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Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Chilean Earthquake May Have Shortened the Length of a Day on Earth
This view of Earth comes from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra satellite.
Yikes! Just how big was the magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile? One scientist says the shaking may have affected the entire planet by shifting Earth on its axis. This possibly may have shortened the length of each day on Earth by about 1.26 microseconds. Using a complex model JPL research scientist Richard Gross computed how Earth's rotation should have changed as a result of the Feb. 27, 2010 quake. If his figures are correct, the quake should have moved Earth's figure axis (the axis about which Earth's mass is balanced) by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters, or 3 inches).
(...)
Read the rest of Chilean Earthquake May Have Shortened the Length of a Day on Earth (189 words)
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How to write about self-washing, self-flushing cat boxes? With passion!
Some love the Internet because it lets you keep in touch with your far-flung friends easily and inexpensively. Others adore it because it gives you near-immediate access to a frightening amount of information. Yet others appreciate it because it gives you an opportunity to write about self-washing, self-flushing cat boxes. I'm not a cat person, but as a reader I'm happiest when someone is passionate about what they're writing. And if you visit the Amazon page for the first-generation self-washing, self-flushing cat box (yes, a second generation, with more or better something, has since come out), you will be confronted by people who are quite passionate, positively and negatively, about this particular technological innovation. The one by "N.A. Cat Lover" is particularly worth reading: "The question is not IF, but WHEN you will find yourself hunched over your cat's feces floating in a pool of fetid water, picking small plastic pellets out of the opaque, pungent water with your fingers so that you can get the device put back together."
It helps to love what you're doing, even if you're writing about cat feces. N.A. Cat Lover is certainly having fun with his or her writing. Last week my friend Doug Chandler passed on something he read recently in a Raymond Chandler (no relation, I think) biography:
"A writer who hates the actual writing is as impossible as a lawyer who hates the law or a doctor who hates medicine...The actual writing is what you live for...How can you hate the magic which makes a paragraph or a sentence or a line of dialogue or a description something in the nature of a new creation?"
Which brings us to the text on the back cover of Jason Sheehan's Cooking Dirty: A Story of Life, Sex, Love and Death in the Kitchen:
"This was The Life. The part they can't teach in culinary school, don't ever show on TV. The unscheduled death and disasters and heat and blistering adrenaline highs, the tunnel vision, the crashing din, smell of calluses burning, crushing pressure and pure, raw joy of it all as the entire rest of the world falls away and your whole universe becomes a small, hot steel box filled with knives and meat and fire; everything turning on the next call, the next fire order, the twenty, thirty, forty steaks in front of you and the hundreds on the way. This was what made everything else forgivable. And I knew that if I could just do this one thing, all night, every night, under the worst conditions and without fail, nothing else mattered."
Doesn't this make you want to cook, right now? I enjoyed the book a great deal, in part because it reminded me, at a time when I'm figuring out what my next job should be, how important passion is when deciding how you want to spend 40-100 hours a week. Do you care about what you're doing? Does it matter to you? You're lucky if you have a job for which you're passionate. If you're not lucky, you have to find a way to develop a passion and do more than just get through the day. And if you can't do that, maybe you can write about self-washing, self-flushing cat boxes in your free time.
For more on amateur reviews (it's where I first learned about N.A. Cat Lover), including the obligatory image of a Three Wolf Moon shirt, there's a good roundup on The Poetics of Amateur Product Reviews at Design Observer.
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Lego that makes you want to cry
And not in a good way. I have blogged about scary Lego before, but the capacity of the AFOL ("Adult Fan of Lego") community to twist everybody's favorite happy Danish building toy into Bosch- and/or Giger-esque abominations has pushed darker boundaries since then. This godawful* thing by prolific and talented builder Mike Foy is just called "The Void," and, if I may suggest, belongs on the cover of some trendy modern edition of a very old and very evil book full of unspeakable things. [via The Brothers Brick]
*By which I mean: I love it, Mike. Keep it up!
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Starbucks to introduce 32-oz coffee supersize, the "Trenta"
Starbucks is reported to be test-marketing a new supersize called the "Trenta," delivering 32 ounces of any cold coffee beverage and a week's worth of caffeine tremors.
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Artsy photos of breakfasts in different countries
I love this series of photographs by Germany's Oliver Schwarzald of breakfasts from around the world (although from the looks of it they are mostly from the Western world). Can you guess where the coffee, croissant, and cigarette are from? (via Designboom)
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Steampunk Art: 11 Steam Powered Character and Fiction Elements
[ By Marc in Gadgets & Geek Art, Technology & Futurism. ]
[ WebUrbanist - By Marc in Gadgets & Geek Art, Technology & Futurism. ]
Steampunk, the aesthetic of Victorian clothing and steam powered technology, is known best for its old timey costumes and eccentric, cog-laden accessories, but there's a whole side to the movement that's exploding in popularity: Artwork. The airships with their sky captains, the rumbling, lurching machines of war, and mustachioed heroes with rocket packs provide a plethora of content for any artist. Here are 11 of the best and most intriguing types of steampunk artwork:
(Images via anidea, steampunkscholar, steampunkmagazine)
A large part of the steampunk appeal is the variety of characters and the uniqueness of their clothing, appearance, and behavior. The Airship Captain and his nemesis the Air Pirate… the Soldier of Fortune with a rocket pack… the variety is endless. It's natural that paintings and digital art would spend a lot of time focusing on these characters and their eccentricities. Bright colors and a lot of movement give these portrait subjects the appearance of swiftness and power.
