"How can you be serious?" Not by wearing this T-shirt! The classic Mark Pawson T-shirt, updated for 2012.
By Mark Frauenfelder at 7:57 am Tuesday, May 22
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[Video Link] Gator doesn't take kindly to having a towel placed over its head and being straddled by a bipedal mammal. (Via Arbroath)
By Cory Doctorow at 10:09 pm Sunday, May 20
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Jun 1, Sydney Vivid Jul 14, London EFF Speakeasy Jun 18, Dublin Internet Freedom | Context (essays) With a Little Help (short stories) For the Win (YA novel) Makers (adult novel) |
In National Geographic, a rare moment of marine nomadism, as a sea nomad child called Enal hitches a ride by holding onto the tail of his friend, a tawny nurse shark. The picture is by James Morgan, submitted to the National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest (Top prize: Photo expedition for two to the Galapagos with a National Geographic photographer).
Enal, a young sea nomad, rides on the tail of a tawny nurse shark, in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Marine nomadism has almost completely disappeared in South East Asia as a result of severe marine degradation. I believe children such as Enal have stories that could prove pivotal in contemporary marine conservation.
Spontaneous Moments—Week 4 Gallery (Thanks, Marilyn!)
By Cory Doctorow at 11:51 am Saturday, May 19
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These delightful boxing felines were equipped with miniature boxing gloves and set to brawling by none other than legendary douchebag Thomas Edison, as a means of promoting his newfangled moving picture device in 1894.
Thomas Edison - 1894 Boxing cats (Thanks, Isaak!)
By Cory Doctorow at 8:00 am Thursday, May 17
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Tom Quinn sez, "A gecko struggles with the low van der Waals forces encountered when climbing a non-stick pan." Here's a Google Translate of the French description on the video:
We conducted an experiment with a gecko on a Tefal frying pan, that is to say, a pan made of Teflon. The gecko, despite numerous attempts fails to climb onto the stove, it proves that it not adhere not in this matter.
Gecko.MOV (Thanks, Tom Quinn!)
By Cory Doctorow at 1:00 pm Tuesday, May 15
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Jun 1, Sydney Vivid Jul 14, London EFF Speakeasy Jun 18, Dublin Internet Freedom | Context (essays) With a Little Help (short stories) For the Win (YA novel) Makers (adult novel) |
A rather implausible report in Chinasmack (translated from the Chinese journal 163) says that a zookeeper saved a rare, born-in-captivity baby Francois Leaf Monkey from surgery by licking its anus until it passed the whole peanut it ate after a thoughtless patron tossed it to him. Reportedly, the anus-licking proceeded for over an hour.
50-year-old Zhang Bangsheng used warm water to clean a small Francois’ Leaf Monkey’s buttocks, then began using his mouth to lick it, not stopping for over an hour, until the little monkey defecated a single peanut. Only after the peanut was defecated did Zhang Bangsheng laugh with satisfaction.
As it is understood, this small Francois’ langur is only 3 months old, and is the first Francois’ Leaf Monkey to be born in nearly 10 years at this animal park. The Francois’ langur is a rare primate from Guangxi and Guizhou and is amongst the nation’s most protected animals. Because it is so precious, the zoo gave it to model worker and high-level expert Zhang Bangsheng to care for and raise.
The accompanying photo is rather ambiguous.
Zoo Caretaker Licks Monkey’s Butt To Help It Defecate (via JWZ)
By Mark Frauenfelder at 8:31 am Monday, May 14
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[Video Link] A two-humped camel would have kicked that bin's ass. (Via Cynical-C)
By Cory Doctorow at 2:00 pm Friday, May 4
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Jun 1, Sydney Vivid Jul 14, London EFF Speakeasy Jun 18, Dublin Internet Freedom | Context (essays) With a Little Help (short stories) For the Win (YA novel) Makers (adult novel) |
Maximoriera, creators of the memorable Octopus Chair, have a new offering: an elephant chair. Pretty regal.
By Cory Doctorow at 8:04 pm Wednesday, Apr 25
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Jun 1, Sydney Vivid Jul 14, London EFF Speakeasy Jun 18, Dublin Internet Freedom | Context (essays) With a Little Help (short stories) For the Win (YA novel) Makers (adult novel) |
Redditor BillyAppletini surprised a friend with an "Imperial CAT-AT (All-Terrain Armored-Transport)" -- a cat-condo/AT-AT walker. His Imgur gallery , which documents the build, has some rudimentary plans as well.
I wouldn't consider myself a great woodworker or an artist - but I will take credit for being committed to a joke. I wrecked my house for a month building this, which was about 27 days longer than I wish it would have taken. The trickiest part was keeping any of my friends from coming inside my place for that whole time - I knew they wouldn't be able to keep it a secret!
The inside of the CAT-AT has a fully furnished luxury cat condo.
I was originally going to forge an Amazon receipt and make it look like my buddy's cat ordered it on his Amazon account and have it delivered while he was at work, but enough was enough - when it was complete, I had to get it out of my loft and clean up.
My buddy loves Star Wars, and has two cats. So I built him this, and put it in his apartment.
By Cory Doctorow at 5:32 pm Friday, Apr 20
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Proyecto Bibliomulas is a Venezuelan initiative to improve literacy in remote and rural areas, by turning mules into travelling bookmobiles. Srsly. And how awesome is that?
Anyone who was not out working the fields - tending the celery that is the main crop here - was waiting for our arrival. The 23 children at the little school were very excited.
"Bibilomu-u-u-u-las," they shouted as the bags of books were unstrapped. They dived in eagerly, keen to grab the best titles and within minutes were being read to by Christina and Juana, two of the project leaders.
