Archive for September, 2007
As we’ll soon be celebrating 100 years of Mills & Boon literature, what better time to feature the following?
Science fiction sleaze covers!
Textbooks rewritten as dime store trash novels!
The melting ice trickled down the mountain’s spine, at once cool and warm, the sensation causing the mountain to gasp sublimated water vapor. The sun beat down on the trees, and the trees reveled in the sweet intersection of pain and pleasure, beginning to sweat. “Evapotranspiration,” whispered the sun, soft yet in control.
September 27th, 2007
How do you quickly evacuate a lot of people from a building? With a car, obviously. A flying car!
I’m pretty sure I saw this same idea in an episode of Wacky Races.
September 24th, 2007
Plotting a course deep in the belly of the Uncanny Valley, the Waseda-Docomo face robot No.2 is a shape-shifting automaton face capable of mimicking any human with an average 3mm of error. An image of the person to be imitated is projected onto the robot face, which then contorts and stretches in a very unsettling manner until a near-perfect doppelgänger is rendered. Like something out of H. R. Giger’s bad dream.
Here’s the same robot, seen from three different angles, with the facial image overlaid.
September 20th, 2007
Whoopi Goldberg tries to tease out the rational of View host Sherri Sheppherd, who doesn’t accept evolution, by asking if Sherri thinks the world is flat. Sherri thinks the jury’s still out on that one. This is what Christian fundamentalism does to your brain.
September 19th, 2007
Be warned: contains irritating sound effects and mind-boggling meta-physics.
Thanks, Brian!
September 19th, 2007
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued a flier to combat myths about the flu vaccine. It recited various commonly held views and labeled them either “true” or “false.” Among those identified as false were statements such as “The side effects are worse than the flu” and “Only older people need flu vaccine.”
When University of Michigan social psychologist Norbert Schwarz had volunteers read the CDC flier, however, he found that within 30 minutes, older people misremembered 28 percent of the false statements as true. Three days later, they remembered 40 percent of the myths as factual.
It’s no news in psychology that whilst people remember facts, they tend to forget who told them those facts, and therefore how credible the information is. The paper linked here describes some interesting consequences of this human trait.
September 19th, 2007
Pruned reports:
In the 1940s, archaeologists discovered the ancient city of Seuthopolis, the capital seat of the Odrysian Kingdom beginning in the 4th century BCE. Unfortunately, the discovery came too late, because under construction nearby was a reservoir dam, which would soon flood the valley and drown “the best preserved Thracian city in modern Bulgaria.”. Now over half a century later, a project proposed by Bulgarian architect Zheko Tilev would uncover and preserve the ruins using “a circular dam wall, resembling a well on the bottom of which, as on a stage, is presented the historical epic of Seuthopolis.”
September 18th, 2007
Alexis Dubat is an expert on terrorism who has interviewed some of the world’s most prominent figures on the subject - or at least he was, up until last week. French and American news outlets have had to reassess much of the reports filed by Dubat afetr it was revealed that not only did he lack a claimed PhD and experience with the French defence ministry, he also fabricated interviews with Kofi Annan, Bill Gates, and Michael Bloomberg. Click here for the full story.
September 18th, 2007
To the surprise of very few people, the Guardian reports that tales of “super-strength” cannabis have been grossly exaggerated. You may recall that some time ago, the Independent on Sunday insisted that the market was awash with a deadly superherb that could cause schizophrenia in one puff. In light of the latest development, you might think that the Independent would be a little contrite. You’d be wrong.
