Archive for March, 2006
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In 1935, Boston architect Chester Lindsay Churchill completed the Mapparium, a three-story spherical globe room with a map of the world made from stained glass:
Churchill purchased large glass panels from the Hope Glass Company in England, which were then shipped to the Rambusch Company in New York. Once there, Rambusch set about the task of creating the map in stained glass. Artists at Rand McNally in Chicago used their 1934 world map to create paper map overlays (known as cartoons) as templates for each panel. Rambusch artists then traced these maps onto 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick glass panels, and then painted them with a colored powdered glass mixture. Each panel was then fired in a kiln to fuse the color to the panel. Different colors required separate firings at temperatures ranging from 1,100 to 1,350 degrees Fahrenheit. To help maintain their exact curve and shape, panels were fired in asbestos cradles. It took eight months to paint and bake all 608 glass panels.
Link (via Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society)
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This has got to be one of the weirder inventions around: a company called Flat-D Innovations is selling a doggie thong designed to reduce dog fart odors!
Link (via Strange New Products)
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Motive Power Review has an extensive photo collection of railroad snowfighting equipments: Link (via Information Junk)
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Ann Mette Heindorff has an amazing collection of stamps delineating art history, styles, and artists.
Link (via KingBoy)
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Archaeologist Yannis Lolos said that his team had unearthed the 13th century remains of the remains of a 3,500-year-old palace of Ajax the Great, a legendary warrior-king described by Homer in The Iliad.
The Mycenaean-era complex found on the small island of Salamis near Athens covers about 750 sq m (8,070 sq ft).
The chief archaeologist said it was a rare case where a palace could be attributed to a famous Homeric hero.
Yiannis Lolos said travellers and archaeologists had been looking for the site "from the early 19th Century".
Link | Wikipedia entry on Ajax the Great
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2Spare has assembled Top 87 Bad Predictions about the Future. To wit, on the computer category, are these bad predictions:
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons.
- Popular Mechanics, March 1949.
There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), maker of big business mainframe computers, arguing against the PC in 1977.
I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year.
- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957.
But what… is it good for?
- IBM executive Robert Lloyd, speaking in 1968 microprocessor, the heart of today’s computers.
Link (via The Presurfer)
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Las Vegas (where else?) Hilton Executive Chef George Bargisen has assembled the World’s Largest Buffet:
Bargisen spent 24 hours straight overseeing the mammoth spread, which included dishes from a dozen ethnic cuisines and offered everything from salmon Wellington to fried alligator, and from pumpkin pie to baklava and pistachio truffles.
The buffet has 40 soups, 100 salads, 150 deserts - all in all, there are 510 different dishes.
Link (Thanks Tiffany!)
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James Wilson of Redford, Michigan, went on strike - a very unique strike. He will stay on the roof of his house until his wife Vanessa makes their 3-year old daughter and 2-year old son sleep in their own beds and not his!
Even though our two month old daughter refuses to sleep without my wife holding her, and my two year son won’t even attempt to sleep without his pacifier, my wife still refuses to take my advice about how to fix these problems.
After begging and pleading with my wife (because I adore and love her dearly) to stop spoiling our children and ignoring my feelings, I’ve decided enough is enough.
So I went on strike — and moved to the roof of our home.
James’ website: Husband On Strike | Local6 Story
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After being held hostage in Iraq for 3 months, American freelance journalist Jill Carroll was released unharmed.
From ABC News:
Carroll, 28, was dropped off near the Iraqi Islamic Party offices. She walked inside, and people there called American officials, Iraqi police said.
"I was treated well, but I don’t know why I was kidnapped," Carroll said in a brief interview on Baghdad television.
From CNN:
Her father Jim Carroll said he was asleep at his home in North Carolina when the telephone rang at about 6 a.m. The voice on the other end of the line said simply, "Hi Dad. This is Jill. I’m released."
Link to news stories: ABC News | CNN
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This snake bowtie ad (the perfect wear for Snakes on a Plane!) is from Space Ace #5, 1952 and is just one of many fantastic vintage ads at Steve Conley’s Super Marketing: Ads from the Comic Books. Link (via Kingboy)
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From the 2002 archive of the Cellar Image of the Day, we find Liew Thow Lin - the famous Malaysian "Magnetic Man".
