April 30, 2008
Bright Lights and Weird Noises in Baltimore Not Aliens After All
Earlier this week:
"It wasn't until we caught it on tape that we realized the magnitude of what they were actually talking about," said Sgt. Warehime. "The sound is almost deafening. You can't describe it. Seeing it on tape without hearing the sound doesn't do it justice."Videotape taken at 3:34 a.m. on April 23 does show a flash of light that lasts a fraction of a second and lights up an area the size of a football field in the middle of the night.
The flash on the tape is accompanied by loud boom that sounds like a crack of electricity or lightning.
What it was discovered to be was some irate old man pissed at his neighbors, armed with fireworks, and low-rent psyops tactics.
That's how police met Mackler, who apparently confessed to creating the disturbance. Inside his home, investigators found quantities of drugs, guns and fireworks. Police say he had been having problems with neighbors in the building."He would get up in the middle of the morning, around 2 o'clock, fire one of these pyrotechnic devices and be done," Hill said.
Posted by Groonk at 10:47 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Research
March 29, 2008
Oh Hai, Anonymous. I Has Much Cake.
(via warren ellis)
Posted by Groonk at 06:30 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Intertube Madness, Research
March 11, 2008
The Buddha Machine is Curious, Confuses
The Buddha Machine is a little plastic box that plays music.Specifically, FM3 constructed nine drones, varying from two seconds to 42 seconds, which repeat endlessly in the listener’s ear until the “track” is switched to the next drone (or the two AA batteries run out).
The machine has its own built-in speaker, in case one would like to fill a room with the drones, but there is also a headphone jack for more personal meditative experiences. There’s a switch on the side that allows for traversal of the tracks, and a DC jack (though an adapter is not included) for those who would like the Buddha Machine experience be truly endless.
In a way, it’s like the cheapest pre-loaded IPod you’ll ever be able to buy."
(via Internet Jesus tweet, pop matters, FM3)
Posted by Groonk at 04:57 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Art, Music, Research, Technology
March 05, 2008
Typography as Couture
I'm not one for the fashion industry but sometimes, just sometimes, they hit on interesting concepts.
And by interesting, I mean wtf that's kind of cool in a ridiculous way.
(via notcot.org)
Posted by Groonk at 06:03 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Art, Research
People are Fasting from Technology
I almost ignored this. Something drew me back and figures it'll be worth remembering later.
Another round of technology-overload-phobia is sweeping the net, this time in the form of fasting.
Not like this is a new concept or anything. The phrasing of Technology Fast couldn't be ignored.
(via buzzfeed)
Posted by Groonk at 05:25 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Research, Technology
February 19, 2008
Verva Vie Sports Gauntlet: Must Have. Give it to Me Now!
Du Nguyen Tran read my mind. He created something pretty darn neat.
The Vie (pronounced vee, French word for life) is a sports glove, of which the main objective is to incorporate today’s technologies to enhance human performance and safety via a simple human-machine-interface. The Vie is aimed towards those who keep active by running/walking but its features can easily be spread to other sports. The Vie is a typical health monitor that also uses GPS technology to do such things as map jog routes, rendezvous with friends, send out emergency distress beacons and more. To keep the sport natural, the input is made via a unique, single hand control interface.[...]
Jogging and other sports, like bike riding, usually require the freedom of both hands. The interface needed not only to be simple but flawlessly controllable with one hand. Influenced by sign language and communication through hand gestures, the Vie uses strain gauges embedded in the glove to receive input commands from each individual finger. Each finger corresponds to an icon on the E-ink screen and the act of tapping is the selection. The result looks like you are typing or playing the piano, in mid air. Miniature motors then also provide tactile feedback, to feel that you have actually pressed a key, as well as OLEDs to give visual feedback. This can be personalized by programming your own shortcuts through menus made up of a combination of few finger strokes. An interaction with a device that is so intuitive and natural, you will know it like the back of your hand.
(via grinding.be)
Posted by Groonk at 08:31 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Just Freaking Neat, Research, Technology, The Future
January 25, 2008
Some Dolphins are Attacking Porpoises to Death
No matter how intelligent or cuddly you think they are, they are wild animals. Their reasons are always their own.
Film taken of gangs of dolphins repeatedly ramming baby porpoises, tossing them in the air and pursuing them to the death has solved a long-term mystery of what causes the death of so many of these harmless mammals - but has left animal experts baffled as to the motive.Another mystery is that the animal 'murders' have only been reported in two parts of the world - along Scotland's East Coast and in America off the beaches of Virginia, where even more alarmingly, the victims were scores of the dolphins' own young.
The first clues to solving the riddle came in 1997 when, by coincidence, marine biologists in Virginia were finding young, dead dolphins with horrific internal injuries at the same time as young porpoises were washing up on Scotland's north-east coast with identical causes of death. The body count was growing in both locations.
And that video is more sensationalist than it should be. Where are the proper scientists? When they start screaming, "Dolphins are tired of porpoisecide and want to use our blood for bathwater!" That's when I tie the boat to the dock and run for the rockies.
(via dunc!, telegraph.co.uk)
Posted by Groonk at 05:44 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Animals, Research, Video
January 24, 2008
Ring Gun: Small. Stylish. Old. Deadly?
Also, it won't pass through Airport Security.
Duh.
Also of interest:
Watch Gun
Crucifix Gun
a fucking Hand Canon!
(via curio&antik, gizmodo)
Posted by Groonk at 02:02 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of History, Religion, Research, Technology, USA
January 22, 2008
May 11, 1999: Solar Wind. Missing for 2 Days.
From May 10-12, 1999, the solar wind that blows constantly from the Sun virtually disappeared -- the most drastic and longest-lasting decrease ever observed.
