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Planet Dave! Monday, August 14, 2006
John Gabriel's G.I.F.T.
I'm feeling rather pleased with myself. Today, in an Internet forum, I cited John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. Although it all comes back to a joke I heard about arguing in a forum and the Special Olympics. It's much too offensive a joke for me to type it out here. ... But I will link to someone else's telling.
Bellagio Fountains Recreated with Mentos and Coke
From /., "What happens when you combine 200 liters of Diet Coke and over 500 Mentos mints? It's amazing and completely insane. The first part of this video demonstrates a simple geyser, and the second part shows just how extreme it can get. Over one hundred jets of soda fly into the air in less than three minutes. It's a hysterical and spectacular mint-powered version of the Bellagio Fountains in Las Vegas."
Was the 2004 election stolen?
This is a scary article. Everyone's heard about 2000 Florida. Have you heard about 2004 Ohio? How much have you heard about exit polls? Accuracy in predicting elections from exit polling has been growing for some years now. And all of a sudden, they're inexplicablly inaccurate. They predicted that Ohio would've gone to Kerry.
Don't chalk up to malice what can be explained by incompetence. But I'd feel better about this if I had heard of a single "vote counting error" that favored the Democrates. It seems like they ALL favor the Republicans.
Backyard Habitat
One of the reasons I hate suburbia is that it's so depressingly barren. People go out of their way to make their lawns look like astroturf. It's not that hard to aim for something a little more natural.
Browse the Real Estate Listings for Castles
No joke. It's right here. 131? Are there really enough people in the work with that much money that there can be 131 castles up for sale? Here's a nice little fixer upper. 3.2 million Euros. Would you call that a buyers' market?
Betsy Rocks
Betsy has a fantastic LJ icon. You've heard of Lance Bass coming out of the closet? Behold Betsy's take on that.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Rey Mysterio
Ok, I'm not much of a pro-wrestling fan. But you gotta be impressed by this. (Ron sent me that and this one, too.)
Lyrebird
Jamie sent me this incredible video of a Lyrebird's courtship song. The text that accompanies the video:
"In April 2006, to celebrate naturalist David Attenborough's 80th birthday, the public were asked to vote on their favourite of his television moments. This clip of the lyrebird was voted number one. A Lyrebird is either of two species of ground-dwelling Australian birds, most notable for their extraordinary ability to mimic natural and artificial sounds from their environment." David Attenborough rocks!
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Sport Utility Bike!
Saw this over at Cool Tools. It's a kit you can build onto your bicycle for hauling huge loads. It's called the Xtracycle. Man, I gotta get a place in Ann Arbor so I can start riding my bike to work again.
Orthodontal molds of the inside of ant-holes
From BoingBoing, "Walter R. Tschinkel, from the Department of Biological Science at Florida State University pours orthodontal plaster down ant holes, and creates perfect molds of the topology of the inside of an ant-colony." Something really suprised me about these casts. Since ants can walk on vertical surfaces, I had always just assumed that they just disregarded gravity in their nests. But all of the chambers are horizontal and flat. I wasn't expecting that.
Inventions and creations inspired by dreams
From BoingBoing, "BrilliantDreams -- a site for lucid dreaming -- hosts a page of famous discoveries and inventions inspired by dreams, like the dream in which Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz discovered the Benzene molecule."
Pizzly Bear Shot in Northwest Territories
(Warning Mom, there are pictures of the dead bear.) What do you get when you cross a grizzly and a polar bear? An indication of things going very wrong. One of these was shot on April 16th, by a guy hunting polar bears. (Treehugger pointed me to this article.) While crosses like this have been known to happen in zoos, there's never been proof of it happening in the wild before. They seem to be theorizing that as the climate heats up, grizzlies are moving north and mixing with the local polar bears.
Junk Food Rocket Propellant
From this great Popular Science article, " Food contains an amazing amount of energy. If you don’t believe it, feed candy to some kids and watch them bounce off the walls. Of course, tot-baiting is only one way to turn food energy into noise and destruction."
If you can release that energy faster (by letting it react with potassium perchlorate, for example) you can do impressive stuff with it. Like power a rocket! (Be sure to check out the videos while you're there.)
Boing Boing points out that there's a group that's trying to send a sugar powered rocket not just into the sky, but into space. Cool. Environmentally friendly rocket fuel.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Puzzlemaker Lee Krasnow videotaped at Maker Faire
Saw this over at BoingBoing. It's a podcast from the maker Faire about a wooden puzzle making dude. (The puzzles are wooden, not the dude.) Here's the video in mp4 format. It's about 60 megs, but worth the download. The clutch puzzle box and the interlacing tetrahedrons were cool, but my favorite was the binary cube.
