Dutchman builds Noah's Ark

A contractor, Johan Huibers, just completed a replica Noah's ark from the bible. The ark is filled it with life size replicas of animals, and a theater showing the flood story. Huibers plans to turn the ark into a tourist attraction. If you are ever in Holland, in the town of Schagen, you should check it out.
Huibers ark is 150 cubits long. Which is roughly half the size of the ark described in the biblical account of Noah. The pictures on his site are pretty good. If you read dutch(I don't), you will probably have an easier time navigating it than I did. But even if you don't read dutch, you should check it out.
I've had people describe the size of the ark in the Bible before, but I guess it never really sank in how big it actually was. looking at the pictures of the one Huibers built, and knowing that his ark is only half the size of Noah's, really sinks the size of the ark in.

Check out the BBC article: Dutchman's Noah's Ark opens doors
Johan Huibers Noah's ark site: www.arkvannoach.com

Miraculin taste test

Miraculin is an extract of the berries from the Miracle Fruit bush. It has a unique property, in that it makes sour food(especially acidic food) taste sweet. Mixing it with a lemon, causes the lemon to taste like sweet lemonade. Kind of a strange trick. Miraculin is interesting in that it itself does not taste sweet. What it does is trick your tastebuds into thinking the sour taste in a lemon or other item is sweet.

Ed Felton over at Freedom to Tinker, recently imported some miraculin and wrote an interesting post about his experiences with it. That's how I got interested in the miracle taste powder and the plant it comes from.

Check out the article for more info and pictures of Ed eating lemons and grapefruit.
Freedom to Tinker: Miracle Fruit: Tinkering with our Taste Buds

For info on the Miracle Fruit plant check out the Wikipedia article and the following article: THE OLD SWEET LIME TRICK

Student arrested after writing violent essay that "disturbed" his teacher

Allen Lee, a high school student in Cary Illinois was arrested after he wrote a violent essay in his creative writing class. The teacher directed her students to write in an uncensored stream of consciousness format. The assignment said, "write whatever comes to your mind. Do not judge or censor what you are writing," Lee wrote a rather vulgar and extremely violent essay and handed it in to his teacher. The essay didn't threaten any particular person or group. Nevertheless the teacher was very disturbed by the essay, and called in school district officials for consultation. It was then decided that the police should be called.
Lee was subsequently arrested for disorderly conduct. If he is convicted, he could face up to 30 days in jail and a $1500 fine.
First off, I want to say that I don't think we should be encouraging students to write essays of the type that Lee wrote. Nor should we be endorsing or condoning it when it does happen. Schools should have rules about this. And punishments, academic ones, should be applied.
But that said, I have a big problem with this whole incident. He didn't really break any law, and yet he got arrested and very likely will be convicted simply because people are scared of more school violence. He was charged with disorderly conduct, which is all they could charge him with since he didn't threaten anyone in his essay. Disorderly conduct generally is applied when a public disruption is caused.
In this case the only person who was even disturbed by this was the Teacher, who arguably brought this upon herself by stressing uncensored stream of consciousness writing. If he had written the same outside of school and published it on the Internet for thousands to read, potentially "disturbing" many more people, he wouldn't have been arrested. More than likely, in that case, no one would even care.
The only reason he was arrested was because he was in a school. It all comes down to his teacher and the school board having more influence than he does. So they have the ability to twist laws and get him arrested even though he didn't really commit any crime.
So how long will it be before you and I can get arrested for writing or saying something that disturbs people in power above us? I understand why they are worried about this in light of recent school violence, but if they get away with arresting him, they are setting a very bad precedent.
The kid may have been wrong to write the essay, but the truth is that he didn't break any laws.

You can check out the news story here: MSNBC: Student charged for writing violent essay
And Here: Chicago Tribune: Student writes essay, arrested by police

Robotic Falcons to fight Pigeon menace

The city of Liverpool is beginning a campaign to fight the pigeon menace that is plaguing their city. As part of the campaign, they are purchasing 10 robotic falcons to be placed around the city to scare the pigeons away.
The flying rats, as many people are calling them, are all getting fat from eating trash rather than seeds. Their population has also gone through the roof. But rather than killing them, which would seem to be a more logical solution, the city is buying robot falcons to scare them away. I really wonder (sarcasm) how well that is going to work. The robots cost about $4,000 each. So it seems scaring pigeons isn't cheap.
What I would like to see, is a grudge match between Liverpool's robot falcons, and the Chinese cyborg pigeons. That would be fun. LOL

Via Popular Science: Robotic Falcons Take on English Pigeons and
BBC News: Robotic birds scare 'fat' pigeons

Poodles aren’t Sheep? Really! They aren't the same!

