Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Video Distractin: Duck Tron
Tron is a 1982 American science fiction film. DuckBrand.com is a company that sells duct tape. The two combine with awesome results.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Video Distraction: Giant Slingshot Destroys Car
Joerg Sprave has built a new sligshot cannon which he describes as the best rubber-based weapon he’s ever made. The device propels steel balls using 6 full Thera Band Gold stripes per side, which are 72 times stronger than “hunterbands” for conventional slingshots. Check out the video after the break to watch the sligshot pelt beer cans, windows and a car.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Daily Links: August 29, 2011
Above: "Steve Jobs for Fortune magazine" by Deanna Lowe of Tsevis Visual Design for Fortune magazine.
10 Species You Can Kiss Goodbye
Before it was a website, Ask A Mathematician / Ask A Physicist was two guys sitting in the desert at Burning Man, presuming to answer (almost) any question that happened to occur to whomever happened to appear at our stand.
The Daily Beast takes a look at the Irene Survival Kits people put together.
The influential American fiction magazine, Weird Tales has a new editor, and a new direction. It's hard to overstate the importance the magazine has played as a platform for genre fiction. Founded in 1923, it has featured authors such as H. P. Lovecraft, C. M. Eddy, Jr., Clark Ashton Smith, and Seabury Quinn. Official link and statement from departing editor Ann Vandermeer.
Living to 100 and Beyond: Scientists are on the brink of radically expanding the span of a healthy life. Author Sonia Arrison on the latest advances—and what they mean for human existence. People are actually thinking about immortality these days. Or at least living a long, long time. (There's a jellyfish that's already made it.) Aubrey de Grey says we can avoid aging. In fact, he believes that the first person who will live to be a thousand years old may already have been born.
A self-styled "ninja" is patrolling the streets of Yeovil in a bid to make the town a safer place. 'Martial arts expert and father-of-two Ken Andre, 33, also known as Shadow, has been monitoring the streets of the Somerset town for the past six years.'
Friday, August 26, 2011
Science: Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream
Thanks to its incredibly low temperature, liquid nitrogen can be used to create ice cream from a wide variety of ingredients, including hard to freeze liquors, in just a few minutes (see the Jefferson Lab demonstrate how to make liquid nitrogen ice cream).
A number of liquid nitrogen ice cream shops have popped up in recent years, including Smitten Ice Cream in San Francisco and Nitro in Long Island (Nitro is opening shops in Manhattan next year).
Daily Links: August 26, 2011
Atheists Supply Less Than 1% Of Prison Populations, While Christians Make -Up 75%.
The hidden meaning of pronouns: "we can predict people’s college performance reasonably well by simply analyzing their college admissions essays. ... Higher GPAs were associated with admission essays that used high rates of nouns and low rates of verbs and pronouns. The effects were surprisingly strong and lasted across all years of college, no matter what the students’ major.
Killed by Inventiveness - A list of inventors killed by their own inventions.
PopSci's 25 Most Awesome College Labs 2011
See history roll over the world. Today, the Internet Archive has released to the world an archive of all news programs on nearly every major television channel from 9/11/2001 to 9/16/2001. This exhibit, called Understanding 9/11: A Television News Archive provides a grid navigation system of these many hours of footage from dozens of worldwide news programs and gives us a comprehensive overview of television's reaction to 9/11, on 9/11.
What Is Up With Noises? Math whiz Vi Hart explains the science of sound in an engaging video.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Great Design: Room in a Box
The Casulo is the brainchild of German designers Marcel Krings and Sebastian Mühlhäuser. The design duo came published the idea in 2007 in their dissertation at the Köln International School of Design in Cologne. Calling it ‘a new concept for mobile living,’ they named their design Casulo, the Portuguese word for ‘cocoon.’ The Casulo contains everything needed for a bedroom: the bed, a desk, shelves an armoire, and several units of storage. It was designed with the goal easing the more frustrating phases of moving - time, transport and reassembling furniture.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Daily Links: August 23, 2011
Source: Behance
10 Strange Things People Tried to Smuggle Onto an Airplane
It's that time of year. Freshmen are confusedly wandering campuses around the nation in packs, searching for free food, and the annual Mindset list has been released.
