The Mars Rover

You gotta be shitting me!

I get annoyed when I’m waiting for a tram for more than 10 minutes. Waiting in a traffic jam for 9 days? I feel bad for the guy who’s stuck behind the wheel of the Porta-Potty truck. I’d abandon my car and call it a day. Smell you later

Sense of scale

BBC, with the help of BERG, has launched BBC Dimensions, a website that allows you to orientate important events, places and things within the context of familiar space. For example, if the Greater Pacific Garbage Patch were floating over my flat in Prague, it would stretch from the Eastern boarder of the Ukraine to roughly 740 miles west off the southern coast of Ireland.

B-School Apps Never End!!!

Speaks for itself

more about "Speaks for itself", posted with vodpod

Netflix rental queues for 2009

Netflix has released their queueing data for 12 of the largest metropolitan areas for 2009. The New York Times put the data into nifty maps broken down by zip code, where you can scroll across a ‘Most Rented-Least Rented’ scale to see which movies were most popular in each zip code.

It’s interesting to see which titles are most popular and fun to try and figure out why Romancing the Stone and Crocodile Dundee 2 made the top 10 list for LaGuardia airport.

More on Outer Space..

As always, National Geographic as published another awesome map of man’s exploration of our solar system and beyond.

The life of the International Space Station

A nice animated construction timeline of the ISS

This little piggy went to the crayon. This little piggy went to the train brake.

PIG 05049 is a new book by Christien Meindertsma, which documents the 185 end products that utilize some portion of each pig

PIG 05049 is a communications design developed in three years of research to track all the products made from a single pig. 
05049 was an actual pig, raised and slaughtered on a commercial farm in the Netherlands. Rotterdam designer Christien Meindertsma was shocked to discover that she could document 185 products contributed to by the animal. 
Meindertsma’s design includes the publication of her book, PIG 05049, which charts and pictures each of the products supported by the animal.  The surprise is in the fact that elements of production contributed to by pig farming include not only predictable foodstuffs – pork chops and bacon – but far less expected non-food items: ammunition, train brakes, automobile paint, soap and washing powder, bone china, cigarettes.

The caption on the page above reads:

Fatty acids derived from pork bone fat are used as a hardening agent in crayons and also gives them their distinctive smell.

Crayons smell like pig bone fat. Crayons will never smell the same again.

Can you tell me the last president with his own action figure?

Sure, almost all if the former presidents have their own action figures. George W. Bush even has a Top Gun version. But I’m not sure how many come with their own samurai sword, 9-mm pistol and an assault rifle.

Barack Obama doesn’t even need Secret Service protection, he packs his own handgun. Operatives of the  ‘axis of evil’ should also be on alert, he has his own street sweeper …And his own katana and wakizashi!

Say it ain’t so…

It looks as if the lastest victim of climate change isn’t an endangered species of aquatic tree frog living in the Amazonian rainforest, but something very near and dear to my heart (no offense to the endangered species of aquatic tree frog living in the Amazonian rainforest).

IF THE sinking Maldives aren’t enough to galvanise action on climate change, could losing a classic beer do it? Climatologist Martin Mozny of the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute and colleagues say that the quality of Saaz hops – the delicate variety used to make pilsner lager – has been decreasing in recent years. They say the culprit is climate change in the form of increased air temperature.

Let’s just buy them out

An interesting suggestion regarding how to win the war in Afghanistan, offered by John McCreary in the August 12 edition of his NightWatch intelligence briefing at AFCEA:

Consider, the US could put all the Taliban fighters on its payroll at twice the daily rate, withdraw all its forces except those needed to guard the paymasters, and buy the insurgency at less cost than maintaining forces, Burger King, Popeye’s, defense contractors and nautilus equipment in Bagram.

The savings in ordnance alone would be enough to buy loyalty of a sort of the insurgents, their families and their clans for as long as the US was wiling to pay. If the Taliban can buy fighters, the US should be able to out bid the Taliban for the same men. This comment intends no disrespect to Afghans; it acknowledges they are among the poorest people on the planet.

For as unorthodox as it sounds to start paying potential Taliban fighters to prevent them from joining the insurgency, when soldiers and innocent civilians are dying everyday, what do we really have to lose??

Don Simpson must be rolling in his grave

Tell me this doesn’t have Days of Thunder written all over it!

Felipe Massa = Cole Trickle
Michael Shumacher = Russ Wheeler

Massa suffers a horrific accident on the track. Thankfully he recovers and is healthy and able enough to race again. But in his absense, Schumacher wins a few races and becomes the hottest thing in racing since, well, Michael Schumacher, and so he wants to come out of retirement. Ferrari gets screwed with 3 drivers and 2 cars. So they tell Massa to find himself another team. Then Massa t-bones Schumacher on his victory lap at Monaco.

Could get interesting….

The English Language

This year China will become the world’s largest English-speaking country…

more about “The English Language“, posted with vodpod

The World’s Biggest Diamond Heist

This is the untold story of the the biggest diamond heist in history

The vault was thought to be impenetrable. It was protected by 10 layers of security, including infrared heat detectors, Doppler radar, a magnetic field, a seismic sensor, and a lock with 100 million possible combinations. The robbery was called the heist of the century, and even now the police can’t explain exactly how it was done.

Notarbartolo reflected on his interactions with the diamond dealer, and a thought flashed through his mind: Maybe the dealer wasn’t operating alone. If he tipped off a group of his fellow merchants, they could have pulled their inventory out of the vault before the heist. Each could then claim that their gems were stolen and collect the insurance while secretly keeping their stones. Most had safes in their offices—they could have simply kept the stock there. Notarbartolo realized that the heist he had spent so much time planning might have actually been part of an elaborate insurance scam.