April 22, 2009
Google looks like Garble
Similar Images is a Google feature that allows you to search for images using pictures rather than words. So you can get images of vaguely similar pigs or somewhat similar houses or egglike shapes or hands or snowflakes.
3xDope
Dance! Rye Rye, Isis from Thunderheist, and RaTheMC are 3 burgeoning emcees that will have you up and on the floor, getting your groove on. [more inside]
4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42, and Other CIA Secrets Hidden in Plain Sight
Wired's Mystery Issue, guest-edited by J.J. Abrams, is a quizzical amalgam of puzzling things both obvious and less obvious... apparently the print edition's misspelled words, irregular borders, and seemingly random placements of numbers are all part of the game too. While the "master puzzle" was recently solved, there are reportedly still some codes left to crack. [more inside]
Blue Lasers?
The AutoTuned News. Shawty.
This is Radio Free Brazil
On March 18, 39 licensed amateur radio operators were apprehended throughout Brazil for clandestine activities of telecommunication. This followed six months of investigations from local officials who received information from the US Department of Defense in regards to unauthorized use of Fleet Satellite Communications System. These geosynchronous satellites, also known as FLTSAT, were used by the U.S. Navy for UHF radio communications between ships, submarines, airplanes and ground stations. These satellites are simple repeaters with no authentication or control over what they retransmit. But the illicit satellite use was not limited to those experimenting with radio systems. Truck drivers love the birds because they provide better range and sound than ham radios. Rogue loggers in the Amazon use the satellites to transmit coded warnings when authorities threaten to close in. Drug dealers and organized criminal factions use them to coordinate operations. [more inside]
All Irish music, all the time
During a vacation in Ireland this past February, I bought an album of music by Shaun Davey, called "Beal Tuinne". I hadn't heard a single cut (but you can!), but a gent at the CD table at the Seamus Begley concert said it was the best Irish music CD in a decade. [more inside]
Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide!
An oldie, but apropros for Earth Day. Join Penn & Teller in banning the nefarious Dihydrogen Monoxide!
I am not joking. It is real. Carry on.
Make That A RASPBERRY Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster
Astronomers searching for amino acids in space have discovered something unexpected -- the center of our galaxy tastes like raspberries and smells like rum. [more inside]
22 de Abril no se olvida
17 years ago, On Wednesday, April 22, 1992, the 461-year old city of Guadalajara, Mexico, experienced a series of ten massive explosions occurring in the heart of the downtown Reforma district. The blasts measured 7.1 and 7.0 on the Richter scale at the University of Mexico in Mexico City some 200 miles away. The disastrous series of sewer gasoline explosions in Guadalajara, though not caused by a terrorist attack, demonstrate the potential impact of a well-planned and executed terrorist attack using a city’s sewer lines. At least 200 people where killed. [more inside]
Octopi
"Throwing the octopus is easy. More difficult is concealing the eight-legged creature until the toss is at hand, a skill that requires determination, luck and the ability to walk normally with 4 pounds of slimy cephalopod stuffed down your pants." [more inside]
watch the american housing market spiral out of control
subprime. Beautiful animation about the US housing market.
PBS Video on demand
To celebrate its 40th birthday, PBS has loaded - and continues to load - tons of content into its new, slick, Coverflow-ish on-demand site. Full episodes of American Experience, American Masters, Frontline, Great Performances, Masterpiece Theater, Nature, Nova, the NewsHour and a bunch more are now online.
A boy named Sue and a girl named Marijuana Pepsi
By high school, her name was cool to many. "They were like, 'Oh yeah. Man, I wish I had your name. I love that. I'm going to name my kid after you.' I hear that so much and I go, Lord, please don't do that to that child." --Marijuana Pepsi Jackson [via] [more inside]
"Mr. Everyman is stronger than we are, and sooner or later we must adapt our knowledge to his necessities."
"Everyman His Own Historian" is the annual address Carl Becker, President of the American Historical Association, delivered on December 29, 1931. It's probably the best thing I've ever read about history, and I thought I'd share it. It's long, but full of lively examples; I'll never forget the image of twenty tons of coal sliding dustily through Mr. Everyman's cellar window. (Via Slawkenbergius's Tales, the brilliant blog of MeFi's own nasreddin.)
Swamp Thing, I think I love you
Slime Molds Show Surprising Degree of Intelligence - A creature with no brain can learn from and even anticipate events. (via)
The H&FJ Institute for Unapplied Mathematics
Joe Palca, a science correspondent for NPR's Morning Edition, was meditating on the best way to convey the magnitude of the world's largest known prime number, 243112609-1. He contacted H&FJ at Typography.com to discuss the implications of typesetting a number with more than twelve million digits. Crunching of numbers and fonts ensued.
That old homemade sound.
How to Build: A simple washtub bass. Some variations (on a crazily made webpage). A cookie tin banjo. (Previously) A cigar box guitar, and a cigar box ukulele. A fancy cigar box uke. (Kathy Marsushita's whole amateur luthier projects page is worth checking out, as is this gallery of cool cigar box ukes.)
CycleKarting: Extreme Vintage Go-Karting
You can't buy a CycleKart and, even if you could, the racers wouldn't let you participate. You have to build your CycleKart. It's one of the many reasons this is a very cool hobby.
Fun for all ages, dimensions.
Topology and Geometry Software by Jeff Weeks.
A Strange Erotic Journey from Milan to Minsk
In September 1969, Simon & Schuster was preparing to publish Irving Wallace's The Seven Minutes, a novel about the obscenity trial of a fictitious book of the same name by the fictitious author J.J. Jadway. Maurice Girodias, head of the erotica and avant garde literature publishing house the Olympia Press had a clever idea: what if I publish Jadway's book? [more inside]
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