We’re looking at a 1979 CB750F called Pearly Spencer
— a tribute to racer Freddie Spencer. It comes from The First Notion, a small Belgian shop run by friends Dominique Quintelier and mechanic Joris De Vos, who has worked for several motorcycle racing teams — via Bike EXIF
Future mobile devices may be able to reconfigure themselves to meet new demands, according to researchers that have developed a nanomaterial that can steer
electrical currents. The discovery could lead to the development of smartphones and devices that can reconfigure their internal wiring
and evolve into an entirely different and new device, to reflect the changing needs of consumers — via redwolf.newsvine.com
In a contest that matches humans against some of the world’s hottest chilli peppers, no one wins. Last week, restaurant in Edinburgh, Scotland, held a competition to eat the extra-hot Kismot Killer curry. Some of the competitive eaters were left writhing on the floor in agony, vomiting and fainting.
According to reports, two British Red Cross workers overseeing the event at the Kismot Indian restaurant in Edinburgh but became overwhelmed by the number of casualties and ambulances were called. Half of the 20 people who took part in the challenge dropped out after witnessing the first diners vomiting, collapsing, sweating and panting.
So what exactly are the health impacts of eating really hot chilli peppers? Can eating too much of the spicy stuff kill you? — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Dune-themed travel posters by DrFaustusAU, who also posted this week a few more pages in his Cthulhu by Dr Seuss book — via Super Punch
He is one of New York’s busiest casting directors, yet very few know of his work.
Light-skinned Hispanic?
Robert Weston mulled over the possibilities. He knew they would want five people; they always do.
Javier, Javier Jr, Eddie, Ray,
he said into a cellphone, and I’ll get another Spanish guy.
Mr Weston, 45, was not casting for an Off Broadway production, and his roster of extras would not need Actors’ Equity cards.
For some 15 years, Mr Weston has been providing the New York Police Department with fillers
— the five decoys who accompany the suspect in police lineups — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Felt Koi 5, originally uploaded by christine prusha.
Spotted in the MAKE Flickr pool, from user Christine Prusha, AKA FeltedChicken. The base, simulating water, is made from poured resin, with felted cherry blossoms sprinkled on top — via MAKE
Of course, what is the point of doing an experiment without documenting it? So I carefully selected four sizable chunks of skin (heh heh heh!) and scanned them on my flat-bed scanner (more squirming). Then, I fed them to four different Venus flytraps (#1: typical plant; #2: Justina Davis; #3: Dentate Traps; #4: Red Piranha). Just in case the plants would not like the skin or would not go through the normal digestion process, I included small earwigs with the skin-chunk sacrifices for plants #2 and #3.
A quick recap summary. I fed DISEASED HUMAN TISSUE to my plants. Yep, not just regular human fragments, but DISEASED HUMAN FRAGMENTS.
After a week, the traps opened. I had predicted the skin chunks would be relatively inert and unaffected. After all, these were hard, crusty chunks of skin from the sole of my diseased feet. Surely the Venus flytraps would have no effect upon them.
Was I ever wrong! The skin chunks were almost completely digested. Worse, what was left no longer had much cohesion, but was gooey and slimy, like little boogers. Uck! Uck! Uck! And what is with the weird hue shift to bacon color?? Uck! Uck! Uck! Iä! Iä!
So I guess that if you were to get caught by a sufficiently large Venus flytrap, your skin would easily be digested, and the plant would be able to proceed to your other internal tissues. Gross! — via The Carnivorous Plant FAQ
Retired dentist Young C Park built this 1/16 scale replica of the classic WWII-era fighter plane mostly from common aluminium roof flashing, of the type sold in big rolls at most hardware stores — via MAKE
— via deviantART
*Choose one: Courageous, Cunning, Principled, Dangerous, Pragmatic, Misunderstood.
At the same time as Hanson wittered on about how good Aborigines in Australia had it, an openly gay man with no children stood in an almost empty Senate to deliver his vision. In his deep and reassuring voice, like rain on a tin roof, Bob Brown outlined the enormous challenges we faced living on a planet collapsing under the weight of human activity. “The future will either be green,” he stated, “or not at all.” Hanson’s speech sparked a bushfire, while his was barely reported, and now all that remains of her is a charred stump.
