Neatorama

Optical Illusion - Impossible Object With a Twist

Queuebot — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 04:11:19 +0000

[YouTube - Link]

If one looks closely at the construction of this figure, it quickly becomes apparent that something is just, well…wrong with it.

This initially-baffling video exhibits how the human visual system can subconsciously interpret and thoroughly "see" a three-dimensional object even though it is impossible for such an object to exist. Thankfully, the creator reveals how it was constructed.

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by flagler.

Having Fun with "Google Suggest"

Minnesotastan — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 02:08:12 +0000

The “autofill” feature of the Google search box was designed as a timesaver, but the suggested searches can also be entertaining. Writing in Slate, Michael Agger compared the autofill of “less intelligent” and “more intelligent” queries, an exercise that has previously been conducted at Digg.

The image above is a screencap of two Google searches conducted tonight using less- and more sophisticated search terms.

A corollary question would be “What searches are most commonly conducted at Neatorama?” The Lijit search engine doesn’t have an autofill feature, but it does offer a list of the most popular recent searches at Neatorama, in descending order of frequency:

“world’s smallest,” mystery sale, halloween, what is it, disney, halloween costume, pumpkin, shop, stories, tattoo, cat, facebook, halloween costumes, pear, game, costume, movie trivia, photography, new species, zombie, bacon, lego, elena desserich, google, anvil cake, costumes, national day, notes left behind, origami, national geographic, videosift, wedding, what is it? game, 6 year old, albert einstein, brain, christmas, chum, hitler, logo, one take, pig, sex, animals, art, batman, brain shot, comic, einstein, shark.

Someone else may want to tackle the sociological implications of that list; I’m not going to touch it.

Link.

New York City Spaghetti Packaging

Alex — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:36:39 +0000

Sometimes the best ideas are the simplest. Alex Creamer, a student at the University of Central Lancashire, UK, came up with this brilliant idea of a New-York centric packaging for spaghetti:

"I created this spaghetti packaging for a university project last year. The brief was to package one of 5 difficult items i.e. eggs, a rose, custard powder, spaghetti or marbles. I chose spaghetti. The spaghetti sits on a 3d model of the chrysler building that was modelled on CAD by my friend Ben Thorpe. And then modelled out of high density foam at uni. Creating a spaghetti model of the Chrysler building!"

Link

Volunteers Work to Save Ash Trees

Minnesotastan — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:32:18 +0000

7.5 billion ash trees are endangered in the United States. (Photo credit Elizabeth Flores, Star Tribune)

The culprit is the well-known emerald ash borer, an invasive Asian beetle that first arrived in Michigan seven years ago. The infestation has spread to Ohio, Canada, and now Minnesota, threatening to do a log power more damage than the famous Dutch Elm Disease. Federal and state authorities have responded to the emerald ash borer by limiting transportation of timber and wood products, but have been unable to quarantine the disease.

Now volunteers in are spreading out across Minnesota and several other states, collecting seeds which may be needed to restore the white, green, and black ash species if the current epidemic destroys the currently standing trees. Some of the seeds will be stored in the National Plant Germplasm System, a depository maintained by the Agriculture Department and at the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation. Others will be retained by Native American tribal authorities.

A map showing states and Canadian provinces at risk, with links to sources of local assistance, is available at the Emerald Ash Borer website.

Further details on seed preservation are available in a story written by Bill McAuliffe for the Star Tribune.

Hail to the Thieves: Famous Heists We Love

Alex — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:16:04 +0000

A REAL LIFE "OCEAN'S ELEVEN": The 2003 ANTWERP DIAMOND HEIST

If you thought George Clooney's Ocean's Eleven character was smooth, check out the velvet finish on criminal mastermind Leonardo Notarbartolo. In February 2003, Notarbartolo and his gang, known as The School of Turin, pulled off one of the stealthiest heists in history. Daring to break into the famous World Diamond Center in Antwerp - where more than half of the world's diamonds are traded - the group made out with $100 million in jewels and other loot.

HOW THEY DID IT: Not ones to rush into something this big, the Turin boys began laying the groundwork for the project three years prior. Posing as a company owner, Notarbartolo rented an office in the Center in 2000 and proceeded to obtain copies of master keys and learn how the alarm system worked. Then, the group waited for the perfect distraction - the Diamond Games tennis tournament on February 15-16, 2003. As Venus Williams wowed throngs of spectators (many of them Diamond Center employees and security guards), Nortarbartolo's crew used their duplicate keys to sneak into 123 of the building's underground vaults. Simply riding the elevator down to the basement, they deactivated a motion sensor and taped over light detectors. Then, instead of just covering the lenses of the CCTV (closed circuit television) security cameras, they avoided suspicion by replacing the tapes with previously recorded footage.

