Science
Someone has invented a swine flu vaccine. Excellent news. Now maybe people will stop flipping out over something that's not even as virulent as the normal flu, and has killed way fewer people. Assuming we can get the vaccine made in large enough quantities, of course.
There are now 13 people up on the ISS. Some might get superstitious about that, but I always found 13 to be a good number, and the perfect size for a class or a group. More than that, and you have to break it down into smaller groups to get things done, but at this size, they can be a unified force. And then we can go to Mars.
New ways to database mean meaning can be gathered from the web in realtime. I don't know waht all of this is about, but I picture Ozymandias standing in front of his dozens of tv screens, learning about the world by watching all channels at once. And anything that captures a zeitgeist is alright by me.
Boat-mounted lazers are in the works. How totally cool is that? Well, maybe not if you're on the reciving end, but still. Lay-zars!
An in-browser Jurrasic Fight Club game to promote the show. And to support my current dinosaur obsession.
More lazers! These cook food like in an oven. The future will be made of lazers.
There's a new element! It needs a name before I start making my periodic table quilt, though, because I'll be pissed if I sew it up and then they change it.
Machu Picchu might be a recreation of a creation myth. Instead of the king's holy city, as previously thought, though there was never much in the way of living-detritus to show that people lived there. I think it's a neat idea, but there's really not a reason that people couldn't live there AND it was a holy site. I mean, there's people who live in the Vatican. This may have been mentioned in the article, and if it was, I agree. Anthropologists always want it to be one way and one way only, but there's no reason why things can't have multiple or shifting meanings, and there's no reason why people couldn't have done things in multiple ways.
Double stars have been found with planetary disks. The article isn't really clear about this, but it seems like it's saying one disk for two stars, and that, I think, would make for a very interesting sky for those planets.
New carbon nanotube memory chips. They hold exponentially more in a much smaller space, and they should last for a million years. Awesome. Now lets make it a usable advance in computer science!
Things that look like crop circles from the air help people find missing parts of the Stonehenge complex of sites! Seems the ruins interfere with plant groth, leaving rings and lines where they are, so that they're super-clear from planes. So cool. Aerial archaeology!
Science fiction
Primeval is cancelled! It's been going fine, so of course the announcement that it's cut comes right after I discover it. ::sigh::
A little info on Torchwood S04. Which is good to hear.
Japan builds a life-size Gundam to protect them. How come we can't embrase our scifi like this? But then this guy one ups them by building a real mecha suit in his own garage.
One of the older SciFi series is getting to be a movie! John Carter of Mars, by the dude who directs the Pixar loves, and it sounds like they're keeping it in-time-period, meaning John Carter will be a Civil War vet from 1911. (I keep thinking of it as John Connor of Mars, but that would be a totally different movie...)
A greener world
Norway deploys a floating wind turbine off the coast. Wonderful! There's nothing to block the wind out on the ocean, and that means there'll be more power available! And if someone can harness a wind turbine to a tidal harness, just think of all the power we could get!
Someone's invented an open-source car. It has a 20 year lease, the cost of gass for the lifetime of the car is included in the price, and all the specs and details are non-proprietary so that people who know what they're doing can modify, upgrade, debug and inprove the design and disseminate the improvements faster than the designers can alone. This is awesome.
Six ways poop of various kinds can be alternative energy. Gross, but pretty interesting.
Alternative living
Food
French Vanilla Organic Honey Vegan Icecream: Usually, vegan attempts to replace dairy just annoy me-- if you're going to stop eating animal products, just stop eating animal products; the replacement is cheating, like giving up smoking by switching to herbal cigarettes, and not really dealing with the problem-- but this actually sounds really good in it's own right.
There are apparently secret restaurants in Paris. I think it's awesome that there's so much food culture that sixteen-seat restaurants that only seat once can survive and become famous. How awesome would that be?
People are declaring food indipendence. Awesomesauce. There's a petition and a challenge to the 50 first families to go local and sustainable and see who can do it best. If Michelle Obama is any sort of rolemodel to these people, and she should be, then I think they should do it.
Why is IPA called Indian? It's pretty neat. I love food history.
