"People thought there was something fishy about it," Ibnale said. "There wasn't. It was just free umbrellas."
Ibnale was one of a dozen people in San Francisco who had been given $100 by a startup charity that is trying to get strangers to start doing nice things for other strangers. It's a novel concept. Most folks, it turns out, aren't prepared for it. "What's the catch?" a man asked.
No catch, replied Ibnale. Take an umbrella. You're getting wet.
"No, thanks," the man answered, and kept walking through the rain. Ibnale began keeping count. He asked 27 wet people if they would like to have an umbrella. Seventeen of them said no.
For amputees, what they experience when they're trying to walk normally is what I would experience if I were carrying an extra 30 pounds," said Art Kuo, professor in the Univ. of Michigan departments of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering.
Compared with conventional prosthetic feet, the new prototype device significantly cuts the energy spent per step.[...]
Based on metabolic rate measurements, the test subjects spent 14 percent more energy walking in energy-recycling artificial foot than they did walking naturally. That's a significant decrease from the 23 percent more energy they used in the conventional prosthetic foot, Kuo says.
"We know there's an energy penalty in using an artificial foot," Kuo said. "We're almost cutting that penalty in half."
You may have heard that when US troops stormed one of Saddam's palaces they stumbled across lurid posters by fantasy artist Rowena Morrill. But did you know that she's a close friend of Boris Vallejo, the artist who drew the iconic poster for The Empire Strikes Back depicting Darth Vader with two lightsabres crossed over his head?
Does the poster's image sound familiar? It is remarkably similar to Saddam's Hands of Victory monument commemorating Iraq's victory over Iran. The arch in central Baghdad consists of two bronze casts of Saddam's forearms holding two 43-metre-long crossed steel swords melted down from the weapons of slain Iraqis; the helmets of vanquished Iranians litter the base of the hands.
On inauguration day in 1989, Saddam rode through the arches on a white horse, declaring "The worst condition is to pass under a sword which is not one's own or to be forced down a path which is not willed by him".
Could this all be coincidence? Perhaps, but you'll be convinced otherwise once you've read about Saddam's private militia's uniform. Before his son, Uday, handed over control of the Fedayeen Sadaam (translation: "Saddam's Men of Sacrifice") to his younger brother he wanted to give his father something to remember his work by. So he presented Saddam with their new uniform: black shirt, black trousers and a ski-mask over which a strikingly Darth Vader-esque helmet was placed.
Called "the most elaborate Atomic Energy educational set ever produced" by the Oak Ridge Associated Universities, this sophisticated science kit contained four types of uranium ore, its very own Geiger counter and a comic book called Learn How Dagwood Splits the Atom. A form on the back of the instruction manual allowed a burgeoning Ernest Rutherford to send a note to New Haven, Conn., bearing the message, "Gentlemen: I need replacements for the following radioactive sources, (check which): ALPHA____, BETA _____, GAMMA ______ or CLOUD CHAMBER SOURCE____."
Mechanical engineer and inveterate tinkerer Bill Gurstelle fondly recalls the Atomic Energy Lab, saying, "everybody wanted that kit." Nowadays, he adds, "science kits are just sugar and salt." This kit appeared 21 years too soon—the as-yet-nonexistent CPSC never got a chance to ban it. In the meantime, here are the results of our recent experiments with eight new, and decidedly less radioactive, science kits.
Faced with a determined group of militants, the resourceful prime minister decided that there was only one option.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the liquid refreshment did the trick and defused any of the group's lingering desire to kidnap their genial host, along with assurances they would guarantee his party a landslide victory if they went through with their plan.
"He asked and received permission to pack a few things and was given 10 minutes' grace.
"After that they were offered and accepted beer. John and Priscilla returned and the kidnap project abandoned.
The Sandpit is a video composed of 35,000 tilt-shift photographs taken in New York City. Director Sam O'Hare wrote about this project:
I have always loved time-lapse footage, and films like Koyaanisqatsi especially, which allow you to look at human spaces in different ways, and draw comparisons between patterns at differing scales. I also really liked the tilt-shift look of making large scenes feel small, and wanted to make a film using this technique with New York as its subject.
via Bits & Pieces | About the Film
She survived a gunshot to the chest, but the the bullet left a scar and deflated the implant.
"She's just one lucky woman," Dr. Ashkan Ghavami told the LA Times. "I saw the CT scan. The bullet fragments were millimeters from her heart and her vital organs. Had she not had the implant, she might not be alive today."[...]
An LAPD firearms instructor told the Times it's possible the implant interrupted the velocity of the bullet.
"I don't want to say a boob job is the equivalent of a bulletproof vest," Scott Reitz told the Times. "So don't go getting breast enhancements as a means to deflect a possible incoming bullet."
I began folding my series of miniature models around the beginning of April 2008. One day I took a random strip of paper and cut a square to fold a crane out of it. I was daydreaming so I wasn’t paying attention to how small the paper was. After completing the crane I realized it was rather tiny. This is the crane I present in my piece called Born from the Hand. I only used tweezers for the last few folds. The paper size must have been about 15×15mm. After I folded that crane I decided to try folding an even smaller crane, which I present in Born from Fingers and Born from the Pinky. I also began folding various other models in miniature form. As the pieces were gettting smaller or more complex. I needed to rely on tweezers more often. The smallest work I’ve created to date was Born from the Cell which was folded from a 3×3mm piece of trace paper. However when it gets that small it becomes very difficult to take a photo of; especially with a simple point and shoot camera. Normally I fold something at a size that can be photographed for a particular concept while still being impressively small.
Although we can’t say how this will change over time, at the moment the older generations are for one reason or another (tech savvy, interest, etc.) not using social networking sites to a large extent. This probably reflects general internet usage, but we suspect the difference is enhanced when it comes to the social media sphere where site usage tends to be more frequent and time-consuming than usual.
It is also noteworthy that social media isn’t dominated by the youngest, often most tech-savvy generations, but rather by what has to be referred to as middle-aged people (although at the younger end of that spectrum).
Picasso’s sculpture of the bicycle saddle and a handlebar was the first example of a work made from everyday things, using junk or scrap. Like other of Picasso's firsts this work opened up new possibilities for artists. In this instance - sculptors, who for centuries had employed traditional materials such as stone or wood now instead, many of them began to incorporate junk materials into their work (known as assemblages) or fashion new objects from them. The works are a great example of the inventive genius of Picasso and the ultimate inspiration for RoboSteel.
The 60 tonne catamaran (or is that trimaran?) has cost 18 million euro ($24.4 million USD) to create at the Knierim Yacht Club in Kiel in northern Germany and will be launched waterside next month with sea trials due between June and September. To achieve to full photovoltaic capture there are solar covered flaps that are extended at the stern and amidships.
SunPower has provided approximately 38,000 of their next generation all black photovoltaic cells, an efficiency of at least 22%, which they believe to be the highest efficiency solar cells commercially available. Maybe it's buried somewhere on the PlanetSolar site, but I missed what storage medium the boat will use once it has harnessed the sun's energy.