Of course, the biggest hurdle was getting past the vault's 12-inch thick doors. Knowing the doors were equipped with internal magnets that would set off alarms if they detached, the robbers drilled through the bolts, carefully taped the magnets together, and moved them out of the way so that they wouldn't separate. After that, all they had to do was break the locks to the safety deposit boxes, rake in the diamonds, and then quietly flee the scene. To escape undetected, they memorized the surveillance patterns of the 24-hour police patrols outside the building. (Hey, they didn't have nicknames like “The King of Thieves” and “The Magician with the Keys” for nothing.) Amazingly, even though the heist took place early Sunday morning, authorities didn't discover anything suspicious until Monday.

HOW THEY GOT CAUGHT: Here's a tip for would-be thieves: If you leave the crime scene with a bag full of diamonds and then dispose of the bags on the road leading out of the city, make sure you don't leave your half-eaten sandwich in one of them. Inspectors used DNA evidence found on the food to nab Notarbartolo, and further DNA traces in the vault to arrest two other gang members. In 2005, he was convicted, sentenced to 10 years in prison, and fined $1.3 million. Meanwhile, none of the diamonds have been recovered. Some have microscopic inscriptions on them that would reveal their identity, but only if the thieves ever decide to sell them legally.

(Photo and a very interesting in-depth story by Joshua Davis at Wired Magazine)

BRUTE STRENGTH AND NUMBERS: THE SECURITAS DEPOT ROBBERY

February must be a good month for crime. In February 2006, three years after the Antwerp diamond heist, a Securitas money depot in England was robbed by a band of thieves who coordinated simultaneous kidnappings. They made off with a jaw-dropping $92.5 Million (US) in cash - most of it unmarked. Today, it's considered the largest cash robbery in British history. (Photo: PA, via Telegraph)

HOW THEY DID IT: Picture this: You're driving along a road in Stockbury, England, when the whirring sirens of an unmarked police car startle you from your evening commute. You roll down your window and chipper police officer tells you he needs to speak with you - in his vehicle. Oops, you've just been kidnapped. That's how Colin Dixon was unwittingly reeled into one of the biggest heists of the century. The crooks handcuffed Dixon - a manager at the Securitas cash collection and money transport company - and told him his family would be killed if he didn't comply. Meanwhile, fellow gang members abducted Dixon's wife and son, posing once again as police offices with a fake story about “an accident involving your husband”. The manager led the thieves to the Securitas depot in Tonbridge, where the criminals- wielding guns and cloaked in knit caps - accosted another 14 employees and made off with a giant trick full of loot. While the event was certainly traumatic for all the victims, fortunately, no one was injured.

HOW THEY GOT CAUGHT: Good old-fashioned police work. Apparently, it takes a lot of accomplices to stage multiple kidnappings. In total, investigators have arrested about 30 people in connection with the crime, including drivers, face police, a car dealer, a salesman, a roofer, and a hairdresser named Kim Shackleton. Guess where she's headed?

BRAZIL'S BIG DIG: THE TUNNEL RATS BANK ROBBERY

Sometimes there's a light at the end of the tunnel, other times, there's $72 million (US). Such was the case in August 2005, when a group of criminals in Fortaleza, Brazil, used their 260-ft. long secret passageway to make off with some serious loot. The trick: Spending three months excavating the thing and tediously sneaking vanloads of dirt past the thousands of workers in the busy urban area above. (Photo: AP, via SMH)

HOW THE DID IT: For the 23 or so suspected gang members involved in this operation, the first step was posing as a company that was renting an office building- which just happened to be located near a bank. Cleverly enough, the crooks set up an artificial business as an artificial turf com - called Grama Sintetica, complete with artificial employees and fancy logo. For weeks, a group of men worked around the clock digging a tunnel leading two city blocks over to the Central Bank building Somehow, the process was so shrewdly executed that Grama Sintetica's neighbors failed to notice that a van was transporting several loads of dirt away from the building each day. And if their stealthy moves don‘t seem impressive enough, consider the tunnel itself: In it, the gang installed electric lighting, air conditioning, and wood-paneled walls (to make sure the tunnel didn't collapse).

