Water turns red with blood as four hundred bottleneck dolphins lie dead or dying on the shore of Zanzibar on Saturday April 29, 2006. Although the exact cause is still a mystery, scientists are surmising that a loud burst of sonar was the cause:

Some scientists surmise that loud bursts of sonar, which can be heard for miles in the water, may disorient or scare marine mammals, causing them to surface too quickly and suffer the equivalent of what divers call the bends – when sudden decompression forms nitrogen bubbles in tissue.

A U.S. Navy task force patrols the coast of East Africa as part of counterterrorism operations. A Navy official was not immediately available for comment, but the service rarely speaks about the location of submarines at sea.

Link

This one is titled "Knife Thrower". Don’t miss Mark’s photography portfolio, including the ones he took for the Ça Ira opera.

Link (The flash-based navigation is a mystery to me, but the photos are worth it Thanks Michal Hovevaj!)

This website is building the world’s largest virtual stadium – they have more than 35,000 fans. As a fan, you can reserve a free seat and dress up your avatar in various outfits and hairdos.

Link (Thanks dali!)

For the last 13 years, about 250 families in the depressed inner city of South Central Los Angeles have depended on an urban farm. Now, they are facing eviction as a new Wal-Mart is coming to town.

The issue is actually more complex: turns out that the farm is on private property, and the owner is not being compensated.

Link to South Central Farmers’ website | NPR Report | Life & Times Blog (Thanks George H.!)

What is Peteena? From the website:

Technically, Peteena is a 9-inch, white, plastic doll that uncannily resembles a poodle. Peteena bears the shameful scars of her lowly, mass-manufactured origins in the legend "Hasbro 1966" imprinted on her butt (Hasbro, however, denies all knowledge of Peteena). Peteena wishes to stress to all you cyber-whatevers out there that she is not and never has been computer generated. Peteena has a very real (and very pampered) corporeal existence.

Link (Thanks Allison!)

From the website:

Brix is composed of a wall of virtual bricks and a camera that sees what is happening in front of the wall. When one approaches the wall, the surface reflects the image captured by the camera, in a thousand rectangular pixels. The image of the inter-actor slips onto the wall and after a few seconds, freezes as a photograph. Brix, prefigures a new form of palimpsestual electronic architecture.

I had to look up palimpsest – it means "an object, place, or area that reflects its history".

Link (Thanks Steve!)

Students at Canada’s Simon Fraser University designed this cool purse called the Ladybag that can detect its contents and alert the owner when something is missing:

To design the purse, the students used off-the-shelf technology. Into the bottom of the bag they embedded a radio frequency identification reader, which is powered by a nine-volt battery.

They wired the reader to a screen-like panel in the front of the bag, which contains three patterns of light-emitting diodes.

Each pattern is an icon representing an essential item that the owner does not want to leave home without. In the prototype, these items are a set of keys, a wallet, and a cell phone.

Lastly, they attached an RFID sensor to each of those items.

As long as each item is missing from the Ladybag, its corresponding icon lights up. As the keys, phone, and wallet are each placed into the tote, the icon blinks off.

Link (Thanks David R!)

Definitely a weird (and interesting) choice of art medium: wrecked abandoned cars. Link (Thanks Yawfren!)

Scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute and the Charité Hospital in Berlin, Germany, have created a brain-machine interface that translates brainwave signals into letters and words.

Although the current invention is still crude, it’s easy to imagine that in the future, you won’t have to type out your letter, just think it out!

...in the long term, such a brain-machine interface could replace the joystick in electronic gaming or serve as a communication tool for people unable to speak or sign.

"We are dreaming of something like a baseball cap with electrodes in the cap that can measure the brainwaves," said one of the scientists behind the project, Klaus-Robert Mueller of the Fraunhofer Institute.

"People could just put on the cap and have a wireless connection from these electrodes to a computer and they can play video games."

Link (Thanks David R!)

What would Frank Lloyd Wright’s blog look like? What would he blog about? Well, his Gingerbread House, of course…

Link (A part of the Lost Blogs, where people blog as their historical figures of choice. Thanks Hubert Sorbet!)

MooBella invented a computer-controlled vending machine that makes ice cream on demand, from scratch (the ingredients are flash frozen in 10 seconds!).

From the website:

On the machine’s front is a computer screen running on a Linux operating system. It displays menus of possible flavors and allows the user to create any combination, such as low-fat coffee ice cream with Oreo cookies. If the machine runs out of a flavor, it stops putting it on the menu and sends a message to MooBella asking for a refill.

USA Today Article | MooBella company website (Thanks Scott Taylor!)

We’ve featured one of Sean’s creation before (4-foot tall Lego Homer), now check out one of his other creations: New York’s Greenwich Village built with 50,000 Lego bricks.

Link | Brick Apple | Sean’s official website (Thanks Yayo!)

We love Phillip Torrone of Make (Hi Phil!). Take a look at his funny clip reviewing Logitech’s Quickcam Orbit MP webcam.

