Friday, July 25, 2008

Friday Links!

It's summer. I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to be working.

From Shad Price, a link to an incredible series of photos documenting a leopard attacking a crocodile. Stunning.

From many of you, a link to a story about drumming and exercise. Here's an excerpt:
It was found that the drummers' heart rates were raised to as high as 190 beats per minute and they could burn off 600 calories in a performance.

From the Edwin Garcia Links Machine, a link to a story about destroying a skycraper--one story at a time (and the video is very cool). Next is a link to inside the Lego factory, a multi-part video tour of the amazing facility that makes Legos. Then we have a link to a story titled Christian, the lion who lived in my London living room, which is both fascinating and surreal.

From Sean, a link to a landlocked ship in the middle of Hong Kong--that's a shopping center.

From MSNBC, a link to a story about the discovery by NASA of the source of the aurora borealis (Northern Lights). Here's an excerpt:
NASA's five THEMIS spacecraft in different orbits around Earth spotted the trigger for the substorms, powerful energy bursts in the planet's magnetic field that can interfere with satellites, power grids and supercharge the aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights.

From Sirius, a link to an article about fossilized feathers and what's now been found in them. Here's an excerpt:
Traces of organic material have been found in fossil feathers that are remnants of the pigments that once gave birds their hue, according to Yale University scientists who believe that fossilized fur should be able to yield its colour too.

Also from Sirius, a link to a disturbing article about DNA matching. Remember all those prosecutors who said that an "exact match" with a defendant was a fifty million to one shot? Well, not exactly.

The hat trick for Sirius with a link to an article about a tongue drive system to control a wheelchair. Absolutely brilliant.

From John Catania, a link to a remarkable series of tilt-shift miniature photographs. Here's a description of how it works:
The technique of tilt-shift miniature faking makes the life-sized look like a miniature scale model. The process involves using Photoshop to fake a shallow depth of field and punching up the color saturation.

From Steven Davis, a link to a story about a three-gram flying vehicle called the DelFly Micro.

Next is an article about the center-pivor irrigator, and even if you've never heard of them, it's still an interesting read.

From George Paci, a link to a remarkable invention: an acoustic drum machine.

From Steve Nygard, a very silly and entirely entertaining video about a new way to enjoy escalators. Kids, don't try this at home.

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