unique and interesting: January 2011

Monday, January 31, 2011

Beer Label Quiz

This 15-question quiz will test your recognition of popular beers based on a detail of the label and a clue in the question. I got 11 out of 15 questions right.

(thanks Cora)

LOL Builder

Pick a picture and caption it. There's a Basic Builder, an Advanced Builder, a Poster Builder and a Breaking News Builder. I made this one.

Try the LOL Builder yourself.

Children's books don't just help our kids develop better reading skills, but they can be extremely important in shaping their value and helping them understand complicated issues. But there are some really unconventional children's books out there today. Covering topics like prison, drugs and conservatism.

(via NeatoHub)

Businesspeople With Briefcases Balancing On Ropes.

(via J-Walk Blog)

Official US State Songs

Forty-eight states of the United States have one or more state songs, selected by each state legislature, and/or state governor, as a symbol of the state. New Jersey does not have an official state song, while Virginia's state song is now considered the 'emeritus' state song and is scheduled to be replaced, having been rescinded by the Virginia General Assembly.

Some states have more than one official state song, and may refer to some of their official songs by other names; for example, Arkansas officially has two state songs, plus a state anthem, and a state historical song. Arizona has a song that was written specifically as a state anthem in 1915, as well as the 1981 country hit 'Arizona', which it adopted as the alternate state anthem in 1982.

(thanks Cora)

Here is a collection of absolutely brilliantly captured tigers photography by Yves Bergeron, a talented nature photographer from Canada.

image credit

Travellers journeying through the desolate landscape of the unforgiving Thar desert in the Indian state of Rajasthan would know when they had reached their destination. The sky would fall to the ground and everything would become a single color - blue. Jodhpur would lie before them, opening up like a blue treasure in the desert.

(thanks Robert-John)

Spanish chef Martín Berasategui has designed a bottle that decants wine sediments and keeps them from rising at the moment of pouring. The bottle acts without the need of any mechanisms.

Its design and architecture are the elements that make the dregs to stay, by the simple effect of physics, at the bottom of the bottle.

(via Blog on a Toothpick)

Why Knot?

Why Knot? is a kinetic sculpture by Seth Goldstein that continually ties and unties a necktie.

YouTube link

(via Nag on the Lake)

Eco Green Cars.

image credit

In 1937 two brothers from Singapore had a dream - they wanted to help people to learn, remember and pass on traditional Chinese values as expressed through myth, legend and the tenets of Confucianism.

They already had a small venue - the Tiger Balm - but wanted to broaden the appeal to a wider audience. So was born the idea of extending the place to incorporate a garden - Haw Par Villa - in which Chinese legends would come to life.

(thanks Robert-John)

Marriage Is The Key To A Better Life

Marriage cheers you up, improves your diet and helps you live longer, researchers say. It brings better mental and physical health, reducing the chance of premature death by 15 per cent, according to major studies in seven European countries.

And the longer a marriage lasts the more the rewards accumulate - the only catch being that the relationship has to be loving and supportive.

It's a hotel - but with a major difference. Instead of booking in guests in human form, Cornwall's newest hotel only takes chickens. The aptly-named Chicken Hotel recently opened for business at Boskenwyn, Helston. The venture was set up to give chicken owners a place to check-in their birds while away from home.

David Roberts, a maths teacher who keeps his own chickens as a hobby, runs the hotel. He said: With more people looking to escape the rat race and move out in the country with a little bit of land, keeping chickens is becoming more and more popular.

(via J-Walk Blog)

The mechanism that controls the internal 24-hour clock of all forms of life from human cells to algae has been identified by scientists. Not only does the research provide important insight into health-related problems linked to individuals with disrupted clocks - such as pilots and shift workers - it also indicates that the 24-hour circadian clock found in human cells is the same as that found in algae.

A study from the University of Cambridge's Institute of Metabolic Science, has for the first time identified 24-hour rhythms in red blood cells. This is significant because circadian rhythms have always been assumed to be linked to DNA and gene activity, but - unlike most of the other cells in the body - red blood cells do not have DNA.

Qwiki

Qwiki is a new site that offers, as they call it, 'an information experience.' Qwii was founded by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim.

