Dumptruck and Porkchop are best friends, but they're ruthless competitors when they get on the agility course. April Campbell and her father demonstrate this in their video showing the pair navigate a scaled-down agility course at high speed. Dumptruck and Porkchop have to get over the hurdles and the seesaw, then through the hoops, past the hamster walk, and through the weaving poles.
Shon Simpkins, who sounds a lot like Morgan Freeman, provides the sports commentary throughout this thrilling race.
What purpose does that piece of furniture serve? Let's not pretend that you're going to sit in it. It's covered in clothes and other junk and, like your otherwise unused exercise bike, it's going to stay that way.
Birdie Picot and Matt Smith of Thing Industries have perfected a chair design for the purpose that it actually serves. They call it the Sacrificial Chair:
Like a lamb to the gods we give you this chair to sacrifice to your clothes. Designed to replace 'that chair' in your bedroom that is constantly covered in crap, this is specifically designed for that purpose. Feel good about your lazy habits.
How are you going to spend your time in your final resting place? In the future, technology will offer so many opportunities! With Wi-Fi access and a charging port, you can amuse yourself indefinitely.
But that's not why some funeral homes and cemeteries in Moscow, Russia plan to set up Wi-Fi access to the internet. The funeral homes want to make it easier for people to locate their loved ones while navigating cemeteries. UPI reports:
Artem Ekimov of Ritual funeral home in Moscow explained that Internet access can make certain needs, such as navigating the funeral grounds, easier.
"Online every person interested in the identity of the buried or the monument of his grave will be able to obtain the necessary information in the network," he said. "In addition, the internet will allow you to download a map of the cemetery."
Cemeteries in Novodevichy and Vagankovskoye had previously been equipped with terminals that allowed visitors to search for the GPS coordinates of certain graves.
During your Christmas festivities, remember that our brave stormtroopers are far from home, defending you in the long war to crush the rebellion. Frank Wu, a science fiction artist, found a great way to do that. He built a Christmas tree that looks like a Super Star Destroyer from Star Wars.
Dominique Ansel is the chef who invented the cronut and the edible cookie shot. If there was a dessert category for the Nobel Prize, Ansel would have won it by now. But he's not one to rest on his laurels. He keeps pushing out into the great beyond to boldly go where no chef has gone before.
Recently, that's meant research into s'more development. Ansel is blowing out the borders of our dessert knowledge with this beauty: the caramel black truffle frozen s'more. It looks amazing!
The Vulgar Chef (content warning: foul language) once again leads us boldly into a new future.
We've seen that Rice Krispie treat batter can be used like an edible form of clay. It can be shaped into a beer cozy or an ice cream cone. I've personally used it as a pizza crust. Now the Vulgar Chef finds a new use for Nature's greatest building material. In a mere 15 minutes of work, he shaped the batter into a taco form, then added ice cream, Reese's Pieces, and chocolate syrup. It's the perfect breakfast food!
This isn't a pair of scissors, but a clamp and forceps. The Facebook page of the West Virginia Friends of Midwives says that the iconic stork scissors used in needlework began as a clamp. Midwives would use it to tie off the umbilical cord of a newborn baby. This particular example includes forceps. This decorative silver set dates back to 18th or 19th Century France. The snake is a reference to the Rod of Asclepius. The stork is, of course, a symbol of childbirth.
I have been unable to verify the identity of this object through outside sources.
The classical ethical dilemma goes something like this:
A train is about to crash into a bus full of people. If you do nothing, it will do so and kill them. If you switch the tracks, the train will instead hit and kill only one person. Do you switch the tracks?
Imagine you’re in a self-driving car, heading towards a collision with a group of pedestrians. The only other option is to drive off a cliff. What should the car do?
If you're the passenger, then you have a lot at stake in the decision that your robotic car makes. What should you do? I'm not sure, but psychological researchers led by Jean-François Bonnefon from the Toulouse School of Economics surveyed 900 people to ask them what they thought the car should do:
They found that 75% of people thought the car should always swerve and kill the passenger, even to save just one pedestrian.
That's very noble of them. But according to Helen Frowe, a psychology professor at Stockholm University, it can get more complicated:
For example, a self-driving car could contain four passengers, or perhaps two children in the backseat. How does the moral calculus change?
