Transportation

Three wheels. The DOT calls it a motor­cy­cle. The man­u­fac­tur­er calls a T‑Rex. I call it covetable.

I don’t know what it means for the stereo­typ­i­cal ‘here comes the bad guys’ cues in movie sound tracks but for peo­ple liv­ing under the traf­fic copter pat­tern it means qui­eter com­mute times. Euro­copter intro­duces the Blue Edge rotor blade and Blue Pulse sys­tem which can cut blade noise by 3 to 4 deci­bels. Which does­n’t seem like it should help much but the in-cockpit record­ing are sub­stan­tial­ly dif­fer­ent in vol­ume and in quality.

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Science

This pho­to a glac­i­er weep­ing red ooze is stun­ning enough for inclu­sion in the link­age. But when you read the descrip­tion of what the ooze is and how this par­tic­u­lar pri­mor­dial ooze has been iso­lat­ed for 2 mil­lion years… Atlas Obscu­ra has infor­ma­tion and lots of pictures.

Infor­ma­tion is Beau­ti­ful has a good visu­al today. A bub­ble race chart of dietary sup­ple­ments and which have sol­id sup­port­ing evi­dence for effi­ca­cy and which don’t. Be sure to read the expla­na­tion of the chart and click on the Show Me tab on the right.

Increas­ing­ly spe­cial­ized iPhone apps are appear­ing. Stuff that’s a lot more use­ful that cap­tion­ing your snap­shots with thought bal­loons. This stetho­scope add on for exam­ple. Dig­i­tal diag­no­sis in your hand.

Not real­ly sci­ence but vague­ly web relat­ed. There are tons of web­sites out there that earn their keep by gen­er­at­ing link backs. In order to opti­mize your chances of grab­bing that cov­et­ed TechCrunch cita­tion I give you “Link Bait Gen­er­a­tor” I had a good lit­tle gig­gle by enter­ing ‑moto press- in the box. Try a few of your own.

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Art, Images, and Design

One com­menter accus­es this image of Aigu­ille de Midi of being over­ly Pho­to­shopped, but I per­son­al­ly like the washed out vin­tage post card feel . No I am not going up there.

Hours of amuse­ment await you in this NBC col­lec­tion of weird news pho­tos. Occa­sion­al gore and one giant, pink, cher­ry blos­som laden phal­lus. (NSFW)

The abil­i­ty to draw eludes me, the abil­i­ty to draw like Paul Lung eludes almost every­one. The ani­mal por­traits in par­tic­u­lar will make you blink. Fur in such incred­i­ble detail.

Close to my heart — book arts. A col­lec­tion of fab­u­lous bind­ings. From embossed images of peonies to sil­ver and gem encrust­ed breviaries.

and that’s it for anoth­er week. see you Mon­day my freaky lit­tle darlings.