The site includes more than 3 million reference terms. You can enter a search term and Qwiki will display a narrated slideshow on topics with facts pulled from Wikipedia.

Leaping Shampoo

Scientists of the University of Twente in the Netherlands won a prestigious place in the 'Hall of Fame' of videos about fluid-in-motion. They have made a video of leaping shampoo, in which they explain the so-called Kaye effect. Scientifically interesting but also of great aesthetic beauty.

YouTube link

(thanks Cora)

American photographer Heidi Lender made a series of self-portrait called 'Once Upon.' She says:

What began as a self-imposed weekly photo assignment - 'Stand on a bench. Make sure it's Monday. Wear something pretty' - transformed into this who-am-I photo-tale exploring the individual in various environments and apparel.

(via Everlasting Blort)

He has lain underground for 2,000 years, loyally doing his duty. But now, archaeologists have unearthed the skeleton of what is believed to be Britain's oldest guard dog, which was sacrificed to protect a hoard of buried treasure.

The skeleton of the dog, which is about the same size as a retriever or Alsatian, was discovered at the site of one of Britain's most important Iron Age excavations.

image credit

They were here once, the Giants. Majestic and mysterious were their ways. Yet, despite their mystery, somehow they left us clues as to what their life must have been like back then.

During the time of the Giants, Earth must have been like their one country, their one vast playground. On mornings, they would probably gather to watch the sun rise and thank the heavens for another day. This must have been why they left images of themselves showing us their early morning ritual.

(via NeatoHub)

With the ever-rising oil price, the ever-worsening traffic, more and more people are forced to choose the bus as their primary transportation. Bus stops become indispensable in the daily schedule of many city commuters. Here are 19 most innovative bus stop concepts.

How The Seahorse Got Its Shape

See how the seahorse's curiously curved trunk, bent head and long snout help it to catch its dinner. Seahorses evolved from straight-bodied swimmers like pipefish. A new study published in the journal Nature Communications shows why a straight body might become S-shaped.

YouTube Link

Google's war against torrents is being kept quiet. No announcements. No press releases. Google is removing keywords from their Suggest and Instant results so that they are no longer recommended when people start typing them. Something as relatively harmless as downloading torrents is considered taboo on Google.

They do however autocomplete your search for how to kidnap someone, how to make mustard gas, cheat on taxes, mix meth, and build a bomb.

(via Boing Boing)

image credit

Ten imaginative examples of repurposing that show why Scrabble is among the best board games of all time.

(thanks Ritu)

image credit

Enormous man-made structures won't just clean themselves, you know. Thank goodness then for the brave few who seem more than happy to scale such beasts in an effort to de-grime them.

Apparently fearless as they swing next to, hang from, and climb up the world's most impressively large landmarks with bucket and sponge in hand and sturdy stomach. To help you appreciate the job in hand, here are some stunning but often gut-wrenching photos.

(thanks David)

Sprinkling Salt

Sprinkling salt on an icy road in Russia.

YouTube link

(thanks Cora)

It has long been true that California on its own would rank as one of the biggest economies of the world. These days, it would rank eighth, falling between Italy and Brazil on a nominal exchange-rate basis. But how do other American states compare with other countries?

Taking the nearest equivalent country from 2009 data reveals some surprises. Who would have thought that, despite years of auto-industry hardship, the economy of Michigan is still the same size as Taiwan's?

(via Neatorama)

Hollywood isn't just a mans world but a dogs heaven too. Countless famous dogs have graced our TV screens and we've cried and smiled for many of them. They bring a different flavor to films with their lovable gaze and incomprehensible barking that we somehow always seem to understand.

The many films with Dog stars in them have shown us that these pets are very smart, caring and loyal creatures. So lets not fail to recognize their hard work in keeping us entertained by remembering who the 20 Famous Film Star Dogs are.

(thanks Danny)

An R2D2 Gas Bottle Wood Burner hand made from recycled gas bottle. He is 28” tall, 13” round and 20” wide at the feet. This will definitely increase your geek cred.

(thanks S Wheat)

Rahmen Emanual

Rahm Emanuel is an American politician and former White House Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama. Emanuel resigned as Chief of Staff effective October 1, 2010, in order to pursue a campaign to run for Mayor of Chicago. Rahmen Emanuel is a Tumblr blog which casts Emanuel in a variety of heroic poses.

