July 4, 2009 at 1:02 am · Filed under Uncategorized
In 1946, famed surrealist artist Salvador Dali and Walt Disney became
unlikely collaborators, and set to work on a short film called Destino.
The project was ultimately abandoned with less than 20 seconds of film shot, but six decades later modern Disney artists
completed the film using Dali’s original storyboards. The result is easily the strangest thing to come out of the Disney studios since… well, probably ever.
Link
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by gregs.
Original post by Queuebot
July 4, 2009 at 12:20 am · Filed under Uncategorized
After the weekend, I’ll be back with a follow up to the post on my progress towards tenure, and I’ll try to address some of the substantive and thought-provoking comments that you all have raised. But, here in the States, it’s already a holiday weekend, and so for today, I’ll punt and take on a side issue from that comment thread.
Comrade Physioprof commented:
“hir” is a total …abomination! It is so …distracting it totally ruins the flow of reading, because it is NOT A REAL …WORD!
In terms of identifiability of an anonymous individual, how much difference does a factor of two make in the likelihood of identifying the person? And if you really think it makes a difference, for the love of god, just use “his or her”. [Use your imagination to fill in the ellipses.]
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Original post by ScienceWoman none@example.com
July 3, 2009 at 10:57 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Somebody recently tweeted the term “transmon qubit” to the Science Scout twitter account, and (for the life of me) I cannot wrap my head around what it is exactly (other than a piece of delicious sounding science jargon).
As far as I can make out, it has something to do with a bit unit in the computation sciences context, which happens to quantum properties. i.e. Not just binary, but more a binary plus this “both, at the same time” option.
Anyway, if anyone can shed some light (a la Bill Nye style) on this term then it would be greatly appreciated.
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Original post by David Ng none@example.com
July 3, 2009 at 7:36 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
The Oops Design Awards have taken it upon themselves to do something that should have been done a long time ago -they have created an award for the ugliest, silliest and most useless product designs of the year. As you may have guessed, the lamp above is in the running for ugliest. It is the Oswine Lamp designed by Johanness Hemann. The nominees gallery actually has a few items I like, but for the most part it’s brimming with hillariously hideous items.
Link
Original post by Jill Harness
July 3, 2009 at 7:02 pm · Filed under 13178
As I agonized over what I’d write about for this week’s installment of The Friday Fermentable, my Wine Authorities newsletter arrived followed by their tweet on their inaugural music video.
Wine Authorities, my local wine merchants and community gods, have been spreading the gospel of rosé wines as a summer alternative to the red wines we enjoy most of the rest of the year. But contrary to the sweet white zinfandels and such that might turn off those who enjoy good wine, there is now a plethora of foreign and domestic wine offerings (and values) that show off red grapes in a lightly-crushed version. (Briefly, by minimizing the amount of time the red grapeskins are incubated with the must, some color and flavor compounds in the skins are extracted without the heavier tannins of a fully-extracted red.)
From the circle of the magnificent rose collection at the Sarah P Duke Gardens, [...]
Original post by Abel Pharmboy none@example.com
July 3, 2009 at 6:23 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
(YouTube link)
This is a music video for “Hibi no Neiro” (Tone of everyday) by Sour. The people in it are fans of the band, and the whole thing was shot on webcams all over the world. At first, you think that using fans and webcams would be the cheap and easy way to produce a video, but then you see the result and realize how challenging this must have been to coordinate and edit. -via Metafilter
Original post by Miss Cellania
July 3, 2009 at 6:08 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
90-year-old Rachel Veitch of Orlando, Florida has been driving the same 1964 Mercury Comet Caliente since it was new. Now she has racked up 557,000 miles on the odometer -and it’s still going great!
Unlike her three husbands, Veitch says, the Mercury has “never lied to me, never cheated on me, and I can always depend on her.”
Veitch is on her seventh Midas muffler, and thank you, gentlemen, for the lifetime warranty. She’s had three sets of Sears shock absorbers, also through a lifetime warranty. And though the number seems high, she claims to have had 16 free batteries, courtesy of J.C. Penney and Firestone.
“She’s demonstrating the perfect way to take care of a car,” says Mike Hardie, director of global quality and productivity for Ford Motor Co., and that’s what makes her a menace.
“If everyone did that,” he says, “we’d never sell another one, so don’t spread it around [...]
Original post by Miss Cellania
July 3, 2009 at 6:06 pm · Filed under 13176
Three new species of diniosaur have been found in the Australian outback. Two plant-eating species were nicknamed “Clancy” and “Matilda”. The third dinosaur is a carnivore dubbed Australovenator Wintonensis, but nicknamed Banjo.
The meat-eating Banjo has been dubbed Australia’s answer to the feared Velociraptor.
“The cheetah of his time, Banjo was light and agile,” said Queensland Museum paleantologist Scott Hocknull, who is among the scientists being credited with the discoveries.
“He could run down most prey with ease over open ground. His most distinguishing feature was three large slashing claws on each hand. Unlike some theropods that have small arms (think T. rex), Banjo was different; his arms were a primary weapon.
“He’s Australia’s answer to velociraptor, but many times bigger and more terrifying.”
The bones will eventually go on display to the public. Link -via Fark
Original post by Miss Cellania
July 3, 2009 at 5:34 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
THE HUMAN BRAIN is a true marvel of nature. This jelly-like 1.5kg mass inside our skulls, containing hundreds of billions of cells which between them form something like a quadrillion connections, is responsible for our every action, emotion and thought. How did this remarkable and extraordinarily complex structure evolve? This question poses a huge challenge to researchers; brain evolution surely involved thousands of discrete, incremental steps, which occurred in the mists of deep time across hundreds of millions of years, and which we are unlikely to ever fully understand.
Nevertheless, a number of studies published in recent years have begun to shed some light on the evolutionary origins of the nervous system, and provide clues to some of the earliest stages in the evolution of the human brain. These clues come from the most unexpected of places - from sea sponges, which lack nervous systems altogether, and from the extant descendents [...]
Original post by Mo none@example.com
July 3, 2009 at 3:01 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
It’s not even three months since the first H1N1 swine flu cases were diagnosed in San Diego, but already there is a significant amount of science published on the subject. Lots of genetic sequences from various isolates, clinical descriptions of hospitalized and fatal cases and now animal experiments. Two teams, one in The Netherlands and one in the US, have infected ferrets and mice with pandemic H1N1 isolates from Europe, the US and Mexico and compared transmissibility, virulence and pathology with seasonal H1N1 strains. The two papers were published yesterday in the journal, Science (papers here and here).
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Original post by revere none@example.com
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