Link (via Boing Boing)

Definitely one of the more unusual uses of Excel, Microsoft’s spreadsheet software: Link (link maybe slow, via J-Walk Blog)

Take a look at Winston’s other montage artworks: Link (via Kingboy)

Mega Mona Lisa has a mega collection of hundreds of user-submitted Mona Lisa Art. Link (via Geisha Asobi)

See how you stack up against these giants of times past: Link (Thanks Tim Mosley!)

From the website:

Salt is of crucial importance for life. It has served as money, played a vital part in the religious rituals of many cultures and has been the cause of bitter warfare.

The Salar de Uyuni, in Bolivia, is the largest salt desert in the world and is located at an altitude of 12000 feet. The Quechas Indians have harvested the salt since centuries. The glare on this huge white plain is extreme.

To nourish their animals, the Ethiopian Borenas, near the Somalia border, extract a valuable but muddy black salt from the deep crater lake of a volcano. The water is as thick as oil and acidic, and yet the workers dive here daily.

See more of Remi’s photos: Link

From the website:

So there it is. A violin, shaped like a fine leg of Serrano Ham, created by Jaromir Bazant, ‘Maestro Luthier’ of Valencia. The booth showing this was so keen to demonstrate his artistry that they had a real leg of ham displayed under the violin.

Link (via Exploding Aardvark)

They’re not kidding when they call themselves Precise Modeling:

Fully scratch built, this model took just over 15 years (8000-10,000 hours) to complete. Begun in Kiev (Ukraine), in 1986 this masterpiece was profoundly difficult to construct due to the extreme scarcity of information on it. In 1986 the Mil-24 was still a top secret piece of military equipment. A set of blueprints was ultimately obtained from the manufacturer and over 1000 photographs were used to ensure complete accuracy in the reproduction. …

This helicopter has many authentic features including: linked controls (pedals that work in parallel motion), a battery powered motor that spins the main and tail rotor in the actual ratio of the original, adjustable tail rotor pitch, fabric covered stabilizer, landing gear with pneumatic rubber tires, compressable shocks, working lights, locks ,fans, aimable guns and titanium engine parts.

Complete accuracy is followed right down to the rivets and screws whose diameter and separation are kept to scale.

Link (via digg)

Richard draws photo-realistic illustrations using only pencils. Link

Archaeologists discovered a 1,500-year-old pyramid under Mexico City:

The unnamed pyramid has the same sized base as the giant Pyramid of the Moon at the famous archeological site of Teotihuacan, an hour’s drive northeast of the capital, which is known as the "City of the Gods" and is Mexico’s biggest ancient city.

Archeologist Jesus Sanchez said on Wednesday the latest find was built by the same people who constructed Teotihuacan between A.D. 400 and 500, and has evidence that it was used for ceremonial purposes.

Link | Christian Science Monitor Article

Seems like pyramids might be everywhere! Scientists have begun digging on what might be a pyramid hidden beneath a hill in Bosnia…

Known as Visocica, the 650m (2,120ft) triangular mound, overlooking Visoko, has long been shrouded in local legend.

The Bosnian archaeologist leading the project says it resembles pyramid sites he has studied in Latin America.

Initial excavations have revealed a narrow entrance to what could be an underground network of tunnels. … The team found two intersections with other tunnels leading off to the left and right.

Their conclusion was that it had to be man-made. "This is definitely not a natural formation," said geologist Nadja Nukic.

Link

From the website:

Dated over 2,000 years old this skull is an extreme example of binding and elongation. Cranial binding is the shaping of the skull, when a child is very young, usually an infant. This wrapping is often done with rope or cloth by itself or against a wooden board. This results in the misshaping, flattening (see our cradle-board skull, BC-222) or in this case elongation. This wrapping, or binding is thought to be the oldest form of
body modifications, dating back 9,000 years. This particular skull is from Peru, but this practiced has occurred in other regions as well.

For other fantastic cast of bones, see: Link (via Jaf Project)

From the website:

Disney is launching a US service that will enable parents to monitor how their children use their mobile phones.

They will be able to track voice, text, video and picture messages and set limits on their children’s calls.

The phone will also allow parents to locate where their children are via a global positioning system.

Link (via Information Junk)

Take a look at this edutainment-fun time slider: Link (via del.icio.us)

Forbes has created the world’s map of billionaires. That big blue dot in Washington state is Bill Gates. Link

Nearly 1,900 people converged in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin to bunny hop their way to claim the World’s Longest Bunny Hop.

During the afternoon, 1,880 people joined in Lake Geneva’s second attempt to hop for five minutes straight and claim the World’s Longest Bunny Hop.

Organizers are hopeful that their latest attempt will break the current record of 1,501 participants jumping together in 2002 in Detroit Lakes, Minn., according to the Guinness Book of World’s Records.

Link

Another bad album cover, this time by Boston.com:

This particular none-too-uplifting album to the left is by Freddie Gage.

Link

Take a look at how Russian bodybuilder Alexander Vishnevskiy does the robot. Indescribable!

You Tube video clip: Link (via Nothing to do with Arbroath)