What? You say poodles and sheep aren't the same thing?
This has got to be one of the funniest things I've ever heard of. Thousands of people in Japan were sold sheep that they thought were miniature poodles. The "miniature poodles" were sold for $1600, which in Japan is a good deal for a poodle. What is amazing, is that no one noticed until an actress went on a talk show and complained. She mentioned that her new "poodle" wouldn't bark or eat dog food. After the talk show she was informed that her "poodle" was actually a sheep. After that, thousands of other people started coming forward with their "poodles" saying that they were also acting strange. It turns out that the sheep were lambs imported from the UK and Australia and given special haircuts.
I'm really not sure how you could get taken in by this. Maybe if you had never seen a sheep before you might get confused. But it should be obvious that it wasn't a dog. It's not like sheep look all that much like dogs.
I especially like the quote from the police officer, "Sadly, we think there is more than one company operating in this way." So that means there is a whole crime wave of fake poodle sheep importers. LOL

Check the story out: Dog owners 'fleeced' in poodle scam

Update: Despite being picked up by a lot of newspapers, Snopes is claiming that this story is a fake. If so, then this is even funnier, simply because so many news outlets fell for it. Snopes: Sheepish discovery

Plaster Casts of Ant colonies

The cast above was made by pouring plaster into an ant hill. It was made by scientists studying ant colony building. BioOne has the scientific journal paper on the study of the Florida harvester ant. The journal article is a bit dry, and I would even say boring. Of course, I'm not really into ants. So maybe it wouldn't be that boring if I was more excited about ants. What caught my attention, was the pictures of the plaster casts from the nests. They are really amazing. So you may want to skip over the paper, but you really should check out the pictures at the bottom.

BioOne journal and pictures: The nest architecture of the Florida harvester ant

Modern Piracy Map

Here is an interesting Google maps mashup. It's a map of pirate attacks from 2006. The data comes from the IMB piracy reporting center. Looks like Indonesia and Bangladesh aren't safe places to go boating. Follow the link below to check it out yourself. You can click on each marker on the map to see details about the attack or attempted attack. Pretty cool mashup. This is the kind of thing that the Google maps API is really useful for.

Check out the interactive map here: IMB live piracy map 2006

Being smart has nothing to do with being rich

There is a study that was just concluded that proves that being smart has a lot less to do with being rich than most people think. The study was conducted by a researcher, Jay Zagorsky, at Ohio State University. His study showed that having a higher IQ meant you were more likely to have a higher income, but also were more likely to be in debt and have fewer investments and savings. So more money coming in, but a higher percentage of that money wasted. People with lower IQ's were generally in a much better position financially than those with higher IQ's. They had more savings and investments, and considerably lower debt. Despite having much lower incomes.
This is another one of those studies, that if you have known a lot of both smart and dumb people is not likely to surprise you. Some of the smartest people, academically, that I knew in college were also the dumbest people when it came to common sense. A lot of good financial habits, seem to be just plain common sense. Don't buy luxury items on credit. Don't buy things on a whim. Save money. All basic stuff, but it seems like many people don't get it. Just because you make more money, doesn't mean you should spend it.

Check out the articles at:
NewScientist: Smarter people are no better off
Scientific American: A Wealth of Smarts Does Not Guarantee Actual Wealth

Use an inkjet to Print 16mm/8mm movies

Jesse England found a way to print film using a standard inkjet printer. He used the Adobe premier to convert his video into a "filmstrip" format. Then printed it on to a transparency using a standard inkjet printer. The film does have to be manually cut out of the transparency, which is kind of a drag. But otherwise this is a really cool idea.

Found via BongBong: Print 16mm/8mm movies with an inkjet
Jesse England's site with directions: Inkjet Printed Film Process

Earthlike planet discovered

Astronomers in Europe claim to have discovered a planet that is in the habitable zone orbiting a red dwarf star. This is the first planet that has been found that is warm enough to have the possibility of liquid water. As you probably recall, it was only earlier this month that evidence of water outside of our solar system was confirmed. Now a planet that is warm enough to have that water in liquid form has been discovered. So far, the planet has only been confirmed to be warm enough. So there may not be any water available on the planet, but this is still a big discovery.

