lose your virginity as a teenager, there's something seriously wrong with you. 

We live in a society where young women are slut-shamed for being curious about or enjoying sex, but simultaneously called frigid or "prudes" if they choose not to be sexual. According to the CDC, the average age for virginity loss in America is 17 years old. But there are also plenty of women who remain virgins well into their 20s (and even 30s) -- and not all them for religious reasons. While virginity is viewed as something that young women should "give" away selectively, older virgins often deal with a different kind of stigma. Of course, what someone chooses to define as virginity and when they choose to "lose" that virginity should be totally up to them, not some weird age window that society has deemed socially acceptable. 

6. If you don't lose your virginity to someone you love, you will regret it for the rest of your life.

Some people feel most comfortable being sexually intimate with a person they are in love with. For others, it's not a big deal. But our culture perpetuates the idea that if young women sleep with someone they do not love, they will not only get "clingy," but then feel humiliated once they realize the person they slept with is just not that into them. Once again, this myth feeds on the idea that women are overly emotional, and that their sexuality has everything to do with what someone else thinks about them. But who we choose to have sex with for the first time should only have to do with what makes us comfortable. If a sexual experience is consensual and enjoyable, that's really all that matters. Period. 

7. Lesbian, queer, and trans women aren't part of the "virginity" conversation.

Think about it -- how many mainstream depictions of LGBT women experiencing their sexuality for the first time do we ever really see? The virginity narrative in pop culture -- and outside of it -- nearly always hinges on heterosexual pairings and penis-in-vagina penetration, failing to represent a whole group of young women who are experiencing their sexualities in a completely different way. These one-note depictions drive home the idea that virginity is a thing someone (a.k.a. a man) "takes" from a woman and always in the same, penetrative way. In reality, sex can be many things, shifting in importance depending on the people who are experiencing it. 

Wanna learn more about virginity -- the myths, the way we think about it and what it really means in our culture? Check out the latest HuffPost Love & Sex podcast:

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