You're 25 and life is tough. You got laid off at work. Your girlfriend dumped you. You ate three KFC Double Downs last week...unironically. You need to get behind the wheel of a Thrustmaster Ferrari Wireless GT racing game controller. More »
Ferrari - Recreation - Autos - Makes and Models - Sports
Despite the fact that it's opt-in and has decent privacy settings, I find Google Latitude's location history dashboard a bit creepy. It now gives step-by-step views of where I've been and even knows how many total miles I've traveled. More »
Google - Google Latitude - Searching - Search Engines - Companies
There is a lot of good writing being done on the oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. I can’t be down there right now, so below is a story from someone who is there, someone who is also using twitter to spread the news of the situation there. Mac McLelland writes for Mother Jones. This was a Twitter message from today:
“That’s it. Grand Isle is totally enveloped in gas fumes. The smell is completely nauseating and inescapable.” (2 hrs. ago) I’ve copy/pasted several tweets from the last 3 days (on comment page) for those not on Twitter.”
BP’s oil is destroying everything in its path.
BP has become an obstructing, criminal organization that does not believe the people of the United States deserve the truth about how bad the oil leak is, and continues to be. Their CEO said the other day that he thinks the environmental damage will be moderate. He could not be more wrong or maybe he’s being dishonest on purpose. So, that’s why I’ll be reprinting some eye witness reports from the Gulf region about the leak in the next few days. The ‘top kill’ procedure began today, and they won’t know for a day or two whether it worked. Divers did diagnostic tests before the procedure began and if there is a weak spot in the blowout preventor, the weak spot could blow, causing a new leak. The mud being used could also tear a new hole in the leaking well pipe, according to reports today. There is no guarantee this won’t make the situation worse.
If this doesn’t work, BP has other ideas to stop up their leaking oil volcano, but none of them are tested methods, and none of them are guaranteed to work. We might be experiencing an oil gusher for months, even years. This situation is beyond a catastrophe. Adding to the oil are hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic dispersants, which are designed to hide the amount of oil that has been spilled. The U.S. government has had planes spraying this stuff in the water for weeks and only in the last two-3 days it has quit doing this.
Read the following for an example of how BP is trying to remain in control, hide the truth about how bad it is, and push reporters and even the U.S. government away while it continues to screw up and fumble around for solutions. They need to get out of the way, at this point.
“It’s BP’s Oil” — by Mac McLelland
Elmer’s Island Wildlife Refuge, even after all the warnings, looks worse than I imagined. Pools of oil black and deep stretch down the beach; when cleanup workers drag their rakes along an already-cleaned patch of sand, more auburn crude oozes up. Beneath the surface lie slimy washed-up globules that, one worker says, are “so big you could park a car on them.”
It’s Saturday, May 22nd, a month [...]
Vladimir Grashnov died of cancer, possibly contracted due to radioactive poisoning. Konstantin Dimitrov was assassinated while on a date. Konstantin Dishliev was gunned down during lunch. All three were assigned a cursed phone number: 0888 888 888. More »
Cancer - Konstantin Dimitrov - Bulgaria - Health - Konstantin Dishliev
If this was the past 18 months for Android then the next 6 months of Android will "blow your mind". [AndroidTapp] More »
Android - Handhelds - IPhone - Android Market - Google
The Firefox Home iPhone app will allow you to sync your desktop browsing sessions to your iPhone. This means that you'll be able to access your Firefox history, bookmarks, open tabs, and Awesome Bar right on your iPhone. More »
iPhone - Smartphone - Handhelds - App Store - Poem
Sprint HTC Evo 4G is fast, but battery life is short USA Today The initial 4G upload speeds of about 1 Mbps were marginally faster than I was getting with 3G. Sprint says peak download speeds can exceed 10 Mbps, ... |
My toes are tingly, my head kinda hurts, and last night's a bit fuzzy. Did I have a seizure? Is it lupus? Where's my iPad? The WebMD app will help me figure it out—Oh God! It's Sjögren's syndrome! More »
IPad - Health - Conditions and Diseases - Musculoskeletal Disorders - Connective Tissue
The folks at 3 Quarks Daily are taking nominations for their second annual Prize in Science. The judge this year will be Richard Dawkins.
Here are the details for how to nominate a blog post from the past year, written after May 23, 2009. The deadline is May 31.