To pull off the heist, the gang managed to break through the bank's three-and-a-half-foot-wide vault floor, using (as police later discovered) a bolt cutter, a drill, an electric saw, and a blow torch. Over the course of the weekend, they eventually removed five containers full of bank notes, weighing nearly 7,700 lbs. Unbelievably, nobody discovered the theft until that Monday. All told, the heist required experts in electrical engineering, global positioning systems, excavation, and, of course, theft. The most brilliant idea, though? Picking a crowded, noisy area in Brazil for the heist, reasoning that no one would notice the sound of tools and digging in the daily commotion.

HOW THEY GOT CAUGHT: The thieves did a good job of covering their tracks (they used a white powder at the crime scene to hide fingerprints), but apparently, tunneling underneath nations is a little trickier. Attempts to transport the money out of the country using truck transports and chartered planes failed, and the assumed mastermind behind the theft, Luis Ribeiro, eventually turned up murdered. So far, the police have arrested a few dozen suspected members of the gang.

NOT-SO-GOOD FELLAS: THE LUFTHANSA AIRPORT HEIST

In 1978, Lufthansa Airlines employee Louis Werner knew two important things: First, that a Lufthansa airplane occasionally transported unmarked bills from West Germany to New York's Kennedy Airport, where they were temporarily held in nothing more than cardboard boxes locked inside a vault. Second, that he owed about $20,000 in gambling debts to his bookie.

HOW THEY DID IT: The wrong way - with brute force. Even though it became source material for the 1990 film “GoodFellas” (plus several books and even a few copycat crimes), the Lufthansa Airport Heist was a brutal affair. Using a few helpful tips from Werner, infamous crime lord Jimmy Burke put together an operation that involved several phases - breaking into the airport's cargo terminal, handcuffing employees, and subduing guards. Once inside the vault, they found 72 boxes of cash and jewelry totaling about $6 million (instead of the $2 million they'd expected). As for the getaway, the gang used bloody force to make sure no employees reported the crime until long after they'd left the airport. The entire robbery took only 64 minutes, but it became one of the most complex and lucrative heists in U.S. history.

HOW THEY GOT CAUGHT: Unlike the other heists, in which some gang members fled the country to hide, the Lufthansa Airlines gangsters stuck around. Not only that, but they made the mistake of displaying their newfound wealth a bit too obviously. The police had a pretty good idea who was behind the crime, and it wasn't long before snitches implicated Werner and a few others. Many of the participants were murdered before they could squeal, while still others became informants and joined the Witness Protection Program. Werner, who organized but didn't participate in the actual theft, was the only one convicted for a role in the heist.

The article above, written by John Brandon, appeared in the Jan - Feb 2007 issue of mental_floss magazine. It is reprinted here with permission.

Don't forget to feed your brain by subscribing to the magazine and visiting mental_floss' extremely entertaining website and blog today!

A Good Clean Fight

Johnny Cat — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:32:28 +0000

Video Link

How about we celebrate Friday with a good old fashioned cat fight? Now I wanna see a good clean fight, no hitting below the tail, shake paws and good luck!

via AcidCow.

Which Browser Would You Marry?

Johnny Cat — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:31:33 +0000

With the advent of competing browsers came some fierce loyalty to one brand or another. Some people would go as far to say they “love” their browser of choice. That got Grace Smith thinking. If you had to marry a web browser, which one would it be, and why? She put the question to her Twitter followers, and got many responses. Some examples:

I’d marry Firefox, but I’d like her to lose some weight and stop complaining when I accidentally call her Google Chrome.

I imagine I would start by dating Firefox, but come to realize she is high maintenance and run off with Safari.

It would have to be Opera, still barely touched and very innocent but with some great hidden features.

Netscape is my MILF!

I would marry FireFox, but every once in a while have a fling with Safari (For the looks) & Chrome (For the performance).

Can’t say which one i’d marry but I’d divorce IE6 in a second.

IE makes promises it doesn’t keep.Safari is unpredictable and incompatible. Firefox hogs the resources. I think I’d be single.

Firefox, though I have to admit, I’ve had several affairs with Safari. *shamefaced* But I’ll always come back to you, Firefox!

Link

Drench

Miss Cellania — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:33:59 +0000

You may have to lose once to figure out how the game Drench works, but then it’s a lot of fun! Select your next color to make your paint splotch bigger, and try to cover the entire floor in paint. You only have a certain number of moves for each level. Link -via Metafilter

Vintage Japanese Stereoviews

Johnny Cat — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:43:01 +0000

Photo: T. Enami

Pink Tentacle has an awesome collection of gifs culled from Okinawa Soba’s Flickr set- called the mother lode of online photos by enigmatic photographer T. Enami (1859-1929). These particular photos were taken for a stereoscope (kinda like a View-Master) that made them look like 3-D. Coincidentally, the geishas in the photo above are enjoying some stereoviews.