If the car’s passengers are all adults, Frowe believes that they should die to avoid hitting one pedestrian, because the adults have chosen to be in the car and so have more moral responsibility.
Although Frowe believes that children are not morally responsible, she still argues that it’s not morally permissible to kill one person in order to save the lives of two children.
Arnold Lobel wrote Frog and Toad Are Friends in 1970, which was thankfully a different world at the time. What would the most famous works of children's literature be like if they were written in 2015? Kristi Olberding of Distractify has 9 photoshopped covers to show you. I can't even . . . .
Player: Piano is pianist Sonya Belousova's and filmmaker Tom Grey's ongoing series of performances of geeky music on ornately decorated pianos. In the past, we've seen her play the Tetris theme and the Akira theme. Now, in her most extraordinarily elaborate performance, the concert pianist treats us to a beautiful mixture of Star Wars music arranged for the keyboard.
The outside of the piano appears to be modular. As she plays, it variously resembles Darth Vader's suit, the Millennium Falcon, and R2-D2. Belousova herself changes costume appropriately, looking at times like Princess Leia, Lord Vader, and Han Solo.
Simeon Cortezano of Nerd Bastards interviewed Belousova and Grey about their work. Grey described the creation of the pianos:
Nerdbastards: Can you tell us about the custom pianos used for the shoot?
Grey: As the crazy person who comes up with the idea to makes these custom pianos, I can answer this one. It started with our very first video, the ‘Walking Dead.’ We didn’t really customize that piano like we do now, but for that video we had a heavy upright that we bought off of craigslist that was the biggest pain in our side. It was incredibly difficult to transport, I cut my hand on it at one point, and it even broke the ratchet strap holding it to the truck and fell over onto a bunch of our equipment. Naturally when we finally got it on set I asked my production designer, Megan Burns, to go to town on it and rip it to shreds. We hadn’t planned on actually doing that, but I really hated that stupid piano. But ultimately it looked really cool and part of the scene we were creating. After that, it evolved and Megan at this point has become a wizard at modifying pianos.
Peter Rowswell of Langport, Somorset, UK was born with a clubfoot. The muscles didn't develop properly, so he recently had it amputated.
To make the best of the situation, Rowswell invited people to guess the weight of his leg once it had been amputated. He donated the revenues from the contest to the Royal North Orthopaedic Hospital.
The winner of the contest was Rowswell's own father, who guessed 3 pounds and 10 ounces. That was the closest estimate to final weight of 3 pounds and 8 ounces. The BBC reports:
Mr Rowswell, who holds black belts in a number of martial arts, said he plans to get back to training and back on a motorbike as soon as possible.
He will be fitted with a prosthetic leg in a couple of months and aims to be back at work in six months.
"I was quite clear how I felt that this is it - the start of my better life," he said.
"I do look at where my leg was and think 'I can't believe I've actually done it - had my leg chopped off' but I don't regret it, never in the slightest."
Mr Rowswell said took the decision to have his leg removed due to needing a "stupid" amount of pain relief just to walk.
Darryl Cox says that his unique artwork "fulfills the part of me that says 'no' to convention." He begins by exploring the woods near his home in central Oregon, looking for just the right piece of wood. He then returns to his studio to merge it seamlessly into a wood picture frame. The result is a sculpture that juxtaposes the civilized and the wild. From an orderly and ornate frame seemingly living tendrils reach out beyond old borders.
Actor Tom Baker played the fourth known incarnation of the Doctor (below) from Doctor Who. According to an internet rumor that I cannot verify, this document is the BBC's official instructions for knitting the Fourth Doctor's iconic scarf. Get out your sonic needles and go to work.
Walking by the gourmet and exotic cheese section of the grocery store always gives me pause. If I want to treat myself, I may pick up Port Salut--my favorite. Now the blog When on Earth has presented even more temptations for me to indulge in. Here are unique cheeses from 37 countries around the world, such as Romania's Năsal, which is pictured above. Here's what it tastes like:
Coming from the village of Năsal in Romania, Năsal cheese is hard and reddish on the outside but soft and creamy on the inside. It is recommended to be served with dry red wine and be accompanied with slices of red onion, red grapes, nuts or crackers.
Which cheese on the list do you want to taste first?
