Dutty Wine – a grim fandango
Dutty Wine – the new dance craze that’s sweeping the nation, or "a demon sen’ from de pit a hell dat is taking the lives of the youth even before dem have time to repent?"
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Ancient Rome in Virtual Reality
Rome Reborn is a digital model of ancient Rome as it might have appeared on June 21, 320 AD, including the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. More info.
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Some animations
Papiroflexia (Spanish for “Origami”) is the animated tale of Fred, a skillful paper folder who could shape the world with his hands. The creator gives his methods here (third post). His website Pixel Nitrate has several other animations.
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Jules Verne map collection
An international cadre of volunteers have collected all the maps that appeared in the original editions. They’re beautiful.
Weirdly, the volunteers who scanned these in have added this to their page: “These maps may not be reproduced for commercial purposes.” Given that the maps are in the public domain, and that scanning a public domain image doesn’t make it yours, I don’t know why they think they can dictate the terms on which these are used. We all benefit from the public domain and no one has the right to tell you what you can and can’t do with it. Might as well post the text of “Hamlet” and say, “This text may not be used for commercial purposes.” Sez who?
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Bizarre Johnny Depp interview in Japan
Johnny Depp recently appeared on Japanese TV to promote Pirates of the Caribbean Part 3. He sat in a chair while a bunch of people stood to the side and spoke to him. Then some cute little kids gave him a talent show. Mr. Depp appeared uncomfortable, but was polite during the bizarre ordeal.
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Gallery of custom vans in Japan
Here‘s a photo gallery of outrageously customized vans in Japan.
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You Spin me ’round babby
Bad album covers: Volume 1 and Volume 2, (NSFW content!). Two flickr sets of album covers to make you laugh. cry, scream in terror, or just quietly go WTF? In addition is the related site of Strange records, which includes a page of mp3s.
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Air Force drops gay bomb
Make love not war? The Pentagon confirms that it was researching the possibility of a "gay bomb" that could "turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting." BBC discusses this and other unorthodox U.S. weapons proposals.
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Sleep is where Ralph is a Viking
“Oh, boy, sleep! That’s where I’m a viking!” From the Simpsons episode "Lisa the Vegetarian," one small Ralph Wiggum line that’s sparked some big debate on the internet. Does Ralph use "Viking" to mean "One who excels"? Or does Ralph dream of being a Scandinavian warrior? Not content to keep it online, people are calling radio shows (June 5th’s episode, around the 49 minute mark) to gain support for their opinion. Perhaps only the show’s writer, David Cohen, can settle this.
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Jaggers Unite!
Mick Jagger joins his little brother Chris onstage in a pub. It’s safe to say the 40-odd people in attendance at the The Bull’s Head pub in southwest London were more than a little surprised to see the pair performing "Dead Flowers."
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Cigarettes, Whiskey and Wild, Wild Women
A preachment dear friends, you’re about to receive, on John Barleycorn, nicotine, and the temptations of Eve, from the Good Reverend Peter Sellers and his Muppet friends.
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Silk Road: “West of Yang Gate there’ll be no old friends.”
Silk Road links: Silk Road Seattle, The Silkroad Foundation, The British Library’s Silk Road site, The Ancient Way of Trading, Lost Cities of the Silk Road and some pictures
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Grand Theft Delorean
Back To The Future, Hill Valley is a "from the ground up" conversion of the videogame Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, with the goal being to re-set the game in the world of Doc Brown, Marty McFly & Biff Tannen. Sample videos of the progress so far. Please note that Hoverboards don’t work on water. Via.
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Graffiti Research Lab comes to Barcelona
The Graffiti Research Lab, creators of the LED throwie and inspiration for the mooninite signs that destroyed the city of Boston in January, went to Barcelona with their amazing laser guided graffiti project system. Here’s a video of the event, which has a good shot of the pedal-powered projection system.
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Canadian gent oozes green blood
The medical journal The Lancet reports on the case of a hospitalized man who was discovered to have green blood.
“It was sort of a green-black. … Like an avocado skin maybe,” said the patient’s doctor, Dr. Alana Flexman.
The patient may have had a condition called sulfhemoglobin, caused by a drug interaction that makes sulphur bind to red blood cells, preventing oxygen from binding. Warning, the article loaded with Mr. Spock jokes about the incident
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MIT students demonstrate wireless power transfer
In an experiment, a team from MIT were able to power a 60W light bulb from two meters away. Calling their demonstration “WiTricity” the researchers believe that a system is possible that could send electricity to your battery powered devices within a room sized space.
It’s a Tesla-dream come true.
“WiTricity” is based on using coupled resonant objects. Two resonant objects of the same resonant frequency tend to exchange energy efficiently, while interacting weakly with extraneous off-resonant objects. A child on a swing is a good example of this. A swing is a type of mechanical resonance, so only when the child pumps her legs at the natural frequency of the swing is she able to impart substantial energy. Another example involves acoustic resonances: Imagine a room with 100 identical wine glasses, each filled with wine up to a different level, so they all have different resonant frequencies. If an opera singer sings a sufficiently loud single note inside the room, a glass of the corresponding frequency might accumulate sufficient energy to even explode, while not influencing the other glasses. In any system of coupled resonators there often exists a so-called “strongly coupled” regime of operation. If one ensures to operate in that regime in a given system, the energy transfer can be very efficient.
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So, you like the brownie edge, eh?
Heck of an edge, brownie! The perfect tool for making sure all your brownies have edges.
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High spirits in Heiligendamm
The Heiligendamm G8 summit just ended. While some stuck to alcohol-free beer, fresh French President Nicolas Sarkozy clearly had something a bit stronger before his press conference.
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evolution of dance
The Dance, historic illustrations of dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. A Project Gutenberg ebook. Brief, illustrated history of dance in India. Vintage belly dance YouTube videos.
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“The house wine of the South”
Where the South Really Begins [Flash] Forget the Mason–Dixon Line. The South really starts at the Sweet Tea Line.
RobDurdle.com 
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