(via Everlasting Blort)

Popular social networking services like Twitter, where users write extremely short messages, present a challenge: How can you intelligently get across a complex thought in just 140 characters without needing to use ugly abbreviations?

If only there were a service that helps with the struggle of rewriting a 146-letter message to fit in a 140 character limit. Well now there is: Thsrs, the thesaurus that only gives you synonyms shorter than the word you're looking up. Just enter one of the longer words in your message, and Thsrs will suggest shorter words to use instead.

(via J-Walk Blog)

Ask a little girl what her favourite colour is, and chances are she'll shout 'pink.' How different it was in the early 1900s, when blue was for girls and pink for boys. DressMaker magazine agreed. The preferred colour to dress young boys in is pink. Blue is reserved for girls as it is considered paler, and the more dainty of the two colours, and pink is thought to be stronger.

But some commentators now believe pink dominates the upbringing of little girls, and this may be damaging. Sue Palmer, author of Toxic Childhood, says the 'total obsession' with pink stunts girls' personalities. She says we are creating little fluffy pink princesses, an image of girliness, that is very specific and which some girls don't want to go along with, but due to overwhelming peer pressure, are having to conform to.

What to do if you have no spare tire?

Boiling Water Evaporating At -45 F

A pan of boiling water thrown into the air, evaporating almost instantly. Video taken in Fairbanks, Alaska.

YouTube link

(thanks Jimmy)

Pasteurization is the process of heating a beverage such as milk to a specific temperature for a specific period of time in order to kill micro-organisms that could cause disease, spoilage, or undesired fermentation. The process is named for Louis Pasteur, the 19th-century biologist and chemist.

Pasteur became a professor of chemistry at the University of Lille in 1854, and soon began studying fermentation in wine and beer. He determined that micro-organisms in liquids could be killed by heating to 55 degrees Celsius (about 130 degrees Fahrenheit) or higher for short periods of time.

image credit

The Tree of Life (Sharajat-al-Hayat) in Bahrain is a 400 year-old mesquite tree which lives in the middle of the desert. The mystery of the survival of the tree has made it a legend. A legend is also attached to the place where the tree is located. The local inhabitants believe with heart and soul that this was the actual location of the Garden of Eden.

The Tree of Life stands lonely in the heart of the desert, on top of a 25-foot-high sandy hill. It's a mystery where the tree gets its water. Scientist say that its roots go very deep and wide to get water from the reserves of sweet springs miles away.

(via Look At This...)

Here are ten of the most terrifying and bizarre creatures to ever, allegedly, walk the Earth. These creatures defy logic, inspire the imagination and generate fear. They are the subject of numerous movies, documentaries, books and even songs.

Do these creatures really exist? Did they ever exist? Or are these merely hoaxes, or the result of over active imaginations? No matter what you believe, the members of this list are the stuff of nightmares, and if encountered, even the most hardened individual would tremble with fear.

(via MGID)

Your Lying Eyes

You have two eyes. Each eye sees a slightly different world. Put a finger in front of your face, switch from one eye open to the other and that finger will shift, just a little bit. But rather than walk around all day seeing in double vision, your brain pulls the world back into one-ness.

Brains decide what we see. Kokichi Sugihara knows this better than anyone. He makes videos that trick your brain into seeing things that you know, you absolutely know, can't happen.

The Buran 1.01 spacecraft was the only finished and operational vehicle from the Soviet Buran program. The Buran completed one unmanned spaceflight in 1988 before the cancellation of the program in 1993. The Buran was subsequently destroyed by a hangar collapse in 2002.

In 1989, it was projected that Buran would have an unmanned second flight in 1993. Due to the cancellation of the project after the break up of the Soviet Union, this never took place.
Space Shuttle 2.02 (seen in the picture above) was 10%-20% complete at the end of the program. It was put outside of the factory near Moscow and vandals have stripped it of most of the heat tiles.

Quantum computing is an experimental method of computing that makes use of quantum-mechanical phenomena. Quantum computers would allow a bit to store a value of 0 and 1 simultaneously. They have the potential to solve problems that would take a classical computer longer than the age of the universe.

