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13 Oct 00:06

A big chunk of the Sierra Nevada caught fracturing on video

by Scott K. Johnson

If you like geology, you’re used to relying on an active imagination. Most geologic processes occur too slowly to see them play out for yourself. Many of the exceptions are dangerous enough that you might not want a front row seat or are rare enough that the odds of being there to witness them are disheartening. Sometimes, though, the Earth throws us a bone—or in this case, a gigantic slab of granite.

One interesting way that rocks weather and crumble apart is called “exfoliation.” Like the skin-scrubbing technique, this involves the outermost layers of exposed igneous or metamorphic bedrock sloughing off in a sheet. Over time, this tends to smooth and round the outcrop—Yosemite’s Half Dome providing a spectacular example.

We’re not entirely sure just what drives the peeling of an outcrop’s skin like this, but the classic explanation is that it’s the result of bringing rocks that formed at great pressure up to the surface. Once there, the outer layers can expand slightly, creating a physical mismatch with the layers below them.

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07 Oct 07:30

Storm

by submission

Author : Connor Harbison

It was a bright and stormy orbit. Wave after wave of solar radiation buffeted the Barracuda, wreaking havoc with her electronics and damaging her solar sails. Captain Aguilar frowned at the display on the bridge.

“Sir, the mainsail can’t take much more of this. We had to bring in the mizzen, and the foresail is showing signs of strain too,” said Lieutenant Chen.

“Can we bring all the sails in? Just ride out the storm on this trajectory?”

“Negative, sir. Our outermost sensors are already fried. If we stay put eventually everything will shut down, first sail controls, then shielding, and finally life support and other crucial systems.”

“I see.”

Not an enviable situation to be in. Aguilar had only been in one other stellar storm of this magnitude. At that time Aguilar had been a midshipman, and there were more senior officers on which to rely. Now it was all on his shoulders; every soul aboard the Barracuda depended on the captain to see them to safety.

“Adjust the mainsail and foresail to catch the brunt of the stellar wind,” Aguilar decided. “Unfurl the mizzen as well. I want a full press of carbon.”

“Yes sir.”

Aguilar watched apprehensively as the carbon nanotube sails unfurled then adjusted themselves. Seconds later the entire ship began to change direction, running before the cascades of high energy particles ejected by the nearby star.

“Captain, we’re getting reports from the crew that the sails are tearing.”

“It’s not coming up on any of the displays.”

“The sensors that feed into those displays went offline hours ago. We’re relying on old fashioned word of mouth from the crew.”

“Very well. Inform them that the sails will stay up. Tell the helmsman to bring her four points to starboard.”

“Right away, sir.”

Lieutenant Chen carried out the captain’s orders, keeping his reservations to himself. Aguilar was unorthodox at times, but he always got the right results in the end. Chen hoped for his own sake, and that of the crew, that the captain knew what he was doing this time.

“Captain, mizzen is in shreds, foresail is almost the same. The mainsail is holding, but I’m not sure for how long. There are a dozen tears in it.”

“Fine, fine. Stow all sails. Get them out of this bombardment.”

Lieutenant Chen never knew how the captain could stay so calm in dire straits like these. He relayed the orders before looking to Aguilar expectantly.

“What now, sir?

“Now? We wait.”

The Barracuda was down to basic life support and communications by the time they picked up a friendly signal.

“This is Vanquisher Station, come in Barracuda.”

“Captain Aguilar of the Barracuda. We’ll need help coming in to dock. Our sails were ripped up in the stellar storm and we don’t have much in the way of control. Right now we’re just coasting on inertia.”

“You made it through that storm? A dozen ships must have been lost in that. We’re still repairing the station.”

“Well add another item to your repair list,” said Captain Aguilar. “The Barracuda needs to be made whole.

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06 Oct 06:38

Luminaris

by Duncan Shields

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

Luminaris.

They called it a slingshot planet. It had what was known as a linear pendulum orbit.

So far it was the only one on record. It was caught in a gravity well between four stars of different colours. It was a planetoid that tried to thread the needle and failed every two months, nearly escaping before being pulled back through. Like a giant playing catch with itself.

