Technology that literally gives you a “pat on your back.”
Patent filed by Ralph R. Piro, via Futility Closet
.
Tag: technology
February 14, 2013
This is pretty wild: New York Biotopes by Lena Steinkühler #stunningvideo #wow
“My idea was to create a film, that fills up the metropolis New York with vegetation, that adapts to the straightness of the technology and the given situation. This happens through the assimilation of structures and forms. These biotopes are shaped by the existing living environment, but in turn also shape the newly developed living environment by their presence. In other words, a symbiotically coexistence begins.”
By Lena Steinkühler, via Notcot.org
February 13, 2013
This counts as one of the most riveting videos I’ve ever seen #curiosity #watchitnow via @BenLillie
I bet those 7 minutes must have been terrifying. Oh, and science FTW!!!
Via @BenLillie
February 8, 2013
I think this will do as a secret headquarters: mobile Antarctica research station.
Is it bad that I want my own?
Designed by Hugh Broughton Architects for the British Antarctic Survey. Via Notcot.org.
January 29, 2013
If you ever need the schematics for constructing a roller coaster that will kill you by the end of its ride…
“Euthanasia Coaster is a hypothetic euthanasia machine in the form of a roller coaster, engineered to humanely – with elegance and euphoria – take the life of a human being. Riding the coaster’s track, the rider is subjected to a series of intensive motion elements that induce various unique experiences: from euphoria to thrill, and from tunnel vision to loss of consciousness, and, eventually, death.”
Proposed details include:
Application:
Euthanasia, execution
Dimensions:
Height: 510 m
Drop lenght: 500 m
Track length: 7544 m
Duration:
Lift: 120 s
Drop: 10 s
Exposure to 10 g: 60 s
Total: 3:20
Features:
Max speed: 100m/s
Inversions: 7
Max g-force: 10 g
Cause of death:
Cerebral hypoxia, lack of oxygen supply to the brain.
Additional effects:
Greyout – loss of color vision;
Tunnel vision – loss of peripheral vision;
Blackout – complete loss of vision;
G-LOC – g-force induced Loss Of Consciousness.
By Julijonas Urbonas, via Thinx
January 26, 2013
Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder – the Earth editions
Note: I put this up, because Ben has informed me that when he grows up, he wants to invent the hover car. Mind you, last week, he wanted to be a comic artist, and before that a Jedi knight…
By Renaud Marion.
December 24, 2012
Sciencegeek Advent Calendar Extravaganza! – Day 24
A SANTA CLAUS AS INTRUDER ALERT SYSTEM
By Thomas Cane
“A children’s Christmas Stocking device useful for visually signalling the arrival of Santa Claus by illuminating an externally visable light source having a power source located within said device.”
(see more of Popperfont’s Sciencegeek Advent Calendar Extravanganza here)
December 9, 2012
Sciencegeek Advent Calendar Extravaganza! – Day 9
DELUXE LED MENORAH KIT
DIY kit available from Evil Mad Scientist.
(see more of Popperfont’s Sciencegeek Advent Calendar Extravanganza here)
November 30, 2012
Some stats if you’re thinking of towing the Space Shuttle with your truck
Click image to see full size.
“Endeavour will be towed 12 miles from Los Angeles International Airport to the museum on October 13, and the Tundra will hitch up to the shuttle for the last quarter mile of the trip. The towing rig was made specifically for this event, allowing the full-size Toyota Tundra to pull almost 30 times its regular towing capacity. Toyota says that the truck used to tow Endeavour will be a stock V8 Tundra with no enhancements or modifications.”
From AutoBlog.
November 29, 2012
Birds on Twitter (this is so seriously awesome)
“Latvian conceptual artist and creative director Voldemars Dudums created this insanely clever bird feeder using an old computer keyboard and some cubes of bacon fat. When the birds would fly down to snack their inadvertent key presses were fed to an api that parsed each little tap into a bonafide tweet on the @hungry_birds Twitter account”
By Voldemars Dudums, text via Colossal.
November 27, 2012
Conceptual space colony art from the 1970s: Kinda want to live there.
Address: Toroidal Colonies (in the vicinity of Earth’s orbit)
“NASA commissioned much conceptual work focused on moving people to space, both for habitation and travel. The artwork featured here come from three summer studies by NASA Ames, conducted in California during the 70s. They feature beautifully fantastic landscapes inside massive structures… a vision of a utopian life inside an artificial atmosphere.”
From NASA Ames Research Center, via Visual News (text by Benjamin Starr)
November 22, 2012
Strapping a camera on a pigeon? Sounds about right.
“Photographing with birds is anything but a new idea. It was actually invented a little over a century ago, in 1907, by a German photography pioneer named Julius Neubronner.
Neubronner worked as an apothecary (i.e. an old-school independent pharmacist) and used carrier pigeons to rush deliver medications to clients. After one of his pigeons returned four weeks late, Neubronner came up with the wacky idea of sticking a camera onto his pigeons in order to glimpse into their activities.”
Text by Michael Zhang at Petapixel. There’s also a wikipedia entry on this topic.
November 22, 2012
I’ve got to get myself a pocket mosquito bar.
Published in The Atlantic Monthly, 1884. Via Futility Closet.
October 11, 2012
This would be SO awesome: An amusement park ride masquerading as an anatomy lesson
An educational amusement apparatus forms a large building structure having an external appearance simulating a man and a woman resting partially under a blanket, wherein riders are taken through a succession of cavities that simulate internal organs of the man and woman. Entrance to a head chamber simulating an oral cavity is achieved by a stairway supported by a simulated arm of the man, the oral cavity having displays of teeth in normal and abnormal conditions, and serving as a staging area for a train to carry the riders. The train passes into a simulated cranial cavity of the woman, past a sectional display of simulated ear organs, and into a body portion of the building that is representative of the abdomen of both the man and the woman, first through a simulated esophagus, stomach, and intestine of an alimentary canal, through simulated urinary and reproductive tracts, then through a simulated liver and a simulated cardiovascular canal, and finally through a simulated lung and windpipe to an exit staging area of the building.
Proposed by Shao-Chun Chu in 1988. See here for patent documents (via Futility Closet)
