unique and interesting: May 2012

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

No Posting For The Next Couple Of Days

Dear readers. There will be no posting here for the next couple of days.
I have to go to the hospital for inflammation of my gallbladder. The bladder will be surgically removed this afternoon. If everything goes well, I may be back to posting on Friday. Thanks for your patience.

update: This comes from the hospital computer. I probably won't be back to posting Friday because the operation didn't go through today. Too busy at the hospital and lots of emergencies. The operation will take place tomorrow morning which means I probably have to stay until Saturday. See you then.

First Flying Platform - 1955

The US Navy demonstrates its 'Flying Platform' in 1955, a vehicle that uses a direct lift rotor aircraft, using contra-rotating ducted fans controlled by the pilot shifting his body weight around to tilt the platform. Development ceased because the US Army judged them to be impractical as combat vehicles as they were small, limited in speed and only barely flew out of the ground cushion effect.

YouTube link

(via Everlasting Blort)

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If you have an open mind, there's no limit to the number of awesome celebrations you can find. Instead of just spinning a globe and putting your finger on a random place, though, here's a guide to help you find some of the best ones.

It's one of the most iconic photos in American business. A ragtag group of bearded weirdos assembled for a company portrait of Microsoft from 1978. It was taken just before the then-startup left Albuquerque for Seattle. We all know what happened with the two guys in the bottom left and bottom right corners - Bill Gates, and Paul Allen.
But what happened to the rest?

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We use them every day - but what are the mysterious origins of these symbols we take for granted? Here are a few short explanations to demystify the meanings of our favorite symbols.

Measuring The Universe

The Universe is absolutely huge and it's really amazing that we're able to look up from this tiny, little planet and actually measure the distance to things which are so incredibly far away. But how do we measure the distance to the stars?

Vimeo link

Tony Karp has been working with projects involving art and technology for over fifty years. He believes that all art requires technology, and vice versa. Tony calls this blending 'Techno-Impresssionism.' He's also the creator of the Techno-Impressionist Museum.
Here are some pictures of abstracts shot with a digital camera.

There are so many things we want in our life, but sometimes little things mean a lot.

Bottle Cap Blues

Sitting around with your friends killing a couple of six packs of beer trying to think of different means to open your next drink is pretty funny.

Vimeo link

(thanks Cora)

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A spindly orange vine known as dodder is a particularly striking example of dynamic plant life.
Dodder is a parasite - it lives off of other plants. Instead of waiting around for a suitable host, the vine hunts one down. The vine sniffs out its hosts, growing toward telltale chemicals released by its neighbors. Eventually it sinks tiny nozzles into the plant to suck out vital juices.

(via Neatorama)

Illusion

Put your fist in the center and see how things speed up.

(via BuzzFeed)

Fugu And Tako

Fugu and Tako follows the story of two Japanese salary men who's lives radically change when one of them eats a live puffer fish in a sushi bar.

Vimeo link

(via Everlasting Blort)

Imagine a world where we never again hear the symphonic startup of a Windows 95 machine. Imagine generations of children unacquainted with the chattering of angels lodged deep within the recesses of an old cathode ray tube TV.

The Museum Of Endangered Sounds - owned and operated by Brendan Chilcutt - preserves the sounds made famous by old technologies and electronics equipment.

(via Nag on the Lake)

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Rick Schrager is a professional beachcomber and hobbyist photographer living in Southern California. He is passionate about written communication. His creative work has been featured in USA Today, The Village Voice and other publications. I've known Rick for over 10 years because of his now-gone sites Wanderlust and Technoerotica. Wanderlust was one of the first sites to say some nice words about The Presurfer.

Rick recently re-opened a project he started in 2006. The Letter Project. It is an effort to preserve the lost art of letter writing. It's actually very simple. You ask for a letter, he writes you a letter. He promises a written response for each letter sent to him. He promises to keep names and addresses private and any information sent to him confidential.

Laziest Polar Bear Ever

Straight from the Arctic to your screen, here's the laziest polar bear ever recorded.

YouTube link

(thanks Cora)

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Flamingos aside, you do not get to see the color pink in the animal kingdom a great deal. A notable exception is the pink katydid. Yet this is by no means a separate species - this coloring affects around one in 500. You may have already guessed that the condition is something similar to albinism.

(thanks Robert-John)

Tornado Wedding

Caleb James Pence and his bride-to-be Candra refused to let a tornado delay their wedding vows at their ceremony near Harper, Kansas, USA.