Check out the article at Scientific American: All Wet? Astronomers Claim Discovery of Earth-like Planet

Starcraft origami

I played a lot of starcraft back in college. It was a fun game. I was never as obsessed with it as some of my classmates were though. A lot of them missed classes, turned in homework late, and just generally spent too much time on it. I even knew a guy who started writing fan fiction based in the starcraft universe.
It looks like this guy was one of those people who was a little too obsessed with it. Check out the starcraft origami from this guys flickr pool. Somebody has way too much time on their hands.

Via The UnderWire: They call it Papercraft
Flickr Pool:gluek's photos/Tags/starcraft

Generations and Informational News transfer

I recently read an interesting commentary by Loyd Case over at ExtremeTech on the difference in information gathering and transmission between those who grew up in a connected world, and those who didn't. It used as a backdrop the way that information got out about the VA Tech shootings. Much of the population was glued to their TV sets and network news feeds waiting on the next bulletin. Even for those who were getting their news on line, most were getting it from standard old media news sites. Old media reporters were writing the standard sound bytes and updates based on what they could find out about what was going on.
The "connected generation" was busy updating and reading blogs, Myspace, and Facebook entries about the tragedy. A Wikipeida entry went up almost immediately, with live updates and new links showing up constantly. Text messages went out from the scene and were posted as fast as they could be. Breaking news and updates got out a lot quicker for the younger generation than it did for the older generation. Furthermore, the news was generated not by professionals sent there to "get the story", but by the people who happened to be on the scene. It wasn't as organized or even always as accurate, but it was fast. The article is a pretty good read and quite interesting when you compare the difference between the ways that news is disseminated amongst the two.
Check it out for your self: Generations

Rent a mech suit in Japan

It seems that the HAL-5 exoskeleton will be available for rent next year in Japan. It will only set you back around $580 a month. So if you have some heavy moving to do, and don't want to over strain your back. You can rent one of these things.

This has got to be one of the coolest gadgets ever. Japan always seems to get the best stuff long before we get it over here in the US. The HAL-5 was designed by Cyberdyne Inc as a system to assist partially paralyzed or severely injured people walk. With the addition of arm supports, it can now assist with carrying as well. Since it isn't limited to use by disabled people, it has some obvious uses in other areas where strength is a factor.


Via Gizmodo: Feeling Weak? Rent an Exoskeleton.

Desktop Tower Defense

Found an extremely addicting flash game over the weekend. I was sitting at home recovering from a sunburn, and started browsing for something to do. What I found was Desktop Tower defense. the goal of the game is to build a maze of towers to try to kill the bad guys before they get across the map. For every bad guy who gets across the map, you lose a life. You get money to build more towers by killing bad guys. sounds simple, but it actually is pretty hard on the higher levels, and the game is surprisingly addictive.
Check it out: Desktop Tower Defense

Mapping the Blogosphere

Matthew Hurst, a scientist at Microsoft Livelabs, has collected data on how Blogs interconnect. He used that data to generate maps showing the different ways that news and people travel from blog to blog. The map above represents data collected over six weeks.
The maps are pretty cool looking. The white dots on the map above, are the most active blogs. As you can see, most of the other blogs connect to the active ones in some way.

Check out the Discover article: http://discovermagazine.com/2007/may/map-welcome-to-the-blogosphere
See Matthew's Blog for more maps and more info: Data Mining: Text Mining, Visualization and Social Media

Russia wants to build tunnel to Alaska

Russia has proposed the building of a tunnel connecting Siberia with Alaska in the Bering strait. The project is estimated to take between 10 and 15 years to complete. It will also cost about $65 Billion to build. The tunnel, if built, would be huge. It would contain a high speed rail line, a full size highway, an oil pipeline, a natural gas pipeline, electricity cables, and fiber optic data cables. The tunnel would be 64 miles long. which makes it twice as long as the UK France tunnel under the English channel.
Currently the project has strong supporters in the Russian government, and supporters in the Alaskan state government. It hasn't really been pitched to the US federal government. So there is no time table on when this will happen or if it will happen.

Via Gizmodo:Tunnel Between Russia and Alaska in the Works and Bloomberg: Russia Plans World's Longest Tunnel, a Link to Alaska

Graphite sculpture tools

Angelo Batle, an artist living in San Francisco, sculpts items using Graphite. Which means you can draw with his sculptures. Each of his sculptures are simple but elegant, and all can be used to draw as though they were an ordinary lead pencil.

