Borrowing books from libraries is old hat. The new hotness is borrowing
seeds to plant in your garden. That's what the Basalt Public Library and
the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute in Colorado are offering:
Here's how it works: A library card gets you a packet of seeds. You
then grow the fruits and vegetables, harvest the new seeds from the
biggest and best, and return those seeds so the library can lend them
out to others.
NPR's Salt Blog has the story, but no mention on what happens if your
plantings failed to produce the seed that you need to return to the library:
Link
You clean your face, your hair, your body - but do you ever clean your
belly button? Wait, how exactly should you clean your belly button? We're
not sure whether this is medically sound, but Japan has got the tools
to do just that. Behold, the Hesogomu Karametoru ("Belly Button Sesame
Mixer-Catchers"):
They may be rather low-tech as medical devices go but Hesogomu Karametoru
(Belly Button "Sesame Mixer-Catchers", seriously) were made
to help you, the user, patrol the front lines of antibacterial navel
warfare.
Maybe you don't care about the dirt, lint and other assorted debris
constantly accumulating in your navel. Maybe you're oblivious to the
approximately 600 types of bacteria partying 24-7 at Club Umbilicus.
Maybe you have an outie.
Regardless, swabbing the decks at the ol' navel base just got easier
and pricier as well. A hefty 1,890 yen (about $24) is what you'll pay
for a mere 10 specially designed cotton swabs and a tube of organic,
dirt-absorbing, plant-based gel... and you WILL pay, now that we've
told you what's going on down there, IN there, as you're reading this.
Eww.
That is just one of seven strange medical devices from Japan, as found
in this nifty post by Steven Levenstein over at Inventor Spot: Link
- Thanks Michelle!
The iconic photograph of Marines raising the flag on the island of Iwo Jima was taken on February 23rd, 1945 -68 years ago today. Since then, the image by Joe Rosenthal has been used in so many ways, from stamps to album covers to the cake you see here by Cake Central. The imagery has also been parodied in a variety of ways, to "raise the flag" for many different causes. See an extensive selection of those homages and parodies at the U.S. Naval Institute blog. Link
Yeah, the Harlem Shake in LEGO might be a neat thing to watch! From the team at Bold Choice, here's a lesson in what can happen when you spend too much time and effort on your video projects in the era of 15-minute memes. -via The Daily What
James ‘Jimmy’ McConnell, a former Royal Marine, died with no surviving family members. The staff at the nursing home in Southsea, Portsmouth, England, where he lived knew little about McConnell and were concerned that no one would be there for McConnell's funeral.
So a call went out across social media websites for anyone from the armed forces family who could turn up to give him a send-off.
And almost 300 people turned up at Milton Cemetery this morning in the bitter cold to say farewell to the man they had never met.
A small procession through the cemetery was led by Royal British Legion standard bearers.
The hearse was accompanied in a procession by flag-bearing motorcyclists from the Royal British Legion Riders Branch.
Sandy beach, palm trees and clear, blue water. But if you think that
these vacationeers are lounging on a warm tropical island, you'd be wrong.
They're inside a giant hangar in snowy Germany:
The 'resort' is actually located on the site of a former Soviet military
air base in Krausnick, Germany. Tropical Islands is inside a hangar
built originally to house airships designed to haul long-distance cargo.
And despite it looking like temperatures are through the roof - outside
the giant hangar it is actually snowing.
Like its name implies, underwater ice hockey is played on ice ... but
with a little twist (technically, a 180° twist). Photographer Michael
Dalder was on assignment to cover the 2013 Underwater Ice Hockey Championships
and took amazing photos:
Underwater Ice hockey is not played on top of the ice like ice hockey
is usually played but underneath it. That’s where diving comes
into the game because the underwater ice hockey players are in fact
apnea divers who want to give their sports an additional sportive kick.
[...]
After checking the equipment we jumped into the water and went down.