(Images via boingboing, infinitecoolness, templates, lanalog)
Any sci fi world has to have robots, as they're a crucial focal point for the examination into humans and technology. With steampunk's emphasis on pushing the boundaries of technological innovation (albeit via outdated science), the creation of robots is a large factor in the genre. The clockwork, cogs and gears, element makes robots even more interesting because of their apparent fragility and uniqueness.
(Images via cgsociety, omega7red, saintview)
The only thing more fun than a clockwork robot is a clockwork robot hundreds of feet high. As is natural in any scenario that involves brilliant Professors, some of them are bound to be insane and power hungry, and just downright villainous. Whether these lurching colossi were created by an ambitious government power, or a greedy tycoon, they always add excitement to a steampunk tale. Artists have a lot of fun illustrating the destruction these creations can wreak on an urban center.
(Images via steamlords, ottens, mykeamend, phoenixnewtimes)
Airships are one of the staples of steampunk, and their importance to the movement is well represented by the amount of artwork centered on them. Whether they sail through the sky using gigantic Zeppelin style balloons, or are kept aloft by gigantic flapping wings and rotors, they are a stunning visual example of all that's interesting about the culture, and the technological dream it represents.
(Images via ebsqart, elfwood)
Just as fantasy subcultures have an intense subculture that revolves around cartography, mapping the various lands in fictional universes with beautiful sketches and old style maps, steampunk has schematics of the intricate clockwork machines and attachments that are required in any interesting steampunk tale. Schematics are often beautifully rendered, but they're also just as often quick entertaining sketches that appear to have sprung out of the mind of some madcap Professor.
(Images via izismile, darkroastedblend, haikubaikou)
As any steampunk world is part of a fictional universe, some artists tend to take the aesthetic into a more abstract direction. They dream of worlds in which animal and machine are combined, or where machines have become so advanced under steam power that they're as ingrained as cars are in our world.
(Images via peachbeach, brassgoggles, steampunkrings, elfwood)
The prolific inventor and wildly intelligent inventor / gentleman is one of the many character types that are popular in costuming and art. The combination of old style stateliness with action and wild accessories lend an interesting duality to these characters.
(Images via myfreewallpapers, ubersuper, cghub, commissioned, ottens)
Victorian landscapes and visions of classic city centers is always beautiful. When you add the steampunk aesthetic, these landscapes can transcend what is truly possible and become utopian (or extremely industrial). The steampunk emphasis on machines and technology allow artists to incorporate incredibly interesting elements into what would otherwise be a mundane cityscape.
(Images via ottens, brassgoggles, drikoland)
Star Wars has leaked into nearly every subculture since its premiere in 1977, and steampunk is no exception. While many artists concentrate on creating costumes for Stormtroopers and Darth Vader that represent steam technology, there are also plenty of painters and digital artists who have taken a stab at this famous trilogy and its characters.
(Images via aj-concepts, gaiaonline, darkroastedblend, streettech)
Transportation is a fun element in any steampunk fiction. Pneumatic tubes, incredibly fast railroad cars, and powered bicycles are just some examples of the shaky steam powered vehicles that are common. The only requirement is that they be groundbreaking for the story's period, and that they break down often, but can always be repaired on the go, and are always able to kick back into action when a second's delay would have meant doom.
(Images via thegeekcouch, pinkkryptonite, forbiddenplanet, conceptart)
Any fiction includes war, but steampunk fiction adds new twists, with even more exotic ways for nations to butt heads. Flying ships, napalm, rocket packs, tanks and robots, all add to the variety of troops and machines that can be sent against one's enemies. In some fiction nations fight in the old style, with alternating volleys of steam powered muskets and rocket barrages, but in most tales, it becomes much messier. Giant war machines are typically at the center of any big battle, and they add an intimidating visual element to steampunk artwork.
Want More? Click for Great Related Content on WebUrbanist:
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Steampunk has gone from an obscure science fiction genre to a style all of its own. Here are some creative Steampunk artworks, fashion designs and other inventions. 30 Comments - Click Here to Read More »» Master Blasters: Science Fiction Weapons to Die For
Mostly harmless? I think not! Any aliens who receive our old TV and radio transmissions will be raising their tentacles in submission once they get a glimpse of sci-fi's greatest hitmen and their weapons of mass annihilation. 14 Comments - Click Here to Read More »» 13 Thrilling Ways Steampunk Art Hijacks Hi-tech
Steampunk gadgets please geeks and non-geeks alike. So polish up that monocle, bring on the brass and banish cookie-cutter clutter as Steampunk hijacks hi-tech back to the future! 14 Comments - Click Here to Read More »» [ WebUrbanist - By Marc in Gadgets & Geek Art, Technology & Futurism. ] Sent from James' iPhone
God tells man to microwave alarm clock and shoot up hotel room
A 53-year-old Michigan man surrendered to police after shooting up a hotel room and putting the alarm clock in the microwave, according to the Associated Press. He left this note: God delivered me from evil and placed me in Albion, Michigan."
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Rube Goldberg music video
Check out this excellently-executed Rube Goldberg machine, featured in this OK Go music video.
When the rock band OK Go, famous for their viral videos including the spectacular and award winning "treadmills video", wanted to feature a 4-minute long Rube Goldberg Machine in an upcoming video, they tapped Syyn Labs to build it. The requirements were that it had to be interesting, not "overbuilt" or too technology-heavy, and easy to follow. The machine also had to be built on a shoestring budget, synchronize with beats and lyrics in the music and end on time over a 3.5 minute song, play a part of the song, and be filmed in one shot. To make things more challenging still, the space chosen was divided into two floors and the machine would use both.
Update: Eliot Phillips IMed me to point out an incredibly cool MAKE connection! The official MAKE racer, the Make: Way Escort appears in the video not only as an actual car but also in Lego form!
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