29 November 2009
28 November 2009
26 November 2009
24 November 2009
Walter Wick | Balancing Act
Walter Wick is a children’s book author and photographic illustrator with an interest in puzzles, games, science, and illusions.Walter Wick
Via: Urlesque
22 November 2009
20 November 2009
Switch
Dominic Wilcox, a young British artist who works with everyday objects, attached an on/off switch to his head with wig tape.
"The switch was worn day and night for close to a month. I remember after leaving the place where it was done I had to overtake some people on the path. I knew they would see it, so that was a big moment, then after that I relaxed a little. I went into a pub once and ordered a drink. It felt like the music and pool balls came to a stop for a second or so. Then started up again."Dominic Wilcox
Via: The Daily What
19 November 2009
What The Ho?
Santarchy takes place in major cities all over the world involving tens of thousands of Santas. It is a non-profit, non-political, non-religious, non-sensical celebration of holiday cheer, goodwill, and fun. There is no good reason to dress up in cheap Santa suits, run around town, give gifts, sing songs, have strangers sit on our laps, and decide who is naughty or nice -- but it's a lot of fun -- so Santa does it anyway. Everyone loves Santa and Santa loves everyone!
Paul Oberle 2008
The nearest Santarchy event is Saturday 12 December in Washington, D.C.
Some rules and reminders:
- Holiday apparel is mandatory. A Santa hat is not enough. Get a Santa suit. Buy a Santa suit. Make a Santa suit. Steal a Santa suit. If you don't have any money, be creative. Already have a Santa suit? Bring spare parts for the Santafication of strangers. Past examples: Santa Claws, Santa Garcia, Santa's naughty little helper, misfit toy, elf, grinch, angel, Jesus, snowman, nutcracker, reindeer. Shit -- last year we had a chicken, a panda, a bunny, and a gay french monkey, so we're pretty flexible here.
- Santa does not make children cry. Really - If you see kids, give them nice toys, candy, or something pleasant. (Feel free to abuse their parents.)
- Santa dresses for all occasions. It's December. Smart Santas wear layers. Dress to maximize merriment whether singing christmas carols in the snow, or swinging from a stripper pole.
- Santa doesn't whine! We will be outside much of the early day and covering a lot of ground on foot -- bring enough "snacks" to keep your pie-hole filled until we get indoors.
- Watching Santa get drunk and obnoxious is fun. Babysitting Santa while they vomit in an alley is not. Don't be that Santa.
- Pay your own god damn bar tab. Tip the bartenders generously for putting up with us.
Santarchy | Washington D.C.
Santarchy and Santacon
18 November 2009
17 November 2009
Gerbil Shirt
Hey, are you tired of leaving your small pets at home when you are out and about? Could you use a little more quality time with your gerbils, mice, hamsters or snakes? Well now your dreams have come true with the Gerbil Shirt! The Gerbil Shirt wraps your torso in plastic tube passageways, making your bod a super highway of fun for Binky and Bart. The interior surfaces are textured for traction and have air vents for easy breathing.Totally Absurd Inventions
The inventor suggests you can clean the Gerbil Shirt by attaching it to a faucet (remove pets first please), and you should avoid collisions and falls that could cause pet panic. We give two thumbs up to this living fashion accessory and we can't wait to see the toy poodle version.
14 November 2009
Watch Online
Clicker is the complete guide to Internet Television. Our mission is to make it simple for you to find the right show, right now. Staying on top of what programs are available online and offline, organizing them for you, and recommending gems for you to discover is what Clicker is all about.The site is clean and easy to use. It only took a few moments to set up an account and I was able to find a free source for Fritz Lang's classic sf movie "Metropolis" in seconds.
Clicker
13 November 2009
Your Brain On God
More than half of adult Americans report they have had a spiritual experience that changed their lives. Now, scientists from universities like Harvard, Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins are using new technologies to analyze the brains of people who claim they have touched the spiritual — from Christians who speak in tongues to Buddhist monks to people who claim to have had near-death experiences. Hear what they have discovered in this controversial field, as the science of spirituality continues to evolve.
Source: NPR
Via: chart porn
One Glass Of Red Wine A Day ...
"Take the stairs instead of escalators or elevator and feel better" is something you often hear or maybe read in Sunday attachments. Few if any people have followed this advice. Can we get more people to take the stairs over the escalator on a normal day in Stockholm, by making it more fun to take the stairs? The result you see here. (translated from Swedish)YouTube
Source: Rolighetsteorin | Volkswagen
Thanks, Lynn
12 November 2009
Body Builders
This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It's about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature's ultimate machine.
Scientists at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine are currently working to engineer 22 different tissues and organs in the laboratory, including blood vessels, heart valves, bone, muscle, kidneys livers. Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Institute, has been growing human tissue and organs in his lab for nearly 20 years.