There I could see the field of play. It was underneath the ice approximately
3 x 6 meters square; each side fronted by a goal. The puck was 10 inches
wide and made of Styrofoam so it didn’t sink but floated right
under the ice.
The teams consisted of two players (men and women) who took turns with
the hockey stick trying to score. Each time they succeeded in scoring
the apnea divers came back to the surface to breathe. In total, the
game lasted three periods with a ten minute break.
And yes, the water is obviously freezing cold (Michael noted that it
was 35 °F). Read more over at Michael's blog post, preferably from
your toasty office or home: Link
- via NBC
News Photo Blog
Life can be difficult when you are not only round but extremely buoyant! This is one of four delightful animated trailers produced to promote the 2013 Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film, all featuring peculiarly inflated animals. See the rest of them at vimeo. Link -via the Presurfer
Update: Read more about how these films were made. Link
Well,
it's about time! The state of Mississippi has finally ratified the 13th
Amendment, some 150 years later.
The whole thing started when Dr. Ranjan Batra of University of Mississippi
Medical Center saw Steven Spielberg's film Lincoln and told his
colleague Ken Sullivan that the state actually never ratified the Amendment
abolishing slavery:
[Sullivan] tracked down a copy of the 1995 Senate resolution, introduced
by state Sen. Hillman Frazier, D-Jackson, who had been upset to learn
Mississippi was the only state that had never ratified the 13th Amendment.
The resolution passed both the Mississippi Senate and House.
“It was unanimous,” Frazier recalled. “Some didn’t
vote, but we didn’t receive a ‘nay’ vote.”
The last paragraph of the resolution called on the secretary of state
to send a copy to the Office of the Federal Register.
Why the copy was never sent in 1995 remains unknown.
“What an amendment to have an error in filing,” said Dick
Molpus, who served then as secretary of state. “Thanks to Ken
Sullivan for being a good citizen in bringing this oversight to light,
so it can be corrected.” [...]
After seeing the film, Sullivan contacted the office of Secretary of
State Delbert Hosemann, who agreed to file the paperwork and make it
official.
Camera resolution charts are like eye charts for cameras. They are used to calibrate and focus the instruments. Cameras on airplanes need to be calibrated, too -and the charts for them are there, larger than life, to be used by spy planes and drones, and even by satellites.
The largest concentration of calibration targets in one place is on the grounds of Edwards Air Force Base, in an area referred to as the photo resolution range, where 15 calibration targets run for 20 miles across the southeast side of the base in a line, so multiple targets can be photographed in one pass. There is some variation in the size and shape of the targets at Edwards, suggesting updates and modifications for specific programs. A number of the targets there also have aircraft hulks next to them, added to provide additional, realistic subjects for testing cameras. Some of these planes are themselves unusual and rare military jets, officially in the collection of the base museum, despite being left out on the range.
There are an unknown number of other isolated photo calibration targets across the country, mostly inside restricted groundspace at military areas, such as at Eglin AFB, Florida; the Nevada Test Site; around Walker Field, a Navy drone airport in Maryland; and an especially exotic one at Fort Huachuca, in Arizona. Several others are painted on existing taxiways and runways, such as at Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio; Travis AFB, California; Beaufort Marine Corps Base and Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina.
Google Earth gives us a view of some of these charts, which you can see at the Center for Land Use Interpretation. They strangely remind one of crop circles, even though they involve neither crops not circles. Link -via PetaPixel
This shirt was spotted at a mall in India. The small print says "Man behind brief and mask!!" Yes, I know you want one, but DC Comics would never authorize this because they'd just as soon see you buy two shirts. Link
You've probably seen the Verizon
ad of a guy riding his bike in San Francisco along a route that looks
like a big heart. The guy was actually real and he did actually ride his
bike all over the city like that.
Robert Krulwich of NPR tells the story of Payam Rajabi and how he landed
a spot in the ad:
Last year, Payam Rajabi got a new job and had to leave Toronto and
his girlfriend Clare and move to San Francisco. All that left him feeling
a little down — until he came up with his upsy, downsy Valentine
idea.