Liew, a retired contractor, discovered that he could have various metallic objects "stick" to his body. He even managed to pull a car using a chain attached to a metal plate that was then stuck to his abdomen. Furthermore, this super power appared to be genetic as 3 of his sons and 2 of his grandchildren also have it.
Now, scientists at a local university had examined Liew - and discovered that there was no magnetic field around him at all:
Professor Dr. Mohamed Amin Alias, from UTM’s electrical engineering faculty in Johor, agreed. After seeing Liew perform, the professor did research on the matter, and decided, "His skin has a special suction effect that can help metal stick to it." "These powers are not an illusion," he said, "That is why his two sons and two grandchildren also have the magnetic-like ability. They have his genes."
Checkout these human magnet articles at: Randi | FarShores ParaNews | Magnetic People by Simon Harvey-Wilson | Tan Kok Thai’s ability at A Welsh View
Some other photos at Sobrenatural | Edward Naumov "magnetizing" a test subject at paranormal.about.com
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From the website:
The PimpStar is a huge leap forward in the evolution of the wheel. With the PimpStar’s built-in full color LED lights, microprocessor and wireless modem, you can display virtually any image, including text, graphics, logos, and even digital photos!
The included software allows you to create your own images and send them to each wheel individually or all wheels at the same time as you drive! You can even pre-load up to six images into each wheel and program them to change automatically at the time intervals you select. The wheels are environmentally sealed, so you don’t have to worry about going to the car wash; and they are powered by the vehicle electrical system so there are no batteries to run out or change, ever.
Link (don’t miss the video! via Fastback)
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From the website:
People in several countries stopped in their tracks today to be wowed by a total solar eclipse that plunged a narrow swath of the planet into daytime darkness. The eclipse’s path began in Brazil and extended across the Atlantic Ocean, northern Africa, and central Asia, ending at sunset in northern Mongolia.
As usual, superstitions die hard:
One Indian paper advised pregnant women not to go outside during the eclipse to avoid having a blind baby or one with a cleft lip. Food cooked before the eclipse should be thrown out afterward because it will be impure and those who are holding a knife or ax during the eclipse will cut themselves, the Hindustan Times added.
In Turkey’s earthquake-prone Tokat province, residents set up tents outside despite assurances from scientists that there was no evidence of any link between eclipses and tremors.
Link (via Metafilter)
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From Underground Ozark’s note on the urban exploration of Nike KC-30 missile silo in Pleasant Hill, Missouri:
Without getting specific, we found a non-damaging way to get down into one of the underground chambers …
After a little while down there, while everyone was milling around doing their own thing, I figured out the elevator, although I didn’t immediately know it. I was playing with the controls and noticed that some lights that hadn’t been on before were now activated. So, not knowing if it would really work, I hit the button to open the launch bay doors.
The doors came SCREAMING open with a sound somewhat akin to the gates of Hell opening….
Link | Wikipedia’s entry on the Nike Missile System
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Back in 2004, Elena gained Internet fame (and notoriety) for posting photos of the abandoned town of Pripyat, Ukraine, where the Chernobyl nuclear reactor is located.
At first, Elena’s website made claims that she rode her motorcyle through the abandoned ghost town. Subsequently, people noted that instead she took a guided tour (by car) through the restricted zone and made factual errors on the site.
Regardless of the controversy, if you haven’t seen the photos, they’re worth a look.
Elena’s website (via De-tec-tive)
Other interesting sites on Chernobyl:
Gpuszczone Gallery | Mary Mycio’s Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl | Wikipedia’s Chernobyl Accident and the links within
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Mark Andermann and Christopher Moore of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT discovered an "exquisite micro-map of the brain. It’s the size of the period at the end of this sentence, and it’s in a most unexpected place — connected to the whiskers on a rat’s face."
The layout of whiskers on a rat’s face creates a topographic map, with one-to-one correspondence between a whisker and a "barrel" of approximately 4,000 densely packed neurons. Like the grid coordinates in the game Battleship, stimulating one whisker barrel, say the third one in from row D, or D3, tells the brain exactly what’s happening at that location.
Link (via Scribal Terror)
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Neatorama reader Hubs wrote:
Hip hip hurray for the Denver Public Library! Today DPL becomes the first public library in the nation to begin a new eFlicks service (which is now available on the same site as the eBooks and the audio eBooks.) which will allow you download the library’s volume of digital movies.
