-
40KV static charge nearly leads to spontaneous human combustion,
leaves charred carpet in man's wake (Reuters headline,
"Power-dressing man leaves trail of destruction"). "'I've been
firefighting for over 35 years and I've never come across anything
like this.'" ... "for a static electricity charge to ignite a carpet,
conditions had to be perfect." As the person from whom I snagged
the link observed, it's interesting to see something like this actually
documented.
-
The coolest blackboard in the world, courtesy of
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ohiblather,
2005-09-19. Really. If ever a blackboard could be called adorable,
this is it.
- I've
got my tinfoil hat on -- song and (Flash) music video.
Retro. Cute. Not ROFL funny, but a bit of a giggle and big smiles.
And cute. (Link swiped from donnad)
-
Pink Fluffy Bunny. BIIIIG Pink Fluffy Bunny.
Two hundred foot pink fluffy bunny, on a mountain in
Italy. "It's supposed to make you feel small, like Gulliver.
You walk around it and you can't help but smile." Supposed to
stay in place until 2025. Made of wool. (How is that going to do
after many seasons?) Link swiped from chipuni.
-
How to build the Quintessential Sentry Gun:
"The idea of this project was to create a fully-automated sentry
gun, capable of picking out a human target and accurately tracking
and shooting him or her in the heart. Really, the idea was to find
a cool robotics project for the summer while I was working at an
advertising agency, and I'd only ever seen sentry guns in movies
(like Congo) and video games (Half-Life 1, Half-Life 2, Team Fortress
Classic). I couldn't find any record of anyone building one, even
the military, although it seems likely I just didn't look hard enough.
[...] If you're here just to see my little brother get shot
with it, scroll to the bottom." A lazy susan, some plywood, a
few servos, a camera, and a bunch of code. Oh, and a BB gun. This
was a student's summer project, and the page includes notes of a
bunch of improvements planned for the future. "There are a number
of applications for a sentry gun like this that don't involve putting
holes in people. For example, I could put a camera on top and use it
for wildlife photography. A squirt gun could be attached, and it
could be used to discipline your cat when it tries to jump on the
couch...simultaneously watering your couch."(Link via tdj.)
-
E-nose to sniff out hospital superbugs
(New Scientist) Faster warning of outbreaks of
antibiotic-resistant staph: "Culture tests routinely used to identify
MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) take two or three days
to complete. This hampers attempts to manage outbreaks as infected patients
remain untreated and at risk of infecting others. DNA-based tests are
being trialled that promise to reduce test times to 2 hours, but now
UK-based researchers have come up with a test using an electronic sniffer
that could cut the time further, to just 15 minutes. [...] Each e-nose is
about the size of a pair of desktop PCs and costs about £60,000.
The food industry uses similar machines to root out rotten ingredients."
I'd noticed as a child that sick people sometimes have a particular
smell I just thought of as "smelling sick" (though some of the grownups
around insisted that one can't smell that so I must have been imagining
things -- yah, I know, those grownups were silly). This quote from the
article reminded me of that: "I was operating on neck abscesses on
two different patients and noticed their infections had slightly different
smells, so I wondered if a machine could work out what the bacterial
infections were from the smell alone." (Another link snagged from
tdj.)
-
Rare books in the British Library, scanned for viewing
over the 'net, but be warned that these are slow to load even
over a broadband connection. Shockwave and non-Shockwave versions of
a few tomes so far, Shockwave only for the rest. "Grab a corner and
watch as you 'turn the page'" interface which I feel guilty for taking
any pleasure in (because it adds overhead without adding functionality
... but it does add something to the subjective experience, at least
at first). I was able to get the animated version to work in Safari
but not Opera under OS X; have not tried it yet on Windows or Linux.
(Link snagged from filkerdave.) And thanks to a comment by
mscongeniality I can also point out that to celebrate its first
birthday, The Oxford Dictionary
of National Biography is making access free from today through
Sunday (2005-09-23 to 2005-09-25). Requires registration.
-
Virtual plague infests virtual world -- an "infection"
designed to affect World of Warcraft player characters near a particular
entity when it was killed, managed to spread to other characters.
Apparently NPCs can act as carriers. (Hmm. A WoW QotD and a WoW
item here, and I've never played the game. Link swiped from
dianec42.)
-
Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber Dissidents from Reporters Without
Borders, looks interesting, though I've not yet read it.
(I downloaded the PDF and will peek at it tonight. Found via
twistedchick.)
- Rolling a handful of weapon-related links into one item ...
List of weapons that don't exist, but should, from Uncyclopedia:
"This list attempts to describe various weapons that don't exist, but
should. To meet the criteria for inclusion on this list, a weapon must
theoretically be able to kick a minimum of twelve varieties of ass. Any
weapons that kick fewer varieties are unworthy of inclusion." Among
others, the list includes Armed monkey, Bracer graters, Chocolate-covered
black hole, Double-sided folding chair, Incendiary pants, Road rage gun,
Swordchucks, and Sharpened hampster. Related entries include
Weapons of Mass Distraction (distinct from the WMD mentioned in
the 'weapons that don't exist' entry),
Weapons that once existed but shouldn't have, and
Weapons that exist but shouldn't. And if you get distracted long
enough following links to other Uncyclopedia articles, you can find the
entry that includes the text, "Breasts have nipples, which are tiny
horns used for fighting. This why Men have nipples." (Caveat: the
site contains many tasteless and offensive bits. As far as I can tell,
the offensiveness is largely intentional. But there's a lot of funny
as well.) If the URLs with apostrophes cause trouble here, try starting
with the weapons
category page and follow links from there. After that, go look at
Turn Your Hamster Into A Fighting Machine
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