Tuesday, August 30, 2011

"Why is he called Shane Battier? Bad handwriting"

NBC:
“My dad, Eddie Battle, born Eddie Battle, on his birth certificate, whoever wrote it down wrote B-A-T-T-scribble-scribble-scribble. So my dad grew up Eddie Battle his entire life, and then he joined the army when he was of age, the army recruiter actually had his own interpretation of what was on the birth certificate. They wrote down B-A-T-T-I-E-R.

So the first day in the army, my dad says ‘Private Battle reporting for duty.’ The sergeant said, ‘There’s no Battle, there’s a Battier (ed. note: pronounced ‘batty-er’).’ So my dad says, ‘That’s not my name.’ The sergeant says, ‘Well Uncle Sam says it is.’ So my dad kept it.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution






Thursday, August 25, 2011

Embarrassing football trophy



"The new trophy designed for the winner of the annual Iowa-Iowa State gridiron showdown was scrapped Tuesday as organizers acknowledged it had too much to do with corn and not nearly enough to do with football."

Here's the old trophy:

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Advice if you have a parrot

"If you have a parrot and you don't teach it to say,'Help, they've turned me into a parrot', you are wasting everybody's time."

Monday, August 22, 2011

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

The dinosaurs are here



Advertisement by Richter7 for Utah's Hogle Zoo.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Full moon pillow



Full Moon Odyssey floor mattress pillow by Lily Suh and Zoono of i3lab.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

San Francisco Giants Carbonite Giveaway




At the September 4 San Francisco Giants game, you can get a Brian Wilson in Carbonite statue:
The statue is three sided, with one side featuring the iconic Han Solo in carbonite pose featured in "The Empire Strikes Back." A second side features Brian Wilson, in his trademark post-save celebration pose, frozen in carbonite similar to Han. The third side features graphics celebrating the Giants and Star Wars.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Using malaria as a weapon

Article about the history of DDT. For example:
The German army purposely triggered malaria epidemics, such as in Italy in 1944. Drainage pumps on the Roman marshes ordinarily pumped excess water out to sea, desiccating the land enough to make it malaria-free and thus habitable for thriving cities and towns. By stilling the pumps, the Germans could have flooded the region and effectively impeded the Allies' progress. But German malariologist Erich Martini had studied the habits of the local malaria vector, Anopheles labranchiae, in depth, and he knew that inundating the region with the Mediterranean's salty waters would allow A. labranchiae, which can thrive in brackish water, to flourish. And so rather than simply stopping the pumps, they reversed them, salinating some ninety-eight thousand acres. Then they confiscated local stockpiles of antimalarial drugs. As the German soldiers departed, they left behind "clever sketches," The New York Times reported in 1944, "of the plague of mosquitoes that would follow the flooding of the farmlands." More than 100,000 of the 245,000 locals sickened with malaria.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

One Crystal Chandelier



One Crystal Chandelier by Thomas Feichtner for J & L. Lobmeyr:
A cable runs through a curved tube which is fitted with an LED at the end to provide light. This tube’s curvature is such that one can hang a crystal from it—and this crystal is then lit from below. The design is a greatly simplified one which consciously breaks with the historically more formal and representative role that crystal chandeliers have played. It is not powerful opulence, but rather a fascinating simplicity that dominates this work. And it is the use of LED technology that makes it possible to take this approach to its logical conclusion. The concept becomes particularly clear within the context of the producer’s history and in light of the way it contrasts with traditional chandelier designs. One Crystal Chandelier is an affordable lighting element for a design-loving but no less traditional public—an “entry-level” chandelier which can be expanded by adding further crystals as one sees fit.

Lego Jedi starfighter








Lego Eta-2 Actis-class Light Interceptor by Kevin "legorevolution" Murney.