Uniquely stable as far as the scientists could tell, it had been going up and down (or back and forth depending on how you looked at it) for nearly half a billion years.

The four suns were a white dwarf, a blue dwarf, a red giant, and a yellow sun like Earth’s.

The ‘orbit’ took two months. Standing on the Luminaris, a person would see the four stars huddled on the horizon to the east while at its furthest point, a bright quartet of glittering color nearly lost in the endless field of billions of quiet points of light. Then the ‘left’ orbit started and the planet sped backwards, the four zenith stars growing larger and brighter as they got closer to Luminaris. Those four stars spread farther apart, obliterating the sky with light as the planet passed through the eye of the needle and experienced a four way ‘sunfall’ from each compass point. It sweltered in the kiln of the four eyes of a cruel god as the suns washed it in radiation and then spat it out again. Then the suns dwindled to the west and the sky got dark until they huddled on the opposite horizon, waiting to grow and return to the east during the ‘right’ orbit.

For one month in between the suns, it was a permanent sunset of plaid in the sky. Sunrays shone from four different directions in four different colours, making the clouds into a circus-clown cotton-candy rainbow gallery of stripes and swirls.

The most brilliant aurora borealis of any recorded planet rippled through the clouds to add to the fun, riddling the magnetosphere with greens, yellows, purples and reds so bright that they were clear during the daylight. Shades of every colour bloomed and washed through the sky. Even new colours were invented here.

Artists wept. Writers tried in vain to capture the hues. Some people went mad from looking at it.

To go there was very expensive. People could be heard saying for the rest of their lives, with as much condescension as possible, “Oh that’s a nice green but it’s not a Lumigreen. You know what I mean? Of course you don’t. It’s like, well, it’s hard to say. You just had to be there.”

I’ve been here for eighteen years now. I was the mankind’s first trillionaire after finding a way to mine the asteroid belts. I tired of the pressures of big business and allowed a few squabbling mining corporations to buy me out. I can afford to live the rest of the days here on Luminaris and I plan to do just that.

I’m a nomad by choice here, walking from resort town to resort town across the desert of Luminaris while the storm of colour comes and goes above me. I’m mistaken for a vagabond for the most part and I don’t mind.

The sky talks to me. The colours riot. People have told me I’m delusional but the sky tells me the truth. The colours have told me how to live a life of complete peace. Buddhism seems belligerent in comparison.

The colours wash my smiling face as I walk under a kaleidoscope rainbow firestorm of epiphany.

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04 Oct 17:36

The African Mystery

by submission

Author : Charles E.J. Moulton

William felt relieved, actually.

One more hour of digging and his hands would have lost all their flesh.

William threw down his shovel, straightened his back, stretching his muscles and positively felt his 50 year-old bones snap, crackle and pop inside his body.

The termite nests he had found proved it.

The small parasites had caused the fairy circles.

“One more picture,” William whispered to himself, lifting his Nikon D4 and pushing the button. He triggered utter panic down there. He loved watching the little guys. Was that mean? William didn’t know. The fact of the matter was that lonely William found himself at last in the position of being able to deliver the geological institute a definite solution as to why these strange fairy circles were appearing along the African coast.

Fairy circles? Why had William become so interested in these things at all? That Spanish ufologist came to mind, that dark guy with the dyed blond hair. A whole evening’s worth of discussion had commenced and prompted William to prove the Spanish guy wrong. Standing here in Namibia five years later, that damn sun transforming his skin into a wasteland of wounds, William remembered yelling at that guy that Africa was not the U.S. and that the American crop circles were not to be compared with the African coast.

Termites.

William reached toward his back pocket and took out his lukewarm water. The liquid felt cool trickling down his throat, cooler than the African sun. In comparison with that sun, the wind seemed chilly. In comparison with the heat, the water seemed refreshing. In comparison with the surrounding grass, these bare patches of wasteland seemed desolate. Eaten by parasites, devoured by insects, all life extinguished to serve one breed of vermin.

William took a few tired steps toward the large stone, throwing the bottle into his bag. Too many years now, too much research. It was time to go home now, take all his research, all those probes, all those little bugs, all that red sand, and give it to the institute in Johannesburg.

William wanted to spend at least a month just doing paper work at his office, eating pizza with his kids over the weekend, making love to his wife on Friday nights, enjoying an Orange River South African Pinotage red wine and a Bobotie dish of South African ground meat with an egg topping. No more than a few jotting of words in his notebook and he could call his wife and tell her to bring out the Scrabble game and pop the pop-corn for the kids.

No time for phone-calls, only time for the dropping of William’s notebook and pen. Had he not been seated, William would’ve stumbled.

The sun darkened because of the size of the arriving spaceships. William now knew what the Spaniard had described and how it was to see a UFO: the disability to move, the increased heartbeat, cold sweat running down a spine, the tingling of the nerve cells, the fear, then three alien ships burning three new dead fairy circles into the Arican ground.

When the alien walked out and took him by the hand, William didn’t protest. Questions were asked, information was exchanged and somewhere inside one of the ships he saw him: the Spanish ufologist. He smiled. It seemed, he belonged there.

William left the fairy circles forever, drove home, made love to his wife, gave up geology and became a painter.

William’s UFO-experience remained a secret for the rest of his life.

Termites remain the official cause of the circles.

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01 Oct 02:44

Color Me Pink

by submission

Author : C. Chatfield

“Shoot it.”

“Shut up, Jim.”

“It might be dangerous.”

“A bear wanders into my yard, I call Animal Control. I’m not gonna shoot it just for being here, Gabe.”

“Sure. You got the number for Alien Control?”

“Quiet. It’s probably not an alien.”

“You ever see goo move like that?”

Next to the three men, a patch of rippling orange goo extended probing tendrils into the surrounding underbrush. There was a sizzling sound as the creature began to sink through the vegetation. After a moment of contemplation, it trembled and assumed the shape and texture of the dissolved grass and bushes: a flawless disguise, if not for the stubbornly garish shade of orange.

“What do you think you’re doing, Jim?”

“I’m just gonna nudge it.”

Jim eased up to the phony grass and poked it with the toe of his brown boot. He let out a yelp and fell backward, abandoning the boot, as the ooze reared up in one flowing motion. By the time his friends lifted him off his rear, all that remained was a bright orange boot sitting in a circle of dirt.

“Christ!” Jim grasped for Gerry’s gun, his eyes the size of golf balls. “Shoot it!”

The creature ballooned upwards until it towered over the terrified men. The pillar of ooze collapsed squarely onto Jim, cutting off his screech.

Gerry and Gabe stood frozen while the goo twisted and writhed into a humanoid shape. A moment later, the new Jim was shaking out his limbs and humming, surveying the empty meadow with satisfaction before turning to the two men.

“Weapon?”

Gerry nodded numbly and handed over the gun.

“Truck?”

Gabe gave him the keys.

The new Jim drove the car in a meandering arc before rolling down the passenger window to speak to them in a halting voice, choosing each word with painstaking care. “Thanks, guys. I gotta say, I’m sorry about your friend. If it helps, he’ll live on inside of me. In one way, I’ll give him a new life. It should be very exciting.” He paused and cocked his head, “You two probably don’t have much information about this planet that I didn’t already get from your friend, so I’m gonna leave you here. Go ahead and try to tell someone what happened, but I don’t think anyone’ll believe you.”

He waved and drove off, leaving Gerry and Gabe to gape. When the taillights had disappeared and the dust settled, Gabe sank to his knees. “Dear God, what’s going on? No one’s gonna believe us. They’ll probably say we killed Jim, if that goddamn maniac hasn’t taken over the world by tomorrow. And, oh Christ, Jim is gone, Gerry. Gerry? Are you okay?”

Gerry shook his head, his entire body racked with silent, hysterical giggles. He waved a shaky hand in the direction of the truck and the unsuspecting town,“D’ya think it knows it’s orange?”

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19 Sep 19:50

The creator of 'Minecraft' is leaving the studio he created; read his goodbye letter

by Chris Plante

Today, Microsoft confirmed its plan to purchase Mojang, the studio responsible for the wildly popular video game Minecraft, for $2.5 billion. The purchase will give Microsoft one of the most popular brands in video games. The acquisition will not, however, secure Minecraft's creator.

This morning, Markus "Notch" Persson announced he will be leaving the studio he created. He posted the following letter onto his website and Pastebin.

I'm leaving Mojang
September 15th, 2014
I don't see myself as a real game developer. I make games because it's fun, and because I love games and I love to program, but I don't make games with the intention of them becoming huge hits, and I don't try to change the world. Minecraft certainly became a huge hit, and people are telling me it's changed games. I never meant for it to do either. It's certainly flattering, and to gradually get thrust into some kind of public spotlight is interesting.

A relatively long time ago, I decided to step down from Minecraft development. Jens was the perfect person to take over leading it, and I wanted to try to do new things. At first, I failed by trying to make something big again, but since I decided to just stick to small prototypes and interesting challenges, I've had so much fun with work. I wasn't exactly sure how I fit into Mojang where people did actual work, but since people said I was important for the culture, I stayed.

I was at home with a bad cold a couple of weeks ago when the internet exploded with hate against me over some kind of EULA situation that I had nothing to do with. I was confused. I didn't understand. I tweeted this in frustration. Later on, I watched the This is Phil Fish video on YouTube and started to realize I didn't have the connection to my fans I thought I had. I've become a symbol. I don't want to be a symbol, responsible for something huge that I don't understand, that I don't want to work on, that keeps coming back to me. I'm not an entrepreneur. I'm not a CEO. I'm a nerdy computer programmer who likes to have opinions on Twitter.

As soon as this deal is finalized, I will leave Mojang and go back to doing Ludum Dares and small web experiments. If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I'll probably abandon it immediately.

Considering the public image of me already is a bit skewed, I don't expect to get away from negative comments by doing this, but at least now I won't feel a responsibility to read them.

I'm aware this goes against a lot of what I've said in public. I have no good response to that. I'm also aware a lot of you were using me as a symbol of some perceived struggle. I'm not. I'm a person, and I'm right there struggling with you.

I love you. All of you. Thank you for turning Minecraft into what it has become, but there are too many of you, and I can't be responsible for something this big. In one sense, it belongs to Microsoft now. In a much bigger sense, it's belonged to all of you for a long time, and that will never change.

It's not about the money. It's about my sanity.

15 Sep 16:08

Shorter X

by Molly Horan
A7b

Sometimes boiling down a movie or book to a few sentences can have amusing results.

14 Sep 18:32

Photographer Thomas Herbrich Took 100,000 Smoke Plume Photos Looking for Unexpected Shapes

by Christopher Jobson

Photographer Thomas Herbrich Took 100,000 Smoke Plume Photos Looking for Unexpected Shapes smoke

Photographer Thomas Herbrich Took 100,000 Smoke Plume Photos Looking for Unexpected Shapes smoke

Photographer Thomas Herbrich Took 100,000 Smoke Plume Photos Looking for Unexpected Shapes smoke

Photographer Thomas Herbrich Took 100,000 Smoke Plume Photos Looking for Unexpected Shapes smoke

Photographer Thomas Herbrich Took 100,000 Smoke Plume Photos Looking for Unexpected Shapes smoke

Photographer Thomas Herbrich Took 100,000 Smoke Plume Photos Looking for Unexpected Shapes smoke

Photographer Thomas Herbrich Took 100,000 Smoke Plume Photos Looking for Unexpected Shapes smoke

Photographer Thomas Herbrich Took 100,000 Smoke Plume Photos Looking for Unexpected Shapes smoke

Over the last three months photographer Thomas Herbrich snapped some 100,000 individual photographs of smoke, looking for unexpected anamalies and fortuitous coincidences where familiar shapes emerged. It’s fascinating to see how the brain tries to create order out of chaos, just like looking up at the clouds, suddenly familiar patterns seem to stand out: faces, hands, or scrolls of paper. After carefully sifting through each image Herbrich selected 20 final shots for this series, aptly titled, Smoke. These are a few of our favorites, but you can see the rest here.

Update: Apparently the psychological phenomenon of seeing images or recognizing patterns in random images/data is called pareidolia. Thanks, Sam!

13 Sep 18:59

The Rise And Fall Of Nintendo... As A Rock Band

by Nathan Grayson

Link as a European EDM legend. Wario's dumb laugh. Mario's sex tape and drug addiction. Skater Mega Man. Bowser's tiny puppy. Peach's pop career. The band going viral. Rolling Shell Magazine. Yoshi gets an island. Yoshi gets an island. This video is perfect.

I'm not often prone to straight out gushing, but this video re-imagining Mario, Luigi, Donkey Kong, Link, and more as the story of a rock band's meteoric rise and drug-fueled fall is incredible. So clever, so spot-on, so many great cameos and references. Man. This just made me so happy.

If Nintendo's world was a VH1-friendly rock fantasy, this would be it. All the actors nail the look and feel of their parts, and this video weaves so many Nintendo tropes into a band story in a way that actually makes sense.

The craziest part? The video is by a band called Patent Pending, so they also released an entire EP of the music used in the video. It's... kinda good! Definitely catchy, amusingly cliched, and one of the songs has more consecutive uses of the word "bro" than I've ever heard in a single three minute span—all of which makes sense given the context.

Watch it. I know it's a little lengthy, but pull up a chair, get comfortable, and prepare yourself for fully serious lines like, "You don't understand what it's like to look back and realize you tornado punched your own brother. I've gotta live with that." So good.

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13 Sep 17:16

FCC Gets Record Volume of E-mail Complaints

by Brad
6c5

Yesterday’s protest set a new record for bringing more than 1.5 million comments in advocacy of net neutrality to the Federal Communications Commission’s inbox, the highest volume of e-mail complaints the U.S. federal agency has ever received in a single day since Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.

12 Sep 21:17

Impossible GTA V Flying Has to Be Seen to Be Believed

by Leon Hurley

Impossible GTA V Flying Has to Be Seen to Be Believed

YouTuber Mario4LYF3 seems to have a different kind of gravity in GTA V to the rest of us as they put their jet through some incredible moves in this video.

This post originally appeared on Kotaku UK.

The grasp they have of how the game's gravity works is incredible here as they use stalls and gently tweaked thrusts to pull off some incredible stunts, flying through buildings, upside down under freeways and generally floating around like they were born with those wings. (Via Rockstar)


Impossible GTA V Flying Has to Be Seen to Be Believed

This post originally appeared on Kotaku UK, bringing you original reporting, game culture and humour with a U from the British isles. Follow them on @Kotaku_UK.

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12 Sep 20:01

The NSA Was Going to Fine Yahoo $250K a Day If It Didn't Join PRISM

by Robert Sorokanich

The NSA Was Going to Fine Yahoo $250K a Day If It Didn't Join PRISM

When we first learned about NSA metadata collection, we wondered how readily the biggest tech companies acquiesced to the government. Today we start to find out. This is the story of how Yahoo was coerced into PRISM, as told by court documents cited by the Washington Post today.

Read more...

11 Sep 18:27

Who's Faster: Superman or The Flash?

by Brad
Fb4

In this latest animated sketch from Dorkly, the Flash learns an important lesson about the physics behind Superman’s superpower.

11 Sep 18:25

Photo















11 Sep 05:52

Today is #InternetSlowdown Day

by Cory Doctorow

The FCC heard from so many Americans who want an Neutral Net that its website crashed. More than a million people told the FCC not to put the cable companies in charge of the Internet -- less than one percent of commenters opposed Net Neutrality.

Despite the astroturfers who compared a fair Internet to Communism, messages like the scathing John Oliver rant have carried the day in the court of public opinion.

But will it convince the FCC? Will Tom Wheeler, who used to run the cable lobbyists before he became FCC Chairman, listen to his golf buddies and former colleagues, or to the people he has sworn to serve? Will the FCC be shamed into doing the thing that we all know is right?

Well, that's up to us.

Today is #InternetSlowdown Day. It's the day that people all over the Internet show Washington what kind of world they're trying to make -- a world of bland, cable company fuckery, where the thing that determines your success on the Internet is how well your sales force sells the cable company on the premium carriage contract -- not whether you're making something that people love and want to see.

The net neutrality campaign smashed every FCC comment record. Now we're going to do it again.

Visit https://www.battleforthenet.com/sept10th/, and get the tools you need to participate: swell avatars for your social media uses, banners and dialog boxes you can install on your site -- everything you need to help boost the net neutrality campaign from millions to tens of millions of people pledging their support for the Web we all want.

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11 Sep 05:47

Infographic: Results after legalizing pot in Colorado

10 Sep 18:01

On the Phone

'No idea what I was thinking! Haha! But anyway, maybe we should check out what this Ba'al guy has to say.'
10 Sep 06:53

Baristas Are Misspelling Your Name on Purpose

by Molly Horan
22a

This sketch suggests the name on your Starbucks cup might be intentionally far from the name you actually gave.

09 Sep 22:55

Report: Microsoft Trying To Buy Mojang, Creators Of Minecraft

by Luke Plunkett

Report: Microsoft Trying To Buy Mojang, Creators Of Minecraft

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that, according to "a person with knowledge of the matter", Microsoft is in "serious discussions" to buy Mojang, the studio that made smash hit Minecraft.

The deal is reported to be worth a whopping $2 billion, and "could be signed as early as this week".

We've contacted both Microsoft and Mojang for comment, and will update if we hear back.

It's worth remembering that in June this year, Mojang founder Markus Persson wrote in a blog post:

Mojang does not exist to make as much money as possible for the owners. As the majority shareholder, I'd know. Every time a big money making deal comes up that would make a lot of money, it's of course very tempting, but at the end of the day we choose to do what either makes the most sense for our products, or the things that seem like fun for us at Mojang.

Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang [WSJ]

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09 Sep 22:45

GoldenEye Watch Face Makes Me Really Want A Smartwatch

by Mike Fahey

GoldenEye Watch Face Makes Me Really Want A Smartwatch

Thank goodness for hungry children, because if not for them I'd be blowing $250 on a Moto 360 right now for no other reason than to load it with the watch face from GoldenEye 007.

Android enthusiast site Phandroid brings this snappy GoldenEye watch face to light. Dubbed the "Secret Agent Watchface" by its creator on Google Play, it uses the iconic Health and Armor bars from the classic Nintendo 64 game to meter battery charge. From what I've read about the Moto 360 so far, that means those bars will deplete really fast.

If you aren't interested in buying a dubious piece of hardware that's very likely going to look like a crappy toy in a few hours (it's Apple conference day!), watch the video Phandroid shared of ten minutes of paused GoldenEye is a suitable substitute.

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09 Sep 22:17

Reminder: The Game Boy Was Almost Indestructible

by Luke Plunkett
Bewarethewumpus

I've dropped my brick down flights of concrete stairs, and it still works like a champ.

Reminder: The Game Boy Was Almost Indestructible

Yes, a Game Boy survived a bombing raid. But as famous as that story is, who's to say it wasn't a fluke? So Wired got Nintendo's old handheld and did some slightly more scientific study on it.

I say slightly because that test involved dropping it a couple of times then having a giant man smash one with a sledgehammer.

Which isn't very scientific at all, but while the hammer was entertaining, that 15-foot drop was impressive. I've dropped phones - made from all kinds of modern, advanced composites and materials not even used in 1989 - from 1/4 of that distance and had them almost disintegrate. Yet the Game Boy was almost unscathed.

Nintendo Gameboy vs. Sledgehammer - WIRED's Battle Damage [Wired]

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09 Sep 21:59

Duck Tales Opening with Actual Ducks

by Don
Bewarethewumpus

Woo-ooh.

D26

The Oh My Disney YouTube channel recreated the entire opening sequence from late 1980’s animated television series Duck Tales using real ducks.

09 Sep 21:18

New wind-tunnel tests find surprising gains in cycling efficiency from leg-shaving

by Cory Doctorow

A 1987 wind-tunnel trial established that leg-shaving was basically useless, used a miniature leg-model with hair glued to it for its control; when the experiment was re-run this year with a human leg, the savings were a whopping seven percent.

Writing in Triathlete, cyclist Jesse Thomas describes his experiences re-running the leg-hair trials. A subsequent trial of five more cyclists confirmed the findings.

As the Globe and Mail's Alex Hutchinson points out, this contributes to the burgeoning case for confirming the results of classic experiments, a practice that is largely discouraged, with many of the major journals being closed to reports on confirmation experiments.

The problem in the research community is that scientists have little incentive to duplicate earlier work just to check if it’s correct. Many journals have explicit policies forbidding the publication of work that attempts to replicate previous experiments. In contrast, when the journal Social Psychology devoted a special issue earlier this year to attempts to replicate 27 “important findings” in the field, 10 findings could not be reproduced.

In this case, Cote contacted Kyle, the author of the earlier study, to ask if he had any ideas about the discrepancy between the two results. It turned out that the 1987 test involved a fake lower leg in a miniature wind tunnel with or without hair glued onto it – hardly a definitive test, and yet it was enough to persuade most people not to bother with further tests for the next three decades.

The revised results should remind us not to place too much faith in any single experiment, and to consider all findings tentative until replicated – including the new shaving findings.

The curious case of the cyclist’s unshaven legs [Alex Hutchinson/Globe and Mail]

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09 Sep 18:17

Invasive Installation

by John
Bewarethewumpus

Via Yousef Alnafjan

Invasive Installation

09 Sep 18:01

jessehimself: Pennsylvania Judge Sentenced For 28 Years For...

Bewarethewumpus

Via Lori



jessehimself:

Pennsylvania Judge Sentenced For 28 Years For Selling Kids to the Prison System

Mark Ciavarella Jr, a 61-year old former judge in Pennsylvania, has been sentenced to nearly 30 years in prison for literally selling young juveniles for cash. He was convicted of accepting money in exchange for incarcerating thousands of adults and children into a prison facility owned by a developer who was paying him under the table. The kickbacks amounted to more than $1 million.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has overturned some 4,000 convictions issued by him between 2003 and 2008, claiming he violated the constitutional rights of the juveniles – including the right to legal counsel and the right to intelligently enter a plea. Some of the juveniles he sentenced were as young as 10-years old.

Ciavarella was convicted of 12 counts, including racketeering, money laundering, mail fraud and tax evasion. He was also ordered to repay $1.2 million in restitution.

His “kids for cash” program has revealed that corruption is indeed within the prison system, mostly driven by the growth in private prisons seeking profits by any means necessary.

—-

Why might this not be a HUGE national story and his name not household? I’ll give you one guess what color those kids were.

09 Sep 06:55

My mum read me this gem a few years ago

09 Sep 06:51

Don't Try This At Home: Man Chugs Bottle Of Jack Daniels In 13-Seconds

jack-daniels-chug.jpg This is a video of ready-to-die Will Williams chugging a fifth of Jack Daniels in 13-seconds. You should not try this at home. Or a friend's home. Or in a nearby parking lot like Will is in the video. Nice Mumford & Sons shirt, by the way. You like that 'I Will Wait' song a lot? That's very hardcore of you.
"We were appalled at the video because it depicts very irresponsible and dangerous behavior," Jack Daniel's spokesman Phil Lynch told the Daily News. "Many people don't realize that kind of consumption could be very harmful to people and could kill them in certain circumstances."
Wait -- many people don't realized that chugging an entire bottle of liquor could be harmful? How do people not know that? Are these the same people that are into butt-chugging? I bet these are the same people that are into butt-chugging. You know, maybe alcohol just isn't for you. Keep going for the video.
08 Sep 20:53

ACTUALLY FUNNY stupid sh*t that high schoolers wrote during their probable writing prime...

07 Sep 06:48

huffingtonpost: Columbia University Student Will Drag Her...













huffingtonpost:

Columbia University Student Will Drag Her Mattress Around Campus Until Her Rapist Is Gone

"I think the act of carrying something that is normally found in our bedroom out into the light is supposed to mirror the way I’ve talked to the media and talked to different news channels, etc," Emma continues in the full video which you can watch here. 

07 Sep 02:21

"Poisonous" Vs. "Venomous"

by Don
Bewarethewumpus

Also applies outside the animal kingdom.

Remember kids, poison is ingested, venom is injected.

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