September 17th, 2007
Last week the Metro ran a curious little article looking at the environmental standards of some hotels. Not just any hotels, mind, but those fortunate enough to be hosting political party conferences. The “research” carried out by Royal & SunAlliance, shows that the Tories choice of hotel is the least environmentally friendly, i.e. experiences the most heat loss, as revealed by thermal imaging:
Crikey! Look how spicy hot it looks. Definitely suffering major heat loss. Especially when you take a look at the alternatives. Here’s the Lib Dem conference centre:
See how green it is? Like, literally green? That must mean something, right? Actually, no, it doesn’t. Because believe it or not, thermal images are monochromatic (that’s black & white to comprehensive graduates out there). Colour is only put in afterwards as a way of analysing the picture. It makes it easier for the human eye to pick out certain trends. Now, it’s possible the same colour scheme was applied to both these images, and the Lib Dem centre just happened to come out all green. But I doubt it. Even if it had, thermal images can’t be compared to eachother, because only the relative infrared reflectance / emission is measured, not absolute value. This means whilst the “hottest” part of the picture is always the brightest, this can’t be compared to another image which could have been taken at a different time of day (or year), at a different ambient temperature under different weather conditions. To phrase it another way, this article isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. Tell me what the real environmental waste is…
September 17th, 2007
Not one to let Ben Goldacre have all the fun, your favourite science punk will also be appearing in the latest issue of PR Week, a big industry journal for those creative media types. Ben’s comments last week regarding the utterly bogus Jessica Alba butt-wiggle formula have stimulated some critical self-appraisal on the merits of using junk science to promote a brand. You can read my previous comments on bogus formulae here, here, and here. See me have the last word on the subject in PR Week here.
September 13th, 2007
We have the capability to rebuild him. Better, stronger, faster… He may not have been given a Nobel Prize yet, but at least Stephen Hawking can take solace in the fact that he has been immortalised in that most reverent of materials, Lego.
Via Brickshelf
September 12th, 2007
After the action-packed virus-themed game I wrote about a while ago, here’s a another one to distract you from your daily work. Pandemic puts you in charge of a world-ending virus. Choose how your pathogen develops, from the symptoms it causes to how it is transmitted. The aim is to wipe out mankind (nice), but public transport will cease and airports will close if the humans cotton on to what’s happening. I managed to wipe out Earth’s human population in 169 days, but I’m sure you can do better.
September 11th, 2007
I recently chanced upon the strange and possibly true story of William Kogut, a prisoner at San Quentin who came up with a cunning plan to avoid the executioner’s chair.
Built in 1852 by the prisoners who would eventually go on to be incarcerated in it, San Quentin is California’s oldest prison. It has a long list of notable visitors, including Johnny Cash, who famously played to prisoners there in 1969. It featured a gallows and later a gas chamber, where hydrogen cyanide was used to execute inmates on Death Row.
Kogut had been sentenced to death for the murder of Mayme Guthrie, but had no intention of allowing the state to decide the time and circumstances of his death. On October 20, 1930, prison guards found Kogut’s body in his cell, a note found near the body read:
Do not blame my death on any one because I fixed everything myself. I never give up so long as I am living and have a chance, but this is the end.
San Quentin’s Death Row prisoners were not easily afforded the luxury of suicide. Inmates were kept under close watch and not permitted any materials that could conceivably used to hasten their end. Yet somehow Kogut had managed it. He simply used an inconceivable weapon - inconceivable to anyone except Kogut, of course.
First of all, Kogut procured several packs of playing cards - a fairly innocuous possession, even in a prison. Once in his cell, he tore the cards into small pieces and stuffed them into the hollow metal leg of his bunk. He then poured water into the leg and sealed it with a wooden broom handle. Placing the leg on top of a paraffin heater, Kogut lay his head on top of the device and waited for his end.
In the 1930s, a substance called nitrocellulose was cropping up in all sorts of places, and still does now - it appears in film reels, nail polish, hair dye, guitar laminate, aircraft dope, car body work, cryptography pads, wound dressing, wart remover, and DNA blots. Oh, and playing cards.
Nitrocellulose is unstable, and decomposes easily, releasing nitric acid. This nitric acid further decomposes nitrocellulose, leading to a self-catalysing reaction. Nitrocellulose is also quite flammable, and when wet forms an explosive mixture. As Kogut lay his head down to rest, the warmth from the heater accelerated the reactions taking place within his improvised pipe bomb. Soon the concoction reached a critical state and exploded, killing Kogut instantly. History doesn’t record whether playing cards were subsequently contraband in San Quentin prison, but we can only wonder what William Kogut ’s intellect could have offered the world had his life taken a different path.
Via gargles.net
September 10th, 2007
Overcoming gravity: not only can Bob Hoover fly a plane with one hand, he can also barrel roll said aircraft whilst pouring iced tea, and not spill a drop. How? He compensates for the shift in gravitational pull by careful manoeuvring. Like I said, Bob Hoover has skillz.
September 9th, 2007
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