Posts filed under 'General'
How do you fancy your chances against a bear? A lion? Or perhaps an ordinary housecat? If you’re not sure, you’ll be pleased to hear the good folks at Their Toys are hosting an interactive guide to forecasting your chances of surviving an animal attack. I really don’t know why a sex toy shop is hosting an animal survival indicator. Allegedly the results are based on known survival rates, so there’s some science in there somewhere. Maybe.
Being a skinny lad with no experience of firearms and a fairly ambivalent approach to death, I didn’t score very highly. In fact, the odds are one in four of me losing to my pet cat. Seems fair, anyone who’s seen my cat knows you don’t mess with that 16lb tabby.
June 11th, 2008
Bizarrely claiming to be based on something to do with the Large Hadron Collider, Epsilon is nonetheless a nice little distraction involving portals, wormholes, gravity bombs and time warps. Even more bizarrely, you will use all these monumental powers to move a tiny ball into a tiny hole. Something tells me the Russians would have used a pencil.
June 5th, 2008
Over at Cracked, Luke McKinney has written a round-up of the 6 most badass stunts ever pulled in the name of science. It’s really rather good. I’m sure you people can think of some notable examples that missed the cut.
June 4th, 2008
We’ve seen a lot of ’stupid exam answers’ in the past, but I like this one best. Click the image for the full picture.
Why do I love it so? Because even though he managed to leave snide comments for every question, he still aced the test. 100/100. Nothing says “understimulated” quite as much as this.
Via Shutterline
June 4th, 2008
The fact that the tagline is “Making the city work together” means this designer failed twice over when creating this advert.
Incidentally, I recently spotted a London South Bank University poster that was exactly the same, but didn’t manage to get a photo. Can anyone find it?
Via Crap
At least they’re not alone, though. HR Results also advertise themselves using non-function gears. And there are tiny people waiting to get ground up in those corporate cogs. Talk about bad imagery.
Finally, here’s a spectacular effort in failure from Oriel Process Management Consulting (one of those names that means nothing). You know what else does nothing? This:
The Design stage of process management puts in place the components required for a successful system. Each of the five activities within this stage works in concert, akin to a set of cogs moving in a linked, nonsequential way
Don’t think I’ll be buying any design plans from them…
June 2nd, 2008
The ideal accompaniment to a gin and tonic on these warm summer afternoons - the image of a leaf perfectly captured on a slip of ice.
Via Afhakers
May 27th, 2008
The fun fun fun blog has a wonderful gallery of vintage handcuffs. If you’re anything like me you’ll be pleased to see the loving craftmanship and elegant design that went into restraining the fellow man. Here are a few of my favourites:
Pretzel cuffs (mmm… salty justice)
Scalextric cuffs…
And these three way cuffs….err… for felons that have three arms?
See them all at fun fun fun.
May 26th, 2008
If it wasn’t bad enough that cyclones are wiping people out in Burma, and earthquakes have laid waste to China, not to mention a global food crisis in progress, the powers that be have seen fit to send a trio of unpleasant plagues to visit mankind. Here’s what you need to know about the brand new pestilences.
Chapare Virus
First reported a month ago by scientists writing in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Pathogens, this haemorrhagic fever is named after the river close to where it was discovered. Symptoms include flu-like headache, fever and muscle pains, rapidly deteriorating into bleeding and shock, and possible death. Related viruses have a mortality rate of around 30%.
The Good News
Chapare Virus is restricted to a small area of Bolivia.
The Bad News
It’s probably carried by rodents, which are everywhere. And almost every rodent seems to have its own similar virus.
Should you be worried?
Unless you’re planning to get bitten by a rat in Bolivia in the Chapare River area, you’re probably OK. Of course, there’s also Lassa Fever, and the Junin, Machupo, Guanarito, and Sabia viruses to worry about, so you probably shouldn’t plan on get ting bitten by a rat anywhere in South America.
