#Welcome To the Future
Animated Map Details Every Nuclear Explosion; Atomic Awesome Woah Time
Source: Pink Tentacle Via Boing Boing
As someone who is obsessed with the Cold War and Apocalyptic Wastelands, it is like this thing was fashioned for me. Behold! An animated map chronicling all 2,053 nuclear explosions that have occurred on the Blue Wonder that is our planet. Blue, you know, as long as we don’t done fuck up with one of these wunder-hammers. Hit the jump and behold in the beauty and terror of man and science.
Forget The Kinect; Play Super Mario Bros. With Your EYES
Fuck the Kinect! This shit is the real deal here! You don’t need no karate kicks here! Waterloo Labs, through some sort of scientific witchcraft have designed a way for people to play Super Mario Bros. using only their eyes. Yeah, it involves a shitload of electrodes and other creepy shit, but still! Super Mario Bros.! With your eyes! Believe!
Hit the jump to check out the video.
A Day In The Life of Japan’s Real-Scale Gundam
Japan’s got a real-scale Gundam statue. Utterly ridiculous, word? Yeah man, but if it isn’t friggin’ awesome, I don’t know what is. Hit the jump to check out a time-lapse video of a day in the life of our boy Real-Scale Gundam.
Heading To Europe? Try The Cloned Steak! No, Really!
In the future, I’ll be able to eat a burger that was cultured from the skin cells of cows, cross-spliced with that of a new born baby T-Rex with a splash of decaying dodo bird. But for now? For now I’ll have to satisfy myself with the notion that I can head over to Europe and eat cloned steak. Welcome to the fucking future!:
New Scientist:
Have cloned meat and dairy products found their way onto the shelves of shops in Europe? Yes, if you believe the Swiss government and the claims of an unnamed British dairy farmer who told The New York Times that he is selling milk from a cow bred from a clone.
&
Material from cloned animals and their offspring is likely to be on the European market already… It is known that imports already began being made some years ago. Once imported, genetic material from cloned animals can spread quickly throughout livestock in Europe, removing choice for farmers and consumers.
Oh Europe! You folks are truly the bees knees. I can’t be the only one who gets a nerdboner while contemplating eating something that is a clone, can I? I mean, I’m not lucky enough to be able to munch on the withering, jerky-esque skull of a clone like Boba Fett, but I’ll take this. Meet me in England!
Dude Was Legit; Arthur C. Clarke Predicted Direct TV and Garmin Like Woah
Source: Boing Boing : Click to Enlarge
In a letter from 1956, Arthur C. Clarke, uncannily, predicts both GPS and satellite TV. Bravo, you amazing and forward-thinking son of a bitch.
Amazon Sells More Kindle Books Than Hardcovers; Tangibility Cries!
I worry about the death of physical books. I do, because I like beating them to a pulp, carrying them around with me, writing in the marginalia. My worrying today was exacerbated:
via boingboing:
Amazon today released an announcement boasting that sales of the Kindle device have tripled since the unit price dropped from $259 to $189. And with that, a related piece of news. Founder Jeff Bezos: “While our hardcover sales continue to grow, the Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format. Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books–astonishing when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months.”
Sweet Jesus Christ. I simultaneously embrace and fear the forthcoming Intangible Apocalypse. I love the idea of collecting an entire library in a slab of plastic. But I also love physically flipping through books. I love the idea of electronically searching for a term at lightning speed. But I also love the smell of books, and writing in them. Actively engaging the text.
I’m torn.
In the end, I don’t think the decision is going to be left up to me.
Tell Marty McFly Hoverboards Are Fuggin’ Real!
via ohhaveyouseenthis:
French artist Nils Guadagnin made a hoverboard. You know, like the one in Back to the Future 2 and you totally wanted after you saw the movie. It was made for an art exhibit and levitates using an electromagnetic system and is stabilized by a laser.
Someone call up Marty McFly he doesn’t have to travel to the future anymore, hoverboards are fucking real! Awesome.
—-
—-
Jellyfish To Death: Fuck You! There’s Seriously An Immortal Species of Jellyfish
It’s amazing on a day when I had to tend my to Nana’s bowel movements and watch as she slowly gets older, my friend Andrew points me in the direction of immortal jellyfishes.