Pizza Box Coffin For Your Leftovers
From BoingBoing, "A chain of Kiwi pizza joints, Hell Pizza, delivers its pizzas in a novelty box that can be folded into a coffin 'for your remains.'"
Who Wrote the Bible?
This is an interesting question that comes up from time to time. I bring it up now because I read an interesting post on the Real Live Preacher's site. And I just wanted to chime in with my $0.02. I've heard it said that to accept the Bible as the end-all, be-all of God, the complete and true word of God, is a form of idolatry. If we accept that we can't form an image of God with stone, what makes us think we can form an image of God with our words? Not that I'm trying to dis the Bible, quite the opposite, actually. I've been known to revere stories, and these are some from several thousand years ago. Some of the foundation pieces of our culture. And there's a lot to be learned from it, provided you're open to the lessons. The Preacher had something to say on this, to. A quote from that, "One of the things I like most about the Bible is the motley and flawed collection of characters that populate its pages. There can be no doubt that we share a common humanity with them."
Monday, August 07, 2006
RIAA Sues Family Without A Computer
It finally happened. One of the RIAA's lawsuits landed on a family that doesn't even own a computer. If you've been living under a rock and don't know what this is all about, the Recording Industry Association of America has been charging incredible numbers of people with music piracy. Downloading copies of music from the Internet. But this family is in luck! If they can't afford the tens of thousands of dollars of legal fees that it'll take to win a court case with a multi-billion dollar company, they can settle for a mere $3000. Plus the RIAA's legal fees, of course. If they can't find that money, they can always pull their kids out of school. These suits have done this before, and they don't show any sign of stopping. That's why I only listen to pirated music.
How-To: LED Throwie
From BoingBoing, "The Graffiti Research Lab was at Maker Faire last weekend with a large black bus and a bunch of raw materials to make LED Throwies. Huong Ngo of G.R.L. was kind enough to explain to me how to make a Throwie. Here's a 1 minute video."
It seems like it falls under the category of legal graffiti. It's not paint or anything. Of course, someone would still need to clean them up. (Especially when the batteries die.) Maybe you could get busted for littering. Ok, someone make a handful of these and throw them at a squad car. Then post a comment here and tell us what you get charged with. (You're on your own for bail.)
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Home Made Tornado Machine
Ok, this thing looks really cool, although a little involved. I'll have to read that through, maybe find a way to cut some corners... And increase the power!
PlanetDave HowTo: DIY wind and solar power.
Treehugger had a couple good posts for do-it-yourselfers. First, there's the DIY wind power competition. Next up, they've got a bunch of links for solar power at home. I particularly like the idea of taking one room off grid. Come to think of it, I've kinda already got an off-grid reading lamp by my bed. I doubt I could do my whole bedroom, though. My computer's in there.
Disadventure!
If you've never played a text adventure computer game, and you've never written a dissertation, this will go right over your head. If you've done one of those, you'll enjoy it. Go read it.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Gaelic Storm at the Ark
Gaelic Storm is performing tomorrow night at The Ark. The show's at 8:00, and tix are $35 a piece. Should be a good show!
Solar Eclipse from Space
Here's what a solar eclipse looks like from the International Space Station.
Florida Police Intimidate, Sue Critics
In today's case of police public relations gone horribly wrong, we have 38 precincts in southern Florida. The Police Complaint Center sent an undercover investigator to get complaint forms from each of these stations. In Florida City, Miami, and Homestead the investigator received the forms with no trouble. But in the other 35 police departments across Miami-Dade and Broward Counties things weren't so smooth. To make matters worse, the worst offender (Sergeant Peter Schumanich actually threw the investigator out, then followed him for a block) actually took CBS to court to stop the story. On top of that, the CBS reporter who broke the story got put on the BOLO list. That's the "Be On the Lookout For" list, for accused criminals who need to be arrested.
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Can everyone please just relax about terrorism?
The Fort Myers (Florida) High School marching band was invited to perform in the London's 2007 New Year's Day parade. Sounds like the trip of a lifetime for a lot of these kids. At least it would be if they could go. But they can't. The superintendent is denying school support for the trip because of TERRORISM!!!
Nontransitive Dice
Ok, here's the setup: you've got four dice. They're all numbered differently. Your mark picks one. The game is you each roll, and the higher number wins. But no matter which die he picks, you can pick one that will give you 2 to 1 odds over him. No kidding.