moonbuggy

That’s just cool.

‘Many of you have seen or heard about Wendy the whippet – a dog with a rare genetic mutation that has led to her being called the Arnold Schwarzenegger of dogs.

The genetic mutation is a deficiency in myostatin, which is a growth factor that limits muscle tissue growth.

But that rare genetic defect does not occur only in the whippet breed. In fact, it can and has occurred in other animals… even in humans themselves!

Behold! The ultimate collection of myostatin deficient monstrosities!’

Hooray for engineering. [shrug]

‘In the continuing adventures of the world’s tallest man, Bao Xishun, our hero shakes hands with He Pingping, who is currently aiming for a place in the Guiness Book of Records as the world’s shortest man.

The historic meeting between Bao, who stands 2.36 meters (7.9 feet) tall, and He, who only reaches 73 centimeters (2.4 feet) in height, took place in Baotou, in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on Friday.’

Followup to World’s tallest man saves dolphin.

(1.2meg Flash video)

see it here »

‘[..] I had recently read a few articles on submersion cooling, where you take your computer and dump it into a tub of non-electrically-conductive oil. It seemed to work really well, and was cheap. So I saw it as a type of poor man’s water-cooling.

I bought a large aluminium oven tray and 9 litres of canola oil.’

Hilarity in a bumper sticker. 🙂

‘Yesterday, just after BMEfest and just before ModProm, we did the rather stress-inducing experiment of doing the first three “eyeball tattooing” experiments on sighted eyes. The procedures were done by Howie (LunaCobra.net), with photos by Lane Jensen (of Tattoo and Piercing Magazine). The first procedure was done on Pauly Unstoppable using a traditional hand-poked technique. The eye distorted significantly but it was difficult to get ink to hold. Probably about forty strikes in all were done but so far it seems like limited ink held.’

‘The first publicly available pictures have emerged of China’s new Jin-class nuclear-powered submarine, which is capable of firing intercontinental ballistic missiles against the US.

Hans Kristensen, a nuclear weapons analyst for the Federation of American Scientists, spotted the new submarine while reviewing photos of north-eastern China that had been snapped by a commercial satellite for Google Earth.

The photos taken late last year show the submarine alongside a pier at the Xiaopingdao Submarine Base south of the city of Dalian.’

Court documents can be amusing. 🙂

Miriam has the answer. 🙂

see it here »

‘It’s not the first time the Polish weekly Wprost has gotten in trouble in Germany. This week, the cover depicts Chancellor Angela Merkel breast-feeding the Kaczynski twins. But it could have been worse, the editor-in-chief points out. At least they used a 21-year-old model.

“Europe’s Step-Mother:” Polish magazine Wprostdoes it again.
It’s not exactly how one expects to see German Chancellor Angela Merkel: The broad, friendly smile seems completely at odds with her open blouse, two bare breasts spilling out. On each breast, one of Poland’s governing Kaczynski twins is affixed — Prime Minister Jaroslaw is suckling on the left, President Lech has attached himself to the right. One of them is holding up the “victory” sign right in Merkel’s cleavage.’

‘Toronto photographer Ed Burtynsky has photographed industrial landscapes for more than 25 years. From 2003 to 2005, he traveled to China several times to capture images of the country’s industrial growth.

A film crew followed Burtynsky on his fifth trip in 2005 to shoot the documentary Manufactured Landscapes, which opened this month in New York. A TED prize winner, Burtynsky manages to convey the scope of China’s growth through images where raw statistics have failed.’

‘So truely devote Buddhist priests are not afraid of death; but they don’t normally seek it either, as this too would be an abnormal obsession with the physical world. The priests that chose to practice self-mummification were usually all older men, who knew they had limited time left to their lives anyway… and since the practice takes years to lead to a sucessful death and mummification, it cannot be characterized as an attempt to reach enlightenment quickly as a normal suicide might be. Rather, the intended purpose of this practice for these priests is to both push their ability to disregard their physical selves to the limit of their ability, and to try and leave an artifact of this struggle that will stand as a symbol of their beliefs to those that are priests after them.’

‘A driver who was high on cocaine destroyed an entire cornfield in an attempt to escape from the police.

Four police cars were destroyed before the 35-year-old crashed into a ditch and was arrested, near the village of Dussen in the south of the Netherlands.’

