Sidewalk art

A great picture of some sidewalk art.

Surviving an air crash

The BBC has an article about surviving air crashes. Interestingly, a common problem is that panicked passengers often have trouble releasing their seatbelts as they try to push on them, as in a car, rather than pulling on the handle.

A view of the earth

Continuing the space theme, we have another picture from Astronomy Picture of the Day. This one shows the earth as seen from Saturn.

The world at night

Astronomy picture of the day has a composite photo of the earth at night. It is interesting to compare areas that are brightly lit with those that are dark. Notice North Korea - the black area to the east of Japan above brightly lit South Korea.

Would it have worked?

The Register has an article about how hard it would have been to mix an explosive out of liquids carried on a plane. I liked the part about taking several hours to combine the chemicals drop by drop.

Of course I still can't take a bottle of water on a plane.

via slashdot

A talking postcard

I'm not really sure what to do with this site but it is a great timewaster. It basically lets you drag and drop words that are then spoken in a British gangster style voice.

Official seal

Courtesy of the Official Seal Generator, this blog now has a seal. Now I just have to figure out what to do with it.

Camels

Snopes has an article on an amazing picture from National Geographic that shows a group of camels in the desert. Note that what you first think are the camels are really their shadows.

What the terrorists want

Computer security guru Bruce Sneier has an article about the reaction, or over reaction, to recent terrorist attacks.

We are fitter than our grandparents

The New York Times has an article comparing the health of present day Americans and their grandparents. In addition to living longer, people today are larger, fitter and much less likely to be chronically ill.

via slashdot

Robot kayaks

Robot Gossip has an article (with a picture) about a new robotic kayak developed by MIT as a testbed for aquatic robots.

Fan death

According to this article on Wikipedia, people in Korea believe that it is dangerous to sleep in a room with a running electric fan. There are regular reports in the Korean media of people dying from fan death.

Strangely these deaths only seem to occur in Korea and most people outside Korea consider the idea to be somewhat ridiculous. This makes me wonder if there are any similar things that we in the West believe that are laughed at elsewhere.

Fake Identities

This site offers a "False Identity Generator". It is mainly intended for use on website registration pages. It returns a valued, though not necessarily existing address, as well as an appropriate zip code and phone number. It also provides a birthdate and mother's maiden name.

An interesting web comic

Gunnerkrigg Court is a web comic with excellent art and interesting stories. Don't let the vaguely Harry Potter-esque setting put you off.

Bionic limb breakthrough

The BBC has an article about a new technique that allows metal rods to be anchored to bone and then protrude through the skin. Until now they haven't been able to get the skin to grow properly around the rod.

via slashdot

Flip clips

I haven't used this service but it looks like it might be an interesting present to get for someone. Basically they convert a video into a flip book.

Water displays

This article describes, and has a picture of, a machine that uses water as a display. Waves are generated by a series of devices around the edge of the water and the interference patterns form the desired image.

Who's watching?

This article in the New Scientist reports on research that shows that people are not only more honest when being watched - they are more honest when there is just a picture of someone watching them.

Money making opportunity

This article in the Telegraph describes how thieves in the UK stole some satellite phones from the British Foreign Office and ran up a bill of over 600,000 pounds.

I don't know how much it costs to set up one of these pay per minute phone numbers but if you did have one that paid $10 per minute you could make a bit of money by calling the number from any unattended phone you encounter. This would be very handy if you visit a lot of different offices.

Where are the planets today?

This site lets you see the positions of the various planets in the solar system at any given time.