visuals
Life beneath Antarctic ice, The Fascinating, Frightening World of Insects, Ingmar Bergman, Turning Points-A timeline of the conflicts, trends and transformations that helped shape modern India, Heatwave in Europe and other photo essays from Time/CNN.
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Soviet Space Art
That the first space race was politically motivated shouldn’t detract from your enjoyment of Soviet propaganda space art. More here and here.
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The Universe is Finite
Remember CERN from The Da Vinci Code? And their mega-project the Large Hadron Collider. This BBC Horizons show, The Six Billion Dollar Experiment, does a good job illustrating why such an experiment is so cool, important and fascinating. Apparently, the universe is finite.
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If you hum a few bars, I can bark it
A Basenji dog can’t bark but man; they sure can sing.
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Tommy Makem
Tommy Makem has passed. May a craic wake follow. Tommy Makem, he of the Clancy Brothers, and solo fame, has died of lung cancer. He will be missed. Raise a pint and sing a wee bit in his honor.
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Bursting the (bubble boy’s) Bubble
Bursting the Bubble – an alternate look at the life of the so-called “bubble boy” David Vetter.
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Chainsaw sculpture!
Chainsaw carving. For kids, too! Videos of some neat carvings in progress.
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Office printers ‘are health risk’
The humble office laser printer can damage lungs in much the same way as smoke particles from cigarettes, a team of Australian scientists has found.
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In a university not far away, sci-fi heaven
UC Berkeley has the world’s premiere collection on Mark Twain — and
Yale an unmatched trove of rare medieval manuscripts. But for research
on Capt. Kirk, Frankenstein or Harry Potter, nothing tops the
110,000-volume Eaton collection at UC Riverside, the world’s largest
library of science fiction, fantasy and horror books.
“It’s like going to Graceland if you’re an Elvis fan,” said Drew Morse,
a creative writing professor who made the pilgrimage to Riverside from
Ohio last summer to study rare poetry by “Fahrenheit 451” author Ray
Bradbury.
As appreciation for the literary qualities of science fiction has grown
in recent years, the UC Riverside collection has emerged from an
academic ghetto. No institution had ever stockpiled science fiction
like this, or subjected itself to such an internal clash over the worth
of the genre.
A Rare Collection (related slideshow)
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Botanicalls: The Plants Have Your Number
Imagine answering your cell phone to hear your Scotch Moss plant telling you in a fake Glaswegian accent that it needs a drink. This scenario is not far from reality, as a group of postgraduate students at New York University is developing a way for over-watered or dry plants to phone for help. The “Botanicalls” project uses moisture sensors placed in the soil that can send a signal over a wireless network to a gateway that places a call if the plant’s too dry or wet. Recorded voices are assigned to each plant to match its biological characteristics and to help increase the charm of the phone message and give plants their own personality.
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Siskel & Ebert & Roeper & You
On At The
Movies this past weekend Richard Roeper announced: 1) The past 20
years of At The Movies (formerly Siskel & Ebert & the Movies) is
going to be archived for free download online. That’s several thousand reviews
— from Adventures in Babysitting to Zodiac. Unfortunately,
the first ten years of of the show was poorly preserved. Ebert writes, “Starting
Thursday, Aug. 2, visitors will be able to search for and watch all of those
past debates, including the film clips that went along with them, plus the “ten
best” and other special shows we did. The new archive will be at www.atthemoviestv.com, and will be the
web’s largest collection of streaming reviews.” 2) Roger Ebert will be a guest
for an online chat Thursday at 8:00 Eastern (7:00 Central). You can submit
questions in advance here.
The chat will be at this link.
(Until the actual archive shows up online, you can enjoy these
links.)
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Play money
Want to learn some coin tricks? There are six fundamental tricks you need to learn: the coin spin, one-finger spin, the walk down, the edge walk, the coin flip, and the coin roll. Once you have these mastered, you can do some amazing tricks with the videos and instructions at Coin Manipulation and from Expert Village.
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Ok fine so I’ll never read Ulysses. But we can still talk about it.
