Chemistry teacher Chris Bergmann at Kinard Middle School ran this loud little experiment two years ago, showing his students a one-step way to give a pumpkin a face from the inside out.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Video Distraction: Explosive Pumpkin Carving
Chemistry teacher Chris Bergmann at Kinard Middle School ran this loud little experiment two years ago, showing his students a one-step way to give a pumpkin a face from the inside out.
Daily Links: October 31, 2011
The Awl takes a look at how Twitter has allowed local slang to go global, and the unhappiness this causes for some.
Did McDonalds cause the decline of violence in America
How many slaves work for you?
The Sheriff's Office in Montgomery County, Texas near Houston has become the first law enforcement agency to buy a weaponizable Shadowhawk MK-III UAV.
"This Halloween, give somebody a scary book, to read. That's it. That's the idea. It's going to be a tradition." It's an idea Neil Gaiman came up a year ago. It's called All Hallow's Read, with a website and everything, which has book recommendations of all sorts, plus stickers, bookmarks, cards, and a small story you can print off, as well as a poster contest for next year's event.
Visa and MasterCard have decided to start selling information about your purchasing history to advertisers.
Wasps create cockroach zombies, viruses produce zombie caterpillars, deep-sea zombie worms live off decaying whale bones, South American flies 'infect' ants with brain-sucking larvae.
What can neuroscience teach us about zombies? A pair of neurology blogs go over nine common symptoms: Aggression, Lumbering Walk, Memory Loss, Aphasia, Capgras-Delusion, Impaired Pain Reception, Locked Attention, Flesh Addiction, Insatiable hunger, Conclusions.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Daily Links: October 28, 2011
"A superheroic twist on Norman Rockwell's 'The Runaway'"
A step-by-step look into the process of making this can illustration.
6 Creepy Churches Made of Bones
An article in the Guardian asks why do so many Goths stick with their subculture through their adult lives, through career, parenthood and well into middle age.
Best Grammar Blog of 2011 has been announced - A Clil To Climb. The competition was intense.
Found on a classroom chalkboard: The best statistics question ever.
Google Earth Clock is a digital clock assembled from views of the planet that resemble numbers. (Requires the Google Earth plugin).
How to Build Your Very Own Flamethrower Jack-O'-Lantern
News:
- Population to Reach 7 Billion This Week. As experts wait for the human population to reach 7 billion this week, some estimates claim even larger growth by the end of the century. One forthcoming United Nations report estimates that the number of humans on the planet may reach 15 billion -- more than double current levels, according to The Observer.
Tech: TEDx in a Box
TEDx in a Box, ingenious concept by IDEO.org to give TEDx organizers in under-resourced areas and informal settlements around the world the tools necessary to host TEDx events.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Video Distraction: Android Dreams
Android Dreams by Samuel Cockedey
A beautiful time-lapse video of Tokyo set to the Blade Runner soundtrack.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Video Distraction: Dragon 50Cal
Dragon M-50 Manufactured by Central Wisconsin Armory, designed by Ed Haywood.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Daily Links: October 25, 2011
The Most Dangerous Game ... prepared to Order
'iStroll Kid' Is an iPad Case that Attaches to a Stroller, raising the question Should Your 2-Year-Old Be Using an iPad?
Itinerant writer talks of living, and dreaming, on $20,000 a year. ... Another man shares The Secret to Living Well on $11,000 a Year.
Future Touchscreens Could Know Exactly What Touched Them: While certainly impressive technology, modern touchscreens are still kind of limited in that they only really know where on the display they’ve been touched. So researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are hoping to advance their capabilities with a new system that can tell exactly what they’ve been touched with.
Was GeekGirlCon 2011 the most important con of the year? Scenes around the con 1, 2. A first time con-goers account 1, 2, 3. GeekGirlCon President Erica McGillivray On Girls & Comics. Kyrax2, the San Deigo Batgirl, on GeekGirlCon.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Daily Links: October 24, 2011
The Bitcoin bubble is bursting.