A stereoview consists of a pair of nearly identical images that appear three-dimensional when viewed through a stereoscope, because each eye sees a slightly different image. This illusion of depth can also be recreated with animated GIFs like the ones here… Follow the links under each animation for the original stereoviews and background information.

These animated images are worth the click. Check them out! Link.

Holocaust Hero Chiune Sugihara

Miss Cellania — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:41:06 +0000

Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara was stationed in Lithuania when Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Thousands of Jewish refugees came to the consulate seeking travel documents in order to escape the Nazis. Sugihara’s superiors in Tokyo ordered him not to issue any travel visas.

Sugihara discussed the plan with his wife Yukiko and decided to risk his career and his entire future by defying his superiors. The couple then spent 29 days issuing travel visas, up to 300 a day, as thousands of refugees stood in line at his office. Yukiko would prepare and register the visas while Chiune Sugihara would sign and stamp them, hour after hour, without breaking for meals. They would work late into the night until Yukiko would massage her husband’s weary hands in preparation for the next day. Sugihara was under orders to leave, which he could no longer delay. The family departed on September 1st, but he kept signing visas even as he boarded the train. Sugihara then tossed his official stamp out to the crowd, as he hadn’t time to stamp them all.

Sugihara’s actions enabled around 6,000 Jewish refugees to escape the Holocaust. For his efforts, Sugihara was imprisoned by the Soviets and fired from his job by the Japanese Foreign Ministry. Read the entire story at mental_floss. Link

Big Ben on Twitter

Miss Cellania — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:22:01 +0000

Big Ben, the London clock tower, has a Twitter account. Online, it says the same thing it has always said in real life. The account was opened as a statement on the banality of Twitter, but Big Ben now has over six thousand followers! Come to think of it, this IS handy if you want to know what time it is in London. Link -via Blame It On The Voices

Motorcycle Club Colors and Patches

Miss Cellania — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:17:39 +0000

Arnie has a collection of around 350 patches and colors signifying motorcycle clubs from all over. Browse through and you might recognize your local club! Or just take a look at the many different designs. Link -via Gorilla Mask

Glottal Opera

Miss Cellania — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:15:33 +0000

(YouTube link)

Thread tiny cameras through the singers’ noses and focus on the larynx. Then have them sing sweetly and see what it looks like deep inside. The singers are Juleiaah Boehm, Emma Deans, Alexi Kaye, and Sally Stevens. -via b3ta

Vinyl Records Purse

Queuebot — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:09:00 +0000

Do you still have piles of vinyl records you store for no reason? Here’s a cool and stylish way to re-use them: a vinyl record purse. Such things always look fashionable, I guess. Tasket Basket posted quite a few pictures of how she made this one.

Link – via diygadgets

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by annsmarty.

Should we let some endangered species die?

Queuebot — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:05:37 +0000

Marine biologist and blogger WhySharksMatter presents the latest in his award-winning "ethical debate" series, showcasing a "hot topic" from the environmental movement, presenting both sides, and asking readers to argue it out in the comments. Since his readership includes scientists, politicians, and leaders from the environmental movement, these discussions are always interesting, and this one is sure to generate some strong opinions.

WhySharksMatter is claiming in this ethical debate that North Atlantic Right Whales, one of the most endangered animals on Earth, are going to go extinct whether or not we help them, and therefore we should stop wasting so much of the environmental movement’s limited resources on protecting them.

“For the sake of this debate, I will concede the following points (i.e. there is no need to debate them any further).

* Right whales are a unique and interesting animal. They, like us, are mammals.

* Without our protection, they will certainly go extinct

* It is undeniably, 100% our fault that they are so endangered in the first place”

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by whysharksmatter.

Bird Drops Bread, LHC Shuts Down

Miss Cellania — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:25:55 +0000

You can’t make stuff like this up. A piece of a baguette dropped by a passing bird caused a shutdown at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.

The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine.

The LHC is scheduled to be reactivated later this month. The bread incident won’t affect those plans. Link -via Boing Boing

We Learn Our Language in the Womb

Johnny Cat — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:04:13 +0000

No wonder learning a new language can be more difficult the older you get. We were learning our individual languages before we were even born! That’s what researchers revealed in a release today by Current Biology.