Check out his site: asbWorkshop

Found via Cool Hunting: Agelio Batle: Graphite Sculptures

Voynich manuscript Images

The Voynich manuscript is a book that is thought to have been written sometime between 1450 and 1520. It is written in an unknown language using an unknown script. It was discovered in 1912 by a book dealer Wilfrid Voynich. No one has ever been able to decipher it. Some of the best cryptologists in the world have worked on it, and have not been able to come up with any meaning to the text in the book. Many believe the entire book to be an elaborate hoax. Several researchers have done statistical analysis on the word structures and have proposed that the text is likely gibberish. The entire book is filled with illustrations and what appear to be text descriptions of these illustrations. All of the illustrations are painted in a medieval style. The only thing that has been confirmed about the book is that it is very old.
Anyway, all of that was to give you a background for the Flickr photoset that I found. Someone has taken a lot of high resolution scans of the book and put them in a photo set on flickr for people to look at. The images are pretty cool.

Flickr Photoset: Voynich Manuscript
For a detailed history of the manuscript read the Wikipedia Article: Voynich manuscript

E85 causes more smog than gasoline

The big news today is that Ethanol based fuels may actually be just as bad for the environment and for public health as Gasoline. In fact, Ethanol can even increase smog in some areas of the country. Ethanol is a plant, usually corn, based fuel that can be produced locally in our country. E85 is the most commonly used type of ethanol fuel.
This is really bad news for the alternative fuel crowd, because E85 has been pushed recently as a viable alternative to Gasoline. It seems that while certain chemicals and pollutants that Gasoline produces are reduced or not present when burning ethanol based fuels, others that are just as bad are increased.
I'm all for reducing our dependence on foreign oil, and for finding better fuels that don't pollute the environment. But we really need to be smart about it. There are a lot of possible alternatives to Gasoline. Any alternative that we push, should be evaluated and properly studied to make sure that the alternative is actually better than the current system(Gasoline). Especially if the alternative is going to be more expensive than Gasoline.

Via Wired: Ethanol Fuel Greener, But Not For Lungs
And LiveScience: Surprise: Ethanol as Deadly as Gasoline For Now
Stanford Study this is all based on: Effects of Ethanol (E85) Versus Gasoline Vehicles on Cancer
and Mortality in the United States (PDF format)

1400 year old Japanese business goes bankrupt

BusinessWeek has an interesting article on a Japanese business. The business was named Kongo Gumi. Up until last year It was the oldest continuously operating family business in the world. The business was a construction business that specialized in building temples in Japan. It was founded in 578 AD and finally went under due to excessive debt and a changing society in 2006. It was a diversified business that had a lot of other construction types, but the specialization in temples was its mainstay. Recent cultural changes in Japan have led to a decline in temple donations and building projects. Revenues shrank and debt climbed as Japan became more secular. Eventually leading to the dissolution of the company in 2006.

I really think it is incredible that a business that was founded so long ago, could have survived. Furthermore, it's amazing that the business remained under the control of the same family for so long.

The picture above, is of the Shitennoji temple that was built by the company.

Via JapanProbe: 1,400-year-old Japanese Business Kaput and BusinessWeek: The End of a 1,400-Year-Old Business

Australian Lives under water for 12 days

An Australian scientist, Lloyd Godson, lived for 12 days in a sealed chamber under water. The chamber was only nine square meters wide. All the oxygen he needed for the entire time was generated by an Israeli-developed "Biocoil" system using algae. He generated his own electricity using an exercise bike. His goal was to prove that a closed ecological system is practical. Pretty cool. I could see something like this being used in trips in space, or in long term underwater research stations.

Via PhysOrg: Aussie boffin lives 12 days underwater on algae-generated oxygen

His official Site: The BioSUB Project

Bleach spritz printing

I found a website that gives detailed instructions on printing designs on colored tshirts using Bleach. It looks really easy. All you do is print out the design you want on your tshirt on a sheet of paper. Cut out the shape and place it on the tshirt where you want it. Put a solution of bleach in an empty perfume bottle, and spray it on the shirt. Leave it in for as long as you want, then wash the shirt. It looks pretty cool, and I've got some old tshirts I'm going to try it on. Probably this weekend. If they come out good, I'll post some pictures.