Quantum computing sounds like science fiction but the age of computing is not even at the end of the beginning. Traditional computing will soon reach a final barrier: Moore's law, which dictates that the amount of computing power you can squeeze into the same space will double every 18 months, is on course to run smack into a silicon wall by 2015, due to overheating, caused by electrical charges running through ever more tightly packed circuits.

Whistler Blackcomb

A day in the life of a miniature Whistler, the biggest little ski area in the world. This video documents a bird's eye view of teeny, tiny Whistler Village and surrounding Whistler Blackcomb mountains, making it a real life snow globe.

YouTube link

(thanks Cora)

From the first e-mail to the domination of Facebook, social media has come a long way.
The History of Social Networking.

The Dumbest Criminals Ever

We have all heard tons of stories and seen many news accounts regarding criminals that don't seem to have a clue when it comes to following laws, and even worse off as they break them.

These types of criminals seem to have zero sense as they make ridiculous choices - some humorous and some harmful, but still very, very dumb. Here are some of the dumbest criminals of all time.

(thanks Ritu)

How to change your own oil like a pro.

You may love flowers and plants but you should always bear in mind that not all pretty blooms are as innocent as they might appear.

Some plants which are regularly placed in gardens are anything but friendly, and that decorative bush might easily be the death of you, quite literally, if you happened to ingest it.
Poisonous plants, toxic to humans, are more common than you might think.

Sapporo Beer Commercial - Legendary Biru

Sapporo beer is one of Japan's oldest beer - founded in 1876. This commercial was developed by Toronto-based Dentsu Canada. It's one of the most beautiful commercials I have ever seen. It was shot on location over a month in Guangzhou, China.

YouTube link

(thanks Cora)

A horse is difficult to draw. Hands are difficult to draw. Bicycles are difficult to draw. So to draw all three is just mind blowing.
Here are some people who tried to draw a horse with hand riding a bike.

(via b3ta)

The State of the Web by The Oatmeal.

10 Incredible Time-Lapse Videos

You used to only see sped-up footage of a flower growing from seed to bloom in science class, but modern technology has made time-lapse videos easier to make than ever before.

Some photographers set up a video camera and let it run for hours, only to speed it up for viewers; others set up a digital camera to snap photos at set time intervals, which they then stream together using computer software. Whatever the technique, the results have been some seriously awe-inspiring clips. Forget about time standing still, here are 10 time-lapse videos that show the beauty that occurs when you speed it up.

(thanks Jessie)

Grand Theft Auto 4 Carmageddon

What happens when you turn the friction off in Grand Theft Auto 4? You can do this by finding the 'handling.dat' file in your GTA4 folder, and edit 'wbias' to be around -9 for each car.
What happens next is a bit violent but nevertheless exciting to watch.

YouTube link

The way in which people frantically communicate online via social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook can be seen as a modern form of madness, according to Sherry Turkle, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

She says that people are become isolated from reality due to such social networking sites because technology is dominating our lives and making us 'less human' and under the illusion of allowing us to communicate better, technology is actually isolating us from real human interactions in a cyber-reality that is a poor imitation of the real world.

Rubik's cube is a toy puzzle designed by Erno Rubik in 1974. It's a cube-shaped device made up of smaller cube pieces with six faces having differing colors. The cube was extremely popular during the 1980s, and at its peak between 1980 and 1983, 200 million cubes were sold world wide.

What if detecting urban pollution was as easy as looking down at your neighbor's chest? It is, if your neighbor is wearing one of the high-tech sweatshirts designed by New York University grad students Sue Ngo and Nien Lam.

The shirts, designed for a class on wearable technologies, feature internal organs that change colors depending on the levels of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere.

(thanks Cora)

Thousands Of Fishermen Empty Lake In Minutes

On one day of the year the Dogon people of Mali can fish in the sacred water of Lake Antogo. It's every fisherman for himself as the lake is emptied in minutes.

YouTube link

(thanks Cora)

Do you think you could do nothing for 2 minutes? Alex Tew, the guy who got famous with his Million Dollar Homepage, made a new site: Do Nothing for 2 Minutes. Just relax and listen to the waves. Don't touch your mouse or keyboard. If you do, you fail!