YouTube link

(thanks Miss Rare)

Think alpine sports and you'll probably think of skiing and snowboarding, but there's another alpine sport that doesn't get the same coverage - Alpine Finger Wrestling. The 35th edition of the annual Alpine Finger Wrestling Championships took place in the Bavarian region of Schnaitsee, Germany recently - with a handful of winners across the weight divisions thrilling the highly enthusiastic crowd.

The sport began when the art of finger wrestling was used as a method of settling disputes in the Alps back in the 17th century. But today, in 2012, finger wrestling is a sport in its own right. Well, in Bavaria at least.

(thanks Cora)

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Many have visited an abandoned city and wondered what catastrophic event could have caused such an exodus from a metropolis once so evidently thriving. Yet these cities are usually hundreds if not thousands of years old, the everyday clamor and cry of civilization just an echo.

Visit Mo'ynaq in Uzbekistan, however, and you can see apocalypse right here, right now. It looks like a scene from a science fiction disaster movie: big ships adrift in the desert.

(thanks Robert-John)

Adventures Of The League Of Steam - 'Musical Miscreants'

In this adventure Crackitus, JayAre and Jasper investigate a client's home for paranormal activity. While there they encounter a trio of happy haunts intent on making mischief for the League.

YouTube link

(thanks Trip)

related posts:
Adventures Of The League Of Steam - Bitter Gnomes And Gardens
Adventures Of The League Of Steam - The Tiki Room

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These hair-raising photographs demonstrate fantastic examples of lightning photography. Hopefully one of these them will hit you with a bolt of inspiration!

The latest product range from Hoxton Street Monster Supplies, Salt made from Tears, has just launched. The salt is collected from humans experiencing a range of emotions, and in various situations. You can pick up salt made from: tears of sorrow, tears shed while sneezing, tears shed while chopping onions, tears of laughter, and tears of anger.

Max - CCTV

The future of CCTV. Watch what you do.

YouTube link

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Starfish belong to a beach vacation like sandcastles and sunburn. They're not fish, of course, but rather close cousins of sand dollars and sea urchins. Just the sight of these stellar sea creatures is enough to excite even the most jaded of beachgoers. Plus, with their knack of showing up in the most romantic spots, they seem to be the perfect gauge for which beaches are the most scenic.

Here are some stunning pictures of starfish sunbathing.

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It's possible that whales can sense things that no other living creatures can. Scientists have discovered a grapefruit-sized mass of vessels and nervous tissues located in whales' chins, and they believe it's an entirely new kind of sensory organ. It's possible the organ is what allows these massive creatures to eat using a lightning-fast mouth movement called 'lunge feeding.'

A Flock Of Seagulls

A flock of seagulls singing 'A Flock Of Seagulls.'
An advertisement for Cape Cod potato chips.

YouTube link

image credit NASA

The Dragon has landed! Photos of yesterday's historic, first-ever docking of a private space craft with the International Space Station. The Dragon was captured by a giant robot arm, operated by American astronaut Don Pettit and Dutch astronaut André Kuipers.

Watching documentaries is always a fun and educational way of passing your time. But for a documentary film to be interesting, it must be relevant to your topic of interest. Thanks to a website called Watch Documentary, you can now browse countless documentaries online according to their topic.

Watch Documentary is a free to use website that includes links to documentaries, sorted categorically, and hosted at various places online such as YouTube. You will find all sorts of topics ranging from globalization to mystery. Simply click on a topic that you are interested in to get started.

(via MakeUseOf)

News Reporter Caught Faking Sandstorm After Missing Event

Romanian news reporter Adrian Boioglu was left red faced after he was caught faking a sand storm live on TV after turning up too late to capture the real thing. The bungling reporter convinced an assistant to stand just outside the camera shot and kick sand towards his direction. He was caught out however when a cheeky, or shockingly bad, cameraman let those watching at home in on the secret.

YouTube link

(thanks Cora)

A motivated Sioux chef?

(via Criggo)

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Remember the scene from Seinfeld where George Costanza is standing in front of the buffet table at a funeral reception, snacking on chips and dip. An onlooker spies him dipping a chip, taking a small bite, and then going for more dip. How dangerous is that?

Paul Dawson, a professor at Clemson University, decided to make a study of it, using wheat crackers with dips of various consistencies. He and his fellow researchers asked participants to bite part of a cracker, dunk it for three seconds into a tablespoon of dip, and then do the same thing with a fresh cracker. Dawson and company then checked the dip for traces of bacteria. The results found that double dipping added almost ten thousand bacteria to the dips.