Monkey malaria
In April’s issue of Future Microbiology , Dr Thomas McCutchan aired his fears that monkey malaria had crossed into humans. Malaria is responsible for over 300 million infections worldwide each year, and 1-3 million deaths, all of which are down to just four different forms of the malaria parasite. Plasmodium knowlesi would bring that total up to five, and worse still, while it is morphologically very similar to one of the relatively benign forms of malaria parasite, P. knowlesi requires immediate aggressive intervention to treat infected persons.
The Good News
Monkey malaria has only been detected in Borneo.
The Bad News
The similarities with other forms of the virus parasite mean that monkey malaria is probably widely unreported. To make matters worse, doctors are unlikely to diagnose you correctly until it’s too late.
Should you be worried?
If you’re in South East Asia you should avoid monkeys. And mosquitos. And given the avian flu menace, you should probably avoid birds too. In fact, just avoid South East Asia altogether.
Hand, Foot and Mouth Virus
Reuters recently reported on the ongoing outbreak of hand, foot and mouth virus in China’s schoolchildren. The enterovirus responsible is common in China, where outbreaks occur annually. This year however, a particularly virulent strain has taken hold, leading to high fever, paralysis and viral meningitis. So far 26 childrenhave died, and a number of kindergartens have been closed to halt the spread of the virus.
The Good News
Most of the fatalities were seen in children under 5, so if you’re old enough to be reading this you’re probably safe.
The Bad News
Your kid’s aren’t. And who’s to say the next strain won’t attack adults?
Should you be worried?
Generally speaking, small children are germ factories and should be avoided at all costs. If you’ve already been living by that principle, you can award yourself 100 points for your foresight. If you can’t avoid small children, you probably have enough to worry about already.
May 25th, 2008
It’s with a heavy heart that I report the sad death of worker ant #010054, or as I called it, Mister Ant.
I’m worried now for the sake of my colony. They don’t work, they don’t eat, it’s like having a group of teenagers in my house. Specifically, the gel forms their food source, and if they’re not burrowing, they’re not eating. I decided to offer them a little sugar and water, in the hope they’d perk up. My ants are still trying to escape, but somewhat feebly - they keep falling off the walls of the formicarium. So add ennui to that list of teenager-like traits.
Perhaps previous comment authors are right, and I really do need a queen.
May 23rd, 2008
I had to look this up - but apparently Nikola Tesla really was celibate.
By Kate Beaton
May 19th, 2008
They say that human progress is undeniable - we’re alway thinking up new ways to kill one another. But the path to genocide isn’t smooth, so let’s pause to take a look at some of the weapons that didn’t make the cut in man’s endless desire to exterminate his fellow soldier.
Anti-tank dog
During the Second World War, the Russian Army came up with an ingenious defence against German tanks. Starving dogs would have bombs strapped to them, and then sent toward the enemy vehicles. The dogs had been trained to retrieve food from under Russian tanks, and the idea was that they would dash under the German tanks, seeking food, and in doing so activate a large wooden trigger on their backs. Unfortunately, having been trained using Soviet tanks, the dogs of war much preferred running under Russian tanks. Added to that, the noise of the battlefield confused and frightened them, culminating in an entire troupe of bomb-dogs running amok in a battlefield, endangering everyone and forcing the retreat of the Russian forces. Although credited with the destruction of over 300 Nazi tanks, the dogs were retired from service shortly after.
M-388 Davy Crockett
Nuclear devices already rate pretty highly on the stupidity scale, in terms of general wanton destructiveness and lasting radioactive fallout. So what better idea could there be than removing all due process behind launching such a hell-spawned weapon, and instead put that decision in the hands of a lowly infantryman? The M-388 did exactly that - it was the world’s first, and thankfully only, handheld nuclear delivery system - an atomic bazooka. With a range of less than 3km, and poor accuracy even at that stones-throw distance, the Davy Crockett’s only effectiveness was one of area-denial, instantly rendering a battlezone an inhospitable, radiation-soaked hellpit. For at least 240,000 years.