A Look at College By Social Class
McSweeney's celebrates fall: It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers. The rocket and plans for it are a bit controversial. Everything from the price tag, who builds it and even the choice of the SLS have been cause for debate.
NASA is designing a spiffy new rocket, the Space Launch System, which will lob people and cargo to the moon, an asteroid and eventually Mars.
Social network popularity around the world in 2011 as determined by Google search statistics.
Why are computer voices mostly female? Apple's 1987 vision of a computerized personal assistant was originally male. Siri's voice is female in the US and Australia, but male in the UK and France. One theory is that a male voice would remind too many people of HAL 9000,but in an interview with one of Siri's early backers, Shawn Carolan says that originally the inventors had tried to secure a URL for HAL, but when that was unavailable, they turned to Siri, which is a Norwegian woman's name. Carolan says, "Personally, I'm glad it was Siri. Hal may have been too [ominous] a persona."
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Video Distraction: The Human Slingshot
This is THE original human slingshot developed by the Pope family in Hobble Creek Canyon, UT. Just a couple posts and some bungee cords. Filmed with Canon 5D Mark II and Canon 7D.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Daily Links: October 20, 2011
The Evolution of the Hard Drive 1979 - 2011
Source: 9Gag
The Great Tech War of 2012: Apple v. Google v. Amazon v. Facebook
How to fix internet embarrassments and improve your online reputation.
Infographic: Star Trek is Just Around the Corner
PBS is running a special on Radioactive Wolves
Thirteen Observations made by Lemony Snicket while watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance
News:
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Daily Links: October 18, 2011
Apparently Apple Purposely Gave Siri Some Attitude. Here is a cnet demo of siri on youtube.
The question is, how does Siri stack up against a real assistant? You can browse some of Siri's more amusing responses in Shit Siri Says.
BRANDWASHED Reveals The Hidden Ways That Stores Make You Spend More Money
Four charts explain what the Wall Street protesters are angry about.
Google has released a new version of Translate, for Android. It now features Conversation Mode.
The Kids Are Actually Sort of Alright: My screwed, coddled, self-absorbed, mocked, surprisingly resilient generation.
Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital now has medicinal meerkats.
News:
- Occupy Wall Street started informally through social media. But who and how? Gilad Lotan has reconstructed the origin of #OccupyWallStreet for Reuters.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Video Distraction: Hotel Worker Quits in Style
Fed up with the working conditions at the Providence, Rhode Island Renaissance Providence hotel where he worked, Joey tendered his resignation by telling his boss in person that he quit assisted with the accompaniment of the What Cheer? Brigade marching band.
Source: Reddit
Friday, October 14, 2011
Science: Blue Holes
Blue holes are giant and sudden drops in underwater elevation that get their name from the dark and foreboding blue tone they exhibit when viewed from above in relationship to surrounding waters. They can be hundreds of feet deep and while divers are able to explore some of them they are largely devoid of oxygen that would support sea life due to poor water circulation - leaving them eerily empty. Some blue holes, however, contain ancient fossil remains that have been discovered, preserved in their depths.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Technology: Connected States of America
A joint project by MIT’s SENSEable City Lab and the AT&T Research Lab visualizes social interaction between emerging communities based on anonymized mobile phone data.
Investigating the interaction network of people reveals interesting facets on how people utilize space. Cities attract their citizens from all walks of life, from nearby and from distant areas across the country. This constant flux of people commuting, migrating, and travelling across the country establishes connections which are dominated by large cities. The social connections woven across the United States can be used to define communities, where the glue that holds a community together is a stronger relationship with other members of the same community compared to members of other communities. Naturally, one can ask whether the communities defined purely by social interactions coincide with the administrative boundaries, for example state boundaries? Remarkably, this is not always the case!Source: The Connected States of America
Daily Links: October 13, 2011
What the organizational charts of big tech companies reveal about leadership psychology
Source: Bonkers World
Google has introduced Dart "a new class-based programming language for creating structured web applications." So far, Dart has garnered criticism and praise with some calling it a disappointment.
The Ladder of Abstraction does an amazing, Tuftian job of illustrating the convergence of science, engineering, and intuition that is involved in tackling the difficult problems of today's systems and software.