Via Yahoo Green:
The turritopsis nutricula species of jellyfish may be the only animal in the world to have truly discovered the fountain of youth.Since it is capable of cycling from a mature adult stage to an immature polyp stage and back again, there may be no natural limit to its life span. Scientists say the hydrozoan jellyfish is the only known animal that can repeatedly turn back the hands of time and revert to its polyp state (its first stage of life).The key lies in a process called transdifferentiation, where one type of cell is transformed into another type of cell. Some animals can undergo limited transdifferentiation and regenerate organs, such as salamanders, which can regrow limbs. Turritopsi nutricula, on the other hand, can regenerate its entire body over and over again. Researchers are studying the jellyfish to discover how it is able to reverse its aging process.Because they are able to bypass death, the number of individuals is spiking. They’re now found in oceans around the globe rather than just in their native Caribbean waters. “We are looking at a worldwide silent invasion,” says Dr. Maria Miglietta of the Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute.
Seriously jellyfish, I fucking resent the shit out of you. My mortality has been weighing on me like a god damn lead cloak lately! My neck hurts from sleeping. My knees creak. And I’m only twenty-seven. I have no idea how old people put up with their rotting fleshbags. It’s beyond me. Maybe it’s because your mind begins going as well, and you’re barely cognizant of the fact that your arms look like loose bags of meat, your legs are discolored, and you’re on thirty-five pills just so you can’t even walk up a flight of stairs.
Oh, sorry for being a downer. It’s Friday, it’s sunny, have a good weekend!
Fingering The Electronic Future Magazine
This video is something I’ve been meaning to share since I found it over on warrenellis.com since last week. The explanation on the site can summarize it better than me:
This conceptual video is a corporate collaborative research project initiated by Bonnier R&D into the experience of reading magazines on handheld digital devices. It illustrates one possible vision for
digital magazines in the near future, presented by our design partners at BERG.The concept aims to capture the essence of magazine reading, which people have been enjoying for decades: an engaging and unique reading experience in which high-quality writing and stunning imagery build up
immersive stories.
Being a hardcore geek and fan of gadgetry, this conceptualization of future electronic magazine tablets has me pretty excited. I’m a fan of magazines and newspapers, they keep me company on many a toilet visits or trips. And while I’ve come to accept they will probably shed their mortal coil sooner than later, I’ve always thought they offer something interesting and tactile. There’s something great about whipping out a magazine on the throne, or in a bus, but also because of how their layout is set-up, and their appearance. BERG and Bonnier’s idea of retaining graphical tables of contents, the ability to flip-through and drill-down, and having the sense of “completing something” as opposed to the endless sprawl of an RSS feed is something I can dig on. It’s a magazine on a tablet. I’m there. Wake me up when something like this exists. Check out the video below.
The Fucking Multiverse Exists!
Oh shit, comic book and outer space nerds, get ready to jack off! Apparently the multiverse exists! Watch out for Earth 2^4’s Superman, he farts fire and ejaculates shotgun bullets. No, not really. And this probably isn’t hard science, or anything more than a theory, but kiss my ass, it’s fun to think about.
Via New Scientist:
The dark flow appears to have been caused shortly after the big bang by something no longer in the observable universe. It has no effect today because reaching across this horizon would involve travelling faster than light.One explanation for the flow would be the gravity of a huge concentration of matter, but this is very unlikely. Within the standard big bang picture, massive cosmic structures were “seeded” by random quantum fluctuations, so overall, matter should be spread evenly.There could be an exotic explanation. Laura Mersini-Houghton of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, thinks the flow is a sign of a neighbouring universe. If the tiny patch of vacuum that inflated to become our universe was quantum entangled with other pieces of vacuum – other universes – they could have exerted a force from beyond the present-day visible horizon (see “Nosey neighbours”).
It would be pretty great if this was true, it would make existence just a bit more intriguing. But it probably doesn’t. Who knows. Scientists, always throwing rocks at one another! Just pretend with me its true, and try to imagine an alternate version of yourself, in some Sliders type shit, where you secretly pine for your Mom, or you can fly because all humans have wings, or something equally gay.