Found via Make: T-shirt designs created with stencils and bleach and
Instructables: Bleach Spritz Clothing

Daylight savings time change puts kid in jail for 12 days

School officials in trying to track down a bomb threat that was called in to a hot line at 4:17 am, arrested a kid who called in to the same schools information line at 3:12 am.
It seems that the hotline's logging function was not able to handle the daylight savings time change correctly. So the bomb threat was actually logged as coming in at 3:17 am. The school officials found the students call to the information line and assumed that it was the same person. They then confiscated the kids cell phone and confirmed that he had made a call to the school that morning around the same time. The kid was arrested and spent twelve days in jail before someone noticed the difference.
I know that bomb threats are a serious issue at schools, but so is arresting someone falsely. Couldn't the school officials have made sure they had a little more evidence, and that they had their facts correct before getting this kid arrested? Even if the time in the log was correct, they still have a 5 minute difference between the cell phone call and the bomb threat call.

Via Techdirt:Early Time Change Costs Kid 12 Days In Jail and The Register: US teen jailed for school's daylight-saving cock-up

The Great Turtle Race

A group of researchers from the Leatherback Trust, who study leatherback sea turtles have tagged a bunch of turtles with satellite tags and organized the first Sea turtle race. The turtles migrate every year from Costa Rica to the Galapagos islands.
The researchers came up with the idea of a race to raise awareness of the severe plight of the leatherback sea turtle. Populations have been plummeting dramatically since the 80s. Each turtle is sponsored by a different corporation, and all can be tracked via the website.

Check it out: The Great Turtle Race

Contra-what?

Last night when I got home from playing soccer, I was too keyed up to go right to bed. So I ended up browsing the Internet for a while to unwind.
I was browsing Del.icio.us and found this interesting article on one of the stranger aspects of the English language. Contronyms. Contronyms are words that can mean opposite things based on where or how they are used.
Some of my favorites are:

• apology - admission of fault in what you think, say, or do; formal defense of what you think, say, or do
  
• screen - show, hide
  
• consult - ask for advice, give advice
  

You can read the entire list and the article: Fun with words

Life Size Mousetrap game

Found this article about a life size mousetrap game that was made for the Maker Fair. It has all of the standard mousetrap items, like the bathtub, the staircase, and even bowling balls. For all of you that played Mousetrap when you were little, this should be a cool little nostalgic fair item.

Via Make:Blog: Maker Faire: The Life-Sized Mousetrap

The Internet is no longer mostly guys

It seems that women now outnumber guys online. The percentages are 48% to 52%. So the difference isn't huge, but it is significant. Especially when you look at the growth statistics. Since 2000, female Internet usage has risen 12% and male usage has only risen 3%. According to the research, the difference also likely to remain that way in the future. I find this is interesting, mainly because the IT and gaming industry is still so male dominated. That means that unlike in previous years, the use of the Internet is no longer centered around IT and gaming. So what is it centered around?

Via Slashdot: Females Outnumber Males Online and eMarketer: More Women Online

Virtual Typewriter Museum

The above picture is a Hansen writing Ball, one of the earliest typewriters to be invented. It is part of a collection of typewriters in the Virtual Typewriter Museum. This is the most interesting typewriter I've ever seen. It has all 52 keys and all line up with the movable paper that fits on the roller below. It was actually invented as a method for deaf and dumb people to "speak with their hands." The inventor, Rasmus Hans Malling Johan Hansen, was a teacher and director at an institute for deaf people in Copenhagen. The device was actually very popular, though only a few have survived to the present day.

Check out the Museum: The Virtual Typewriter Museum

Modeling Computers after the human brain

Found a very interesting article about Hierarchical Temporal Memory(HTM). The HTM platform is a completely new way of attempting to program artificial intelligence in a computer. Rather than attempt to program the computer to handle each task needed, the researchers of a company called Numenta have come up with a way to program machines to learn based on sensory data. The most interesting thing about it, is that the models they are using are all based off of research into how the neocortex of the human brain learns. Most of the article was over my head, but I understood enough of it to actually finish reading the entire thing (all 6 pages of it).

Check out the article at IEEE Spectrum: Why Can't A Computer Be More Like A Brain?

