John Farrier's Blog Posts
What you're looking at is a huge mass of pumice--volcanic rock that can float. Aircraft and naval vessels from New Zealand are studying the 10,000-square mile body which is likely the product of a recent underwater volcanic eruption:
The stretch of golf-ball-size pumice rocks was first spotted this week by a New Zealand air force plane about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) northeast of Auckland. The rocks stretch for about 26,000 square kilometers (10,000 square miles). [...]
Scientists say the rocks likely spewed up in an eruption by an underwater volcano.
Link -via Ace of Spades HQ | Photo: New Zealand Defense Force
Ronen Tinman's artisic motto is that everything deserves a second chance. That's why he takes old cars that aren't roadworthy and gives them new purpose as furniture. Here's a sink cabinet that used to be a Volvo. At the link, you can also find a Citroën hood serving as a table, a BMW 318 chest and a motorcycle fuel tank turned into a bag.
Link -via Dude Craft
Hockey, sausage and lasers--three wonderful things that belong together. Aapo Mattila etched this portrait of Timo Jutila, a famous hockey player from Finland.
Link -via Tasteologie
The spider was there for five days before doctors discovered it:
A woman who checked into China's Changsha Central Hospital Wednesday (Aug. 8) with an itchy ear learned she had a small spider dwelling in her ear canal, according to news reports. It had crawled inside five days earlier while she slept.
That's probably something that you should keep in mind when you go to bed tonight. Spiders are just looking for opportunities to crawl into your ears. They watch you as you start to fall asleep. Do you feel a little itch in your ear right now? That may be a spider that got in last night.
Link -via Geekologie | Image: Rednet.cn
The best thing that you can do when you have a hostile encounter on the road is to drive away. Just drive.
This is the second best option. Especially if the jerk has conveniently left his car windows down.
Link -via Glenn Reynolds
In “The Return of Harmony,” the demon Discord threatens to destroy Equestria. Twilight Sparkle’s friends are picked off one by one, until she alone is left to find a means to defeat him. She immediately runs to her library and searches her collection for the answer. She finds inside one volume the mystical Elements of Harmony, which she uses to banish Discord.
It's a great metaphor for the value of libraries and librarians in an information age. The hero of the tale is Twilight Sparkle, the librarian of Ponyville and the protagonist of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. She is undoubtedly intelligent, considerate and brave. But is she, from a professional’s point of view, an effective librarian? What follows is an assessment of her in that capacity.
Organization
Twilight’s libraries are profoundly disorganized. This is apparent in the first few minutes of the first episode. Twilight’s responsibility is to manage a library in Canterlot, Equestria’s capital city. But books are piled in stacks with no adherence to any cataloging scheme.
Her organizational work in Ponyville is initially no better. Twilight’s stacks are in shambles—so much so that she can’t find information that she desperately needs. Spike, her library assistant, knows exactly who to blame: Twilight herself.
Eventually, Twilight’s inadequate organizational skills and knowledge of cataloging induce a major crisis when she is unable to locate a critical spell in an archive in Canterlot. What can she do? Twilight cries in anguish, “I don’t know!”
Matt Elder's Yoda on Dagobah captures the sage perfectly. Elder rendered it with oil on gessobard, mostly with the use of a palette knife.
Link -via Comics Alliance | Artist's Website
The dog thought that he had his prey trapped. But Action Cat is not so easily defeated. Watch our hero ride a surfboard to safety.
No, your time machine hasn't taken you to an alternate universe. This is just an old nickel that, in the hobo nickel tradition, has been carved with an alien design. Visual News has a roundup of other alien designs, which you can view at the link.
In the America of a century ago, grave robbing was a lucrative business. The deceased didn't seem to mind, but their living relatives did. So they often went to great lengths to secure the bodies, including the use of steel cages.
But the best defense is a strong offense, so the more serious graveyard keepers used guns and tripwires to shoot robbers. Among their options were coffin torpedoes:
In 1878, a number of "Coffin Torpedoes" hit the market. One design by Phil Clover of Columbus, Ohio was for an abbreviated shotgun that rested just inside the coffin lid. Once the lid was raised, the gun would fire directly into the face of the violator, discharging a number of 36-caliber lead balls.
Another inventor, Thomas N Howell, perfected two different "Grave Torpedoes." Each was more like a landmine than any firearm. Borrowing Civil War technology, Howell's device weighed 8-pounds and carried a charge of more than .75-pound of black powder ignited by a percussion cap. Buried atop the coffin with a protective plate above the torpedo, if disturbed the metal plate would help serve as a shape charge directed right at the would-be grave robber. An advertisement for the weapon declared that it would allow one to, "“sleep well sweet angel, let no fears of ghouls disturb thy rest, for above thy shrouded form lies a torpedo, ready to make minced meat of anyone who attempts to convey you to the pickling vat.”
In 1881 at least three men were killed when one such device ignited during a late night traipse through the cemeteries near Gann in Knox County, Ohio.
Link -via American Digest
Thanks to YouTube user Zyphorg, the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation can collectively sing Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe." Lots of Worf and Beverly Crusher clips. Not enough Ferengi scenes, even though the Ferengi have a refined sense of romance and irrestible allure.
-via Nerd Bastards
Weather is no obstacle or excuse for the committed motorcyclist--even the extremes of Antarctic weather. That's why Bob Sawicki and Toby Weisser, two mechanics at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, built this chopper-style snowmobile from scraps four years ago:
“This is what McMurdo is throwing away,” Sawicki proudly pointed out to a visitor gawking at the heavy-framed snowmobile. The brake is a bent crowbar, the accelerator handle an old tent pin. Pre-bent pipes found in a waste metal recycle bin worked perfectly in shaping the frame.
“This was all stuff we found in the garbage — or headed to the garbage,” Weisser said.
The two mechanics, who work in the station’s Mechanical Equipment Center (MEC), spent their weeknights and Sundays off constructing the snow machine. They estimate it took about six weeks to build from start to finish, including a week salvaging parts out of recycle bins.
A discarded pickaxe, latched onto the long front forks, serves as an emergency break. So far, they haven’t had to test that feature. The tired motor, Sawicki said, really can’t pull the heavy frame too quickly.
Link and News Story -via Paul Overton | Photo: Peter Rejcek
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