It seems that fetuses not only warm to the sound of mother’s voice as they gestate, they also are being programmed in the direct patterns inherent in certain languages. By the time we are born, our dialect is determined.

Wermke’s team recorded and analyzed the cries of 60 healthy newborns, 30 born into French-speaking families and 30 born into German-speaking families, when they were three to five days old. That analysis revealed clear differences in the shape of the newborns’ cry melodies, based on their mother tongue.

Specifically, French newborns tend to cry with a rising melody contour, whereas German newborns seem to prefer a falling melody contour in their crying. Those patterns are consistent with characteristic differences between the two languages, Wermke said.

ScienceDaily has a brief story about this new knowledge: Link

Bald Hedgehog

Alex — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:01:46 +0000

Remember the bald bear we featured on Neatorama yesterday? Well here’s another case of unusual baldness – this time it’s a bald … hedgehog?

A bald hedgehog abandoned by his mother in a garden in Norfolk is being treated at a wildlife rescue centre in a bid to encourage his spikes to grow.

Baldrick, named after the character from the television programme Blackadder, was brought to Foxy Lodge wildlife rescue centre, Great Yarmouth.

He is now being cared for by Tonia and John Garner in the hope he can be eventually released into the wild. Treatment includes antiseptic scrubs and baby oil massages.

I’d suggest a laser comb to stimulate those spike follicles, but what do I know?: Link

Swine Flu: Fear vs. Knowledge

Alex — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:01:12 +0000

Infographic: Raj Kamal

Raj Kamal of MintLife has a pretty nifty infographic about swine flu. Eye candy aside, I’m not going to take it completely at face value. For one, the graph lists graphjam.com (LOL!) and squidoo.com as source. This particular portion show above, however, looks logical enough to me

Link

Peacock Spider

Johnny Cat — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:52:11 +0000

Photo: Jurgen Otto

This is a kind of jumping spider, and it’s only about 5mm in size. The males have a colorful pattern on flaps that extend from their abdomen during breeding/mating. In addition to this, they raise their back pair of legs and dance from side to side to win over their plain brown females.

Only found in Australia, they were classified as species Maratus volans because people originally thought the flap was for gliding after jumping. Wiki

Link

13 Other Leaning Towers

Miss Cellania — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:11:07 +0000

Hey, it’s hard to keep a tower on the straight and narrow! The Leaning Tower of Pisa may be the most famous, but there are towers that lean all over the world. Web Urbanist looks at thirteen of them, including the Round Tower of the Kilmacduagh Monastery in Ireland pictured. It leans 1.5 feet, but is in no danger of falling over. And its door is 26 feet off the ground! Link -via Unique Daily

Animal Mummies

Miss Cellania — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:28:16 +0000

Thousands of mummified animals have been recovered in Egypt over the past hundred years. They include gazelles, shrews, rams, crocodiles, hawks, fish, dung beetles, and of course, cats. In the early days of excavation, they were considered unimportant, as things to be pushed aside in order to get to the treasure. Scientists are now studying them in detail for clues about the way ancient Egyptian humans lived. National Geographic looks at how the animals were preserved, and why. Link

(image credit: Richard Barnes)

You Must Drive to the Recycling Center

Miss Cellania — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:28:39 +0000

David and Katie France of Dorset County, England thought they were being eco-friendly when they walked to dump to dispose of their recyclables. But they were met at the gate by an employee who told them they would have to bring their bags in by car! He cited safety concerns and warned the couple they may be hit by a vehicle. David France walked the 400 yards back to their home, got the car, and drove to the gate where they loaded their bags of scrap metal and took them into the center.

Mr France said: “It was farcical. I thought we were being doubly green by taking our recycling there on foot.

“But whatever good we did in recycling our waste was probably counteracted by the CO2 emissions we used up in our car.”

The council responsible for tip said that because there is no “dedicated pedestrian access point” it was unsafe for people to walk there.

Link -via Arbroath

(image credit: Flickr user hugovk)

A Common Nomenclature for Lego Families

Miss Cellania — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:35:02 +0000

Children are rarely familiar with the names the LEGO company gives its various bricks and accessories. Giles Turnbull was delighted to find his son had his own terms for each piece. So he gathered more children, four in all, to find out what names they used, and assembled those names in a handy chart. Link -via Buzzfeeed

Man Shows Up at His Funeral

Miss Cellania — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:25:50 +0000

The family of 59-year-old Ademir Jorge Goncalves of Santo Antonio da Platina, Brazil identified his body after a fatal traffic accident. The funeral was held the next day, which is customary in Brazil. Imagine their shock when Goncalves himself appeared at the funeral service!