Found via SlashDot: Building Brainlike Computer and www.polarman.com

Terrorists take over satellite broadcast

A Sri Lankan terrorist group, the Tamil Tigers, has been illegally using an Intelsat satellite to broadcast propaganda messages. It seems that they discovered how to get the satellite to rebroadcast TV and radio transmissions on an unused frequency of the satellite. It's not the first time that a terrorist group has used satellites to broadcast their message to the world, but it is the first time that it was done with out the authorization of the satellite owners.
While details on exactly how the satellite was hijacked are not available, it seems that many satellites are vulnerable to having their broadcasts hijacked.

Via Slashdot: Sri Lankan Terrorists Hack Satellite

We Feel Fine

I realize this isn't new, the site has been around since 2005, but it's new to me. So if you've seen this before, you can just skip over this post.
I was browsing del.icio.us last night and found We Feel Fine. The site is a social artistic experiment in human feelings. Did that statement make any sense to you? It didn't really make any sense to me either. I'll explain, but to truly understand you are going to have to go to the site yourself.
Basically the site crawls blogs all over the Internet looking for comments that have the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling." When it finds a phrase, it will copy the entire sentence it found the phrase in, and attempts to identify the sentence based on the "feeling" expressed(sad, happy, mad, depressed, etc.). It then attempts to extract any other info it can find about the commenter such as age, gender, location, and local weather conditions. All of these variables along with the sentence are stored in a database for statistical analysis. At this point, you are probably wondering why this is interesting.
What makes it interesting is the amazing fluid interface that this data is presented in. I really can't even describe it. You just need to go there and check it out yourself. Go to the website and click on the big heart to load the browser. Once it loads, start off just clicking on the dots at first. Then you can start customizing it.

Check it out We Feel Fine

Cardboard Sound Room

I have no idea who made this, as the article doesn't say. But I guess you could make it yourself if you had a large quantity of cardboard sheets. Basically it's a stack of cardboard sheets that has had a room hollowed out of it. Then a stereo system and speakers installed in it. It seems that the acoustic properties of corrugated cardboard make for a good listening experience.
But I think it is just cool to have a adult sized cardboard room to play in. Remember when you were little and you used to take the cardboard boxes from large appliances to build rooms and houses? Well, if you didn't you really missed out. My siblings and I once built an entire maze out of discarded boxes left over after moving into a new house. We had tons of fun with it until Mom made us throw them out to make room for our furniture.

Via The Cool Hunter: Cardboard Sound Box (A place for listening)

Vampire hunting kits from the Victorian era

This has got to be the coolest thing I've ever found. For all you Buffy the Vampire slayer fans out there, this is an authentic Victorian era vampire hunting kit. They actually sold these kits to gullible people between 1850-1900. It comes with everything needed to kill your very own vampire. Garlic, holy water, ivory cross, mirror, gun with silver bullets, and a wooden stake.
Via Blenders: A 19th century vampire hunting kit

Singles Map

Found this very interesting map(click on it for a bigger view) from the February edition of National Geographic. It maps out the percentages of single men vs the percentages of single women across the country. Seems that there are a lot more single Women on the east coast than on the West coast. There doesn't seem to be any definitive reason for this distribution, but I suspect that it has a lot to do with industry. All of the largest male concentrations are in known technology centers, whereas some of the largest female concentrations are in fashion and publishing centers. The tech industry is known for being heavily male dominated, just as the fashion and publishing industries are strongly female dominated. Industry dominance explains some of the concentrations, but not all. So I think it is probably a little more complex than that. According to this map, I live right between a high single female area and a high single male area. Now, if only I could find a way to leverage this to find myself a girlfriend, I would be all set. Maybe I should move to New York.

Map found at CreativeClass

Wind powered garden lights

My house is located on a bay in sunny Florida. And the truth is, you wouldn't believe the amount of wind that comes off of that bay throughout the day and night. On a stormy day, that wind can be a stiff gale that will knock over my trash can and blow the trees all around. But even on a sunny day, you get a nice breeze coming off the bay. So this product is something I would actually be interested in buying.
An industrial design group called Demakersvan has come up with a garden light that is powered by wind. The product is called the "light wind." Basically it uses a propeller at the top to generate electricity from wind, and stores that electricity for future use. The lamp runs off of the stored electricity and produces a soothing light for you yard or garden. I would love to get a few of these and put them around my yard. With as much wind as I get, I doubt I would have any trouble charging them.