Clever, and kinda cool.

‘When Dr Brady Barr decided to dress up as a crocodile, the disguise needed to be good.

Otherwise he was in grave danger of being eaten by the real thing.

The zoologist adopted his bizarre outfit in the hope of getting closer to a colony of Nile crocodiles, which can grow up to 20ft.

His disguise was a prosthetic head attached to the front of a protective metal cage covered with canvas and a generous plastering of hippo dung to mask his human scent.’

‘A friend of mine happened to live in a students’ flat where such a thing happened: the landlord basically made them cram a bunch of stuff, which usually was in the main hallway, into a room that was too small for it, while in the same flat three rooms were completely empty, but locked. Luckily, the guy could lockpick his way into a room, but he asked me for a way to be able to re-lock it without the key and without anything suspicious being visible from the outside.

After some brainstorming, we came up with a James Bond-worthy concept: knock on the door in a certain fashion, and the door’ll open automatically. The idea was perfect: no need to drill holes, sneaky enough so the landlord wouldn’t accidentally trigger it, easy enough to remember.’

‘for the purposes of this project, we’re using a pretty broad (and to some extent, arbitrary) definition of “passive-aggressive” that roughly correlates with how the term is popularly used. (most people don’t go diving for the dsm IV when someone describes his or her roommate as “so passive-aggressive” — or “so antisocial” or “so sadistic” or “so schizo,” for that matter.)

truly, some of the notes found here aren’t really passive-aggressive even by our generous standards. some are really more aggressive in tone, and some of them are more passive — polite, even – but they all share a common sense of frustration that’s been channeled into written form rather than a direct confrontation.’

‘Feast your eyes on the result of weeks of work using the various remains of over a dozen cars — from 80’s BMW’s to a 1990 Toyota Tercel — it’s the glorious Turbo II Junkyard Boogaloo boombox. For those of you who want the gearhead nitty-gritty, the full “How To” is here. For those who just want to see this baby in all of its radical goodness, below you’ll find some documentation of what the Turbo II is and does …

Ninety-two pounds of plywood and car parts joined together as an homage to the homemade car-battery boomboxes used by first-generation break dancers; if you’ve watched the video above you’ve already got the general idea of the Turbo II Junkyard Boogaloo’s features. Read on and we’ll fill you in on the details [..]’

‘Three words on a cardboard sign outside a luxury downtown high rise have senior citizens outraged. One senior was so upset she took a picture outside The Vue at Lake Eola, on the corner of Rosalind and Robinson streets.

Some senior citizens were across the street in a small rally when they noticed the construction workers laughing at them. Then they looked by the fence and saw a sign they consider very offensive. The words were scrawled in bold white paint on cardboard.

Sandra Taylor, 64, stood across the street and could feel the sign shouting at her.

“The next thing we knew, we looked over and he had made a sign, holding it, said ‘Old People Suck,'” Taylor said.’

‘Marine scientists in Canada and abroad are puzzled by bizarre photographs that appear to show the skeleton of a large mammal jutting out of an iceberg that recently drifted past Newfoundland’s east coast.

The six pictures show what looks like a brown rib cage and spinal column, slightly bent, sticking out of a crust of ice.

But researchers throughout Canada, Greenland and Norway are unable to determine the origin of the skeleton, said Garry Stenson, a marine mammal scientist with the federal Fisheries Department.

“It’s definitely unusual,” Stenson said Monday. “It’s not something that I’ve encountered before.”‘

‘She was taken handcuffed and crying from her home. She was escorted into court disheveled, without makeup, hair askew and face red with tears.

Crying out for her mother when she was ordered back to jail, Paris Hilton’s cool, glamorous image evaporated Friday as she gave the impression of a little girl lost in a merciless legal system.

“It’s not right!” shouted the weeping Hilton. “Mom!” she called out to Kathy Hilton, who also was in tears.

The 26-year-old hotel heiress tried to move toward her parents but was firmly steered away by two sheriff’s deputies, who held her by each arm and hustled her from the courtroom. [..]

The sheriff later hinted at a news conference that Hilton had psychological problems, and said she would be watched in jail “so that there isn’t anything that is harmfully done to herself by herself.”‘

Followup to Paris Hilton ordered to return to court.