The Simplest Motor In The World

There's loads of homopolar motor videos out there but this sums things up well. It's a battery, magnet and wire. I don't fully know why it works - it's not a simple Force-Field-Current explaination. I think there's some crazy quantum mechanics explaination. I'll find out and let you know. You are shorting a battery - don't have one blow up in your face.

Sony's Flexible Display

This prototype from Sony is pretty amazing, despite a few bad pixels.

Solar Powered Plane

More solar powered plane plans here, with the aim of building a plane to fly round the world by itself, all solar powered.

Telescope Shows Carbon Can Pimp Anything

This is a top-of-the-line Celestron telescope, but even a cheap and nasty 'scope is enough to give you a life affirming experience. Go on. You could get run over by a bus tomorrow and you'll never have seen the moons of Jupiter. This one has got a carbon fibre tube. Mmmm.

It's My Desire

Magnolia, decluttered home? I recommend you change all that, starting with an Electric Six Danger! High Voltage themed room with this wallpaper, spotted in a local boozer. Not a Gay Bar. Gay Bar.

Apollo 16

It's a panoramic print. PANORAMIC. On the moon. ON. THE. MOON. Check it out here. Starting at $59.

Flight of the Navigator

Here's Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor. 168 highly polished panels working out at £70,000 each by my reckoning is maybe 1000 times too much but anyway, the result's great.

Remember that film? It was great.

Bridge Building Game

Download from CripticSea.

Piggy Mirage

I saw one of these yesterday and it really is amazing. Your brain says the object is just sat there on the top in full, normal three dimensions and yet your finger goes right through it.

Egg Beaters

Yes. It is wrong to drool over bike pedals. These are Crank Brother Egg Beaters btw. You pervert.

Fixie

Here's Alta Bike's fixie offering. Bullhorns off-the-shelf. Genius.

New Feature - Knitting News

It's Bjork. In some kind of woolly jumper.

What is this?

Over here. Is it a design house that was used for the Nike Crab advert (by Neill Blomkamp of Tetra Vaal fame - see previous post)? Is it a Japanese website showing drawings of slightly scary robots? I don't know yet. Amazing photo' whatever.

GSX-R/4 concept (back in 2001)

The Suzuki GSX-R/4 concept featured an engine from their GSX-R 1300 'bike. Why do these works of art never go into production?

Imagining the Tenth Dimension

Book and associated Flash site here.

Biggest Engine for Biggest Ship

It the Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C which goes into the Emma Mærsk container ship. Look it up for more info, else just say "feck that's big".

All Is Full Of Love

Here's Bjork's All Is Full Of Love video, in fecking huge format if you're used to YouTube. Directed by Chris Cunningham (check his video of Aphex Twin's "Windowlicker" - NSFW), the video received multiple awards including a Grammy nomination in 2000 for Best Short Form Music Video (it lost to Korn's excellent "Freak on a Leash").

Phew.

Tetra Vaal

Check out this excellent video short by director Neill Blomkamp. You might know the Citroen Transformer adverts - well that's this chap. The digital effects of dirt and texture are excellent. If you're not sure the first time you watch it whether it was computer generated or real then you know they've done a great job.

It's like a vision of the future. 50 years? 100 years? But with stupid rabbit ears.

Blender F1

Here's the 2006 winner of the Blender F1 competition. Blender is a free, open source 3D content creation suite. The annual Blender F1 challenge rules are simple - design the Formula One car of the future (in Blender, gotta be open open-cockpit).

Cycling News!

"London is experiencing a cycling renaissance" says Mayor Ken Livingstone. The number of people cycling in London has risen 83% in the last seven years.

Very good hydration levels here.

28 Weeks Later Trailer

...and here's the trailer for 28 Weeks Later. Great reviews about a zombie movie. Right, I'm going to see it. Even better than the first one apparently!

Bourne Ultimatum Trailer

You can check out the trailer here. They were filming for it in Lower Marsh, London just a couple of weeks ago.

The Evils of The Evils of Evolution

Yes. You're reading that right. Over at Answers in Genesis we learn that believing evolution is the foundation for such evils as abortion, pornography, homosexuals and lawlessness. Here they are on Drugs and Evolution...

"My naive belief in evolution had three important practical consequences:

1. It strongly encouraged me to look to drugs as an ultimate source of comfort and creativity.

2. It led me to the conclusion that God, if He was around at all, was a very distant and impersonal figure, separated from humanity by very great distances of space and time.

