Wanted: old socks, ripped, without partners, and of any size or colour
. Offered: a telephone pole. Wanted: a chicken coop, a doghouse, a barn. Offered: Excellent quality landscaping rocks. Organic lemons will be given away to those who take the rocks as an extra bonus.
Freecycle is using the Internet as a way to make connections and fall into riches at the same time. In this case, the treasure comes in the form of someone else’s trash. Freecycle is now available in Australia
The city of Aliso Viejo, California nearly banned foam cups when they learned they are produced from a substance known as dihydrogen monoxide. A paralegal working for the city apparently found a professionally designed web site put up to describe the dangerous properties of this chemical. Apparently, the report about Dihydrogen Monoxide was written by a then 14-year-old Nathan Zohner who was researching the gullibility of fifty ninth graders
An air passenger was stunned to find a handgun in his luggage after a flight with Israel’s national carrier El Al. Security officers sometimes put replica guns in luggage to keep bag checkers on their toes. In theory, the weapon would be discovered during checks and removed, leaving passengers none the wiser. This handgun, however, appears to have slipped through the net — via Darren Barefoot
Greens MP and transport spokesperson Lee Rhiannon said that the final report from the Unsworth Review of Bus Services in NSW opens the door to privatisation of the public bus network
An Australian Navy tanker has been daubed with the words John Howard — US boot licker while berthed at Wellington’s Overseas Passenger Terminal. The graffiti attack coincided with two high-level meetings of New Zealand and Australian police and anti-terrorism chiefs after last week’s terror attacks in Spain
The bare-bones chassis of the Xoxide X-UFO Ultimate Aluminium Cube Case includes three large acrylic windows, cut-outs for a mind-numbing eleven fans, chrome front-panel switches, and a set of medium-duty casters. You can remove the drive bays, the motherboard tray, and the backplane, and Xoxide plans to offer interchangeable drive bay modules for buyers who prefer different configurations. All three acrylic panes are fitted into the case’s U-shaped wraparound cover, which removes them from harm’s way whenever you work inside
Federal welfare agency Centrelink has paid more than $5.3 million for a web content engine and two relatively simple web applications
Researchers from the Johns Hopkins University have built electronic circuits which exhibit a rubbery behaviour. The flexible circuits, built by using gold springs, can stretch like rubber. And Nature says that these stretchy wires can be used to create artificial nerves bending inside our bodies or wearable electronics. Wiring like this could be woven into stretchy sports clothing and used to connect up sensors that monitor athletic performance. Rubbery electrodes made from biocompatible materials might be attached to a beating heart and used to sense impending problems
You need little origami robots, or paper automata, for your desktop. Enjoy the soothing motions of the flying pig, the witch or a barking dog. They have some free downloads too.
John McEwan is a grand old man of military and role-playing miniatures. He also makes cut-and-fold paper models of buildings and vehicles. Some of these are really, really cool, like a line of alternate-history zeppelins and steam tanks. Once in a while he puts up files for free download. This month it’s a cool Victorian submarine.
Stunning, elaborate paper toys to print, fold and glue. Make your own model of the Sydney Opera House, the Chrysler Building or Angkor Wat.
Freebie fold and glue PDFs that turn into ultra-fab Japanese paper robots.
This collection of dirty origami — mostly explicit sexual stuff — is hilarious. The Kama Sutra pieces are nice, and folding a vulva out of a dollar bill is a great dinner-table trick, but they’re not a patch on the shitting dog origami.
A significant portion
of people who use Hotmail and other internet-based products had trouble accessing the services for more than 24 hours on the weekend
The new planet, dubbed Sedna after the Inuit goddess of the sea, is 3 billion km further from the sun than Pluto, and is slightly smaller at 2000km in diameter. This discovery has apparently reignited the debate as to how big a solar object must be in order to qualify as a planet
, but it is significant nonetheless — via The Soulful Blogger
The UN-backed war crimes court in Sierra Leone has barred its president, Geoffrey Robertson QC, from judging cases involving rebels because of the appearance of bias against them. The ruling at the weekend defied calls to dump the London-based human rights lawyer but it sidelined him from the court’s most important cases because of a book he wrote lambasting rebel atrocities in the west African nation’s decade-long civil war
Scientists have found the cells that are the source of follicles and hair growth, a discovery that will energise research into treatments for thinning hair and baldness. An American team reported yesterday that it had become the first to isolate parent cells — stem cells — in mouse hair follicles that can regenerate hair, skin and follicles after being implanted into the skin of mice
Telstra’s worst fears are about to be realised, with rival Vodafone planning to unleash a price war in the $10 billion a year Australian mobile phone market which will see the cost of mobile calls fall to the same level as local calls
Chiko Space Cadet could possibly be made into a tv cartoon series. Woo hoo!
You can check out some more info on characters and plot background.
Like Scary Girl, Chiko has a feline sidekick, Minkie, who is orange and has a screwdriver that comes out of it’s chest.
Let’s hope Chiko and Minkie out of red tape land soon.
Professor Alan Windle has spun nanotube yarn by twisting nanotubes onto spinning rods as they come out of the furnace from which they are made. Do not get your hopes up yet, the yarn has a strength comparable to that of most modern textiles but the group does state that there is room for improvement. And there is mention of a space elevator
The waste you flush down the toilet could one day power the lights in your home. So say researchers at Pennsylvania State University who last week revealed they have developed an electricity generator fuelled by sewage
The Swiss government approved draft legislation to end a ban on absinthe, the mythical herbal liqueur beloved of turn-of-the-century artists and blamed for driving some of them mad
California’s Supreme Court has ordered San Francisco officials to immediately suspend same-sex marriages. The move was made pending a legal review on the issue later this year and comes amid conservative outrage and calls for a constitutional ban. More than 3,000 ceremonies for gay and lesbian couples have been performed in San Francisco since the city began issuing marriage licences last month. The court has yet to rule on the legality of these existing marriages — via Die Puny Humans
With 21 million items listed on its Web site every day, it is easy to tell why eBay has become a favourite target for organised e-scams in Australia
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