January 10, 2013
Strike One for Comet Apophis
Comet Apophis flew to within 9 million miles of the Earth yesterday.
In 2029 it will come around again and get within 20,000 miles (closer than geosynchronous satellites). Then in 2036 it will approach again. At one time it was thought that it had a 3.5% chance flying through a specific keyhole of space in 2029, which would indicate that it would hit the Earth in 2036. But now the odds are calculated to be infinitesimal.
Let's hope the astronomer assumptions are correct about that pesky Yarkovsky Effect. [more inside]
How the Future Changed
Not THAT kind of virus.
Google uses searches for flu symptoms to track each year's strain's intensity and spread. In 2013, the US is basically doomed. [more inside]
Nespresso vs Espresso
Serious Jibber-Jabber
Conan O'Brien's 75-minute discussion with Jack White In which they discuss their early friendship, shared Catholic values, and Jack's love of upholstery.
Tokenism
The Monopoly game has used the same 8 "base tokens" (car, thimble, boot, scotty dog, battleship, top hat, iron, wheelbarrow) since the 1950s (with a few extras added to "Deluxe Editions"), and since it's been 15 minutes since Parker Brothers' last promotion, they're doing internet voting at their Facebook page to "SAVE YOUR TOKEN". In "American Idol" style, the one with the fewest votes will be replaced by the top-vote-getter among 5 "New Tokens" (robot with mustache, big-ass diamond ring, cat, helicopter, awkwardly-balanced guitar). So far, Scottie Dog has a third of the votes (take THAT, cat people), while Whellbarrow and Absurdly-Oldfashioned-Iron are bringing up the rear. VOTE DAILY to support your favorite "chocking hazard for under 3 yrs. old"
...and, er...meeting someone special, maybe?
High Impact Bloody Violence
After years of deliberation, Australia finally have an R 18 rating for games, allowing a wider range of games to be legally released in Australia. The first game to be rated R18 will be Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge, a Wii U game that will receive that rating due to its 'high impact bloody violence'.
And Pranks For All The Fish!
But how can I pull a wheelie???
To satisfy the need for efficient transportation, RYNO Motors has designed a multiple use, self-balancing, one wheel, electric scooter that’s adaptable to wide range of uses including urban individuals, government, and industrial customers. [more inside]
The Man With a Train in His Basement
Jason Schron loves VIA Rail trains so much that he built a full-size replica of one of their cars in his basement. "His first memory is being lost, at age 2, crying on a Toronto-to-Montreal VIA Rail passenger train. That’s when the obsession began. 'For me, being on the train is … this wonderful cozy comfy space, especially when the weather is terrible outside; it’s sort of this microcosm of comfort,' he says." P.S. It's worth checking out Schron's YouTube video tour embedded in the first link: The Guy With a Train in His Basement.
Sheed and Stack in the Big Apple
Sheed and Stack in the Big Apple is a new piece by Grantland's Jonathan Abrams about the NBA veterans Rasheed Wallace and Jerry Stackhouse
%-| The difference between us and them
The Depressive and the Psychopath, an article about mental state of the killers responsible for the Columbine high school massacre of 1999.
Hat palm palm hat
Roger Deakins, Perpetual Nominee
Bond film Skyfall has been nominated for its first Academy Awards since 1982. Skyfall was nominated for original score, sound mixing, sound editing, original song, and cinematography. It is also cinematographer Roger Deakins' tenth nomination without a win. [more inside]
Meet Michael Forsberg, Conservation Photographer
I think it is high time that MeFites meet Michael Forsberg, a Lincoln, Nebraska based Conservation Photographer who works primarily in the Great Plains of North America, once one of the greatest grassland ecosystems on Earth. (His bio.) His goal has been to try to capture the wild spirit that still survives in these wide-open spaces and put a face to the often overlooked native creatures and landscapes found there. His hope is that the images can build appreciation and go to work to inspire conservation efforts on the land far into the future. Here is a great 48 minute presentation that Michael gave at the California Academy of Sciences after completing his most recent book simply entitled "Great Plains". In the video he unselfishly shares not just his photographic images but also his equipment and techniques. [more inside]
Your daily teleport
"Every day a PHP script picks a random spot on the land mass of Earth. The nearest photo to that spot is posted here."
loop-a-doop-a, loop-a-doop-a, loop-a-doop-a, squiggly dot!
Doodle Music [slyt]
The smallest Hall of all
I thought this summer would last forever.