Ridiculous Tips For A Miserable Sex Life: Each month like clockwork, men's and women's magazines hit the newstands, bursting with terrible sex and dating advice. And each month, we pick out the stupidest tips and make fun of them
Science:
- Hedging the Apocalypse: Dornith Doherty’s documentary images of seed-saving facilities.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Daily Links: October 12, 2011
The energy efficiency of computing is doubling every 18 months Since sensors, miniaturization and mobility is some of the most important info technology drivers today, this insight is highly relevant.
10 of the dumbest million dollar ideas of all-time
11 High Paying Six Figure Jobs without a College Degree
HowCast features How-To Videos on just about every project you can imagine, including salsa dancing, crocheting booties, making fried ice cream, how to pull off a surprise marriage proposal, preventing ear infections in children, and so much more. Search or browse through categories like Kids, Teens, Games, First Aid & Safety, Holidays & Celebrations, Cars, House & Garden, etc.
In a recent Op-Ed piece on the Wall Street Journal, author, journalist, public speaker and generally inquisitive fellow Robert Bryce offered up following analogy in his discussion of climate change science: "If serious scientists can question Einstein's theory of relativity, then there must be room for debate about the workings and complexities of the Earth's atmosphere. " And the internet took it from there, in the form of comics, the Twitter hashtag #WSJscience, and plenty of science-minded blogs and sites a-plenty.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Daily Links: October 11, 2011
Source: Cajun Mike's
10 Awesome Online Classes You Can Take For Free
10 Exotic and Weird Toilets: You may not think about it much, but chances are your toilet is boring and dull. It's a comfort to know that there are some truly unusual porcelain thrones out there to break up the monotony of everyday... business.
Hand signals used by waiters in restaurants to communicate with one another.
How Two Scammers Built an Empire Hawking Sketchy Software
In August 2011, 35 ACLU affiliates filed 381 requests in 32 states with local law enforcement agencies seeking to uncover when, why and how they are using cell phone location data to track Americans. So how long do American cell phone carriers retain information about your calls, text messages, and data use? According to data gathered by the US Department of Justice, it can be as little as a few days or up to seven years, depending on your provider.
Ready for the robot revolution?
Rescued Owl returns to care for other injured birds and one cat
Robert Cringely: it’s suddenly clear why Apple didn’t introduce the iPhone 5 this week. It would have been lost in the news of Jobs’s death, killing the marketing value he would have loved. I’m sure the phone will appear in a week or two with that appearance in part to encourage the recovery of Apple shares from what is sure to be a short-term decline.
The top 500 supercomputers in the world, in rank order, as of last June. The top entry on the list uses 548,000 SPARC64 cores and burns 10 megawatts. No word on what the air conditioning plant looks like.
You need a permit to use amplified sound in New York City. The #OccupyWallStreet protesters haven't got one. So they've come up with a unique solution for transmitting their message - the human microphone.
Friday, October 7, 2011
Architecture: Dumpster Home
Gregory Lincoln Kloehn and his plush dumpster home from Varsh Charles Farazdel
Gregory Lincoln Kloehn , a direct descendent of Honest Abe, has crafted a
fully functioning, sturdy and stylish home from our good old beloved
dumpster.
This 3 minute film features some of the outside features available for this plush dumpster home crafted by Greg Kloehn. Although these dumpster dwellers come from different walks of life, they all yearn for the same feeling: simple, carefree living, that comes from being immersed in your physical surroundings.
When was the last time you could name 3 of the 10 different flowers you passed by today? Or the bird that is perched a couple meters away? Are we really listening? Can anyone tell me the name of the bird from the song?
This 3 minute film features some of the outside features available for this plush dumpster home crafted by Greg Kloehn. Although these dumpster dwellers come from different walks of life, they all yearn for the same feeling: simple, carefree living, that comes from being immersed in your physical surroundings.
When was the last time you could name 3 of the 10 different flowers you passed by today? Or the bird that is perched a couple meters away? Are we really listening? Can anyone tell me the name of the bird from the song?
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