BLOG OFICIAL DEL "PROYECTO BIBLIOMULAS"
Venezuela's four-legged mobile libraries (BBC)
(via Bookshelf)
By Cory Doctorow at 9:42 am Friday, Apr 20
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Jun 1, Sydney Vivid Jul 14, London EFF Speakeasy Jun 18, Dublin Internet Freedom | Context (essays) With a Little Help (short stories) For the Win (YA novel) Makers (adult novel) |
An AP story describes a plan to explode a group of frozen cow-carcasses in a remote mountain cabin in Colorado. The cows, which were roaming free in Gunnison National Forest, were caught in a cold snap and sought shelter in the cabin. Now that the thaw is coming, there is no easy way of getting them out of their frozen death-chamber. If the cows are allowed to thaw and decompose, they could contaminate the forest's hot-springs; and bringing in trucks would violate the forest's preservation rules. The plan, then, is to explode the cows while they are still frozen, turning them into manageable frozen chunks that can be more readily removed.
Carroll praised the Forest Service for trying to remove the animals while doing the least damage. He said burning down the cabin or packing out the carcasses are probably the best solutions.
"They need to use the minimal tool to get the job done. They don't want to leave the land scarred," he said.
Segin said the Forest Service occasionally uses explosives to destroy carcasses of animals that can't be retrieved.
"We've used them as a means of disposal to remove dead horses, elk and other animals in areas where it's impossible to get them out," he said.
Forest Service Considers Blowing Up Frozen Cows That Died Inside Of A Colo. Mountain Cabin
(Image: Cold water fountain, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from sbeebe's photostream) (via JWZ)
By Cory Doctorow at 1:00 pm Tuesday, Apr 17
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Jun 1, Sydney Vivid Jul 14, London EFF Speakeasy Jun 18, Dublin Internet Freedom | Context (essays) With a Little Help (short stories) For the Win (YA novel) Makers (adult novel) |
Here's a diagram that shows the relative size of a great grey owl's body to its feathers. It's hosted on Wikimedia commons, labelled "Cross sectioned taxidermied Great Grey Owl, Strix nebulosa, showing the extent of the body plumage, Zoological Museum, Copenhagen."
By Cory Doctorow at 3:26 pm Monday, Apr 16
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Jun 1, Sydney Vivid Jul 14, London EFF Speakeasy Jun 18, Dublin Internet Freedom | Context (essays) With a Little Help (short stories) For the Win (YA novel) Makers (adult novel) |
This 1949 Winchester Batteries ad was posted to the Vintage Ads LiveJournal group by noluck_boston, depicting a mother-daughter pair whose wise choice of reliable Winchester Batteries have rescued them from the terrible fate of being bitten by a deadly snake in the dark. Now they can be bitten by it in the blinding light of their flashlight. There's also a generous, 1829x1610 scan on Flickr.
By Cory Doctorow at 10:00 pm Saturday, Apr 14
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Jun 1, Sydney Vivid Jul 14, London EFF Speakeasy Jun 18, Dublin Internet Freedom | Context (essays) With a Little Help (short stories) For the Win (YA novel) Makers (adult novel) |
In Robust Soldier Crab Ball Gate, recently published in Complex Systems, a Japanese-UK computer science team describe how they made functional logic gates by constructing a maze of narrow tunnels and spooking soldier crabs into running through them in predictable ways by exposing them to bird-of-prey silhouettes. Lead researcher Yukio-Pegio Gunji (Kobe University) and colleagues implemented a "billiard ball computer" (a computer that implements logic gates out of chutes through which balls are dropped, either colliding or falling straight through) using the crabs, who have a repertoire of deterministic flocking responses to various stimuli, including narrow passages and the presence of predator shadows. The result is a relatively functional AND gate and a less-reliable OR gate. A Technical Review blog summarizes the method well:
When placed next to a wall, a leader will always follow the wall in a direction that can be controlled by shadowing the swarm from above to mimic to the presence of the predatory birds that eat the crabs.
Under these conditions, a swarm of crabs will follow a wall like a rolling billiard ball.
So what happens when two "crab balls" collide? According to Gunji and co's experiments, the balls merge and continue in a direction that is the sum of their velocities.
What's more, the behaviour is remarkably robust to noise, largely because the crab's individuals behaviours generates noise that is indistinguishable from external noise. These creatures have evolved to cope with noise.
That immediately suggested a potential application in computing, say Gunji and co. If the balls of crabs behave like billiard balls, it should be straightforward to build a pattern of channels that act like a logic gate.
Computer Scientists Build Computer Using Swarms of Crabs (via Wired)
By Cory Doctorow at 1:19 pm Friday, Apr 13
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Jun 1, Sydney Vivid Jul 14, London EFF Speakeasy Jun 18, Dublin Internet Freedom | Context (essays) With a Little Help (short stories) For the Win (YA novel) Makers (adult novel) |
Long before there was a "tiger in your tank," Ethyl wanted to assure you that this delightful simian would speed your jalopy along.
By Rob Beschizza at 4:04 pm Wednesday, Apr 11
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A Toledo man abandoned six English bulldog puppies in a suitcase, say Ohio prosecutors, only two blocks from his home. Howard Davis, identified by a nametag on the suitcase, faces a $750 fine and 90 days in jail. Reuters' Kim Palmer:
The mother of the puppies was found pacing around the suitcase, which attracted the attention of a passerby. ... The puppies, three male and three female, are estimated to be four weeks old, too young to be separated from their mother, so they will spend at least another four weeks in foster care before they are eligible for adoption.
Photo: WileeCole / Shutterstock