You Can't Say That In English
Approximately 375 million people speak English as their first language, and 470 million to over a billion people speak it as a second language (to varying degrees). Even so, there are some words that do not exist in English, even with new word entries periodically being added to the Oxford Dictionary. 25 words that do not exist in English. [more inside]
"Name Withheld" needs to find another letter column
The Comics Buyers Guide was founded in 1971 by Alan Light, morphing over the decades (not in the least due to postal regulations requiring a certain amount of editorial content) into the most widely read industry newsletter, highly influential in its heyday under the editorial guidance of Don and Maggie Thompson in the eighties and early nineties. Now its run has come to an end as it will stop publishing with its March 2013 issue. [more inside]
When your house is burning down, you should brush your teeth
Mods, guns and hats
How profitable has it been for Anthony? He, like many of the other contributors, was coy about the exact amount: “Let me answer this as indirectly as possible. I am sure that Valve has a new Lamborghini in the staff car park.”
Modding allows amateur and semi-professional designers to fiddle around with commercially-produced games - anything from adding monocles to crabs to recreating Westeros, all the way to a zombie survival mod more popular than the orginal game. While mods have traditionally been free, Valve's Steam Workshop is a marketplace to sell hats and other items for a selection of games, including Team Fortress 2 and DOTA 2 - both sequels to mods. PC Gamer talks to the modders who are making six-figures sums.
Modding allows amateur and semi-professional designers to fiddle around with commercially-produced games - anything from adding monocles to crabs to recreating Westeros, all the way to a zombie survival mod more popular than the orginal game. While mods have traditionally been free, Valve's Steam Workshop is a marketplace to sell hats and other items for a selection of games, including Team Fortress 2 and DOTA 2 - both sequels to mods. PC Gamer talks to the modders who are making six-figures sums.
A Machine that Writes in Time
"La Machine à Ecrire le Temps" from Swiss watchmaker Jaquet Droz took nearly a decade to develop, with more than 1,200 intricately connected components; including 84 ball bearings, 50 cams and 9 belts. It costs nearly $350,000. What does it do? It writes out the time for you.
Lost in The Canyons
Here Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie. The movie in question is The Canyons, the Kickstarter-funded erotic thriller written by Bret Easton Ellis and directed by Paul Schrader. There's no release date yet, but the film does have several retro-themed trailers.
Rex Trailer, New England legend, rides off into the sunset
Just when you thought it was safe to avoid Korn
Amazon just announced AutoRip, a service to provide MP3 versions of any song you buy on CD from their store. That's all well and good, but the kicker is that "Amazon is retroactively giving free MP3s to any customer who has purchased an AutoRip compatible CD since its Music Store first opened in 1998". Looks like I'll be knee deep in Blink 182, Cake, and The Spin Doctors again.
Animated History of Nintendo hardware in 2min 12 seconds
Enjoy this delightful short animation which lays out the history of Nintendo hardware ;
History of Nintendo.
The Frightening Hungarian Crackdown
Not in our backyard
Following an incident at Fort Bragg where Lt. Colonel Heather Mack's wife, Ashley Broadway, was told she could not join the Association of Bragg Officers’ Spouses, the Marine Corps has issued guidance that spouses clubs operating on its bases and installations must offer membership to the same-sex spouses of gay and lesbian service members. [more inside]
Nordic Odyssey
brrrrr-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-kik-ch-ch-ch-brrrrrr
You seem to have paid a fairly high price for your happiness.
enchantMOON is a "Hypertext Authoring Tablet" featuring hardware design by Yoshitoshi ABe. For CES the company behind the tablet, Ubiquitous Entertainment, created a series of shorts directed by Evangelion veteran Shinji Higuchi. Some more details about the tablet can be found here and on the official Facebook page. Current details about the UI suggest it takes inspiration from Hypercard and Alan Kay's Dynabook. [more inside]
The sale of the century
How We Happened to Sell Off Our Electricity is James Meek's dissection of the systematic re-privatisation of the UK power industry.
Are you an enemy of liberal principles if you question the fact that, when local electrical engineers dig up the roads in London, they’re working for East Asia’s richest man, the Hong Kong-based Li Ka-shing? In north-east England, they work for Warren Buffett; in Birmingham, Cardiff and Plymouth, the Pennsylvania Power and Light Company; in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Liverpool, Iberdrola; in Manchester, a consortium of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and a J.P. Morgan investment fund.
Undressing But Never Bare
"Outcasts are my kind, they try harder. From strip joints to Burlesque theaters, I went on a quest and met the 'Legends', these dominating characters of the quintessential American art of strip tease. Hours of confidence on tapes, intimate photo sessions, they peel off and reveal the hidden layers of their life with throaty emotion. Their memories reflecting the memories of the land. Vietnam vets and bikers are their loyal patrons..." The Living Art Of Risqué, a photo essay from Marie Baronnet, features portraits of former strippers aged 60 to 95, accompanied by short bio-vignettes in their own words. [NSFW; nudity] [more inside]
"Corporations are people, Officer!"
« Previous day | Next day »