Marcus Chown's top 10 bonkers things about the universe.
The perfect location for the perfect crime. Due to a loophole in the US Constitution there is an area of Yellowstone Park where you may be able to get away with a major crime. U Michigan Prof Brian C Kalt looks into this loophole and gauges your chance at success. Someone has tried.
Study: A Third of Young Adults Have Had Pretend Phone Conversations
Why Arabic is Terrific
Monday, August 22, 2011
Daily Links: August 22, 2011
8 Most Famous Intellectual Feuds of All Time
The 12 Scariest TSA Stories of All Time
47 Cheap, Fun Things to Do This Weekend
Are beautiful people 'selfish by nature'? People with symmetrical faces are more self-sufficient and less likely to co-operate, new research suggests
List of unusual deaths; of inventors killed by their own inventions; of chess related deaths; of entertainers who died during a performance.
The Outer Limits episode, The Architects of Fear is built around faking an alien invasion in order to stop nuclear armageddon. In a recent interview, Paul Krugman of the New York Times proposed a fake alien invasion to stimulate the economy.
Plants for a Future offers an online database of plants that are either edible or useful as medicine. It's a great resource for outdoorsy types.
Researchers Find That Alligator Fat Could Be a New Source of Biodiesel. Alligator farming is alive and well in the United States and elsewhere but traditionally it's all about the animals' skin and meat. Now it seems that there may also be a use for the 15 million pounds of alligator fat that are currently being deposited in land fills every year: bio diesel.
The Secret Ingredient In Your Orange Juice: Haven’t you ever wondered why every glass of Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice tastes the same, no matter where in the world you buy it or what time of year you’re drinking it in?
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Daily Links: August 9, 2011
Above: Double-decker bus aflame during the London Riots.
3D printing: The world's first printed plane: The promise of 3D printing has finally taken off with the development of a drone that takes just a week to create.
Have you ever wondered which part of the other side of the earth is directly beneath you?
How to remove yourself from various background check sites.
Interesting Facts About 12 Random Topics
Locks-R-Us has posted a photo gallery of the 8 Biggest Locks on Earth
NPR Books is asking people to vote for their ten favorite science fiction / fantasy books of all time. The list is exhaustive; the picking only ten is hard.
Saudis Set to Build Kingdom Tower, Soon to be The World's Tallest Building, an elegant yet extreme tower that will rise 3,281 feet above the streets of Jeddah.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Quick Pic: Batman Graph
Redditor i_luv_ur_mom is learning some important things in math class, like how to summon Batman. This would be unusual in most places, but Batmath is actually a graduation requirement at all Gotham City high schools.
Video Distraction: How to Stop Procrastinating
Hmmm... this may not be the best post for this blog, seeing as how it encourages you NOT to procrastinate, but I doubt any of you will be turning over a new leaf any time soon.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Daily Links: August 2, 2011
Above: Architect Ryuji Nakamura thought of a brilliant way to convert his screen-mounted webcam into a miniature paper house that creates the illusion of turning him into a giant. Complete with tiny furniture.
3D interactive journey into the Great Pyramid of Khufu. More from BBC. Tour in and around the pyramid guided or on your own. Also explains the theory by French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin how the pyramid was built.
15 Years in Prison For Taping the Cops? How Eavesdropping Laws Are Taking Away Our Best Defense Against Police Brutality. The War on Cameras
55 Fiction is a form of microfiction with a few rules, including a limitation to 55 words. Started as contest in a local San Luis Obispo, California alt-weekly paper in 1987, the contest has since been replicated elsewhere, including two related books (Google books previews) and two unrelated websites. The latest contest is now done.
For a mere $65, headstone maker Quiring Monuments will add a QR barcode to a cemetery headstone and run a linked web site for five years. A Seattle cemetery manager says he is considering adding the codes to historical monuments and even trees.
Halden Prison prison in Norway is being called the most humane in the world. Check out these photos. I swear, it's nicer than my college dorm. Damn.
Ron Doerfler's Dead Reckonings - Lost Art in the Mathematical Sciences is a collection of essays, in weblog format, on historical techniques in mathematical sciences, antique scientific instruments and other related topics.
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