Some Loom readers have already nominated some posts–thanks! Here are a few other of my favorites…
Bitbop is a clever little app that allows you to stream or download full-length TV shows to your mobile device. Currently only a few BlackBerry models are supported, but other cellphones will soon enjoy the mobile Hulu-like fun, too. More »
Wi-Fi - BlackBerry - Television - Smartphone - Hulu
In 1915—one year into World War I—bullets were too expensive to use in air-to-air combat pilot training. Camera manufacturer Thornton-Pickard had a great idea: Make a machine gun that used film—the Mark III Hythe Machine Gun Camera. More »
World War I - History - Twentieth Century - Wars and Conflicts - World War
Artist Neil Richards has created a set of 10 posters, one for each Dharma station on and off (and really off) the Island. They're an awkward dimension for your desktop, but work GREAT as a smartphone wallpaper. [Flickr via Bestbookmarks] More »
Lost - Wallpaper - Desktop Customization - Arts - Holidays
There's a lot of complex math equations that describe the interaction between fluids and masses of lipids wrapped in keratinocytes, melanocytes, Langerhans cells and Merkels cells in the presence of gravity. This video doesn't solve any of them. [Gawker TV] More »
Fluid dynamics - Physics - Fluid Mechanics and Dynamics - Companies - University of Massachusetts Lowell
Yesterday an employee at a corporate Verizon gym found an unreleased Motorola Droid Shadow. The device's owner eventually returned to pick it up, but a photo and specs were still emailed to us. Hours later the gym employee was fired. More »
Verizon Communications - Droid - Smartphone - Handhelds - Motorola Droid Shadow
A group of new blogs have launched at NYU’s Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program. In my capacity as Visiting Scholar there, I helped some of the students think through how to work blogs into their training at NYU. Mainly, I urged them to think about how to not be boring. I suggested they set up blogs that they themselves would actually want to write, and that weren’t like a lot of other blogs.
And they did! Kids these days.
So check out the whole blog roll, and offer your deeply insightful and constructive critiques. They’re waiting for you.
How does Grandma stay connected to you? Buddy Radio hopes to help the elderly by giving them an old school gadget—a basic radio—that combines new school technology—social networks—so they can broadcast their mood and ask for help. More »
Facebook - Online Communities - Social Networking - Twitter - Radio
It’s BMJ week (again) on NCBI ROFL! After the success of our first BMJ week, we decided to devote another week to fun articles from holiday issues of the British Medical Journal. Enjoy!
“OBJECTIVE: To investigate the risks of mild traumatic brain injury and neck injury associated with head banging, a popular dance form accompanying heavy metal music. DESIGN: Observational studies, focus group, and biomechanical analysis. PARTICIPANTS: Head bangers. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Head Injury Criterion and Neck Injury Criterion were derived for head banging styles and both popular heavy metal songs and easy listening music controls. RESULTS: An average head banging song has a tempo of about 146 beats per minute, which is predicted to cause mild head injury when the range of motion is greater than 75 degrees . At higher tempos and greater ranges of motion there is a risk of neck injury. CONCLUSION: To minimise the risk of head and neck injury, head bangers should decrease their range of head and neck motion, head bang to slower tempo songs by replacing heavy metal with adult oriented rock, only head bang to every second beat, or use personal protective equipment.”
Image: flickr/y-its-mom
Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Injuries due to falling coconuts.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: I scream! You scream! We all scream…from ice-cream headaches.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Pink Floyd hallucinations: not just for druggies.
WTF is NCBI ROFL? Read our FAQ!
My wife and I were watching New Yankee Workshop this week. Norm was building a swank shelving unit out of Mesquite. Mesquite is not a great choice for lumber as the trees don't get very large, making it difficult and expensive to get any significant size of board, and the boards cut from it tend to
I have seen that matched transistors are used in diff. amplifier ckts and in some others,
but are there any use of it for high i/p impedance?
if there are any, can you please help me saying name of that/those particular ckts?
When Google says the T-Mobile G1 will never get Android 2.2 Froyo because there's not enough space for the OS to fit in the flash space, the dev community thankfully doesn't listen. The folks at the xda developers have gotten a "very Alpha" build of 2.2 ported to both the T-Mobile G1 and myTouch 3G and it's sort of usable. Calls, 3G, LEDs, and the notification bar are in working order and it's noticeably speedier. Things that are currently broken: Wi-Fi, camera, gps, and external audio. And don't even think about installing Flash unless you like crashy browsers. If you're an experimenter of these sorts, you can download the alpha build of Android 2.2 froyo here. More »
myTouch 3G - Android - T-Mobile G1 - Google - Handhelds