Amazing Coating For Bottles' Interiors Lets Ketchup Flow Like Water

LiquiGlide, developed by a team at MIT's Varanasi Research Group, is a surface coating that liberates the notoriously non-Newtonian fluid ketchup from its glass- or plastic-walled prison.

(via Popular Science)

Legal Cartoon by Andertoons

Mark Anderson is a professional cartoonist from the Chicago area. His cartoons have been published in Reader's Digest, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Woman's World and the Saturday Evening Post, to mention just a few. Among his clients are GM, General Electric, FedEx, Microsoft, and IBM.

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Quicksand is a staple hazard of adventure movies, TV shows and video games. Whenever a minor character needs to be killed off quickly, the hero needs someone to rescue, or danger needs to be introduced without calling the villain in, quicksand is there to fulfill the task and swallow an explorer whole. But what exactly is quicksand?

The Sick Kitten (1903)

A century before Rolf Harris and 'Animal Hospital', audiences had more than their fair share of films about sickly pets, brave dogs and assorted animals in peril. Here, cinema pioneer G. A. Smith's tale features two under-aged vets and a feline patient.

'The Sick Kitten' is interesting for more than its cute factor. It was possibly the first film to use a close-up shot that was not motivated by someone staring down a microscope or ogling through a keyhole.

YouTube link

(via Everlasting Blort)

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The fourth Star Trek series, Voyager, told the story of a ship and its crew hurled to the opposite side of the galaxy. At the best possible speed, it would take 75 years for them to return home - if they completed the journey at all. From 1995 to 2001, we watched their tales of comradeship, courage and inventiveness. Here are ten things you might not know about Star Trek: Voyager.

Bowser Beer - A Beer For Dogs

Bowser Beer is for dogs... seriously! Bowser Beer isn't technically beer in the human sense. It contains no alcohol, no carbonation, and no hops (which can be poisonous to dogs).

Instead the brewer, 3 Busy Dogs Inc. use all natural dog-friendly ingredients including USDA beef or chicken, Glucosamine, and Malt to create a canine friendly form of beer. Of course the exact recipe is a secret. Three different flavors are available: Chicken, Beef, or a Chicken/Beef Combo.

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The Codex Mendoza is an Aztec codex, created about twenty years after the Spanish conquest of Mexico with the intent that it be seen by Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain.

It contains a history of the Aztec rulers and their conquests, a list of the tribute paid by the conquered, and a description of daily Aztec life, in traditional Aztec pictograms with Spanish explanations and commentary. The Codex Mendoza is named after Antonio de Mendoza, then the viceroy of New Spain, who may have commissioned it.

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An international tripoint is a geographical point at which the borders of three countries meet. There are currently 157 international tripoints by some accounts. Usually, the more neighbours a country has, the more international tripoints that country has.

China with 16 tripoints and Russia with 11 to 14 lead the list of states by number of tripoints. This is list of 8 interesting international tripoints worldwide.

Hexapod Robot

MorpHex is a hexapod robot that can transform into a sphere shape and back.

YouTube link

(via Everlasting Blort)

Chocolate-lovers need look no further for a place to pay homage to their favourite treat after chocolatiers created a mouth-watering edible sculpture of an ancient Mayan temple.

Chocolatiers have broken the world record for the largest chocolate sculpture after building a replica of the Kukulcan pyramid based in Chichen Itza in Mexico weighing an incredible 18,239lb - the equivalent of two adult elephants.

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Chromeography is a website with pictures of the lettering, logos, and ornaments adorning old automobiles.

You have probably heard of Douglas Engelbart. He is best known as the inventor of the computer mouse - but in fact, this man created just about all of the conceptual underpinnings of what we now think of as the standard human-computer interface. Engelbart presented his ideas to the public in one long demo session on December 9, 1968. This demo is known today, quite appropriately, as 'The Mother of All Demos.'

If you watch the Mother of All Demos you will notice the piano-like device sitting to the left of the conventional keyboard. It is known as a chorded keyboard, or chorder. In Engelbart's computing environment, it supplemented, rather than replaced, the traditional typewriter keyboard. Most of Engelbart's contemporaries saw the chorded keyboard as a somewhat naive engineering mistake.

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Jellyfish have enchanted humanity since we first laid eyes on them. Unsubstantial and wispy, they float around our oceans almost without thought or effort, their tendrils carelessly drifting behind them as they go. Jellyfish have existed in one form or another for about 700 million years and in that time they have evolved some rather amazing attributes.