What family members didn’t know was that Goncalves had spent the night at a truck stop talking with friends over drinks of a sugarcane liquor known as cachaca, his niece Rosa Sampaio told the O Globo newspaper. He did not get word about his own funeral until it was already happening Monday morning.

A police spokesman in the town of Santo Antonio da Platina said Goncalves rushed to the funeral to let family members know he was not dead.

“The corpse was badly disfigured, but dressed in similar clothing,” said the police spokesman, who talked on condition of anonymity as he wasn’t authorized to discuss the case. “People are afraid to look for very long when they identify bodies, and I think that is what happened in this case.”

The victim has since been identified and the remains sent to the correct family. Link -via reddit

(image credit: Flickr user Hipolito Luiz)

What Is It? Game 114

Alex — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:36:12 +0000

W00t! It’s time for our collaboration with the always awesome What is it? Blog. This week’s entry is this strange looking object to the left: can you guess what it is?

Two prizes this week: the first person to guess correctly and the funniest (but ultimately wrong) guess will win a T-shirt from the Neatorama Shop.

Contest rules are darned easy: place your guess in the comment below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you’d like. Post no URL or web links – let others play (doing so will forfeit your entry).

For more clues, check out the What is it? Blog. Good luck!

Update 11/6/09 – the answer is:An exercise club, the 1897 patent says it was “for the purpose of testing the strength of the wrist and forearm”, additional weights could be attached to the bottom of it, patent number 578,230. Commonly known as Indian clubs, these can be found in a wide variety of sizes and weights.

Congratulations to Mr. Weaver who got it right first and to huh? for the um, very funny entry that I won’t repeat here.

VideoSift Clips of the Week

dag — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:30:42 +0000

(Links open in a new browser window/tab)

	Fanwing – a New Kind of Aircraft Inventor replaces the wing and propellor with an entirely new method of using a horizontal axis fan instead of an aerofoil wing. Link
	Lock Detects Secret Knock A very clever inventor has invented a geeky yet cool secret knock enabled door lock. Link
	Very Complex Rotary Weaver Makes Carbon Fiber Parts If you’re a space nerd like me the first thought that will come into your head is “is this how we’ll make the elevator?” Link
	Mom Feeds Family of 6 for $4 a Week It’s coupon cutting at a level you’ve probably never seen. Link
	Water Droplets Bouncing Around on a Sheet of Water You may have seen water droplets in slow motion before, but probably not like this. Link

I Can Has Swine Flu: H1N1 Virus Infected Pet Cat

Alex — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:29:11 +0000

Can your pet get sick from swine flu? The answer turns out to be yes. Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine has found a cat that contracted the H1N1 virus and got sick with swine flu:

On Wednesday, the Iowa Department of Public Health reported the first confirmed case of H1N1 in a house pet, a 13-year-old domestic shorthaired cat. The animal likely contracted the virus from its owners, veterinarians say, since two of the three family members living in the cat’s household had recently suffered from influenza-like illness. Late last week, when the cat came down with flu-like symptoms — malaise, loss of appetite — its owners brought it to Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine for treatment. The family mentioned to the vet that they had also recently battled illness, which led to testing the pet for H1N1.

Link

7-Eleven Wine

Alex — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:28:18 +0000

These days, it seems like everybody and their uncle are making their own wines. Even 7-Eleven (yes, that 7-Eleven). Here’s "Yosemite Road," the company’s brand of affordable Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon:

And, whoa, Yosemite Road is quite the bargain: Says the press release, both the Chardonnay and a Cabernet Sauvignon will sell for $3.99 a bottle. Who needs a Trader Joe’s, anyway?

"We prefer to think of it as value," says 7-Eleven spokesperson Carole Davidson, when Unfair Park said of the Napa Valley-produced product, "Wow, that sure is cheap." She also laughed. "But, yes, it is inexpensive. …

$3.99? Apparently, they’ve never heard of Two Buck Chuck! Link

I, For One, Welcome Our New Furniture Overlords

Alex — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:27:00 +0000

Voices from the off 1 (2008) by Julian Göthe

Is that an alien being disguised as furniture or is it artwork by Julian Göthe?

This wonderful piece is part of Julian Göthe’s exhibition "Events during Flood" at the Galerie Buchholz in 2008 but just in case I’m mistaken let me just say I, for one, welcome our new furniture overlords: Link