Dropping to a fraction of its normal density and to half its normal speed, the solar wind died down enough to allow physicists to observe particles flowing directly from the Sun's corona to Earth. This severe change in the solar wind also changed the shape of Earth's magnetic field and produced an unusual auroral display at the North Pole.
Starting late on May 10 and continuing through the early hours of May 12, NASA's ACE and Wind spacecraft each observed that the density of the solar wind dropped by more than 98%. Because of the decrease, energetic electrons from the Sun were able to flow to Earth in narrow beams, known as the strahl. Under normal conditions, electrons from the Sun are diluted, mixed, and redirected in interplanetary space and by Earth's magnetic field (the magnetosphere). But in May 1999, several satellites detected electrons arriving at Earth with properties similar to those of electrons in the Sun's corona, suggesting that they were a direct sample of particles from the Sun.
"This event provides a window to see the Sun's corona directly," said Dr. Keith Ogilvie, project scientist for NASA's Wind spacecraft and a space physicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. "The beams from the corona do not get broken up or scattered as they do under normal circumstances, and the temperature of the electrons is very similar to their original state on the Sun."
(via digg)
Posted by Groonk at 08:54 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Research, Science
The SPs are Organized
Somebody has declared war on Scientology. The video won't survive on You Tube long and that's for sure.
Aside from being a little creeped out, I am intrigued. Ellis points out it's some internet strike group called Anonymous. Noted here.
EDIT: A glossary for crazy can easily be read and laughed at.
(via warrenellis)
UPDATE: Anonymous is clearly organized and won't be "taken to school".
Posted by Groonk at 08:40 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Intertube Madness, Research, Video, Weird
January 21, 2008
TRex R/C Helicopter Makes Me Wish I had Money
I would take that, modify a brain chip, implant said brain chip, and control it with my MIND.
(via geekologie, remote air trickery you tube)
Posted by Groonk at 05:47 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Just Freaking Neat, Research, Video
January 11, 2008
Earth's Geology May be What Keeps Water Wet
Hansen recently stirred the pot with a controversial hypothesis published in last month's issue of the journal Geology. Meteorite impacts early in Earth's history, she suggested, created the first rifts in the crust, jump-starting plate tectonics.[...]
Energizer Bunny Tectonics?
"It's an implicit assumption that plate tectonics never shuts down," Silver told Discovery News. "But it's nowhere stated in plate tectonics theory."Silver and his colleague Mark Behn proposed in the Jan. 4 issue of Science that all it takes to stop plate tectonics is the devouring of the crustal plate under the Pacific Ocean. And that's not as far-fetched as it sounds.
[...]
The end result would be a supercontinent, no remaining subduction zones, and virtually no plate tectonics, at least for a while.
(via disovery news)
"If Mars were to have plate tectonics, it would have to be bigger early on," said Valencia. This is because plate tectonics require a planet to have a lot of interior heat to keep things moving. Smaller planets dissipate their heat faster, and so have a very short window of time for plate tectonics.Venus, on the other hand, is about the same size as Earth, but it lacks water, said Hansen. Without water in the mantle to help melt rocks and trigger volcanic recycling of material, Venus' crust appears to have remained stiff and locked up forever. Had Venus held more water, or if it had been a super-sized rocky planet, it too would have had plate tectonics and perhaps life.
Posted by Groonk at 07:51 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Mars, Research, Science
Chimps Eat Dirt to Stay Healthy
Krief collected the dirt along with leaves from one of the chimps' favorite foods, the Trichilia rubescens plant. She found that when eaten alone, the leaves had no pharmacological effect, but when combined with soil, the mixture had clear anti-malarial properties.[...]
Krief also compared the dirt chimps eat to that used by nearby human healers to treat diarrhea. The samples shared many similarities, including a high concentration of the mineral kaolinite, the main ingredient of some anti-diarrheal medicines.
"Local people around Kibale use soil in traditional medicine, associated to different plant parts," Krief said. "It may potentialize the properties of plant or attenuate their toxicity by adsorbing noxious compounds."
(via yahoonews, the complete study to be published in the journal Naturwissenschaften )
Posted by Groonk at 07:45 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Animals, Research
December 21, 2007
Man Finds Future Self Under Sink. Feels Really Good About It.
"Quite simply, I met myself there in the future and had a great time."
And managed not to ask himself how old he was or what date it is..er,was...er, will be. Also, he managed not to tell how he got back or to vid the surrounding area. But he did video himself with his future self.
Color me non-believing but intrigued by the video. For some reason, I feel I've seen this video before.
I'm not even trying to set up a joke there.
Well, maybe just a little.
UPDATE: Being curious I searched and found this thing is old. I guess I was too busy with my present to be bothered with his future at that time.
(via digg,5min life videopedia )
Posted by Groonk at 07:08 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Quotables, Research, Timey Wimey, Video, Weird
December 06, 2007
Son of a Bitch. Look What they Dug Up.
It's the damnedest thing.
I didn't know there was a Max Headroom pirating incident in 1987.
Sumbitch.
(via warren ellis)
Posted by Groonk at 06:43 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of History, Research, Tee Vee, The Future
November 18, 2007
Tattoos of Science Love
A whole mess of them after this jump.
(via digg)
Posted by Groonk at 05:54 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Culture, Photos2, Research, Science
November 14, 2007
What Ever Did People Do with 5 KB of RAM?
A strange museum where facts on old computers live.
(random find)
Posted by Groonk at 04:34 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of History, Research, Technology
November 09, 2007
COMICS: Learn from the Best Why Don't You?
There are days that I love the internet more than peanut butter cookies and coffee.