(thanks Danny)

Happy Food

A short film by Yum Yum London featuring audio from German sound designer David Kamp.

Vimeo link

(thanks Cora)

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Some have created fantastic illusions consisting of sculptures that look as if they're sinking into the ground! Whether it's Sue and Peter Hill who made the magnificent Mud Maid at the Lost Gardens of Heligan, UK, or Banksy who transforms an ordinary row of orange traffic cones into an extraordinary work of art, one thing is certain. These pieces make us do a double-take!

(via Everlasting Blort)

Robert Moog (1934 - 2005) was an American pioneer of electronic music, best known as the inventor of the Moog synthesizer. In celebration of his 78th birthday, Google has created a Google doodle. The Google logo has been incorporated into an electronic synthesiser which can be played by clicking on its keys using a mouse cursor.

You can apply different effects to the synthesized sound by tweaking the knobs to shape the wave, change oscillator pitches, mess around with the filter or envelope and more, with the numerical values for each appearing above the keyboard.

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This is what the Food Court in Hell must look like.
The 11 Worst Fast Food Restaurant Names.

Slinky On A Treadmill

Running a slinky continuously on a treadmill.

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Whether you're a Trekkie or not, you have to admit that there's some sense of wonder to exploring the stars and trying to find life on distant planets. Of course, the U.S.S. Enterprise is a fictional ship, but have you ever put into thought as to what it would take to actually build it, and when we could get it done if we really put in the effort?

The man behind the well-researched site buildtheenterprise.org has, and he's determined that a fully functional Enterprise is only 20 years away if we put in the effort. In 20 years, the ship would be ready for a 'moon fly by' with full crew and supplies. The estimated cost of building the Enterprise: about $50 billion a year for the next 20 years - $1 trillion in total.

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Nursing for the sick was a family obligation back then, so nurses were but family members. In some cases, though, where the sick has no family or is a settler from another land, a self-appointed nurse will attend to his medical, physical and emotional needs.

In both circumstances, clothing designed for sanitary purposes is the last thing that would come to mind. And in more organized nursing care facilities, which were basically monasteries and nuns were the nurses, the nursing uniforms were but their habits.

(via Everlasting Blort)

Social media technologies take on many different forms including magazines, Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, microblogging, wikis, podcasts, photographs or pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking.

The State Of Social Media 2012.

(thanks David)

The Oberfranken Steakknife Massacre

A homemade 'chain saw.' The weapon consists of eight razor sharp, serrated steak knifes that rotate at fast speed. A battery drill is the power source, using a transmission with a rubber band as a belt.

YouTube link

(via Everlasting Blort)

Oral B Triumph Electric Tooth Brush

For sale: Oral B Triumph Electric Tooth Brush. I don't need it.

(via Criggo)

How Fast Do You Read?

A good book is hard to put down. But if you're enjoying it on an eReader you eventually have to break and recharge. How many pages can you get through before your battery runs out? How fast can you read classics like The Lord of the Rings or War and Peace?

I know I'm a fast reader but I never knew how fast. So I took the test. I can read 927 words per minute which is 271% faster than the average. It means that if I could maintain this reading speed, I could read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling in 1 hour and 23 minutes.

Check your reading speed on this fun interactive infographic and compare it to the national average.

Superfoods are full of antioxidants, fibre and essential fatty acids which have fantastic health benefits. When consumed as part of a healthy, balanced diet, superfoods improve immune system function, prevent or help treat illnesses and reduce the physical signs of ageing.

Rivers And Homes

Rivers And Homes is a taggable music video directed by Eran Amir.

YouTube link

(thanks Jino)

related post:
500 People In 100 Seconds

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The best place to see the eclipse was across Asia and parts of the western United States. It was the first solar eclipse of its kind in nearly 18 years.

Car-Sized Turtle Found In Colombian Coal Mine

Excavating in a coal mine in Colombia, paleontologists have discovered the fossil of the world's largest turtle, a 60-million-year-old specimen nearly 8 feet long - the size of a small car. If you were to stand it up, it's 5 foot 7 inches, just shorter than the average male.

And that's just the shell. Its skull is about the size of a football and was equipped with massive jaws that allowed it to eat almost anything. The remains of the turtle, called Carbonemys cofrinii, were found in a Colombian coal mine by a team of NC State researchers.

