In 1969, Chairman Mao commanded the construction of a second Beijing beneath the surface of the original city, designed to accommodate all six million of its then inhabitants, so that if nuclear war did kick off, folk would still have somewhere to hang out and play Mah Jong while the rest of us burnt to death in a shower of atomic rain. War never came, but the city is still there.
http://www.viceland.com/wp/2009/11/chairman-maos-underground-city/
The Allan Hills 84001 Meteorite which landed on earth has been examined and they’ve discovered that the tiny magnetite crystals it contains are chemically consistent with being formed in bacteria – they’re basically little fossils. They’re pretty sure the rock, which has floated around for around 16 million years, comes from Mars as it matches chemical compositions with the relative proportions of various gases measured in observations of the atmosphere of Mars made by the Viking spacecraft in the 1970s.
Evidence of life on Mars lurks beneath surface of meteorite, Nasa experts claim – Times Online.
The Dutch have a crazy plan to charge people per km they drive. How will they monitor this? By placing little black GPS boxes in every car. If you don’t have a working box in your car, you will face up to four (!) years in jail – more than most other forms of crime.
Now the economics minister is saying that the ideas of an invasion of privacy are indian stories and nonsense. I ask, how much more can you invade someone’s privacy than following someone’s car everywhere (s)he goes and putting all that information in a huge database?!
EZ: privacybezwaar km-heffing is indianenverhaal (video) | Webwereld.
This page is fantastic! Loads of themes easily browseable and best of all, you can download them directly 🙂
This site has huge archives of declassified aerial reconnaissance photographs from the second world war.
The National Collection of Aerial Photography.
This is like the FUFME but really works: a haptic personal pussy which is linked to porn films. The makers of the device have programmed it to respond by tightening and heating and rubbing and lubing just like the pornstar you’re watching is doing in the scene on your computer.
According to Fleshbot it works very well. But it’s a bit pricey. For your richer type masterbator then…
- Blizzard Online Network Services run in 10 data centers around the world, including facilities in Washington, California, Texas, Massachusetts, France, Germany, Sweden, South Korea, China, and Taiwan.
- Blizzard uses 20,000 systems and 1.3 petabytes of storage to power its gaming operations.
- WoW’s infrastructure includes 3,250 server blades, 75,000 CPU cores, and 112.5 terabytes of blade RAM.
- The Blizzard network is managed by a staff of 68 people.
- The company’s gaming infrastructure is monitored from a global network operating center (GNOC), which like many NOCs, features televisions tuned to the weather stations to track potential uptime threats across its data center footprint.
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/11/25/wows-back-end-10-data-centers-75000-cores/
These guys make the original US military flight sunglasses, starting at only $70,-
You can record your screen, do picture in picture, record output from your webcam, save as AVI, convert to SWF, annotate – all for free!
CamStudio – Free Screen Recording Software.
In this theory, time is split from space entirely. It’s a working model, but is still being refined as there are some flaws in it yet. It’s exciting because it does what Newton’s and Einstein’s theories can’t do, which is predict at the quantum graviton level.
Splitting Time from Space—New Quantum Theory Topples Einstein’s Spacetime: Scientific American.
This thing is quite amazing – it features a heart rate meter, x, y, z-axis motion sensitivity, temperture sensor, battery voltage and altitude (based on temperature, not a barometer) and has wifi, USB, connects to stuff and is fully programmable. Best of all, it only costs $49,-
This is the press blurb: TI revolutionizes design of wireless networking applications with eZ430-Chronos, world’s first customizable development environment in a sports watch – News Room – News Center.
You can find the development tool here
A wiki with loads of information here
After some teething problems and predicions about the world ending, it’s started and we’re still here: the first low power collisions have been made in two of the four sensor arrays, meaning more science is yet to come!
BBC News – Cern’s Large Hadron Collider makes first collisions.
All these hygenic parents who continuously wash and disinfect their children and don’t like them to play in the dirt are doing their progeny a huge disservice.