Via Core77: Light Wind by Demakersvan
Demakersvan official website: Demakersvan

Increasing P2P transfers using similar files

A group of researchers from several Universities have come up with a method of file sharing that has the potential to increase P2P speed dramatically. David G. Andersen, assistant professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon, and Michael Kaminsky of Intel Research Pittsburgh, along with graduate student Himabindu Pucha of Purdue University have come up with a new system for P2P transfer called, Similarity-Enhanced Transfer (SET).
To understand the system, you need to understand how BitTorrent and other distributed file sharing applications work. BitTorrent breaks a file into multiple chunks. When a user goes to download the file, they actually begin downloading each individual chunk. The chunks do not need to be downloaded in order, as each one is assigned a position in the file. As soon as the user has all the chunks, they have the entire file. There are two main advantages to this system. The first one is that the user can download many chunks at a time from many different users. Downloading from multiple users means that the file will be downloaded much faster than if downloaded from a single user. The second advantage, is that as soon as the user has a complete chunk, they can start sharing that piece. So they don't have to wait for the entire file to be available before they start contributing to the availability of the file.

The SET system works much the same way. The difference is that is actively searches for files that are similar to the one being shared, and attempts to download the similar parts as though they were from the same file. This can dramatically increase the availability of a file, which in a protocol like the BitTorrent protocol means that the file will be downloaded much quicker.

News Via PhysOrg: Computer scientists develop P2P system that promises faster music, movie downloads
Published reaserch paper: Exploiting Similarity for Multi-Source Downloads Using File Handprints

Dry Valleys of Antarctica

Found an incredible slide show of pictures taken in the "Dry Valleys" area of Antarctica. The picture above is of one of the clearest frozen lakes in the world. Most of these valleys get very little snow fall, but almost all of them have significant ice in them. So I'm not sure how "dry" they are, but I guess that in comparison to other areas of Antarctica they seem dry. You can read all about the dry valleys here.
You should also check out the slide show Washington post: Exploring Antarctica The slide show has some truly amazing pictures, as well as captions and brief descriptions.

The photographer who took the pictures also has a website here.

Chocolate for your blood pressure?

Researchers at the University Hospital of Cologne, Germany have found that cocoa products can reduce blood pressure almost as much as the commonly prescribed drugs for that purpose. It seems that cocoa contains chemicals know as polyphenols. Polyphenols are known to help prevent cardiovascular disease and lower blood pressure. Polyphenols are present in many vegetables and in tea, but it seems that a particular type that is present in cocoa is more active than other types.
Chocolate itself, due to the high sugar and fat content is still bad for you, but the cocoa in it might help you with your blood pressure. So the next time you feel guilty about eating chocolate, you can claim it's for your heart.

Via Scientific American: Cocoa, not tea, calms blood pressure, study says

Google Phone Search

Over the weekend Google launched into public beta a new free 411 service for your phone. You can access it by dialing 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone. The service is currently completely free, and totally automated. It's also only available in the US right now. The automation thing could be a problem. If you can't get the computer system to understand you, there are no human operators on the other end to talk to. But that aside, this could seriously upset the big telecoms. The 411 market in the US is currently a $7 billion a year money maker for the telecoms. So I doubt they will be very pleased with this new offering.

It works by connecting to the local search info in the normal Google search engine. So if your business isn't listed in the local search database, then Google wont be able to find it in it's free 411 service.

I haven't had a chance to test it out yet, but I am hopeful that it will be a viable alternative to the current 411 service and it's associated charges.

From TechCrunch: Google Launches Free 411 Service
Google's official site: Goog411

[edit] I tested it using both a specific business name and a generic business type. Both worked great. I had to repeat the business name twice before it understood me, but then it found the right business. The generic business type seemed to come out correctly even when I was purposely slurring and mumbling my words. The voice recognition is actually pretty good with common words, but more obscure words seem to need more precise pronunciation.

Cybernetic memory

Back in the 90s a movie came out called Johnny Mnemonic. The movie was based on a short story of the same name by William Gibson. The short story is actually pretty good, and if you haven't read it, you should. William Gibson writes some of the best cyberpunk stories out there. The movie adaptation sadly wasn't very good. In fact, I would say it was really awful, despite having Keanu Reeves in the staring role.
But all that aside, both the movie and the short story share a common theme, the storage of memories in an implanted cybernetic module hardwired to a persons brain.

It seems that a neuroscientist, Ted Berger, has created the first artificial memory chips and found a way to connect them to living brain cells. He currently has them interacting with rat brain cells. This is the first step towards truly cybernetic enhancement of our own brains. Ted Berger initially sees this as a tool for people with extensive brain damage who seem to have memory problems.

