Friday, November 23, 2007

Friday Links!

A "Nobody Wanted to Come in to Work Today" Edition of Friday Links, so punch in, tune out, and start reading.

One Rock Band note: Jacob Pursley let me know that Tribe (who I've written about on multiple occasions) has a bonus song in Rock Band. Now if they'll just add Supercollider, I'll be set.

From Sean Hoyt, here's a link to a video of a jet plane hitting a wall--at 500 MPH. It was all part of a controlled test, it's spectacular, and you can watch it here.

Here's an excellent link from Sirius to a story at Wired titled "10 Great Snake-Oil Gadgets." This is my favorite quote: When it comes to gadgets, perpetual motion machines are bullshit's bread and butter. See the article here.

Also from Sirius, a link to "7 Incredible Natural Phenomena You've Never Seen." They're spectacular, and they're here.

And the hat trick from Sirius, and it's particularly appropriate link around Thanksgiving. It's called "Turkey Day Chemistry In the Kitchen," and it's a series of Popular Science articles that you can read here.

Here's another holiday-food related article, this one from the NY Times, and it's about an easier way to carve a turkey. It's the "butcher's method," and you can read about it here.

From Tim Lesnick, a link to one of the most amazing case mods I've ever seen--it's wooden and hand-carved. Amazing, and you can see it here.

Mitch Youngblood sent in a link to an article titled "The Most Sensuous Car Shapes Ever Designed." There are some fantastic pictures, and it's here.

From New Scientist, a link to a story about an imaging machine--buried in ice at the South Pole. Here's an excerpt:
A giant imaging machine buried in ice at the South Pole could one day create pictures of the Earth’s core...Currently under construction, IceCube is designed to detect subatomic particles called neutrinos, which are so evasive that they can slip quite easily through the body of the planet.

The machine consists of thousands of detectors and will eventually fill a cubic kilometre of ice. The detectors look downwards, watching for the distinctive flash of blue light that means a neutrino has come through most of the planet only to get snagged in the Antarctic ice.

The main aim is to look for neutrinos from exotic objects in deep space, such as the giant black holes in galactic cores, using the bulk of the Earth as a shield to screen out unwanted noise from other cosmic particles.

Read about it here.

From Garrett Alley, a link to the discovery of ancient sea scorpions that were larger than men. And we thought the Japanese film industry was just making it up. See it here.

David Gloier sent in a link to a story about cockroaches--the robotic variety. They can even fool real cockroaches, and you can read about it here.

From John DiMinno, a link to a video that demonstrates just how important music can be, and that's all I'm going to tell. Well, except for telling you that it's a video about hamsters. See it here.

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