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October 7, 2007
Growing drugs in space. If the rainforest runs out of undiscovered medicines, just grow new drugs in space:
Wired reports that "a swaggering Texas investor" wants to turn the
International Space Station into a kind of orbiting drug lab: "If people knew what I already know," he says, "the International Space Station would be considered one of the most valuable resources our world possesses." Think of it as
New Jack City in zero-G – full of weird, crystallized proteins (and billion dollar cures).
posted by BLDGBLOG at 11:38 PM PST - 19 comments
Swamp Ghosts.
Of all the wrecks on Papua New Guinea (PNG), none is as fabled as the "Swamp Ghost," a B-17E Flying Fortress that ran out of fuel on an ill-fated bombing mission in early 1942 and was ditched in the Agaiambo Swamp about eight miles inland on the northern coast. There the plane rested, intact and more or less unmolested, in soggy splendor for 64 years—that is, until May 2006, when an American salvager took it apart and removed it. This caused such a controversy that the plane was stopped from leaving the country. The story of the Swamp Ghost illustrates the international debate over ownership of salvaged wrecks and war surplus, told from a personal perspective by a journalist whose war-correspondent father died in PNG during WWII.
posted by amyms at 9:40 PM PST - 13 comments
In one fell swoop, some 16,000
hyphens have been eliminated from the sixth edition of The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, published last month.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:52 PM PST - 62 comments
The number of handicap tags has
been increasing in recent years and so has abuse, for example nearly one-third of temporary placards found on cars parked in downtown Boston were being used by people who were not disabled.
Handicap Fraud is a website for anonymously reporting seemingly able-bodied people who park in handicap spots. Free post-it-notes "You've been reported" available.
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posted by stbalbach at 5:34 PM PST - 67 comments
Reporter whacks man with shovel [video]. d30 (dee-three-oh) is a specially engineered material made with intelligent molecules. They flow with you as you move but on shock lock together to absorb the impact energy.
posted by nickyskye at 5:17 PM PST - 47 comments
"
A Ghostbike is a junker bike that has been painted stark white and afixed to the site where a cyclist has been hit or killed by a car driver."
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posted by ardgedee at 5:12 PM PST - 76 comments
WW1: Experiences of an English Soldier This blog is made up of transcripts of Harry Lamin's letters from the first World War. The letters will be posted exactly 90 years after they were written. "Dear Kate, Just a line to let you know I’m going on alright. We had an exciting time and this time up the line. We had only been in about six hours when fritz’s came over to us. We had an hour and a half of it but we beat them back and they lost a good many men too not many got back I can tell you. We lost #### (pencilled out –censored?) which I’m sorry to say and about #### wounded. I think the mug will be all right for Willie which Jack is getting for him. If you send me anything it will come in very nice the chocolate is very good I should like a bit of cake, if you could afford it really gets crushed so if it is not packed careful. With best love from Harry"
posted by feelinglistless at 3:42 PM PST - 6 comments
"My first day on the job was the Amish school shooting at Nickel Mines in Lancaster County, Pa. in October of 2006.
Here is some video of what I saw that day." Raw footage from that terrible day, recently posted to YouTube.
1,
2,
3,
4,
5 [more inside]
posted by Toekneesan at 7:33 AM PST - 28 comments
Flamenco guitar is such a subtle and delicate mean of expression that it looks like arranging flamenco music for a number of musicians isn't practical or efficient. Nevertheless, many attempts have been made to use flamenco phrasing or colors within large ensembles : in a classical piece like
The Aranjuez Concierto, in jazz when Gil Evans teamed with Miles Davis to greate several pieces entitled
Sketches of Spain, or more recently, with the beautiful work of
Maria Schneider, or the small units of
Louis Winsberg. One of the most convincing score has been recently produced by
Juan Carmona, a gipsy guitarist from Marseille, a
work performed by many philarmonic orchestras.
posted by nicolin at 3:14 AM PST - 11 comments
