Friday Links!
A bizarre compendium, in easy link form.First, off an absolutely scorching edition of Matt Sakey's Culture Clash. Scorching!
From Tim Jones, a link to something amazing: the 20 Most Fascinating Prehistoric Paintings. The pictures are incredible, but please note that the embedded YouTube video to the right is not a cave painting, but rather a young woman in your area who would like to meet you.
From Doug Walsh, a whimsical story about Kathryn Bertine, an excellent (but not great) cyclist who decided she wanted to ride in the Olympics. So she started e-mailing every country she could think of, and here's part one of what happened.
From Sirius, an amazing article titled Black Fungus Found in Chernobyl Eats Harmful Radiation, and I'll leave it to you to figure out the subject. The details are incredible.
From Jeff Pinard, a link to a video of a prop plane with the shortest takeoff and landing I've ever seen.
From Edwin, a link to a story about battery research at MIT. Their research is foscusing on ultracapacitors, and here's an excerpt:
The focus of Schindall’s research is ultracapacitors, which store drastically less energy than a battery but have essentially none of the drawbacks. In any capacitor, there’s no battery memory caused by partial discharging and no reduction in capacity with each recharge. “They never wear out, they have no electrolyte, they don’t have any chemistry taking place in them,” Schindall says. “It’s just an electric field that stores the energy. So you can recharge a capacitor a gazillion times. It’s very efficient—just the internal resistance of the wires.”
Here's a second link from Edwin, to a solar and wind technology called GROW. It's very clever and even somewhat attractive.
Jesse Leimkuehler sent me a batch of links to HD images of the Space Shuttle, and they're fantastic:
one
two (stunning!)
three
four
five
sixseven
Also from Jesse, a link to a story titled NASA Baffled by Unexplained Force Acting on Space Probes. The title may not be the best, but the article itself is fascinating.
Two interesting links from Joe Kaplan, the first to OObject, which has all kinds of unusual and cool photo sets. The second link is to (believe it or not) Shoeless Joe Jackson's grand jury testimony in the 1919 Black Sox scandal.
From Sean, a link to the edible martini, the vacuum infusing of a martini inside a cucumber. Not words you see in conjunction very often--or ever.
From Gloria (I believe you know her), one of my favorite local headlines ever: "Using a crossbow to kill opossums is not legal in city."
Okay, this isn't a local headline, but Juan Font sent in a classic: "On the menu today: horse penis and testicles with a chilli dip ." It's a restaraunt in Beijing, and it's described as "China's first speciality penis restaurant." Not just a penis restaurant, mind you, but a specialty penis restaurant.
Note to tourists going to the Olympics this year: stock up on Cliff bars.
Finally, from Geoff Engelstein, a story about the world's fastest swimsuit.
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