The Goliath tigerfish is a predator with large teeth which is found in Africa. British angler Jeremy Wade looks understandably anxious as he grapples with this ferocious-looking 'giant piranha'. He caught the fish during a fishing expedition up the Congo River in Africa.

The brave fisherman was forced to hold the Goliath tigerfish at arms-length for fear of being bitten by its razor-sharp teeth while posing with it for the camera.

Bus Drives Over Waterfall

Crazy or not? When flooding turns a roadway into a raging river and waterfall, an old school bus full of people crosses a river in Nicaragua.

YouTube link

thanks Mowgli)

Did you write a book, an article, or a document? You can send your manuscript to the Journal of Universal Rejection. But remember, the founding principle of the Journal of Universal Rejection is rejection. That is to say, all submissions, regardless of quality, will be rejected.

After submitting your work, the Editor-in-Chief will reject it without even reading it. At other times your manuscript may be sent to anonymous referees. Unless they are the Editor-in-Chief's wife or graduate school buddies, it is unlikely that the referees will even understand what is going on.

(thanks Jimmy)

Japanese schoolgirls could be the driving force behind a new era of fashionable accessories for your teeth. These 'fronts' contain bright multicolored glowing LED lights.

The LED teeth prosthetics were originally created as an experiment by two Japanese designers and are now being used in a commercial advertising a winter sale at a Japanese clothing store, Laforet Harajuku.

(thanks Mark)

Ever wondered what the numbers on your credit card mean? Do credit card companies pick them at random? Geographical location? Spending habits? Turns out all credit card companies follow the same set of rules. Cracking the credit card code.

(via Gizmodo)

Stjepan Hauser And Luka Sulic - Smooth Criminal

Croatian musicians Stjepan Hauser and Luka Sulic playing Smooth Criminal by Michael Jackson for two cellos solo.

YouTube link

(thanks Cees)

This record player plays vinyl records, the 12" kind, and it does it well with only the bare minimum. It's called 'Turnstyle' and it's made up of the motor, the needle, the speakers, and the controls.

What more do you need? The record player was designed by RD Silver, a designer who has the guts to take away everything but the guts.

(via Neatorama)

Interactive 360 Video Taken From A Helicopter

Fly in a Helicopter over Nimmo Bay Fishing & Wilderness Resort and a 150 mile track of the Beautiful British Columbia coastal mainland. Hover over pristine waterfalls, race down rivers and over oceans, explore 10,000 year old glaciers, forests, snow capped mountains reaching through clouds and amazing fishing spots secluded and hidden away from the world.

You can control the view of the camera the whole time. Look up, down, and completely behind you by clicking and dragging on the video once it is playing.

(thanks Cora)

Question: Should Lenin's Body be Buried?

A political party in Russia has launched an online poll asking whether the body of revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin should be buried. Lenin died Jan 21, 1924, and his corpse was embalmed and placed in a specially-built mausoleum in Moscow's Red Square.

The pro-Kremlin United Russia party launched the poll on the website www.goodbyelenin.ru and asks only one question: 'Do you back the idea of burying the body of Vladimir Lenin?' The question requires a 'Yes' or 'No' answer. At the time of this posting, 70 % supported the proposal of burying Lenin and 30% were against.

Hello, I'm Shelley Duvall

Film actress Shelley Duvall likes to introduce herself.

YouTube link

(via Everlasting Blort)

image credit

They might perhaps be at risk of coming across like characters in a scene from a certain Monty Python film, but some people still insist on asking the question what have computers ever done for us?

One mooted answer could certainly be blobitecture (or, blobism, blobismus or blob architecture) for this architectural term could not have become reality without them.

(thanks Robert-John)

Laughter may help women who are trying to become pregnant through in-vitro fertilisation.

In a study of 219 women undergoing IVF published in Fertility and Sterility, an Israeli team led by Shevach Friedler found that the odds of success were greater among women who were entertained by a professional 'medical clown.'

The researchers found that, compared to women who came to the clinic on a 'non-clown' day, those who'd had a laugh were more than twice as likely to become pregnant.

(via Neatorama)

Pages - Menu

Monday, January 31, 2011

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Friday, January 28, 2011

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Monday, January 24, 2011

Sunday, January 23, 2011