freakn wrote:
[ Video Link ]

I am not sure if this is funny or sad.

I heard a quote once: "Slow equals easy after a few Zimas."

Wonder what bar she frequents...

RE: YouTube - Miss Teen USA 2007 - South Carolina answers a question

possibly noteworthy wrote:

Even a buffalo separated from the herd has reasonable chances. At one point we saw a lone bull that was trying to get back to the herd, which was about a half mile away. In between him and the herd were four lionesses, sacked out asleep. This looked like the perfect opportunity for a kill, but the buffalo surprised both us and the lions. He crept up on the sleeping lions, then when he got close he lowered his horns and charged. The lions awoke, panicked and scattered into the bushes. The buffalo then trotted victorious back to the pride. It was a perfect illustration of the adage that the best defense is a good offense.

This essay carries the following warning at Edge.org:

WARNING: some of the photos are a bit gory, and one shows explicit lion sex.

See also the latest research on fight-or-flight, using fMRI on video-game-playing humans.

You may also be interested in Wildebeest vs. wild dogs.

This was pretty humorous, the discussion about what part of the anatomy a lion will start ripping into first:

I was describing this to a friend over lunch in Palo Alto. As I was describing this the waiter came up behind me to take our order. I was in the middle of saying "it's very hard to enter the rectum, but once you do things move much faster", only to hear the waiter gasp. Whoops. I tried to explain saying "well, this is about" but with a horrified look he said "I do NOT want to know what this is about! Some people are just not interested in natural history, I guess.

RE: Lions: Africa's Magnificent Predators | By Nathan Myhrvold

k wrote:
It was the poor power-to-weight ratio of batteries that drove Goldfarb to look for alternatives in 2000 while he was working on a previous exoskeleton project for DARPA.

...

Goldfarb’s power source is about the size of a pencil and contains a special catalyst that causes hydrogen peroxide to burn. When this compound burns, it produces pure steam. The steam is used to open and close a series of valves. The valves are connected to the spring-loaded joints of the prosthesis by belts made of a special monofilament used in appliance handles and aircraft parts. A small sealed canister of hydrogen peroxide that easily fits in the upper arm can provide enough energy to power the device for 18 hours of normal activity.

Awesome... not sure how commercially viable, given the manufacturing tolerances required and so forth, but extremely cool nonetheless...

Go Vandy!

Steampunk anyone? :)

RE: Exploration, Vanderbilt's Online Science Journal - New prosthetic arm is powered by miniature rocket motor

Wow.

Disabled Breakdancers (this is not funny, this is inspiring)

Rattle wrote:
My mission, should I choose to accept it: Find out what happened to Haden-Guest's
story, and write about Haden-Guest's alleged MI6 connection in Radar. If I don't, Young will write about it on Cryptome. "I don't believe you for a minute that you're any different from Haden-Guest," Young rants. "I'm about to get fucked over again. Radar's behind this. Turns out, you're on my shit list. I'm only talking to you to figure out what happened, and what I'm going to make of it. It doesn't look good. Until you find out what this story was and why it was killed, I only have vengeance in my mind against Radar and anyone associated with it."

Interesting read. Never really knew much about the guy's background. But at the end, I had to wonder, why didn't he also record the interview with Haden-Guest? Seems like someone that paranoid would at least take that basic step. Now it's basically "oh you have the tape and you won't let anyone hear it, you bastard!" That's a mighty convenient out. You can make bold claims all day. And if Haden-Guest did actually produce the tape in the future that did not mention his purported stints with MI6, Young could just say, "you edited the tape!"

Lame.

RE: Radar Online : Inside Cryptome, the website the CIA doesn't want you to see

“While we fully understand your frustration with the limitations the technology has placed against the video frames per second of the game play on the PlayStation 3 game console, it was out intent to put out the best possible with Madden across 10 platforms,” wrote Rob M. of EA Sports.

...

My emphasis added.

Ouch.

EA Sports Speaks on Xbox 360 Advantage Over PS3 in Madden NFL 08

Dagmar wrote:

w1ld wrote:
He goes way to far, but he is trying to make a point.

I dunno, man. Millions of people losing their homes is serious bad juju.

Greg Saunders, a guest blogger on This Modern World, describes the situation succinctly:

http://thismodernworld.com/3903

So let me get this straight. For a few years now, the financial industry has made billions in risky subprime loans by essentially tricking people into believing they can borrow more than they’ll be able to pay back and now that this brilliant idea is going south, people are floating the idea of a government bailout. Well, screw ‘em. If you’re foolish enough to loan hundreds of thousands of dollars to people who can’t even balance their checkbooks, then you deserve to be as poor as your customers.

Then again, this is all assuming that these creditors were giving out loans in good faith in the first place. The way it looks to me is that these subprime loans were always about locking people into high interest loans for a few years until they went broke after which the banks would take back the house and any more money they can squeeze out of the debtors (thanks, bankruptcy reform!). Once they unload the house, which has almost certainly grown in value, they make a nice profit on top of the cash they gouged out of their now-homeless former customers.

The reason this has all come back to bite lenders in the ass is because they lacked the foresight to realize that when their customers were going broke, everybody else would be going broke as well, which would drive down the value of their repossessed houses and make them harder to unload to the next poor sucker who just wants to move out of an apartment.

In a truly free market economy, we’d be pointing these idiots towards the back of the line at the local soup kitchen, but these guys had a backup plan. They bribed (I mean, “lobbied”) every level of government that’s willing to cash their checks, insisting that if they pay the price for their moronic business practices, the entire economy will suffer. In short, they don’t need government bailouts to help themselves, but to help us.

RE: Jim Cramer Blows a Head Gasket 8/3/07

k wrote:
This is already awesome, but even more, i want this with a 12 hour cycle.

This is way cool. It would be fun to deconstruct some pop tunes and visualize them with this technique.

RE: whitney music box var. 0 - chromatic - 48 tines

Catonic wrote:
WOAH! BADFUCKING ASS!!!!!

Very cool.

Anyone know the first tune that's played?

RE: YouTube - Singing Tesla Coil at Duckon 2007

"Don't you want devoted followers?"

MIND CONTROL MADE EASY - or How to Become a Cult Leader