3. It led me to increasingly abandon the moral values I had been taught at home, because when man is viewed as an arbitrary by-product of Time + Matter + Chance, there is no logical reason for treating men or women as objects of dignity and respect, since in principle they are no different from the animals, trees, and rocks from which they supposedly came."

Here's some more...

"Trotsky … another monster brainwashed by evolution"

"World's worst mass-murderer was influenced by Darwin at 19"

AiG are a US tax-exempt organization with offices in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom. They are currently building the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. The projected cost is around US $27 million - it opens on 28th May. Rather worryingly, AiG executive director Ken Ham derides Christians who abide by the idea that they must tolerate “all religious ways, beliefs and practices.” Referring to an organization in his native Australia called “Toleration” that opposes teaching creationism, Ham says,

“Do you know what tolerance of all religious ways, beliefs and practices means? It means an intolerance of absolutes. Christ said, “I am THE WAY,” (not one of the ways),--THE TRUTH (not one of several different and acceptable approaches to truth). If anyone is intolerant of absolutes, they are intolerant of Christ.”

Oooookkkkaaaaaayyyyy... Walks backwards out of room.

He Will Be Pleased

Over at Flying Pig. You can also see a video over on youtube.

A Flying Spaghetti Monster model to download print out and make. Once complete turn the handle on this cardboard curiosity and the Flying Spaghetti Monster waves his noodly appendages. Let the pasta power of the FSM help with your tricky decisions, turn the handle and ask yourself "What would Flying Spaghetti Monster Do?"

Joan

You can have a chat to Joan, winner of the 2006 Loebner Prize Bronze Medal - no silver or gold medals have been won yet...

Judge: But can't a machine think?
Joan: It may be possible.
Judge: And conscious?
Joan: Not after I'm done with you.
Judge: What are you going to do to me?
Joan: Nothing. I just wanted to talk.
Judge: What about?
Joan: Being tested like this.

Science vs Faith Flowchart

Great flowchart over at WellingtonGrey showing the difference between the science and faith method.

Science vs Stephen Jones

There are times when science and religion clash for example Galileo vs the Catholic church or the Catholic Church's opposition to the use of condoms as a strategy to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, and STDs. The Church maintains that the promotion of abstinence is the only effective way to deal with the AIDS crisis. From the Guardian...

The Catholic Church is telling people in countries stricken by Aids not to use condoms because they have tiny holes in them through which HIV can pass - potentially exposing thousands of people to risk. A senior Vatican spokesman backs the claims about permeable condoms, despite assurances by the World Health Organisation that they are untrue.

BBC Panorama featured...

an interview with a Catholic woman in Uganda who has chosen to sleep unprotected with her infected husband: "We won't go to heaven if we use condoms," she explains. Asked if the woman made the right choice, the Archbishop of Kampala, Cardinal Emmanuel Wamala, replies: "If it is wrong to use the condom, then she has made the right choice." Even if it costs her her life? "Yes," replies the cardinal. "That is a harsh teaching," the reporter responds.

Well, it may be time for the latest craziness with the discovery of a planet in the habitable zone around a lightweight red dwarf star called Gliese 581. Check out Stephen Jones' blog on the newly discovered planet.

Here's some of his views...

Christianity. Is the one true religion, in the sense of God's only way of salvation. Is proven true beyond reasonable doubt by Jesus Christ fulfilling multiple prophecies of Messiah's time of coming

Evolution. Cosmological and biological change over time in which God had no part. Does not actually exist, except in the sense of a counterfeit of the genuine article, creation.

Seems he picks up a scientific theory/article, then runs through it marking his bold comments on anything that doesn't fit his beliefs. Brilliant.

I think if my blog and Stephen Jones' anti-blog ever touched, they would immediately annihilate each other and disappear.

Ross Finnie 1 Scientists/Life on Earth 0

Here's a Scottish Wildcat. He knows he's cool. Approach to give him a stroke and he'd claw your face off, piss on you to mark his territory then disappear into the thistles before you could say puss puss puss, here puss puss puss. Anyway, I'm in a rush...

Ross Finnie, Scottish environment minister. And you Ben Bradshaw, UK Fisheries Minister. I disagree with your views strongly. If you were even a little cool and I thought you wouldn't sue for libel I could have put that more succinctly. Right...

Who are these scientists I'm about to talk about?
They belong to ICES (International Council for the Exploration of the Sea). ICES are scientists from 19 member countries and are the main source of advice for the European Union when it comes to deciding fish quotas.