And anti-over-eating food additive. It's supposed to help your brain know that you're full better, and is tasteless. It looks great on it's own site, but that doesn't really mean anything, except that maybe it's better at looking realistic and scientific. I might get some, though, when I have money...
Apricot tartlets. They look amazing.
Blueberries in a wine reduction. I think this would be awesome as a topping on a really fancy icecream, or as part of a trifle or something. And it should be loaded with antioxidants, so it'll healthify dessert! Plus, I think the idea would work well with lots of different berries, making it something extremely versatile to have around.
Salted Butter Caramel Icecream. All the more reason to get my own icecream maker.
Fun things
More info on Natal. Which is looking cooler all the time. It brings us that much closer to the scifi world I want to live in.
Six gross ways animals inprove health. No kidding on the gross part, but it all sounds very promising.
A solar-powered portable office. It all fits inside a vintage steamer trunk and is super-cool. We've already establushed how much I love the idea of fully mobile societies.
A dress where you can design your own color pattern. Works by letting markers bleed into the fabric, so you've got to time it and plan a little, but it's fully customizable each time you wear it.
A knife designed so you can't stab people. Is this really necessary?
A Mary Poppins dance mix that is actually really freaking cool, and a little spooky.
Art:
Jen Corace. Pretty little vintage-clothed people on all sorts of useful things.
Nick Dewar. A Scottish illustrator that has really neat and weird little designs.
About sixty working cats patrol a Russian art gallery to preserve the art from rats. This is a great, low-tech way to save art, and it serves as an incentive to take care of cats, to find good homes, and offers a little pride in the culture.
Crafts
Birch-log tables. 85$ for a designer piece, and I get to saw things with a saw?? I'm there!
Home-made shampoo. With variations for what ails ya. I haven't tried them yet, but if it's SLS-free, and if it works as well, I'm so there.
Fandom
Twilight only gets worse from here. I read the first book and that was really enough for me, but this article is hilarious, and the crazy fans at the comments are just too much.
Ten ways to start a geek-fight. My fav is second to last: "Joss Whedon is a hack."
Magnum meets Star Wars. Very strange, but remarkably consistent.
Last week, Betty White played beer pong with Jimmy Fallon. I love Betty White. She's my favorite feisty old lady,and I want to be just like her when I'm 87.
Bones is still on Thurs, Sept 17 @8. Other return dates are mentioned, too.
Gardening
Build your own vermicomposter. I'm so tempted to try this. Worms enrich soil and break down compost in much less time than the much smaller bacteria do. And it's cool.
Literacy
How to write like Twilight. All the rules you should not follow to write a decent book.
Disasters
There might be a supervolcano under Mt St Helens. We all know how I love to know all the ways I might be killed off by a planet, and this one seems close to my heart; MSH blew about a week before I was born, and that's waht all the news was about as I came into the world. This is like a smaller version of Yellowstone, but it might also just be a sandy aquifer. I think they need to test this.
A new theory says that maye our magnetic field comes from moving ocean currents, not from moving magma in a spinning core. I do love me a new theory, but if this one turns out to be true, then global warming is more terrifying than it already was, like so: the plant heats up --> the ice caps melt, water down the ocean with fresh water and changing the densities --> the currents stop flowing --> the em field drops --> everything on the surface is fried by solar and galactic radiation. Bad news, man. We need to invenst in building fallout shelters under water, in case we can't stop it before it comes to this. Or, at least, hope that the theory doesn't lead to this conclusion.
Weird News
A 14 year old was hit by a spacerock. Which, though it probably sucks to be his hand, is really pretty neat. You've got more chance of winning the lottery more than once than you have of being clipped by a meterorite.
Someone invented a limp remote. Very strange.
Cities Still Don't Get It:
The story of the South Central Farm. It was once the biggest urban farm in the US, run almost entirely by volunteers and people who needed the food, and now it's been cold to be a warehouse. There's a documentary about it. Why can't cities see that they're supposed to take care of their people, not starve them?
More reasons to love Sweden
The Pirate Party! It's about copyright law and such, but still.
No comments:
Post a Comment