The Comic Book Script Archive
An online resource for comic books scripts
(via comicbookscripts)
Posted by Groonk at 02:34 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Comics, Google-fied, Research, Tutorials
November 05, 2007
Magician Pulls Burger from a Poster
Come on ladies. That's not so impressive. In america, we get carboard burgers from those little windows found in the side of McDonald's every day.
There seems to be a whole series of vids dedicated to this guy on You Tube.
I can't believe she drank that.
(via feed the hungry with magic youtube)
Posted by Groonk at 12:28 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Only in Japan, Research, Video
October 29, 2007
Cell Phones are the Ghosts in Your Pants
"It started happening about three years ago, when I first got a cellphone," says Canadian Steven Garrity, 28, of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. "I'd be sitting on the couch and feel my phone start to vibrate, so I'd reach down and pull it out of my pocket. But the only thing ringing was my thigh."[...]
Some who experienced recurring phantom vibrations wondered whether the phenomenon had physical roots: Was it caused by nerve damage or muscle memory?
But experts say the false alarms simply demonstrate how easily habits are developed.
Psychologically, the key to deciphering phantom vibrations is "hypothesis-guided search," a theory that describes the selective monitoring of physical sensations, says Jeffrey Janata, director of the behavioral medicine program at University Hospitals in Cleveland. It suggests that when cellphone users are alert to vibrations, they are likely to experience sporadic false alarms, he says.
"You come armed with this template that leads you to be attentive to sensations that represent a cellphone vibrating," Janata says. "And it leads you to over-incorporate non-vibratory sensations and attribute them to the idea that you're receiving a phone call."
So I'm not crazy then?
(via digg and usa today, of all places)
Posted by Groonk at 06:19 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Research, Technology
October 18, 2007
Those Who Live in 1/4" Steel Plate Houses
28 years in the making, he says. The steel skin is the main support for the entire structure. Bruno just wanted to do something new with steel. He's a sculptor. He sculpts.
(via robert bruno and vrogy)
Posted by Groonk at 05:01 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Art, Research
The Nomadic Aborigine Myth Debunked
Dwellings were constructed in various styles, depending on the climate. Most common were dome-like structures made of cane reeds with roofs thatched with palm leaves.Some of the houses were interconnected, allowing native people to interact during long periods spent indoors during the wet season.
The findings, by the anthropologist and architect Dr Paul Memmot, of the University of Queensland, discredits a commonly held view in Australia that Aborigines were completely nomadic before the arrival of Europeans 200 years ago.
The belief was part of the argument used by white settlers to claim that Australia was terra nullius - the Latin term for land that belonged to nobody.
Dr Memmott said the myth that indigenous Australians were constantly on the move had come about because early explorers made their observations in good weather, when indigenous people were more mobile than at other times.
(via warren ellis)
Posted by Groonk at 12:55 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Culture, History, Myth, Research, Science
October 02, 2007
The Future of Cell Phones: A "Finger Joint" Keypad
Your eyes don't deceive you. That woman is using a light emitting keyboard to dial phone numbers on her hand. Not quite a rocket pack but as wearable technology goes, it's alright.
Having trouble tracking down the source link for this article. Google searches only pull up one blog after another reporting on its wonders. And yet I can't find the wonderful source...hmmm.
Other areas of light emitting keypads: MARISIL
(via yanko design)
Posted by Groonk at 03:29 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Research, Technology
September 25, 2007
Drug Fueled Fictional Destruction
Wikipedia is full of fabricated altered states.
Other lists I've gathered thus far:
- Street Terms: Drugs and the Drug Trade
- LSD told Albert Hoffman to "find me"
- Iraqi Insurgents + Weaponized Hallucinogens = Isane Shit!
- Drug Turns Crime Victims Into Zombies
Posted by Groonk at 02:44 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Research
Body Modification: Suspension Edition
Body modification has returned to my thoughts.
(via modblog)
Posted by Groonk at 02:38 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Culture, Research, Weird
Mid-20th Century Artwork: And You'll See them By Name
A Flickr fellow has collected the art and illustrators of the mid 20th century and put them in his rather extensive collection set.
(via leifpeng's flickr)
Posted by Groonk at 02:07 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Art, Flickrlicious, Research
September 24, 2007
Man Decapitates Duck in Hotel. Eats it Like Sushi.
Scott D. Clark allegedly cornered the duck before grabbing it and decapitating it with his hands in front of a security guard and other onlookers.Mr Clark then said: "I'm hungry. I'm gonna eat it."
He was allegedly drunk, AP said.
Drunk?
Do tell.
(via digg and daily telegraph)
Posted by Groonk at 05:04 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Animals, Quotables, Research
September 10, 2007
Viking Queen Raised from Her Rest
Archaeologists exhumed the body of a Viking queen on Monday, hoping to solve a riddle about whether a woman buried with her 1,200 years ago was a servant killed to be a companion into the afterlife.As a less gruesome alternative, the two women in the grass-covered Oseberg mound in south Norway might be a royal mother and daughter who died of the same disease and were buried together in 834.
"We will do DNA tests to try to find out. I don't know of any Viking skeletons that have been analyzed as we plan to do," Egil Mikkelsen, director of Oslo's Museum of Cultural History, told Reuters at the graveside.
[...]
Mikkelsen said he saw no ethical objections to opening the grave, partly because the two were buried so long ago and no one even knew their names.
Posted by Groonk at 12:28 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of History, Research
September 09, 2007
CSI has Nothing on Space Scientists. They Found the Dinosaur Killer
This information revealed at the best time ever.
The extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago can be traced to a collision between two monster rocks in the asteroid belt nearly 100 million years earlier, scientists report on Wednesday.The smash drove a giant sliver of rock into Earth's path, eventually causing the climate-changing impact that ended the reign of the dinosaurs and enabled the rise of mammals — including, eventually, us.
Other asteroid fragments smashed into the Moon, Venus and Mars, pocking their faces with mighty craters, the researchers believe.
[...]
The sleuths were guided by an intriguing clue — a large asteroid called Baptistina, which shares the same orbital track as a group of smaller rocks.
Turning the clock back, the simulation found that the Baptistina bits not only fit together, they were also remnants of a giant parent asteroid, around 105 miles across, that once cruised the innermost region of the asteroid belt.
Around 160 million years ago — the best bet in a range of 140-190 million years — this behemoth was whacked by another giant some 37 miles across.
(via discovery)
Posted by Groonk at 07:32 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Dinosaurs, Research
August 30, 2007
Galaxies Like to Eat Each Other
And to the Andromeda Galaxy: I hope that you're lactose intolerant.
(via yet another blog and History Channels The Universe)
Posted by Groonk at 05:30 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Just Freaking Neat, Research, Science, Video
August 24, 2007
Extensive Comics Covers Browser Kills All Your Time
Tom Muller shared a link to a cover browser warning all who follow it will lose hours of their precious time clicking through it.
He wasn't wrong.
He follows up such a wonderful link with something so horrible that decent people should turn their eyes from it: Worst Album Covers.
But none of you fine readers will. I know who reads my noise.
(via tom muller)
Other comic book covers:
Posted by Groonk at 01:01 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Comics, Research
The Tasman Outflow Connects the Weather...Maybe
The newfound Tasman Outflow is part of the "super-gyre" ocean current pathway which helps connect the Indian, South Atlantic and South Pacific oceans and is part of the global heat conveyor belt known as the thermohaline circulation. It's not certain, however, just how big a player the Tasman Outflow is."It's another link between the Pacific and Indian Ocean," said Ken Ridgway of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). "The other is through Indonesia." Ridgway and his colleagues report on the Tasman Outflow in the August issue of Geophysical Journal Letters.
(via discovery)
Posted by Groonk at 12:04 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Research, Science
August 15, 2007
Cause You're a Dying Star. That's Who You Are.
(via bbc)
Posted by Groonk at 02:36 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Just Freaking Neat, Research, Science, Weird
August 13, 2007
Human 2.0 or The Technological Singularity
Yes, it is more than a MI:3 MacGuffin.
Yet another documentary I don't have time to lay eyes on.
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BywCMkbG-Jg2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmzPHzu7RlI
3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28Go3Thymuo
4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xLYI3Q6BcI
5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyRiizhPrvE
6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f48NT73ex2o
you can also read Ray Kurzeils "The Singularity Is Near" (http://www.kurzweilai.net/)
and about AI development: http://www.novamente.net , http://www.numenta.com
(via The convulsing Engine)
Posted by Groonk at 02:16 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Books, Research, Technology, Video
August 12, 2007
Using Trees to Terraform Mars
MEXICO CITY - Scientists are using the pine-forested slopes of a Mexican volcano as a test bed to see if trees could grow on a heated-up Mars, part of a vision of making the chilly and barren red planet habitable for humans one day.Planetary scientists at NASA and Mexican universities believe if they can warm Mars using heat-trapping gases, raise the air pressure and start photosynthesis, they could create an atmosphere that would support oxygen-breathing life forms.
[...]
The scientists are studying what makes trees refuse to grow above a certain point, where temperatures drop and the air becomes thinner, to see how easily they could grow on Mars.
"Things don't really start cooking from a biological point of view until trees start growing. Trees are the engines of the biosphere," McKay said.
[...]
In the long term, Mars's low gravity could also have odd effects on would-be settlers, causing people to grow alarmingly tall, and cosmic radiation could cause cancers and mutations.
McKay ruled out anything more permanent than short-term research bases for the next century. "I don't have this vision of people moving to Mars the way people settled the New World, setting up homes and bringing their families."
(via msnbc and The Sputtering Engine)
Posted by Groonk at 07:08 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Mars, Research, Science
August 08, 2007
Dinosaurs: Imprinted in Sand and Time
Dinosaur research. Top Secret, yah.
(via Dino Stomping YouTube and waverly films)
Posted by Groonk at 10:52 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Funny, Research, Video
Guess Which THE STATE Member is Pimping a New Show
Trick question. There are Two, count them, TWO State members pimping new internet shows. And they are:
David Wain's new whorebaggery appears on some new video site called My Damn Channel.
THE MICHAEL SHOWALTER SHOWALTER
While Michael Showalter's funny business(see: more whorebaggery) appears on College Humor.com.
If we were gonna have a video embed code fight, I'd declare College Humor.com the winner. Just a little bit smoother that My Damn Channel's.
(via various places)
Posted by Groonk at 07:23 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Flash, Funny, Research, Video
August 07, 2007
A Magic Gallery Full of Wonder...and Posters
Did my damnedest to find someone other than Houdini to promote this find. Alas there are only so many hours in the day.
Posted by Groonk at 04:01 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Research
August 02, 2007
MIT Fall Fashion: The New Spacesuits are In
MIT folk have designed a new kind of spacesuit.
You can't tell me they didn't watch Robotech as kids.
(via geekologie)
Posted by Groonk at 09:56 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Mars, Research, Science
July 26, 2007
Nursing Home Cat Predicts Your Death
Or as Ponzu tells me, "finally a cat that's good for something."
PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours. His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live."He doesn't make too many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die," said Dr. David Dosa...
[...]