Common bacterial species, known as staphylococci, which can cause inflammation when under the skin, are “good bacteria” when on the surface, where they can reduce inflammation.
By studying mice and human cells, researchers discovered that they did this by making a molecule, called lipoteichoic acid (or LTA) , which acted on keratinocytes, the main cell types found in the outer layer of the skin.
Scientists give grubby children a clean bill of health | Life and style | The Guardian.
It turns out that administering low-intensity shockwaves to the penis can help men with blood flow problems get over their difficulties getting a hard on. Viagra and Cialis help, but they need to keep taking the pills every time. This is a more permanent solution, because the shocks encourage the growth of new blood vessels from existing ones. It’s still a preliminary study, but it’s looking promising.
Shocking Treatment Helps Erectile Dysfunction | LiveScience.
Looking through this thing allows you to find camera lenses pointed at you. It detects signals in the 1 – 6500MHz band which means you can detect the wireless signals the camera is sending.
For this big brother age, nice to see who’s spying on you.
Spy Wi-Fi Signal and Camera Lens Detector.
Looks pretty cool to me!
Amidio’s Touch DJ app stuffs a turntable into your iPhone (video) — Engadget.
This amazing piece of software allows you to rotate an object in front of your webcam and it’ll build a 3D model of it. It has a very good tracking system, so it can follow the model as it’s moved left or right.
Cambridge University Engineering Department – Qi Pan.
Now anyone can develop for the Microsoft Surface without actually owning one of these insanely expensive items.
Learn more about Microsoft Surface technical resources.
Basically it’s all about the movie and music industry being able to kick you off the net and subject you to huge fines without any proof – just an accusation of filesharing is enough. It’s also about giving the business secretary the power to make up penalties and enforcements at whim.
It’s not about stimulating creativity, new business, ensuring that everyone has broadband, etc.
Looks like labour has it’s pockets filled with copyright holders hands!
Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas, unveiled in Fort Lauderdale, is nearly 50% larger than the largest cruise ships now at sea. But it’s not just the ship’s size that has people talking. Built at a record cost of $1.4 billion, the 225,282-ton vessel is chock-full of industry firsts housed within seven themed neighborhoods. The 6,296-passenger vessel’s first cruise with paying passengers is set for Dec. 1
This makes it 5 times larger than the Titanic – and in the current economic climate, they’ll have problems filling it up, as well as fitting it into ports: currently only four can take it, but other ports are expanding their facilities and there should be more ports next year.
via Oasis of the Seas sets sail – USATODAY.com.
And allthough the authenticity of the 1079 emails and 72 documents hasn’t been verified, it shows that the researchers have manipulated the data to fit their models, can’t explain the lack of global warming and have plans set up to destroy the credibility of any scientist doubting their stance.
Michelle Malkin » The global warming scandal of the century.
[edit]You can find the full archives here
Looks like Jobs will do anything to avoid repairing that overpriced piece of equipment you bought from him: not only are the repair times shocking, but the lame excuse that tar clogs up your computer, creating a biohazard – whilst not mentioned anywhere in the AppleCare contract – voids your warranty is a bit ridiculous, no?
Smoke Gets In Your Imac: Smoking Near Apple Computers Creates Biohazard, Voids Warranty.
The art of swordmaking has remained fundamentally unchanged for the past couple of centuries, but Dan Watson has gone and changed the way the steel is tempered, making for swords twice as tough and flexible as any of the old ways. He does this by making the molecular strands in the steel twist in a curve instead of remaining in straight lines, and by using cryogenic freezing systems to ensure that the hardening of the molecules occurs in a completely controlled and optimum manner.
Expect to pay around $20.000,- for one of these…
Angel Sword Store | Choosing a Sword | Sword, Blades, Katana, Buccaneer, Angel.
This site lists satellites, the ISS and other astronomical objects you can see in the sky based on your own location. It’s a very comprehensive, easy to use astronomy site with object you can and can’t see.