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.
http://customwheel.com/custom_wheels/default.php?pimpstar=1 (don't miss the video! via Fastback)
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.
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.
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....
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.
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.
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)
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?
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.
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.
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)