It’s the Greens, led by Brown, that are the new political reality in Australia, a seemingly permanent, menacing force for the once cosy two-party system, mauling Labor’s left flank and gnawing away at softer morsels of conservative flesh. In 1996 fewer than 350,000 Australians voted Green in the Senate. By the last election, that had grown four-fold to almost 1.7 million votes, compared to 4.5 million for Labor and 4.9 million for the conservatives. The Greens hold the balance of power in the Senate with nine senators and a crucial seat in the lower house. And now each week that parliament sits, Bob Brown gets to plonk his sensible shoes beneath Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s desk for a cup of tea and a chat about the direction of the nation.
“I am having a ball,” says Brown, 66, as we talk in his Parliament House office. He’s a man who often forgets to eat and so his face is all sinew and smile. “I am having too much fun to retire.” He flippantly says that Rupert Murdoch – his nemesis – is somewhat of an icon, still going strong at 80 — via redwolf.newsvine.com
With the European Greens’ adoption of the Pirate perspective on the copyright monopoly, I have received a few questions from entrepreneurs, the copyright industry lobby, and libertarians why we want to ban Digital Restrictions Management. It’s a good question that deserves a good answer.
First of all, DRM is a type of fraud that robs citizens of their lawful rights. The copyright monopoly is chock full of exceptions that allow copying in many circumstances; DRM takes no notice of this whatsoever but establishes and enforces a superset of restrictions that goes well above and beyond those of the law.
Therefore, to begin with, a ban on DRM can be seen as a form of consumer protection — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The Federal Government has quietly deleted a controversial section of text published in a consultation paper last Friday that proposed a streamlined
legal process to aid anti-piracy organisations such as Movie Rights Group and AFACT to target individuals allegedly downloading copyrighted material online.
Last Friday, 14 October, the Department of the Attorney-General published a consultation paper regarding digital copyright regulation. The original paper, available in full here (PDF), contained two discrete sections. The first dealt with a proposal to revise the scope of ‘safe harbour’ regulations to better protect organisations which host others’ content online — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Channel 4 could find itself at the centre of another taste row after agreeing to broadcast a documentary showing the body of a British man being mummified like an Egyptian Pharoah.
The macabre programme, called Mummifying Alan, will make television history when it airs later this month as a scientific embalming experiment is unprecedented — via redwolf.newsvine.com
This year’s Core77 Design Awards trophy is a mold. The winners also get a supply of crayons to melt for casting — via Boing Boing
If you’re reading this, chances are that you’ve googled a lot to decide which language to learn and how. And without a doubt, you must have run into a ton of articles about how language X is so much better than PHP and PHP is going to die through obscurity soon — via Nettuts+
Paws for Life is a dog food auto-delivery service. Their service is simple: select your favourite dog food, tell them how often you would like it and then relax in the knowledge that your dog food will turn up on time every time.
They stock all your favourite brands, including Eukanuba, Hills Science Diet, Royal Canin and Advance Pet Nutrition. If they don’t have what you want let them know
The bracelet is done with making a couple of half knots, as you would to start when making a twisted cobra stitch/Solomon bar/Portuguese sinnet, but alternating with each colour for the knots and core — via Stormdrane’s Blog
Just a touch of a female pheromone can send male longfin squids into a frenzied rage, potentially giving wimpy squid males a chance to fight for the ladies.
Whether there exists a human analogue to the pheromone, called Loligo beta-microseminoprotein, is a matter of premature speculation. But the findings do reveal a potentially fascinating subject for further research.
It’s like Popeye’s spinach. When they touch it, they say ‘let’s go’ and start to kick ass,
said biologist Roger Hanlon of the Marine Biological Laboratory, who reported the findings 10 February in Current Biology. It’s a beautiful, robust response. It may be a mechanism for smaller males who have trouble being dominant to mate with females
— via Wired
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