A daily miasma of frivolity by two wanna-be cultural critics. Or: just, like, some good links, dude.

Tag Archives: holy crap

Sep 08 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Mattel has a series of iPad games called Apptivity. They’re intended for use with figures, which you place directly on the iPad surface to control the game.

Cultures across the planet have been making toys for thousands of years. Lots of us grew up playing with toy cars.

What do you do with a toy car? You drive it. You drive it on the floor, on a playmat, between toy buildings, on tracks, etc.

With Apptivity, you can now also drive it on a magic window that goes anywhere. Consider that for a minute.

This is the future. We are living in the future.

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
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Jan 27 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Felicity Aston skis solo across Antarctica

Felicity Aston skis solo across Antarctica

Michael Warren for the Associated Press:

British adventurer Felicity Aston became the first woman to ski alone across Antarctica on Monday, hauling two sledges around crevasses and over mountains into nearly constant headwinds, past the South Pole and onward to the coastal ice shelf, persevering for 59 days in near-total solitude.

She made it to her destination ahead of schedule, using nothing but her own strength to cover 1,084 miles from her starting point on the Leverett Glacier on Nov. 25 to Hercules Inlet.

TWO MONTHS

A THOUSAND MILES

COMPLETELY ALONE IN ANTARCTICA

WHAT THE FUCK

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Jan 08 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Craig Welch, The Seattle Times:

It was Monday morning, Jan. 2, and the four Seattle hikers were more than halfway through a beautiful weekend of winter camping at Mount Rainier National Park (which remains closed until Saturday).

Now someone in a chopper was barking a garbled message through a loudspeaker.

“We thought we heard ‘A ranger has been shot and killed, shooter at large,’ ” camper Brian Vogt wrote in an email exchange with The Seattle Times. But it wasn’t all that clear.

That’s when the pilot let fly his backup plan. He dropped a coffee cup with a warning scrawled in ink: “A ranger has been shot shooter at large. Call on cell if able to Pierce Co Sheriff.”

The above photos, via MSNBC’s PhotoBlog, were taken by one of the campers, Jen Berthiaume. She and her party made it out okay, and the suspected shooter of the ranger was found dead later. Check Welch’s article for the full story.

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Dec 08 2011
Mark Twain, probably

‘Mythbusters’ cannonball hits Dublin, CA home, minivan

‘Mythbusters’ cannonball hits Dublin, CA home, minivan

Demian Bulwa & Henry K. Lee for the San Francisco Chronicle:

One of the zany experiments staged by the “Mythbusters” television show nearly turned into a suburban tragedy Tuesday afternoon in Dublin when the crew fired a homemade cannon toward huge containers of water at the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department bomb disposal range.

The cantaloupe-sized cannonball missed the water, tore through a cinder-block wall, skipped off a hillside and flew some 700 yards east, right into the Tassajara Creek neighborhood, where children were returning home from school at 4:15 p.m., authorities said.

There, the 6-inch projectile bounced in front of a home on quiet Cassata Place, ripped through the front door, raced up the stairs and blasted through a bedroom, where a man, woman and child slept through it all – only awakening because of plaster dust.

And it did more damage after that. Unbelievably, no one was hurt.

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Oct 18 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Kelly Chan, Architizer:

French artist and architect Serge Salat is bringing his immersive installation “Beyond Infinity” to ten cities in China, including Beijing and Shanghai. In this installation, he has created a private cosmos where visitors are invited to journey through endless layers of space mapped out using cubic shapes, panels of mirrors, shifting lights, and music. “Beyond Infinity” is a multi-sensory, multimedia experience that blends Eastern Chinese with Western Renaissance, modern, and contemporary visual culture into a singular work.