FP-45 Liberator
The Liberator was a pistol maufactured in the US during the Second World War. Made from stamped and bent sheet metal, the Liberator was designed to be produced quickly and cheaply, and dropped into occupied territory as an insurgency weapon. With an unrifled barrel, the Liberator had a maximum effective range of just 25ft. Of course, “effective” in this occasion had little meaning, seeing as the empty shell casing had to be removed with a wooden dowel before the next shot could be fired. This way, the FP-45 took longer to reload than it did to manufacture - ten seconds to seven seconds respectively. In fact, the only useful function of the Liberator was to incapacitate someone long enough to take their weapon. In other words, the US could have shipped out the lump of metal they began with, and had an equally effective weapon.
No 74 ST Grenade
During the Second World War, the British military removed much of the bureaucy surrounding weapon development, hoping to foster an increased rate of innovation. This also allowed many absurd and impractical ideas to reach the front line, including the No 74 ST Grenade, or sticky bomb. The sticky bomb was designed to act against enemy tanks, and consisted of a glass ampule of nitroglycerin attached to a plastic fuse. This was encased inside a knitted wool ’sock’ coated in sticky resin, and the whole grenade then encased inside a protective metal case. Although effective in combat, the fragile glass casing easily cracked during transport, the explosive was highly volatile, and worst of all, the sticky coating often glued an armed grenade to the thrower’s clothing, making it a very unpopular weapon.
Fusen bakudan
Japanese fusen bakudan, or balloon bombs, were used during the Second World War to strike at the US mainland. Small hydrogen balloons were fitted with anti-personnel and incendiary explosives and launched on trade winds toward the US. The idea was that the bombs would set light to forests and damage cities. In reality, of over 9,000 balloons launched by the Japanese, only 300 were sighted by Americans. Once the US forces realised what was happening, air patrols regularly shot down the balloons; in addition the campaign had begun in Autumn, when woodlands were too damp to ignite. The only casualties of the fusen bakudan were a group of Oregonian picnickers who tried to move a landed bomb. Early on, the US government imposed a media blackout on the balloon bombs, and the Japanese gave up their campaign just six months later, rightly assuming from the lack of panic that their weapon had been a failure.
May 19th, 2008
I’m not usually one to poke fun at religion unless it creeps into the science sphere, but this is too funny not to share: God-Man, omnipotent superhero. By Ruben Bolling.
May 16th, 2008
After the man with green sweat, and medical case notes on an incidence of green blood, SciencePunk is proud to continue a theme with reports of a bright green puppy born in New Orleans. First Coast News has the story:
“It’s surprising, alarming to see,” Louisiana SPCA CEO Anna Zorrilla said. “Sometimes, when a puppy is born, the amniotic fluid mixes with the placenta and dyes the coat of the puppy and it almost always happens to very light colored puppies.”
Zorrilla said the puppy will not be green forever, and will likely turn white or a light tan color in the next few weeks.
Link
May 13th, 2008
Kudos to Chris Woebken and Skeptobot for laying the groundwork.
May 11th, 2008
Update on Project Ladybird: Having retrieved an intact chip from the body of a London Transport Oyster card, I set about repairing the damage I’d done to it. Skeptobot used a milder solution of acetone and was able to extract the chip and aerial in one piece. I’ll need to drastically modify the aerial in order for Project Ladybird to work, so I’m not too disappointed that I need to reattach it – it’ll be a good lesson.
Out I went and purchased the necessary materials – fine wire, solder, a soldering iron, plus a crocodile clip to use as a heat sink (thanks for the tip, Ian!). My soldering skills have remained untested since high school, but I was pleased with the result.
The following day, I took my Oyster hack to Piccadilly station to test it out. The result… it failed! Boo. From what I can gather, I think I’ve attached the aerial to the wrong termini on the chip. I couldn’t find any good quality images of the chip with aerial attached, so I had to guess how to attach it. But it’s equally likely that I fried the chip with the soldering iron, or the military grade acetone used.
So it’s back to the drawing board, to extract a new chip, this time with Skeptobot-endorsed nail polish remover – watch this space!
NEW: See the video!
May 9th, 2008
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