In the image above, a human bladder is engineered using a biodegradable, three-dimension scaffold that supports bladder cells while they multiply and develop. A technician is "seeding" cells on the scaffold.
Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine
Gizmodo
International Vegetarian Union | Veggies Are Good For Your Body
Advertising Agency: JWT KuwaitVia: LikeCool
Creative Directors: Alessandro Antonini, Mark Makhoul
Photographer: Tommy Morris
Retoucher: Nabil Kamara
Published: August 2009
Aromicon: Taste-Based Wine Search Engine
Aromicon, which lists thousands of wines that are intricately categorized acording to region, grape variety, and food pairing, also allows users to find wines by their taste ... You just enter a search for a particular taste (some strange examples include butter, blood, and animal!) and Aromicon will find you the wine that tastes like what you’ve searched. Enhancing your visual experience is a short animation of swirling flavors, such as banana and grapefruit, that shows you what to expect from the taste.The site is in German but Google Translate works well.
Aromicon
Via: Trendhunter
11 November 2009
Funniest Analogies Collected By High School English Teachers
These analogies are the winning entries in a 1999 Washington Post humor contest.Source: Writing English
1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a ThighMaster.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.
18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.
19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
Thanks, Linda
10 November 2009
09 November 2009
Make Up A Story
What do you think is going on here?
07 November 2009
Letters Of Note: Prepare For Contact
Letters of Note is an attempt to gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos.
Here's a 1924 telegram from then Chief of U.S. Naval Operations, Edward W. Eberle, instructing all Naval stations to monitor the airwaves for any unusual transmissions due to anticipated contact from Martians. August 22nd of that year was witness to the closest Mars opposition since 1804 (a mere 55,777,566 km), and as such provided desirable conditions in which to receive radio signals from the Red Planet. The man tasked with clearing the airwaves - a Professor David Todd - somehow managed to persuade both the Army and Navy to report any findings for a three day period, but failed to silence the country's private radio broadcasters for even two days. Needless to say, the three day exercise produced nothing but static.
WASHINGTON-ALASKA MILITARY CABLE AND TELEGRAPH SYSTEMLetters of Note
TELEGRAM
RECEIVED AT 1308 1ST AVENUE, SEATTLE, WASH.
18RD B 78 GOVT DUPE
RD PUGETSOUND WN AUG 22 1924
GOVT COMDT 13 NAV DIST
SEATTLE WN
7021 ALNAVSTA EIGHT NAVY DESIRES COOPERATE ASTRONOMERS WHO BELIEVE POSSIBLE THAT MARS MAY ATTEMPT COMMUNICATION BY RADIO WAVES WITH THIS PLANET WHILE THEY ARE NEAR TOGETHER THIS END ALL SHORE RADIO STATIONS WILL ESPECIALLY NOTE AND REPORT ANY ELECTRICAL PHENOMENON UNUSUAL CHARACTER AND WILL COVER AS WIDE BAND FREQUENCIES AS POSSIBLE FROM 2400 AUGUST TWENTY FIRST TO 2400 AUGUST TWENTY FOURTH WITHOUT INTERFERRING WITH TRAFFIC 1800
SECNAV WASHN DC
257P
05 November 2009
Alleged Google Interview Questions
Seattle Interview Coach collected 140 questions presented to their clients during job inteviews at Google. Positions applied for included engineering manager, software engineer, product manager, AdWords associate, and quantitative compensation analyst.
Some of the non-technical questions:
- You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?
- How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?
- You need to check that your friend, Bob, has your correct phone number, but you cannot ask him directly. You must write a the question on a card which and give it to Eve who will take the card to Bob and return the answer to you. What must you write on the card, besides the question, to ensure Bob can encode the message so that Eve cannot read your phone number?
- How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?
- How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?
- You're the captain of a pirate ship, and your crew gets to vote on how the gold is divided up. If fewer than half of the pirates agree with you, you die. How do you recommend apportioning the gold in such a way that you get a good share of the booty, but still survive?
- Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco.
- You have to get from point A to point B. You don’t know if you can get there. What would you do?
The folks at Silicon Valley Insider have suggested answers for some of the questions.
Is The Large Hadron Collider Jinxed?
20 October 2009
Scientists claim the giant atom-smashing Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is being jinxed from the future to save the world.5 November 2009
In a bizarre sci-fi theory, Danish physicist Dr Holger Bech Nielsen and Dr Masao Ninomiya from Japan claim nature is trying to prevent the LHC from finding the elusive Higgs boson. Called the "God particle," the theoretical boson could explain the origins of mass in the universe — if physicists can find the darn thing.
The scientists say their math proves nature will "ripple backward through time" to stop the LHC before it can create the God particle, like a time traveller who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.
One could even almost say that we have a model for God, Dr Nielsen says in an unpublished essay. He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them.
"While it is a paradox to go back in time and kill your grandfather, physicists agree there is no paradox if you go back in time and save him from being hit by a bus," Dannis Overbye wrote in the New York Times.