He jumped on his bike, opened his iPhone to a map of San Francisco,
and tracking himself with a GPS, he rode 27 miles around the city, taking
two and a half hours, burning 1,135 calories and carefully etching a
heart shape onto a city map ...
[...] Payam's map got picked up by Cyclelicious, a geeky bike equipment
site, by Uptown Almanac, a local blog, by Health 2.0, a health news
site, by Iranian.com, a Persian-American site. Payam was named "Iranian
of the Day," and within the year, ka-ching! An ad agency called.
It was Verizon. They asked Payam if he would get back on the bike and
do the whole thing over again, this time tracked by a rigged out truck
with a giraffe-like hi-cam
But there's a twist at the end ... Read the rest over at Krulwich Wonders:
Link
Kelli Higgins and her husband have eight children, including 13-year-old Latrell and his younger sister, who were adopted from foster care at age 10 and 5.
The family was sitting around the dinner table last month, when Higgins – a professional photographer – mentioned that she was preparing for an upcoming baby photo session. Latrell mentioned that he wished he had baby photos of himself.
Higgins’ 12-year-old daughter asked, why not “recreate” a newborn photo shoot just for Latrell? The family had a good laugh thinking about him in all the newborn poses.
“I thought it was funny and that it would be a good idea,” Latrell told TODAY.com. His mom found the notion bittersweet.
“I was very sad too because I didn’t have any photos of him either," Higgins said. "I think it’s really hard to have children and not know what they looked like when they were younger.”
Higgins and Latrell went into her studio the next day, both laughing hysterically the whole time, she recalled.
Latrell's photo shoot created a sensation when she posted it on her Facebook page. Latrell is cool with it, and the photos have brought attention to the many older children available for adoption. Link -via Metafilter
He may be the Dark Lord of the Sith and all, but one thing's for sure:
Darth Vader ain't no Sun
Tzu. The Battle of Hoth should've been an easy win for the Galactic
Empire - it has superior fire power and the Rebel Alliance's Echo Base
was particularly vulnerable - but missteps almost cost Vader his victory.
Spencer Ackerman of Wired's Danger Room dissected the Battle of Hoth
and showed us why we should find Vader's lack of cohesive military strategy
disturbing:
From a military perspective, Hoth should have been a total debacle
for the Rebel Alliance. Overconfident that they can evade Imperial surveillance,
they hole up on unforgiving frigid terrain at the far end of the cosmos.
Huddled into the lone Echo Base are all their major players: politically
crucial Princess Leia; ace pilot Han Solo; and their game-changer, Luke
Skywalker, who isn’t even a Jedi yet.
The defenses the Alliance constructed on Hoth could not be more favorable
to Vader if the villain constructed them himself. The single Rebel base
(!) is defended by a few artillery pieces on its north slope, protecting
its main power generator. An ion cannon is its main anti-aircraft/spacecraft
defense. Its outermost perimeter defense is an energy shield that can
deflect Imperial laser bombardment. But the shield has two huge flaws:
It can’t stop an Imperial landing force from entering the atmosphere,
and it can only open in a discrete place for a limited time so the Rebels’
Ion Cannon can protect an evacuation. In essence, the Rebels built a
shield that can’t keep an invader out and complicates their own
escape.
When Vader enters the Hoth System with the Imperial Fleet, he’s
holding a winning hand. What follows next is a reminder of two military
truths that apply in our own time and in our own galaxy: Don’t
place unaccountable religious fanatics in wartime command, and never
underestimate a hegemonic power’s ability to miscalculate against
an insurgency.
Nat Geo TV published a series of comics from Dr. Byron Beekle containing interesting facts about the ocean and the creatures that live in it. As the series progressed, the "facts" became more personal and the artist progressively more unhinged, until the comic was suddenly cancelled -on April Fool's Day. You can read the entire series at the NatGeo Wild TV blog. Link -via Blame It On The Voices