The 2-year-old feline was adopted as a kitten and grew up in a third-floor dementia unit at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. The facility treats people with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and other illnesses.
After about six months, the staff noticed Oscar would make his own rounds, just like the doctors and nurses. He'd sniff and observe patients, then sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours.
[...]
Most families are grateful for the advanced warning, although one wanted Oscar out of the room while a family member died. When Oscar is put outside, he paces and meows his displeasure.
(via buzzfeed)
Posted by Groonk at 02:44 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Animals, Quotables, Research
July 05, 2007
Chinese Villagers are Eating Dinosaur Bones...for Sexual Healing
The article didn't say that but you just know they were.
BEIJING - Villagers in central China dug up a ton of dinosaur bones and boiled them in soup or ground them into powder for traditional medicine, believing they were from flying dragons and had healing powers.Until last year, the fossils were being sold in Henan province as "dragon bones" at about 4 yuan (50 cents) per kilogram (2.2 pounds), scientist Dong Zhiming told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Dong, a professor with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said when the villagers found out the bones were from dinosaurs they donated 200 kilograms (440 pounds) to him and his colleagues for research.
"They had believed that the 'dragon bones' were from the dragons flying in the sky," he said.
(via yahoo news)
Posted by Groonk at 06:29 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Animals, Myth, Research, Science
June 06, 2007
BLIND CLICK 11: Robo Reconaissance
(via rocketboom)
Posted by Groonk at 05:48 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Research, Robots, Video
May 30, 2007
Grant Morrison Warps Reality. Talks Sigil Magic.
Funny how I can research the various forms of magic(sigil magic, chaos magic) til I'm blue in the face, only to find the info I needed through sideways means months after the initial search began.
(via magickal youtube)
Posted by Groonk at 02:50 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Research, Video, Weird
April 28, 2007
Ice-Lashes are a Bit Freaky
(via reuters pictures)
Posted by Groonk at 05:55 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Photos2, Research, Science
April 24, 2007
Jake Gyllenhaal Sums Up ZODIAC with Cell Phones
"Well, I actually believe that this film [Zodiac] is - you're probably going to look at me like I'm a madman - but I think it's about the advent of the cellphone. It would be a 25-minute movie if there were cellphones in the 70s. Because all the things that go wrong, if there had been a means of communication on your person that had been as quick as text message or a phone call, I think they could've solved this. This movie is a lot about the lack of technology."
The strange thing is I had those exact thoughts while watching ZODIAC. The 70s cellphone. The apparent lack of technology in 70s crimefighting. Yeah, I thought my angle was crazy til he said the same thing.
(via ontd and the guardian)
Posted by Groonk at 07:57 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Interviews, Movies, Research, Technology
April 23, 2007
40 Songs I Can Never Use in Any of My Movies
AKA Rolling Stones list of "40 Songs that Changed the World."
All of these tunes have been done to death in any movie you watch. Sad thing is, I agree with 90% of the list only where is Jeff Buckley or Weezer?
Thank you Rolling Stone. It's nice to know where the movie cliche dangers lay.
1. Elvis Presley “That’s All Right”
2. Ray Charles “I Got AWoman”
3. Chuck Berry “Maybellene”
4. Bob Dylan “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”
5. The Kingsmen “Louie Louie”
6. The Ronettes “Be My Baby”
7. The Beatles “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”
8. Martha and the Vandellas “Dancing In The Street”
9. The Rolling Stones “(I Cant Get No) Satisfaction”
10. Bob Dylan “Like A Rolling Stone”
11. The Beatles “Strawberry Fields Forever”
12. The Velvet Underground “Herion”
13. Aretha Franklin “Respect”
14. Jimi Hendrix “Purple Haze”
15. Led Zeppelin “Whole Lotta Love”
16. James Brown “Get Up (I Feel Like being a) Sex Machine”
17. Marvin Gaye “What’s Going On”
18. John Lennon “Imagine”
19. David Bowie “Ziggy Stardust”
20. Bob Marley “I Shot The Sheriff”
21. Joni Mitchell “Help Me”
22. Bruce Springsteen “Born To Run”
23. Queen “Bohemian Rhapsody”
24. The Ramones “Blitzkrieg Bop”
25. The Sex Pistols “Anarchy in the UK”
26. Donna Summer “I Feel Love”
27. The Sugarhill Gang “Rappers Delight”
28. Black Flag “TV Party”
29. Michael Jackson “Billie Jean”
30. Prince “When Doves Cry”
31. U2 “Pride (In The Name Of Love)”
32. Madonna “Like A Virgin”
33. Dun DMC and Aerosmith “Walk This Way”
34. The Cure “Just Like Heaven”
35. Guns N Roses “Sweet Child O Mine”
36. Public Enemy “Bring The Noise”
37. Dr. Dre “Nuthin’ But A G Thang”
38. Nirvana “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
39. Britney Spears “…Baby One More Time”
40. The White Stripes “Fell In Love With A Girl”
(via ontd and rollingstoneextras)
Posted by Groonk at 04:54 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Movies, Music, Research
March 26, 2007
Found in Greenland: Oldest. Rock. Ever.
The oldest substantial chunk of Earth’s crust has been found in Greenland, and dates back at least 3.8 billion years. The find is important because it is of a type known as an ophiolite – a signature of plate tectonics – and provides the best evidence yet that plates have been moving across the Earth's surface for at least a billion years longer than thought.[...]
Ophiolites form when a piece of ocean crust is forced up onto a piece of continental crust. Ocean crust is denser than continental crust, and so it usually is forced under, meaning ophiolites are quite rare. They are created when two tectonic plates are moving towards each other, with one being forced under the other. The fragments of the descending - or subducted - oceanic plate can be shaved off and left on top of the other plate, forming an ophiolite.
