May 26, 2013

Prefabricated Buildings

Jens Risom talks about his family's prefabricated beach house.via [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:39 PM PST - 17 comments

A New Breed of Bushfire

On January 4th, 2013, in the midst of a national heat wave, Tasmania experienced some of the most extreme weather on record, with Hobart recording a record temperature of 41.8°C in the afternoon. Fires blazed around the state, covering almost 50,000 acres, claiming hundreds of properties, and destroying the town of Dunalley. The Tasman peninsula was cut off by the fires, necessitating a sea rescue of over 2,000 people. An image of a family clinging to a jetty in the water to escape from the fire captured the attention of the world. With the launch of their Australian edition, The Guardian have produced a frightening and fascinating multimedia article exploring the human side of the inferno.
posted by Jimbob at 8:58 PM PST - 46 comments

A cuckoo clock that only keeps borrowed time

Student loans? WHATEVER Not quite so "dope" when they try to drag you out of your window and kill you. (SLYT)
posted by passerby at 7:50 PM PST - 36 comments

The Sharp Top Mountain B-25

On Feb 2, 1943 a B-25 with 5 crew members crashed into the side of Sharp Top Mountain, near Bedford VA during a training flight. There were no survivors. [more inside]
posted by COD at 7:04 PM PST - 16 comments

Bridge Over Troubled Waters No More

Do you have Gephyrophobia? Are you afraid to cross that scary bridge? Now there's a service to help you get across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge instead of going miles out of your way to go around. "Some people go miles out of their way to avoid crossing the George Washington Bridge — for example, driving to Upper Manhattan from Teaneck, N.J., by way of the Lincoln Tunnel, a detour that can stretch a 19-minute jog into a three-quarter-hour ordeal. Other bridge phobics recite baby names or play the radio loudly as they ease onto a nerve-jangling span — anything to focus the mind. Still others take a mild tranquilizer an hour before buckling up to cross a bridge."
posted by Xurando at 6:22 PM PST - 66 comments

Mominus Vobiscum

The Los Angeles Times' Women becoming priests without Vatican's blessing The world's oldest corporation has a problem. The same one it's always had. Well, at least since the founder died. If you've been to mass recently, I'd bet the female attendees outnumbered the men...in the pews. There's a ways to go, but... [more inside]
posted by issue #1 at 6:03 PM PST - 96 comments

Maybe the best comic about a coroner you dreamed of reading this week.

Quincy, M.E. + Inception + St. Peter + Reservoir Dogs II + a cameo appearance by Snake 'n' Bacon + some other stuff = Michael Kupperman's new online comic book thingy (because Houghton Mifflin decided publishing this story would be too legally risky) "Quinception" [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:27 PM PST - 9 comments

What's In The Box?

The secret at the centre of Peter Molyneux's iOS game, Curiosity, has been revealed. The winner, Scotland's Bryan Henderson, will be 'God' over Molyneux's next game, Godus. Peter Molyneux explained that "You, the person who reached the center, will be the God of all people that are playing Godus. You will intrinsically decide on the rules that the game is played on. "You will share in the success of the product. Every time people spend money on Godus, you will get a small piece of that pie."
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 4:55 PM PST - 40 comments

No Shit

Can fecal transplants save 14,000 lives a year?
posted by Artw at 4:50 PM PST - 51 comments

Iraq's constitution has something America's doesn't: The right to vote

The Missing Right: A Constitutional Right to Vote is an essay regarding the proposed constitutional amendment to provide all Americans the affirmative right to vote and empower Congress to protect this right. The right to vote is the foundation of any democracy and yet, surprisingly, such a right is not part of the constitution. U.S. Reps. Mark Pocan (D-WI) and Keith Ellison (D-MN) are trying to create that right and limit the power of special interest to chip away at it.
posted by 2manyusernames at 3:37 PM PST - 30 comments

Waiting for Godel

Perl Cannot Be Parsed: A Formal Proof In the man page for PPI, Adam Kennedy conjectures that perl is unparseable, and suggests how to prove it. Below I carry out a rigorous version of the proof, which should put the matter beyond doubt. [more inside]
posted by jenkinsEar at 2:44 PM PST - 73 comments

“Now I feel like I’ve earned my medal."

Yesterday, thousands of runners participated in One Run Boston, an one mile event organized for those who were injured in the Boston bombings, and those who were stopped on the course without a chance to finish. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:18 PM PST - 4 comments

They want to put one of these on the moon

In the hostile, arid suburbs of Phoenix AZ, Dennis McClung and his family have created a lush and ingeniously efficient food-production system from an unused swimming pool. HuffPo is also there.
posted by ominous_paws at 12:02 PM PST - 87 comments

14th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition

Held once every four years, the 14th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition is being livecast. Running from May 24th to June 9th, performers — some of the best young pianists in the world — are currently in the preliminary round.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:39 AM PST - 11 comments

Transcript on the right; annotation on the left.

Wikileaks responds with line by line refutation of the new documentary We Steal Secrets. {via}
posted by dobbs at 11:06 AM PST - 116 comments

"You know, you have a very musical voice."

You've probably never heard anything quite like the musical documentary More About Henry. Remixing interviews with musical interpretation, composer Adam Goddard has woven a unique work of art from the stories of his grandfather, Henry Robert Tindale Haws, who spent a half-century farming in rural Ontario. More About Henry first aired on CBC Radio's Ideas. [more inside]
posted by oulipian at 10:48 AM PST - 1 comments

Pinterest Skeptics Board

"I don't think the pronoun "it" can have "whoever you want to be" as an antecedent." The Pinterest Skeptics Board mocks widely shared inspirational quotes.
posted by escabeche at 7:15 AM PST - 121 comments

A Virtual Weimar: Hyperinflation in a Video Game World

A culmination of a series of unanticipated circumstances — and, finally, a most unfortunate programming bug — has over the last few weeks produced a new and unforeseen dimension of hellishness within Diablo 3: hyperinflation. [via]
posted by Pyrogenesis at 6:09 AM PST - 95 comments

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