I CAN SEE FOREVER

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Oct 10 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Rider on the Storm

Rider on the Storm

Damn Interesting is updating again, which is neat. Here’s Alan Bellows:

Unable to restart his engine, and struggling to keep his craft from entering a near-supersonic nose dive, Rankin grasped the two emergency eject handles. He was mindful of his extreme altitude, and of the serious discomfort that would accompany the sudden decompression of an ejection; but although he lacked a pressure suit, he knew that his oxygen mask should keep him breathing in the rarefied atmosphere nine miles up. He was also wary of the ominous gray soup of a storm that lurked below; but having previously experienced a bail out amidst enemy fire in Korea, a bit of inclement weather didn’t seem all that off-putting. At approximately 6:00 pm, Lt Col Rankin concluded that his aircraft was unrecoverable and pulled hard on his eject handles. An explosive charge propelled him from the cockpit into the atmosphere with sufficient force to rip his left glove from his hand, scattering his canopy, pilot seat, and other plane-related debris into the sky. Bill Rankin had spent a fair amount of time skydiving in his career—both premeditated and otherwise—but this particular dive would be unlike any that he or any living person had experienced before.

Absolutely insane story of a skydive through a cumulonimbus storm.

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Aug 25 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Stunning photo on APOD yesterday:

Pictured, behind this darker cloud, is a pileus iridescent cloud, a group of water droplets that have a uniformly similar size and so together diffract different colors of sunlight by different amounts. The above image was taken just after the picturesque sightwas noticed by chance by a photographer in Ethiopia. A more detailed picture of the same cloud shows not only many colors, but unusual dark and wavy bands whose origins are thought related to wave disturbances in the cloud.

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Jul 06 2011
Mark Twain, probably

NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day is the internet’s greatest source of desktop pictures. It by itself justifies the entire technology of RSS. Somehow we’ve gone more than 250 posts here on NS without slapping up something from APOD for you, so that ends right now. This is a photo of the Mount Tiede volcano in Spain, taken by Juan Carlos Casado.

The volcano is the large, triangular shadow in the background. APOD’s writeup talks about how the volcano casts such a triangular shadow even though it’s not really shaped like that at all. And that’s all well and good, but can we talk about how gorgeous this shot is?

‘Ili:
Are these colors even possible?
Colin:
Saw that.
Colin:
“What the flying fuck?”
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Jul 04 2011
Mark Twain, probably

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoR6YQ1V8ks

In 2004, George Harrison was inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. During the induction ceremony, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Dhani Harrison, and a few others performed “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” The rendition isn’t anything to write home about through the first three and a half minutes.

But then at 3:32 is when Prince magically appears on stage out of nowhere and obliterates the song, building, planet, and universe with a three minute guitar solo. The rest of the performers reprise the chorus five times during it. It’s an awe-inspiring performance.

And after he’s finished? He throws his guitar in the air, where it undoubtedly exploded into a flock of doves, and then walks off the stage. No bow, no staying for the applause, no nothing. He knows he rocked the faces off of everyone there; he doesn’t need to hang around for acknowledgment.

“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is an awesome song written by an awesome Brit, but this is all-American master shredding.

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
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Jun 22 2011
Mark Twain, probably

See those two pictures above with different focusing? Those are not two pictures. That is one picture taken with the in-development Lytro light field camera. You can refocus photos taken with it after you’ve taken them. On the fly. Whenever you want.

How is this light field camera different from my current camera?

Great question. Unlike regular digital or film cameras, which can only record a scene in two-dimensions, light field cameras captures all of the light rays traveling in every direction through a scene. This means that some aspects of a picture can be manipulated after the fact. To acquire this additional data, Lytro cameras include an innovative new light field sensor that captures the color, intensity and vector direction of light rays.

…

What are some of the features of a light field camera?

Shoot now, focus later: Because the camera captures the entire light field, there is no need to focus ahead of time. You can simply capture the moment, and adjust the focus later. This means you can concentrate on what’s happening in the scene, not fiddle with your camera. Lytro pictures can be focused to your liking days, weeks, even years after they’re taken.

hladhghglsahgsahglhsag THIS CLICK THIS LOOK AT THIS

THIS IS THE POWER OF SCIENCE

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