Until now, the oldest example of an ophiolite was an example in China dated to 2.5 billion years ago, and its identification had been questioned. Now Harald Furnes at the University of Bergen in Norway and colleagues have analysed an ophiolite fragment embedded in the Isua supracrustal belt in south-west Greenland. The fragment was part of a distinctive layered deposit called "sheeted dikes" that are a key component of ophiolites, measuring about 30 by 50 metres.
(via rocketboom)
Posted by Groonk at 08:33 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Research, Science
March 18, 2007
The Sound Theory of Nerves
The theory that nerves may use sound to communicate rather than electricity isn't as disturbing to me as the idea that scientists(doctors included) are quite sure about the workings of anesthetics. Yet they use the stuff every damn day.
Physicists don't liek the idea of electricity traveling along nerves because there's no detecable heat along the nerve. It's a whole Law of Thermodynamics, you know.
The sound theory seems to solve that problem:
Nerves are wrapped in a membrane of lipids and proteins. Biology textbooks say a pulse is sent from one end of the nerve to the other with the help of electrically charged salts that pass through ion channels in the membrane. But the lack of heat generation contradicts the molecular biological theory of an electrical impulse produced by chemical processes, says Heimburg, who co-authored the new study with Copenhagen University theoretical physicist Andrew Jackson.
Instead, nerve pulses can be explained much more simply as a mechanical pulse of sound, Heimburg and Jackson argue. Their idea will be published in the Biophysical Journal.
The lipids in a nerve membrane are similar to olive oil, the scientists explain. And the membrane has a freezing point that is precisely suited to the propagation of these concentrated sound pulses.
(via yahoo news)
Posted by Groonk at 04:45 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Research, Science
The Mathematics of Jeopardy
For all the math geeks. In 23 years, this has never happened.
The three contestants on the venerable game show all finished with $16,000 after each answering the final question correctly in the category, "Women of the 1930s," on Friday's show. They identified Bonnie Parker, of the famed Bonnie and Clyde crime duo, as a woman who, as a waitress, once served one of the men who shot her.[...]
UPDATE: There's video, of course.
(via yahoo news)
Posted by Groonk at 04:38 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Research, Science, Video
March 06, 2007
Future Pipe: Bee Plague Haunts USA
Not a plague *of* bees, but a plague *on* bees. Funny how this doesn't get as much airplay as bees attacking people.
Does no one recall The Circle of Life?
A mysterious illness is devastating honeybee populations across the US from California to Florida, claiming up to 80% of colonies in some areas. The losses of honeybees could disrupt the pollination of food crops, researchers warn.Beekeepers are finding once-healthy colonies abandoned just a few days later, says Jerry Bromenshank, at the University of Montana at Missoula and Bee Alert Technology, a company monitoring the problem: “In most cases the only one left is the queen, along with a few young bees.”
The absence of dead bees makes it difficult to know what ails them and where they have gone. Furthermore, experts cannot track the spread of the mysterious illness. “The problem is that it strikes out of the blue,” says Bromenshank.
At a loss for an explanation, researchers have referred to the honeybee decline as “colony collapse disorder”.
Thank a mispent youth. I figured out the bees true plan.
(via new scientist, neil gaiman, buzzy youtube)
Posted by Groonk at 10:07 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Research, Science
February 24, 2007
Power Jacket: The Inflatable Exoskeleton
You heard me: inflatable power suits!
Japanese electronics giant Matsushita Electric Industrial unveils the prototype model for a "power jacket" to help patients recover from partial paralysis during rehabilitation, at the Home Care and Rehabilitation Exhibition in Tokyo.
(via igargoyle, less cool looking suit)
Posted by Groonk at 09:41 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Only in Japan, Research, Technology
The Future of Graffiti? LASERs!
Boston PD, please make a note. The public now has the ability to paint on the sides of buildings with light. Your world may never be the same.
(via The Engine, laser tagged YouTube, graffiti research lab, how it works)
Posted by Groonk at 09:19 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Just Freaking Neat, Marketing, Research, Technology, Video
February 20, 2007
The Apocalypse has been Televised
Sleep tight, my children.
(via warren ellis)
Posted by Groonk at 08:50 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Research, Video
Save the Languages, Save the World
More than half of the word's 7000 languages are endangered, because they consist of an unsustainably small – and declining – speaker base. Each language death represents a significant erosion of human knowledge about local plant and animal life that was acquired over many centuries, says David Harrison at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, US.
[...]
the Siberian Todzhu tribe has many different and complex names for reindeer, according to the animals' life stages. What is called a "chary" by the Todzu, would be translated in English as "a two-year-old male, un-castrated, rideable reindeer".
(via warren ellis)
Posted by Groonk at 08:01 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Grammar, Research
February 11, 2007
3D Tree of Life Visualization
This picture is a visualisation of the entire tree of life. The tree of life (cellular organisms) has three main branches:
- The bacteria (unicellular prokaryotic microorganisms) which are in focus in this picture and represented by orange nodes.
- The archaea which are probably more closely related to the eukaryotes than they are to the bacteria even though they lack a cell nucleus and represent some of the most extreme forms of life on earth. They are represented by red nodes and near the top and in the background of the picutre
- The eukarya (all cellular organisms with a cell nucleus) represented by yellow nodes and are located on the left hand side and in the background of the picture.
(via neatarama)
Posted by Groonk at 07:56 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Art, Research, Science
February 01, 2007
Boston Police should Watch more Adult Swim
It would save them from that keystone cop image.
