Truth about teleportation
Scientific American’s JR Minkel interviewed CalTech physicist H. Jeff Kimble about quantum teleportation. In the article, Kimble explains in simple terms why recent experiments in quantum teleportation have nothing to do with the Star Trek transporter. As Minkel sums it up, the phenomenon “turns out to be more relevant to computing than to commuiting.” From the interview:
Scientific American: What’s the biggest misconception about teleportation?
Jeff Kimble: That the object itself is being sent. We’re not sending around material stuff. If I wanted to send you a Boeing 757, I could send you all the parts, or I could send you a blueprint showing all the parts, and it’s much easier to send a blueprint. Teleportation is a protocol about how to send a quantum state–a wave function–from one place to another.
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Another success in Homeland Security’s War on Babies
A 14-day-old Samoan infant died in DHS detention at Honolulu airport earlier this week, and American Samoa’s delegate to Congress is calling for an investigation:
The baby had been flown to Honolulu for emergency heart surgery. He died while detained inside a customs’ room at the Honolulu airport with his mother and a nurse.
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Valentine’s Day Surprises
http://www.metacafe.com/fplayer/1075416/valentines_day_surprises.swf
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Melt a beer bottle in a microwave
http://www.metacafe.com/fplayer/1004040/melt_a_frickn_beer_bottle.swf
The Unwise Microwave Experiment guy shows how to melt a beer bottle in a microwave oven. You have to prep the bottle by using a blowtorch to make a red hot spot on the bottle. Stick around for the end of the demo to hear his explanation of how it works.
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Man lived with corpse for years
The body of a man believed to have been dead for more than five years has been found in a Bristol flat where a tenant continued to live.
The corpse was discovered by council workers on a sofa in the lounge after neighbours reported a foul smell.
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Find 14 Uses for Orphan Socks
It’s one of life’s greatest mysteries: Two socks enter the washing machine, one sock leaves, its mate gobbled up by laundry goblins. Besides suffer the sartorial indignity of wearing mismatched pairs, what else can you do with an orphan sock that’s all by its lonesome? Here are some ideas:
1. Sew a pet bed
2. Make a chew toy
3. Make an animal puppet
4. Protect fragile holiday ornaments when you put them away for the year
5. Sew a sock monkey
Most of the ideas link to instructions!
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Heat-Sensitive wallpaper changes patterns when you crank the thermostat
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How to Cheat
Here’s a roundup of students’ how-to-cheat YouTube videos. The best one is definitely the guy who scans the label off a Coke bottle, replaces the nutritional information with cheaty stuff, prints it, and glues it around a bottle (presumes that your teacher lets you bring Coke into class — I suppose this works best in schools where Coke has struck a deal requiring their products to be available at all times and in all places.)
When I was a kid, we were obsessed with figuring out methods for cheating — far more so than with actual cheating itself. We used binary encoding to sneak in long lists of numbers, stitching them up the outer seams of our jeans or cuffs — a stitch for 1, no stitch for 0 — that we could read by fingertip. After we learned the resistor color-coding scheme, we started to shave pencils and then decorate them with colored bands that actually contained the same lists of numbers. We tried — and failed — to produce a decent tapping code for interactive cheating, though this is certainly possible. One exciting failure was a light-based semaphore wherein the conspirators would flash reflected discs of light up on the wall over the teacher’s head using our watch-faces.
The kids in these videos are awfully sanguine about their teachers’ YouTube cluelessness. I’m relatively certain that the adorable little English moppet pictured here has never actually succeeded in using his cheat, as it relies on your teachers allowing you to keep playing cards on your desk during the exam. This is surely a purely theoretical cheat.
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Scientists to turn women’s bone marrow into sperm
British scientists are ready to turn female bone marrow into sperm, cutting men out of the process of creating life.
The breakthrough paves the way for lesbian couples to have children that are biologically their own.
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Jury acquits Wesley Snipes of tax fraud
Wesley Snipes’ attorneys admitted his ideas were crazy – that Americans have no obligation to pay taxes and the IRS cannot legally collect them.
But the star of the “Blade” vampire trilogy was the victim of crooked advisers, promoters of the tax protest movement, they argued, and a jury apparently agreed.
Snipes was acquitted Friday of federal tax fraud and conspiracy, but jurors found him guilty on three misdemeanor counts of failing to file a tax return.
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40 Downloadable Open Source Social Software Applications
This list will give you links to 40 open source resources to get you started building your own social bookmarking, networking, filesharing or search application. If you are looking for a great software for your business then check out SalonTouch Studio Software. It will have everything you need.
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Am I Blue?
The allure of blue eyes has long been celebrated. In the Odyssey, Homer gives the goddess Athena “bright blue eyes,” and our fascination persists to this day with actors like Brad Pitt and Naomi Watts. Until recently, however, no one could explain the phenomena.
Research focussed on the OCA2 gene, iinvolved in the production of melanin and pigmentation. However, key to blue eyes wasn’t on the OCA2 gene but rather on a nearby gene called HERC2, that works like a switch that regulates the behavior of OCA2. Interestingly, the evidence suggests that this mutation is not one that has arisen spontaneously several times, but that all blue-eye people are descendants of a single man.
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What would Darth Luthor do?
Can a lightsaber cut through Superman? Through him it cuts, hmmmm?
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Rags to stitches
One dog’s story of her journey from bait dog (a non-fighting dog used as a “training dummy” for fighting dogs) to loved pet. She got by with a a little help from her friends.
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Finally have it figured out…
After years of debating, I finally figured out what I want for a tattoo. Its been a labour of trying to sort it down to the one thing I’d be happy with. And this is it…
Orginal:
What I want:
Opinions? leave a comment
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Take a Break with Faith Fighter
Need a distraction? Check out Faith Fighter, a web-based online game where the friendly animation illustrates the sad reality of ongoing religious conflict. As they use videogames as a political medium, Faith Fighter’s creators, a team of Italian designers and game developers want to remind you that if this offends you, don’t play. “Faith Fighter is the ultimate fighting game for these dark times. Choose your belief and kick the shit out of your enemies. Give vent to your intolerance! Religious hate has never been so much fun.”
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KFC brings boy out of coma
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Dip Once or Dip Twice: A scientific inquiry into the realm of double-dipping
Researchers at Clemson University set the record straight in asking the age-old snacking question: Does double dipping encourage the spread of germs? “OUR annual national snacking binge is almost here. It would take a very large bowl indeed to hold all the guacamole mashed from the more than 100 million avocados that are consumed on Super Bowl Sunday. (My rough calculation gives a hemisphere bowl 20 yards in diameter and 3 times the height of the goal post crossbars.) And guacamole is just one of many dips that will be shared around the TV…”
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Sarah Silverman “I’m F*cking Matt Damon” on Jimmy Kimmel
Seriously, she’s hot. Messed up as hell, but hot.
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Global arms transactions, visualized in interactive map
ARMSFLOW.org is a data visualization project that shows international arms transactions between 1950 and 2006. The site (a big ole Java applet) was created by Jeffrey Warren of Vestal Design, based on data from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
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Fishtank habitrail
Octopus Studios’ tropical/freshwater fish-tanks assembles into a kind of fishy habitrail, wherein bulbous spheres of water are connected by diagonal tubes.
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Scan of 1950 menstruation primer
Just Between Us…, a booklet for girls about menstration; published by Beltix Corporation, copyright 1950, 1955, 1961.
To me, it’s amazing that the editors of this little booklet allowed the spokesgirl to have freaky swirly eyes — usually a sign of craziness or dizziness! This is either a stroke of genius or incredibly inappropriate — I’m not too sure.
RobDurdle.com 
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