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There are a couple things at play here, some involving the paper, some involving your skin. For one thing, what part of your body comes in contact with paper the most? Right, the majority of paper cuts happen on the fingers and hands. Your hands are pretty complex sensory instruments, and they're absolutely jam-packed with nerve fibers called nociceptors.

These guys sense temperature, pressure and pain, and there are more of them per square inch in your hands and fingers than most other parts of your body. Injuries there are noticed much more than similar injuries elsewhere. The same small paper cut on a less nerve-dense area, such as, say, your leg, won't send nearly as many pain signals to your brain.

iPad Beer At Hofbräuhaus In Munich

Magician and performance artist Simon Pierro shows some iPad magic at the world famous German Hofbräuhaus in Munich, Germany, the beer capital.

YouTube link

(thanks Cora)

Law & Order is an American police procedural and legal drama television series that premiered in 1990 and completed its 20th and final season in 2010. Law & Order & Food is a tumblr photoblog about the food eaten on the TV show.

(via Neatorama)

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Just the thought of mold is something that makes many people involuntarily shudder. There are thousands of known species of molds which include opportunistic pathogens, saprotrophs, aquatic species and thermophiles.

Like all fungi, molds derive energy not through photosynthesis but from the organic matter in which they live. They are like alien landscapes on Earth. Take a look at this enigmatic and beautiful world on our own doorstep.

Are you a fan of Nicolas Kim Coppola? I mean Nic Cage? Then here's a tumblr blog for you.
An endlesss stream of Nicolas Cage Gifs.

Light Hearted Kites

A train of six kites flying in tandem. The kites are made and flown by Steve Polansky. The Music is 'Lighthouse' by Patrick Watson.

YouTube link

(thanks Cora)

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An archive of all Batman's significant outfits from comics, movies, games from 1939 until today.

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A propeller-driven suspended monorail, claiming the speed of aircraft with the safety and reliability of railways, was designed by George Bennie in 1926, and named the 'Bennie Railplane'. A short test track was built over a railroad line near Glasgow, Scotland. Two electrically-powered propellers delivered 240 horsepower in a short burst for acceleration to the cruise speed of 160 kph (almost 100 mph).

There were plans for a high-speed link between London and Paris, with a seaplane to carry passengers across the English Channel, but the grave economic difficulties of the 1930's doomed the Bennie Railplane from the start.

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The naked mole rat (Heterocephalus glaber) is a burrowing rodent native to parts of East Africa. It has a highly unusual set of physical traits that enables it to thrive in an otherwise harsh, underground environment, including a lack of pain sensation in its skin and a very low metabolism.

The naked mole rat is also of interest because it its extended lifespan of up to 28 years. A a new study from the University of Texas, USA, that could be due to differences in protein destroying machinery in their cells.

(via Look At This...)

Opening A Bottle Of Beer With A Chainsaw

A man opens a bottle of beer with a chainsaw.

YouTube link

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The Dhole is also called the Asiatic Wild Dog or Cuon alpinus. It is not closely related to any other canine, so it is a species apart from dogs, wolves, foxes or dingoes. This native of Southern Asia is an endangered species. A Dhole is roughly as large as a border collie.

A pack of Dholes may number about ten, although sometimes four times that number have been reported in one group. A pack generally has only one breeding female; males usually outnumber females. Many of us whistle to summon our dogs. The Dhole whistles too to summon other members of the pack, if they become separated while hunting.

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If you are very lucky you may see a fire rainbow once or twice in your life. It sounds like it could be one of a series of children's books - Harry Potter and the Fire Rainbow has a certain ring to it, but this phenomenon is not fiction.

If you are in the right place and at the right time then a fire rainbow is something that you will remember witnessing forever.

Dog Rides A Bike

Norman the Scooter Dog rides a bicycle.

YouTube link

(thanks Miss Rare)

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The Megalithic Passage Tomb at Newgrange - located in County Meath, on the eastern side of Ireland - was built around 3200 BC. The kidney shaped mound covers an area of over one acre and is surrounded by 97 kerbstones, some of which are richly decorated with megalithic art. It is estimated that the construction of the Passage Tomb at Newgrange would have taken a work force of 300 at least 20 years.

The passage and chamber of Newgrange are illuminated by the winter solstice sunrise. A shaft of sunlight shines through the roof box over the entrance and penetrates the passage to light up the chamber. The dramatic event lasts for 17 minutes at dawn on the Winter Solstice and for a few mornings either side of the Winter Solstice.

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