How the hooha started:
Nine blinking electronic devices planted at bridges and other spots in Boston threw a scare into the city on Jan. 31 in what turned out to be a marketing campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force, a late-night Cartoon Network series, the Associated Press reported.Peter Berdovsky, 27, of Arlington, and Sean Stevens, 28, of Charlestown, were each arrested on one felony charge of placing a hoax device and one charge of disorderly conduct, state attorney general Martha Coakley told the AP.
In a news release announcing Stevens' arrest, she said the men worked together to place the devices. At an earlier news conference she said Berdovsky had been hired to place the devices.
[...]
Turner Broadcasting, parent company of Cartoon Network, said the packages in question were magnetic lights that pose no danger and added that the devices have been in place for two to three weeks in 10 cities: Boston; New York; Los Angeles; Chicago; Atlanta; Seattle; Portland, Ore.; Austin, Texas; San Francisco; and Philadelphia.
The offense in question:
I need to re-investigate the throwie movement.
(via scifi wire for link, 7d for heads-up, pentacleus for the vid, and quad-laser YouTube)
Posted by Groonk at 02:12 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Marketing, Research
January 29, 2007
Surreal Documentary on Power, Control, CIA Brothels and LSD
The doc talks about the CIA hosting brothels in San Fran and secretly dosing "johns" with LSD just to see what happens.
There are 4 parts to this documentary at Realitysurfer on youtube.. Part 1 includes Groucho Marx on LSD, and a CIA Brothel. The Documentary is by Aron Ranen. He currently teaches at DVworkshops.com.
Posted by Groonk at 08:59 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Movies, Research, Video, Weird
Missile Silo Luxury Home... with Runway
Because nothing says luxury like the remnants of the Cold War with a dash of paranoia
All you need is $2.3 million:
(via Missile Silo the 20th century castles)
Posted by Groonk at 07:54 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Research
January 24, 2007
Apocalypse Scale, Great Fun at Parties
Jamais Cascio decides to bum out everybody and make a framable eschatalogical taxonomy:
(via warren ellis)
Posted by Groonk at 01:27 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Research
Someone Put on the Apocalypse Cloak Last Week
Iran announced new tests of short-range missiles Sunday.
U.S. contingency planning for military action against Iran’s nuclear program goes beyond limited strikes and would effectively unleash a war against the country, a former U.S. intelligence analyst said on Friday.
Poland said on Sunday it was still in talks with the United States about the possibility of allowing it to base an anti-missile system on its soil. Moscow has warned it will take unspecified measures against Poland if it accepts the defense system.
China Blows Shit Up in Space
Jan. 18, 2007 — China last week successfully tested a system that can destroy spacecraft, sending notice to the United States that it will not be the only country to be able to protect its satellites and spacecraft in orbit.The Chinese test, which will be reported in next week's issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology, is believed to have occurred on Jan. 11. The magazine will report that a ballistic missile was fired from or near China's Xichang Space Center and that it successfully destroyed an old Chinese weather satellite as it flew about 530 miles above the planet.
U.S. officials have expressed concern over the test.
(via discovery news and warren ellis)
Posted by Groonk at 12:51 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Research
Redheads: Gone by 2100?
I heard this same thing about blondes for years now. Snopes called that story bollocks.
Guess the legend shifted:
If predictions by the Oxford Hair Foundation come to pass, the number of natural redheads everywhere will continue to dwindle until there are none left by the year 2100.The reason, according to scientists at the independent institute in England, which studies all sorts of hair problems, is that just 4 percent of the world's population carries the red-hair gene. The gene is recessive and therefore diluted when carriers produce children with people who have the dominant brown-hair gene.
(via the seattle times)
Posted by Groonk at 12:45 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Research
January 23, 2007
Meet Jose: The Living Capacitor
I muted the volume on this one. That bastard narrator gets on my nerves.
(via electric youtube, warren ellis)
Posted by Groonk at 11:16 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Research, Video
January 19, 2007
In from the Forest, Not Out of the Rain
Ro Cham H'pnhieng went missing in the Cambodian jungle 18 years ago. Now she's back and all is not right in the world.
"She prefers to crawl rather than walk like a human," said Mao Sun, a district police chief in the jungle-clad northeastern province of Rattanakiri where the girl's family live.[...]
After 18 years in the wilderness, police said she was able to say only three words: father, mother and stomach ache.
Villagers from the Phnong ethnic hilltribe minority believe the girl is still possessed by evil spirits of the forest. They have brought in Buddhist monks to bless her and set up a round-the-clock watch on the family hut.
Question: Why would she point at her mouth for a drink of water? Pointing at your mouth in the wilds of the jungle gets you nothing but an invite for random critters to fly in and lay buggy larvae on your uvula.
(via yahoonews)
Posted by Groonk at 04:12 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Research, World
January 17, 2007
The Midnight Hour is Close at Hand
If The PTBs won't listen to burlyman Hawking, they'll surely listen to a clock...right?
Right?!?
LONDON (AP) - The world is nudging closer to nuclear or environmental apocalypse, a group of prominent scientists warned Wednesday as it pushed the hand of its symbolic Doomsday Clock closer to midnight.
The clock, which was set two minutes forward to 11:55, represents the likelihood of a global cataclysm. Its ticks have given the clock's keepers a chance to speak out on the dangers they see threatening Earth.
It was the fourth time since the Soviet collapse in 1991 that the clock ticked forward amid fears over what the scientists describe as "a second nuclear age" prompted largely by standoffs with Iran and North Korea. But urgent warnings of climate change also played a role.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which sets the clock, was founded in 1945 as a newsletter distributed among nuclear physicists concerned about nuclear war, and midnight originally symbolized a widespread nuclear conflict. The bulletin has grown into an organization focused more generally on manmade threats to human civilization.
