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Illustration by Shaun Tan
The Book Review has an annual roundup of the best in children’s books from an illustrative point. Books for kids are crucial for learning the language, and if you can lure them in with outstanding visuals, all the better. NYT has the ten best, including this one from Shaun Tan’s “Tales From Outer Suburbia.” Tan also won a slot in 2007 for the phenomenal, wordless “The Arrival.”
A couple of weeks ago I posted about the robot that plays volleyball. Add this to the growing list of sporting droids: a robot that can pitch a fastball to another machine that can hit (although that looks like an easy play by the short stop… I bet the mad scientists are working on that one now). Will the Singularity take place in a sports arena?
There is some evidence that peeling a hard-boiled egg is not as easy as it was a couple of decades ago. The reason why might surprise you -older eggs are easier to peel, and the eggs we eat are fresher than ever! As an egg ages, it loses both moisture and carbon dioxide, which causes the air bubble between the shell and the membrane to get bigger. A bigger air pocket makes eggs easier to peel.
While I’ve noticed the Peeling Problem most distinctly with superfresh farm eggs, the eggs you buy at the supermarket could be getting fresher too. Most American eggs are produced and distributed by agribusiness concerns like Cal-Maine and Rose Acre, which each have more than 20 million hens cranking out eggs just for you.
Statistics on the time it takes for an egg to go from hen to supermarket have not been calculated, a USDA representative told Wired.com, but there’s some reason to believe that new production techniques could be delivering eggs to markets faster.
A 1998 report by the agency found that big consolidated chicken egg facilities, which wash and package the eggs on-site instead of sending them to a separate processing location, could reduce the time from farm to store from 100 hours to 53 hours. And, according to Cal-Maine’s SEC filings, the industry continues to centralize, squeezing out the old facilities in favor of the new ones.
So if you are going to use hard-boiled eggs in your Thanksgiving dishes, you might want to purchase your eggs soon. Link -via Unique Daily
Fiat Lux is a lamp with a switch that hovers underneath -no strings attached! The ball-shaped switch is magnetic, and rests on the lamp when not in use. When you approach the lamp, it turns itself on. Then you “hang” the switch underneath, where it levitates by magnetic force. Move the switch to turn the lamp off. Designed by Constance Guisset and Grégory Cid. Link -via Metafilter
A tree snail found in the tropical forest near Cairns, Australia has been named after the late Steve Irwin. Dr. John Stanisic of the Queensland Museum named it Crikey steveirwini.
The scientist described Crikey steveirwini as “a colourful snail, with swirling bands of creamy yellow, orange-brown and chocolate giving the shell an overall khaki appearance”.
“It was the khaki colour that immediately drew the connection to the late Crocodile Hunter,” Dr Stanisic said.
National Geographic’s Adventure Magazine named ten people as Adventurers of the Year, and invite you to rate each of them to help them determine the readers’ choice top adventurer. One of the profiles features 37-year-old Dean S. Potter, rock climber, tightrope walker, and BASE jumper. Potter set a world record in 2009 by jumping off a high face of Switzerland’s Eiger in a wingsuit and sailing for almost three minutes! The trip was 9,000 feet vertically and four miles horizontally. Links to all adventurers. Link to voting. -Thanks, Ethan!
SwissMiss discovers that Google Reader offers several sorting options, including this one:
I’ve started a new project on flickr called Limericks for Naughty Children. Here’s a sample, and here’s the full set. I’m having a bit too much fun making them.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Ape Lad.
National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen is one lucky man. Not only did he get to swim and take photos of a 12-foot leopard seal in the Antarctic (and didn’t get eaten), he was actually "adopted" by it!
I slipped into the water, terrified of what might happen, and I swam up to this leopard seal. My legs were shaking and I had dry mouth. Right away she dropped the penguin. She came up to me and she opened her mouth … and her head is twice as wide as a grizzly bear’s head. She’s huge. She took my whole head and my camera inside her head and did this threat display.
But then the most remarkable thing happen. She went off and got me a live penguin. She came up and she started to feed me a penguin. She kept letting these live penguins go and the penguin would shoot past me and she’d look disgusted as she go by me. She did this over and over.
And then I think she realized that I was this useless predator in her ocean, probably going to starve to death and I think she became quite panicked and she got me weak penguins then dead penguins …
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]
Hulu, which I understand is not available to the whole world (apologies), has a great video by Gerald Calderon. It’s quite possibly the best explanation of the origin of life ever presented on film. The art direction, the narration, the whole 40 minute production really sums up the scientific record, and is full of win.
15 billion years ago the Universe just suddenly was. 5 billion years ago, the Earth and Sun formed a healthy bond. Then things started getting interesting. Single celled organisms, coral, and amazing advancements though the millenia are represented here. 600 million years ago was when transfer of genes through sex became the new fad, and diversity took over. 400 million years ago, life started flourishing on dry land.
This is seriously some of the best underwater footage we’ve ever seen. Highly recommended if you’ve ever wanted to see an octopus eat a same-sized crab.
Link, again apologies if you can’t see this. | Image by Steven Hobbs