How to discuss books that one hasn’t read… “in order to . . . talk without shame about books we haven’t read, we should rid ourselves of the oppressive image of a flawless cultural grounding, transmitted and imposed [on us] by the family and by educational institutions, an image which we try all our lives in vain to match up to. For truth in the eyes of others matters less than being true to ourselves, and this truth is only accessible to those who liberate themselves from the constraining need to appear cultured, which both tyrannizes us and prevents us from being ourselves.”
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Northern Ireland: Operation Banner Ends
Operation Banner [Wikipedia], the British Armed Forces’ campaign in Northern Ireland that began in 1969, ended midnight on July 31, 2007. The period included Bloody Sunday in which 13 civilians were killed by the British Army. The Guardian have published a summary of significant events (and one going further back). In pictures: Guardian, BBC.
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Imaginary Places
If you like looking at maps of imaginary places, you should take a peek at the Fantasy Atlas, a German-language collection of maps of literary fantasy and sci-fi worlds. For a more obsessive (but just as interesting) take on maps of imaginary places, you can check out the work of Adrian Leskiw, who’s been creating road maps of non-existent places since the age of 3.
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I-35W collapse
The I-35W bridge by the University of Minnesota campus has collapsed. The bridge, one of the most heavily traveled freeway bridges in the Twin Cities metro area, collapsed around 6:05 this evening. Sections of the freeway are said to be floating in the Mississippi as cars are stranded on standing portions of the bridge. Slideshow of images. Real-time updates at MPR.
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All you ever needed to know about crayons
A history of crayons. A Crayola color chronology. More facts about crayons. How to remove a crayon stain. How crayons are made (video). The lost Crayola colors. “State colors” and their equivalents. Soy crayons. Art made of crayons.
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Air Filter
Aiway Robbery.
Another
summer, another disaster for British Airways. The
company has just received the largest fine ever issued by Britain’s competition
agency (nearly £270m / $547m) for price fixing on fuel surcharges. BA
admitted to colluding with rival airline Virgin Atlantic (who won immunity in
the UK) on at least six occasions. The allegations are thought
to be linked to the resignation of commercial director Martin George and
communications chief Iain Burns. Although BA said fuel surcharges were “a
legitimate way of recovering costs”, in May 2007 it put aside £350 million for
legal fees and fines. Criminal proceedings against individuals in both countries
are a distinct possibility.
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A new golden age for bitters
Bitters. This
sharp-flavored, slightly medicinal liqueur, originally used as an aperitif,
remains one of the defining ingredients in many classic cocktails, including the
Manhattan,
the Pink Gin, the Champagne
Cocktail, and the Sazerac. Some
popular herbal liqueurs, such as Campari
and Jägermeister,
are essentially just big bottles of bitters. But bitters had fallen on hard
times, with most bars stocking only one brand, Angostura, or, if they
were particularly sophisticated (or Southern), a second option, Peychaud’s. Orange bitters, once an
essential ingredient in the Martini, were
forgotten and impossible to purchase. Times have changed, with companies such as
Fee Brothers, Regan’s,
the Bitter Truth, and even Angostura,
releasing their own versions of the orange stuff. In fact, bitters in enjoying
something of a renaissance, with bars experimenting with making their
own.
Hobbyists, in the meanwhile, are reviving
lost
recipes.
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‘Peak Oil’ believers just got PWNED!
Genetically Modified Bacteria to make “Renewable Petroleum” (A biotech startup describes how it will coax petroleum-like fuels from engineered microbes within three to five years).
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Make Your Own Coin
Online coin generator. Sure, it’s in German, but you can figure it out.
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just another nice little hobby—everybody needs a hobby, right?
It seems that this gentleman bought a set of musical robots from the defunct Showbiz Pizza restaurant chain. This gent has been reprogramming the robots to sing recent hit songs, rather than the ’60s Motown hits they sang originally. He then takes video of these performances, and posts it on YouTube. I guarantee this version of Evanescence’s “Lithium” will haunt your dreams (or, perhaps, make you hurl).
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I Yam What I Yam
He’s Popeye the Sailor Man, he’s Popeye the Sailor Man, he’s strong to the finish, ’cause he eats his spinach, he’s Popeye the Sailor Man. Bitch.
RobDurdle.com 
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