2004 Quota
Scientists: Cod is at risk of extinction in EU waters with stocks at the lowest ever recorded. Recommend a ban on cod fishing off the west of Scotland, in the North Sea and in the Irish Sea.
Ben Bradshaw: The 15 nations shelved plans for drastic cuts to quotas for cod in Western Scotland. Ben Bradshaw declared the result a good deal for UK fishermen.
The Guardian Headline: EU agrees fishing quotas
Headline Should Read: Scientists told to Fuck Off.

2005 Quota
Scientists: Advise a complete halt to cod fishing in the North Sea, the Irish Sea and west of Scotland. North Sea stocks have shrunk to about one tenth of 1970 levels, warning on depletion on the scale of eastern Canadian waters where cod disappeared in the 1990s and stocks have yet to recover.
Ben Bradshaw: The EC dropped proposals to close depleted cod grounds in parts of the North Sea, Irish Sea, the west of Scotland, the Baltic and the Channel. Ben Bradshaw said "the deal strikes the right balance between maintaining a viable UK fishing industry and one that contributes to protecting our marine environment".
BBC News Headline: Fishing fleets hail new quotas
Headline Should Read: Scientists told to Fuck Off.

2006 Quota
Scientists: recommended the closure of the worst-hit fishing grounds in the North Sea. The conservation group, WWF Scotland, says it makes no sense to continue to allow targeted fishing in the North Sea cod when it's on the brink of collapse. Spokeswoman Claire Pescod: "In doing so, they are ensuring that this iconic British species has virtually no chance of survival or recovery."
Ross Finnie: Scotland's Fisheries Minister Ross Finnie said he believed the package represented a "sustainable deal". He had vowed to resist any further cut in days at sea.
BBC News Headline: Opinion Divided Over Fish Quotas
Headline Should Read: Scientists told to Fuck off.

2007 Quota
Scientists: Call for a total ban on cod fishing in the name of conservation.
Ross Finnie: The Scottish environment minister indicated he would be against even the compromise cut.
Independent Headline: Environmentalists attack deal on fishing quotas
Headline Should Read: Scientists told to Fuck off.

Well done Ross Finnie and Ben Bradshaw. A lot of fishermen will lose their jobs, but now it will be in 10 years when you've retired and cod has disappeared from the North Sea.

Well done British media. Your reporting on the Ross Finnie and Ben Bradshaw show in recent years has had all the bite of a declawed Scottish wildcat. Kept indoors.

Damn. I was in a rush too.

Traffic Patterns

Here's a picture showing some FLYSAFE developments - a European project to pimp out cockpit human-machine interfaces amongst other things seeing as air traffic is expected to triple in 20 years. Not really related to this, but anyway...

Check out William Beaty's page on road traffic patterns with loads of links on traffic patterns and simulation. I've had a suspicion that we'd all be better off if traffic lights were all removed and this is only backed up by reading about the outrage at such a suggestion from town planners. I've had plenty of experience with lights not working on my old drive to work - when the lights are out the traffic moves much better than when the lights are working. Has anyone done any good town traffic simulation with/without traffic lights? I've always wanted to have a go at simulating this. And I've always wanted to work on pimping out cockpit displays. Imagine all the stuff you could do without beer in your life.

Alphonzo Bad Boy

Okay. One more thing from myplasticheart while I've got them in mind. Speaking of Bad Boys, I've got a review of my Cannondale Bad Boy to come soon.

Differential's First Visit to Shopping Centre

Here's a cutaway of a 2006 Range Rover differential. The idea of the differential might just be the greatest piece of design I'm aware of. The problem it overcomes is this... when a car goes round a corner the wheels on the outside of the bend travel further than the wheels on the inside of the bend. So, car wheels spin at different speeds. But the driven wheels are linked together so that a single engine and transmission can turn both wheels. How can you have the wheels linked so the engine can power them, but still allow them to move at different speeds.

If I was put on a desert island and had to solve this problem it would take 100 years and involve something very complicated. The differential does it incredibly beautifully.

Check out howstuffworks. The animations with straight and turn buttons show it working. When going straight the wheels are locked together, but when turning the wheels travel at different speeds. I see it and I still don't believe it. Genius. And it may go back to 100BC, with the Antikythera mechanism.

OMG

Over at myplasticheartnyc, get the poster if you can't make their exhibition.

Maneki Neko

Okay, apparently declawing of cats is common in North America. Stop it. I didn't have to travel far... here's wiki:

Declawing is rare outside of North America, being considered an act of animal cruelty in many Western countries. In Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland, declawing is forbidden by the laws against cruelty to animals. In many other European countries, it is forbidden under the terms of the European Convention for the Protection of Pet Animals.