Links posted in June 2010
June 30, 2010
The 2010 Gulf of Mexico gusher is a replay of the 1979 Gulf gusher. The deep-ocean oil rig that exploded back then had the same type of malfunction, was run by the same company that was operating the currently-gushing rig, and failed attempts were made to fix it in the same way that failed attempts were made to fix the current one. It gushed for nine months until a relief well could be drilled. [more inside]
Texas Rangers raid an El Paso library demanding their computer signup sheets (shortly after Sept. 11 2001).
June 29, 2010
Long-exposure pictures of fireflies in a forest in Germany. In Japan. In Taiwan. In Elkmont Smokey Mountain National Park. Over a river somewhere. Fireflies on video in New York. Synchronous fireflies in a tree. [more inside]
Who would win in a fight, Spain or France? So #2 has a new job which entails travelling to the EU and US (alternating) four times a year. This means a minimum of 30-35 hours of economy-class travel for him each way, every time. I made the comment that it would make more sense to move to the EU or east coast of the US. Since we've already lived in the US, we have hypothetically decided to move to Europe. Help us narrow down options! [more inside]
June 28, 2010
Conan the Barbarian: The Musical.
A new ocean is forming in northern Africa. Cool, huh? Although the rift started forming in 2005, scientists now say that the volcanic activity in the crack is similar to what is happening in the ocean's trenches. (This link has a couple of photos for scale.)
June 26, 2010
Maximum 2010 Iconography: OKGO meets Muppets (plus celebrity cameos). Maybe not hilarity but amusity ensues.
How to Play Monkey-Pirate-Robot-Ninja-Zombie.
If you were just a little smarter, you'd know how dumb you are! Errol Morris, the guy who directed The Thin Blue Line and The Fog Of War, has an interesting essay/interview up at the New York Times about the way our egos and our ignorance shape our perception and conception of the world. [more inside]
June 24, 2010
The Age of Nanobotic Goo
could make all of our pollution and oil slick problems go away through *bioremediation*. Yet many other kinds of goo might be possible - even the Scifi horror imagined in Michael Crichton's Prey. In short, rather than ushering in the Promised Age of universal health and wealth, the planet may just end up being covered in grey goo.
[more inside]
June 23, 2010
What Higgs boson may sound like
June 22, 2010
John Hodgman, Neil Gaiman and OK Go's Damian Kulash sing "So Happy Together"
June 21, 2010
What cats are really thinking
!
You know they only love us as their servants.
Also:
Catnip pleeeeze! 'N thank you.
[more inside]
"Projecting Our Ignorance Is The Past, Injecting Our Ignorance Is The Future" It appears that Kynetx's Blog Post Buzzword Auto-Generator may have some bugs in it. [more inside]
June 20, 2010
Beautiful Photos of Infrared Trees.
BP well deeper than permit allowed, lacked safety valve
.
What we're not being told by the government or BP: "It's a race now...a race to drill the relief wells and take our last chance at killing this monster before the whole weakened, wore out, blown out, leaking and failing system gives up it's [sic] last gasp in a horrific crescendo."
Republicans are calling BP's failure a "natural disaster," suggesting nothing could have prevented it.**
BP's pointing fingers and blaming the other guy
Of course.
[more inside]
June 19, 2010
The Blues Brothers is a Catholic movie. The Apocalypse is just a bit further down.
June 18, 2010
Behold the Tsintaosaurus, the dinosaur with a... um... a "unicorn-like crest" on its forhead. Yeah.
June 17, 2010
June 16, 2010
Happy Captain Picard Day! (via)
June 15, 2010
Strong man Joe Rollino has died. Over a hundred years old, he was taken out by a mini van collision. Already he was strong a a child, as shown in the New York Times article. He will be missed, but more children of strength will keep up the tradition. Guliano may be the strongest boy. Then there's Maevax, who may well be the strongest little girl. (That's 125 kg or 275 pounds she is bench pressing for reps.) Some have said that lacking the gene for myostatin will create such power from birth... But the feats of strength I've listed were not done by people with huge muscles... [more inside]
June 14, 2010
FOR SALE: G20 Tank! (6 wheeled, 8.5 ton Armoured Personnel Carrier) [more inside]
June 13, 2010
Crater face - great piece of short animation. (my cat is trying to help, so let's hope the URL is still OK) via
La Maison en Petits Cubes is a sweet, very sad, 12-minute animated film that's kind of a counterpoint to "Up", but without balloons and with a lot of global-warming-esque sea-level-rising. [more inside]
June 12, 2010
La Maison en Petits Cubes is a sweet, very sad, 12-minute animated film that's kind of a counterpoint to "Up", but without balloons and with a lot of global-warming-esque sea-level-rising. [more inside]
MonkeyFilter is now over. Please shut the door behind you. Chimp Rapes Frog. SLYT. Try not to cry too loudly.
June 11, 2010
End of the journey this Sunday - that's the plan for Hayabusa, which will release a capsule carrying a sample (hopefully!) of the asteroid it landed on years ago.
It's finally here!! Groups of Death. North Korea. England vs the US. Brazil vs Portgual. The Dutch and the Danes. Are we ready to rumble?
June 09, 2010
The Burger Lab: how to make perfect thin and crisp french fries
Couch Cushion Architecture; A Critical Analysis.
June 07, 2010
The very short and fairly descriptive domain name e.co is being auctioned off. Less than 2 hours into the 3 day auction, 16,500 USD has been bid, and it can be expected to go much higher. Of course, anyone can bid, and it'd be a great asset for the BP PR department at any price, right?
June 05, 2010
'murikins are evolving!!
.
Gallup Poll reflects changing attitudes on sexuality
[more inside]
Astroturfing is bad, mmkay?
Walter Apai of Techi.com and Web Design Depot admits to running paid reviews of his sites without labeling them as paid content and calls it ethical behavior. Do you want your opinion of a site to be bought? Or do you want to make up your own mind freely?
(Disclosure: This links to my site, and I used to write for Techi.com but quit 'cause I smelled a phony. But I would have done the same due diligence on any other phony...)
June 03, 2010
Diana Wynne Jones "not at all well." If you grew up speaking English, odds are that before you were twenty you read at least one book by brilliant and prolific authoress Diana Wynne Jones. Now she has, according to this month's Ansible, decided to "abandon chemotherapy [...] and resign herself to whatever may follow." [more inside]
June 02, 2010
Imagine if ads in the US were like this. Vive la France!