"In the case of the Higgs and the collider, it is as if something is going back in time to keep the universe from being hit by a bus."
It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck, Dr Nielsen told the New York Times.
European science agency CERN designed the world's biggest particle accelerator to shoot beams around a freezing 27km concrete ring underground near Geneva, smashing atoms together in search of the elusive "God particle" believed present at the Big Bang.
The multi-billion-dollar machine, built over almost 20 years, was set to launch in late 2008 but broke down after it overheated during a test run.
The relaunch was pushed back to late 2009 as more parts had to be replaced, and CERN was recently scandalised when a LHC scientist was found to have approached al-Qaeda for work. Source: YouTube | Fox News
The Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, just cannot catch a break. First, a coolant leak destroyed some of the magnets that guide the energy beam. Then LHC officials postponed the restart of the machine to add additional safety features. Now, a bird dropping a piece of bread on a section of the accelerator has, according to the Register, shut down the whole operation.How the LHC Works | The Los Angeles Times
The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine.
This incident won't delay the reactivation of the facility later this month, but exposes yet another vulnerability of the what might be the most complex machine ever built. With freak accident after freak accident piling up over at CERN, the idea of time traveling particles returning from the future to prevent their own discovery is beginning to seem less and less far fetched. Source: Popular Science
LHC Website
04 November 2009
Ferrofluid > Morpho Towers
Morpho Tower--Two Standing Spirals is an installation that consists of two ferrofluid sculptures that move synthetically to music. The two spiral towers stand on a large plate that holds ferrofluid. When the music starts, the magnetic field around the tower is strengthened. Spikes of ferrofluid are born from the bottom plate and move up, trembling and rotating around the edge of the iron spiral.More at Sachiko Kodama
Via: Neatorama
03 November 2009
Sarah Palin's Undelivered Election Night Speeches
The Daily Beast has obtained the speeches Sarah Palin planned to deliver on Election Night 2008—win or lose.Click here to read Palin’s election night victory and concession speeches, reprinted for the first time exactly as written.
Best Lines from Palin’s Undelivered Victory Speech:
•“And I said to my husband Todd that it’s not a step down when he’s no longer Alaska’s ‘First Dude.’ He will now be the first guy ever to become the ‘Second Dude.’”
•“Had it gone the other way tonight, we would not have returned in sorrow to the great State of Alaska. We would have carried with us memories that are forever, and joyful experiences that do not depend on victory.”
•“This is a moment when principles and political independence matter a lot more than just the party line.”
Best Lines from Palin’s Undelivered Concession Speech:
•“If [Obama] governs America with the skill and grace we have often seen in him, and the greatness of which he is capable, we’re gonna be just fine.”
•“Now it is time for us go our way, neither bitter nor vanquished, but instead confident in the knowledge that there will be another day.”
•“It would be a happier night if elections were a test of valor and merit alone, but that is not for us to question now.”
•“I told my husband Todd to look at the upside: Now, at least, he can clear his schedule, and get ready for championship title number five in the Iron Dog snow machine race!”
Source: The Daily Beast
Pipette Vinegar Bottles
Exact measures of oil and vinegar for the table in balanced simplicity. Camilla Kropp has devised new functionality for the well-known instruments used in laboratories and pharmacies. The Pipette Bottles refine the centuries-old design to conquer a new context. The bottles measure the exact amount of condiment, and are suitable for soy sauce as well.Design House Stockholm
Via: Book of Joe
02 November 2009
"What's The Weather? What To Wear? Obama Helps You Everywhere!"
You don't have to check your thermometer anytime you go out in order to decide what clothes to wear. No more 'let's look out of the window to see what people wear today' or go out to the balcony to feel if the clothes you've chosen is ok not to get freezed or hot. All you need is to check what Obama or his friends wear.Choose from Barack Obama, Angelina Jolie, Bender (from Futurama) and Dr. House.
Obama Weather
01 November 2009
Pocket Light
The Marvelous Hairy Girls
From the Yale University Press Website:
This book tells the extraordinary story of three sixteenth-century sisters who, along with their father and brothers, were afflicted with an extremely rare genetic condition that made them unusually hairy. Amazingly, the Gonzales sisters were not mocked or shunned, but were welcomed in the courts of Europe, spending much of their lives among nobles, musicians, and artists. Their double identity as humans and beasts made them intriguing, and the girls and their father were the subjects not only of medical investigations but also of a considerable number of portraits, some of which still hang in European castles today.
Using the Gonzales family as a lens, historian Merry Wiesner-Hanks examines their varied and wondrous times. The story of this family connects with every important change of their era—political and religious violence, colonial conquest, new forms of scholarship and science—and also provides insights into the complex relationships between beastliness, monstrosity, and gender in early modern life.
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks is Distinguished Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her many books include Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World and the prize-winning Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, now in its third edition. She lives in Mequon, WI.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)