"The dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons," said Kennette Benedict, director of the bulletin.
Stephen W. Hawking, the renowned cosmologist and mathematician, told The Associated Press that global warming has eclipsed other threats to the planet, such as terrorism.
And there's a chart. A lovely chart of death in which to track the human extinction agenda.
(death link via 7d)
Posted by Groonk at 08:51 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Research, Science, World
Real Life Ronin Saves Police in England
As one of them stabbed at a Policeman with his knife, a mysterious do-gooder appeared from nowhere and attacked him with a samurai sword.Two of the criminals were arrested, but in true hero style the samurai disappeared before police could speak to him.
(link via boingboing)
Posted by Groonk at 09:46 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Martial Arts, Research, Weird
"Fantastika" will Shag Your Wife Rotten
Today's word is russian.
* In clicking around, I discover a word. Fantastika. Fantastika appears to be the Russian word for speculative, slipstream or science fiction. Isn't that a gorgeous word? Fantastika. Much better than fantastique. Fantastique is arch. Fantastika is spiky.* "What do you write?" "I write FANTASTIKA. And I just shagged your wife until she saw God. Get away from me now, shitbreath."
--Warren Ellis
(via another Bad Signal "Brain Dump 3", the internet jesus amuses me no end)
Posted by Groonk at 08:58 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Grammar, Just Freaking Neat, Quotables, Research
Stone Henge was Not Alone
I'm gathering a decent bit of Stone Henge news over the years.
Recent excavations of Salisbury Plain in southern England have revealed at least two other large stone formations close by the world-famous prehistoric monument.One of the megalithic finds is a sandstone formation that marked a ritual burial mound; the other, a group of stones at the site of an ancient timber circle.
(via national geographic)
Posted by Groonk at 08:14 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of History, Research
January 15, 2007
"If you think of sheriffs, you think of horses"
A better picture could not be found.
The swearing in ceremony looked more like a scene from an old western movie.
From his palomino, Lightning, to his cowboy boots, DeKalb County's new Sheriff Jimmy Harris fits the part.
"I rode my horse up the courthouse steps," said Harris.
It's something Harris calls a dream come true.
"Growing up as a child, if you think of sheriffs, you think of horses. And it's just part of me. I've wanted to be sheriff all my life and started dreaming about it since about 1963. And you know, fooling with horses like I have all my life, I just, I wanted to come in on a horse," said Harris.
(via waff news)
Posted by Groonk at 06:50 PM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Alabama, Research
January 10, 2007
People Love to Hide Stuff
A sidenote to the Hidden Passageways site mentioned earlier.
TV Coverups hides your plasma screen from looky loos while, simultaneously, making you look super cool and ultra pretensious.
(via tv coverups)
Posted by Groonk at 08:12 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Culture, Research, Technology
Jinn: Born from the Smokeless Fire
Gaiman linked to this quite nice article talking about the Jinn's(or genie's for the western layperson) place in history and contemporary times. The whole article is worth reading and knowing.
The Bible holds that God created angels and then made man in his own image. The Koran states that Allah fashioned angels from light and then made jinn from smokeless fire. Man was formed later, out of clay. Jinn disappointed Allah, not least by climbing to the highest vaults of the sky and eavesdropping on the angels. Yet Allah did not annihilate them. No flood closed over their heads. Jinn were willed into existence, like man, to worship Allah and were preserved on earth for that purpose, living in a parallel world, set at such an angle that jinn can see men, but men cannot see jinn.[...]
In Somalia and Afghanistan clerics matter-of-factly described to your correspondent the range of jinn they had encountered, from the saintly to the demonic; those that can fly, those that crawl, plodding jinn, invisible jinn, gul with vampiric tendencies (from which the English word ghoul is taken), and shape-shifters recognisable in human form because their feet are turned backwards. Occasionally the clerics fell into a trance. Afterwards they claimed their apparently bare rooms had filled with jinn seeking favours or release from amulet charms.
[...]
But to more scholarly clerics jinn are little more than an energy, a pulse form of quantum physics perhaps, alive at the margins of sleep or madness, and more often in the whispering of a single unwelcome thought. An extension of this electric description of jinn is that they are not beings at all but thoughts that were in the world before the existence of man. Jinn reflect the sensibilities of those imagining them, just as in Assyrian times they were taken to be the spirits responsible for manias, who melted into the light at dawn.
(via neil gaiman and economist.com)
Posted by Groonk at 07:31 AM | Comments (0) | Ministry of Just Freaking Neat, Myth, Religion, Research
January 07, 2007
Man Survives 24 Days in 10C Temperature by Hibernating Naturally
Well, damn!
Mitsutaka Uchikoshi went missing on Mt Rokko in western Japan on October 7 after a barbecue with colleagues. Rather than joining them for the return trip by cable car, the 35-year-old decided to walk down the mountain, but lost his way, slipped in a stream and broke his pelvis."On the second day, the sun was out, I was in a field, and I felt very comfortable. That's my last memory," he said, shortly before being discharged from Kobe city general hospital on Tuesday. "I must have fallen asleep after that."
When a passing climber found him 24 days later, Mr Uchikoshi's body temperature had fallen to just 22C (72F), he had a barely discernable pulse and he was suffering from multiple organ failure and blood loss.
"He fell into a state similar to hibernation and many of his organs slowed, but his brain was protected," Dr Shinichi Sato, head of the hospital's emergency unit, told reporters. "I believe his brain capacity has recovered 100%."
(via neilgaiman and guardian unlimited)
Posted by Groonk at 04: