Friday, March 03, 2006

Giant Batch of Links

You guys are sending me so many good links it's hard to even keep up. Here's a sampling.

From Michael O'Reilly, a link to a Yahoo news story about, well, this:
Half of the world's human population is infected with Toxoplasma, parasites in the body—and the brain. Remember that.

Toxoplasma also alters the behavior of rats, making them do things they non-infected rats wouldn't do. Stupid things. So maybe people who get high from being stupid only do so because they're infected.

I like the sound of that.

Here's the link:
http://tinyurl.com/9x644.

Okay, I'm not going to name the person who sent me the next link, but it is unbelievable. It's a sports bra company, and they have this handy little program that lets you put in your bra cup size and then they do simulations to show you how much less your boobies would jiggle with their bra. If you're a guy, I defy you to go to that site and not put in "F cup" first and the highest level of activity. Because we're all twelve-year-olds and always will be. This is probably not safe for work if simulated naked boobie jiggling will get you in trouble.
http://www.shockabsorber.co.uk/bounceometer/shock.html.

From Elliot Weed, a link to an article about Spinosaurus now being officially recognized as the largest carnivorous dinosaur.
http://tinyurl.com/pcbma.

From Ron Watkins, a link to an interesting and thorough article about quantum computing and why "off" can still be "on."
http://cosmicvariance.com/2006/02/27/quantum-interrogation/.

From Glen Haag, a link to a nightime view of the world from Google maps. Very cool.
http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/~pesti/night/.

From MSNBC:
Scientists have found what they believe are traces of the lost Indonesian civilization of Tambora, which was wiped out in 1815 by the biggest volcanic eruption in recorded history.

I thought Krakatoa (which is actually east of Java, not west) was the biggest volcanic eruption in history, but this story says the 1815 eruption was FOUR TIMES more powerful. Incredible.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11594274/.

From Wired, a fantastic article about the problems Richard Linklater is having as he tries to finish A Scanner Darkly, based on Philip K. Dick's novel of the same name. Specifically, the rotoscoping is causing all kinds of difficulties.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.03/scanner_pr.html.

Finally, Iain Bruce sent me a link to the most amazing open source project ever: an attempt to break three German intercepts from World War II. They were created with the Enigma machine, the cryptographers at Bletchley Park never solved them, and there are now over 2,500 computers working on the solutions. Here's the link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4763854.stm.

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