Read the full story at Popular Science: The Memory Hacker

Military secrets hidden in porn collection

Sometimes people are just too stupid for their own good. It seems that some officers in the Japanese defense forces decided that storing top secret documents in with their porn collections was a good idea. Those collections were later shared with other officers who did not have clearance for the classified information. No one noticed until later that the top secret documents were in the same folder with the porn.
There are so many things wrong with this situation.
Why in the world did they think that their porn collection was a good place to hide secret documents? If a hacker ever got a hold of one of those computers you can be sure they would at least look at the porn folders.
Why were the officers keeping their collections on military computers in the first place? Seems like your own personal documents and porn collections shouldn't be on government computers in the first place.
Why were the classified documents not encrypted in some way? Really, having them in the clear is a big security risk.
I would say that the Japanese military is obviously not very good at protecting secrets, but here in the US we seem to be just as stupid. It seems that the National Nuclear Security Agency whose job is to protect our nuclear secrets lost a whole bunch of its desktop computers recently.

Check out the story: Porn swap tied to Aegis info leak

Invisibility cloak available, but only in red

Engineers at Purdue University say they have completed a design for an 'optical cloaking' device that renders objects placed inside it invisible by bending light around them.
The idea behind this isn't new. Last year researchers in both the UK and the US working together theorized that it should be possible to bend certain wavelengths around an object. You can picture it as the way water in a stream flows around a pebble. Since the human eye only 'sees' things by the way light bounces off of them, the end result is that the object becomes invisible in that wavelength.
Up until now, the concept had only been proven mathematically. The engineers at Purdue have actually come up with a design that should make it a reality. For the moment their design only works with the color red, but they say that it should be possible to make it work for any color. They hope to be able to expand the design in the future to work across multiple wavelengths(colors), but with current technology they are limited to one wavelength at a time.

Check out the story at PhysOrg

Driving Both directions?

Found these photos of a double ended Mini Cooper that BMW presented at a car show in Germany. It can apparently be driven from direction. Just think of the stares you would get while driving this car down the road.
For that matter, forget backing out of parking spaces. Just pull in one direction, and pull out from the other.

You can check it out here on the blog I originally found it on, or for the same story with more pictures here.

Edit: This story reminded me of an old video I saw of a car that was modified to drive backwards. You can check it out on YouTube here. It's a pretty cool video, and I love the background music(Prodigy - Breath).

Self healing walls

The University of Leeds' NanoManufacturing Institute is currently building a proof of concept house in the Greek mountains. The Greek mountains are prone to frequent minor earthquakes. The plan is to build a house that will automatically heal cracks in the walls. The walls will contain nano particles that will liquefy under pressure, flow into cracks and gaps in the walls, and then harden again. The scientists involved say that the nano particles are easy to produce, and only a small amount are needed in the walls to be effective. So if all goes well, we may be seeing self healing walls within a few years. Of course, if the ground underneath your house disappears, then having self healing walls won't do you much good. But they are working on that as well.

Regenerative house to grace Greece mountainside
'Self-healing' house in Greece will dare to defy nature

EMI launches DRM free downloads in Itunes

This is all over the tech sites, so you may have already heard, but I thought I would post anyway because it's such big news. EMI has announced that it will be offering its music downloads without DRM for sale on Itunes. This is a big step for the music industry, and one that is long overdue. The big music labels have always said they couldn't offer their music for sale without DRM, or people would copy it and share it with their friends. That whole argument was always a bit ridiculous, since all of the big labels already offer their music for sale in a DRM free format(think CDs). Furthermore, any music that is for sale can be found online for free without DRM in the illegal file sharing networks.
So adding DRM to the legit music they sell on Itunes never made a lot of sense. From the customers point of view, why would they pay for a crippled version of a song they can get uncrippled for free? The best thing for the music execs to do is make the legit versions better in some way than the illegal versions. DRM actually makes the legit versions worse. So this is a big step in the right direction. Hopefully the other labels will join EMI and also offer their songs without DRM.

Offical press release from EMI

Museum Plagiarius: A museum of copied products

On the plagiarism note, I found this rather cool looking museum set up to show off some of the more blatant knockoffs of brand name products. In some cases even the packaging and the boxes the item was sold in were ripped off. I'm all for competition in the market place, but blatantly copying a product and attempting to pass the knockoff as the real thing is not competition.

Article on Museum
Plagiarism Museum slideshow