The service is still very new - I’ve managed to see only previews, but this promises to be good! Kudos to the Denver Public Library.
Link (Thanks Hubs!)
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Ana Fakin made this funny movie of her dog Shiva singing Hot Diggity (Dog Ziggity Boom) by Perry Como and Ray Charles Singers.
Link (Thanks Ana!)
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From the website:
The Toraja way of death is a fascinating mix of ritual, custom and spectacle. For the Toraja, the dead are as much a part of society as the living. At Lemo, cliffs rise precipitously from the rice fields like stonework condominiums. Crypts, carved with prodigious manual labour, high into the solid rock, house the mortal remains of Toraja nobility. Set among the crypts, the striking tau tau, life-size wooden effigies representing the deceased, look impassively on the world below. Tau means ‘man’ and tau tau ‘men’ or ‘statue’.
Link(via Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society)
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From the website:
By 2300 the United Nations forecasts that the global population will be just under 9 billion. World population is expected to rise, peak and then decline slightly between 2050 and 2300. The highest long term population growth is predicted for Africa. Africa is currently underpopulated and has the lowest life expectancies. Other regions’ populations are predicted to stay level or decline. Between 2050 and 2300 the areas currently known as India, China, the United States and Pakistan maintain their ranked order as having the world’s highest populations. The numbers shown here are estimates - based on predicted future behaviours.
WorldMapper’s visualization of the world’s population at year 2300 is shown above. See how fat China & India will be and how skinny Australia will be?
Link (via Metafilter)
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To salute Sam Frantz, the inventor of hybrid corn, the city of Dublin, Ohio, commissioned an Malcolm to create a field of corn ears - from concrete!
Link (via Bits & Pieces)
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Shahimi Abdul Hamid, a 33-year-old Malaysian man, set a new world record by kissing a cobra 51 times in the head in 3 minutes.
The cobra kisser said he originally planned to kiss the newly caught wild cobra 15 times in 10 minutes to beat the previous record by American snake handler Gordon Cates in September 1999.
But after successfully puckering up 51 times in just three minutes, the cobra expert said he didn’t feel like he needed to hang around another seven minutes.
Meanwhile, the poor cobra was not only kissed against its will, it was later squeezed of its venom to prove that the feat was not a scam.
Link - don’t miss the video! (via Nothing to do with Arbroath)
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From the website:
Outside our building is a sorry little sidewalk tree. At the height of summer, it had about five leaves. A dead glowstick has been dangling from its branches for three months.
Tonight while I was out on a smoke break, I looked at the tree and thought, “Man, that is one sad tree. It looks cold and wet and pathetic. It needs a sweater!”
I went home and whipped one up, it only took an hour and a half to knit. Then another fifteen minutes or so, standing outside in the cold at half past midnight, stitching it up.
Link with pattern (via Make: Blog)
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Hisashi Tenmyouya’s artwork is that of traditional Japanese style of drawings but with very modern subjects, blended with a large dose of irony and humor. Link (via Drawn)
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Kyaik-htiyo Pagoda on Golden Rock. From the website:
The golden rock is a large boulder of granite, which is supported by an extremely small area of contact with the rock beneath. It seems to be just before falling down, but it has been lying there for hundreds of years already. The pagoda upon it is erected upon one hair of the Lord Buddha.
Link (via Jaf Project)
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Snakes on a Plane is probably the only movie ever given an award by Wired for "the worst film of 2006", based on just the title and the premise of the movie.
That same title and premise also made SOAP a jolly good internet meme: it sparked tons of fan-made art, parodies, and all-round buzz.
To counter Wired, some people at IMDB are even trying to vote it top 250 movies of all time without seeing the movie.
So good is the buzz that Newline Cinema decided to go back and re-shoot the movie to take the movie from a PG-13 to an R-rating!
Link | Snakes on a Blog | Snakes on an Elevator
See also: The Ten Evil Reasons Why SOAP Rules (Thanks Norwood Matt!)
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A neat collection of art made from soda and beer cans: Link
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Blame the Gold Rush for bringing all those jack asses to California, as seen from this 1849 Gold Rush handbill.
Seriously though, for more vintage images on politics, visit Teaching Politic’s great collection of Images of American Political History.
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