The other day I was driving past the 2010 stadium being built in Green Point and I was amazed by how far it seems to have come. I still worry that they aren’t going to be ready in time, but it does look pretty impressive.
Here is a site that posts photos of the progress as it moves along. The ones below are from 21 April 2008. Long way to go….
Wired recently had an article on this Swiss pilot who has spend the last few years developing some rocket wings that he straps to his back. Basically he jumps out of a plane, unfolds the wings and powers up the rockets. He is able to steer pretty well (enough to do barrel rolls), build up some good speeds (over 300kph) and crucially land safely.
Very cool, but I’m sure it’s not as safe as he makes out.
This must have been pretty freaky. It seems that the pachyderm is in a rather ‘friendly’ mood if you know what I mean – still scary though…
Click for a larger view of the image – the guys expression is pretty cool and you can see what he is looking at
Science is awesome – get an idea about how the world works, create an experiment to test that idea, repeat. That simple process is how mankind has come so far.
Along the way there have been several cases where the scientific process has overturned conventional “knowledge”. For example people thought that the Earth was flat because that is what came naturally to them – but that was rubbish. Don’t be so smug though, I guarantee that today we believe things that are equally untrue (about human nature, morality, and consciousness for example).
The stories of the open minded scientists who made these breakthroughs are interesting reading. Here is an article discussing 10 great experiments of history: “moments when, using the materials at hand, a curious soul figured out a way to pose a question to nature and received a crisp, unambiguous reply”.
I’ll summarise an example:
William Harvey – the heart actually pumps blood
In the 1700s conventional wisdom said that invisible spirits called “pneuma” caused the blood to “slosh back and forth like the tides” but Harvey thought the heart had something to do with it. He tested his theory but cutting open a live snake and pinching the main vein entering the heart. The heart became paler and smaller as it was starved of blood. When he pinched the main artery coming out of the heart the opposite happened, the artery swelled up with blood like a balloon. He had shown that the heart pumps blood around the body.
New Scientist has this article about a study showing that a woman’s voice becomes more attractive when she is most fertile. The researchers made recordings of women during four different phases of their menstrual cycles. The recordings were played in random order to both men and women, who consistently rated recordings made during fertile stages as more attractive. It seems that using voice alone both men and women are able to subconsciously detect fertility.
I’ve previously blogged about another experiment showing that fertile lap dancers earn more tips – this is just another example of the fact that we can subconsciously detect fertile women.
I explain the evolutionary reasoning behind these interesting effects in that article. In short, it pays women to conceal when they are fertile – so men will stick around all the time to be sure. It pays men to know when women are fertile so that they can focus energy when it counts.
NewScientist has an awesome headline on one of it’s stories today: “Great tits enjoying the warmer weather”. I think that one might get quite a lot of traffic…
Anyway, the article is actually about how a species of birds in the UK known as great tits have responded to global warming by laying their eggs earlier. They need to time their laying pretty precisely and over the last 30 years their laying has shifted 2 weeks earlier in the spring.
So here is that picture of some young great tits:
I like this photo. At first I didn’t realise what was going on, but it shows the tracks of a rabbit moving across some snow when BAM an owl nails it. You can see the wings of the attacking bird imprinted in the snow – and no more rabbit tracks…
No. Carrots do contain high levels of Vitamin A which is essential to eyesight, among other things. However, eating carrots only makes a difference to sight for those who have a serious Vit A deficiency.
The myth was started by the British during World War 2 as a plausible explanation for their remarkable success rates at shooting down German planes at night. Stories were told about pilots with amazing night vision like, Lieutenant John “Cats Eyes” Cunningham who was said to have exceptional night vision thanks to his love of carrots.
In fact, the Brits were making use of a secret invention – radar – and they didn’t want the Germans to realize something was up. So they told the public that they were feeding the defenders massive amounts of carrots and that was leading to improved night vision.
They were so persuasive that the British public actually increased carrot consumption in an effort to improve their own night vision – which was important when cities were being blacked out to prevent bombing!
Here is a time-lapse video showing the ordeal of Nicholas White who was trapped in an elevator for 41 hours back in 1999. He went for a cigarette break at 11PM on a Friday night and was trapped in the elevator until Monday morning. The video shows his 41 hours compressed into under 4 minutes accompanied by some great piano music. He repeatedly prises the doors open (to show a brick wall) and lands up spending a lot of time sleeping.
I have been stuck in an elevator for just over an hour before, but at least people knew that I was in there. The video is extremely popular and has already been viewed 2.8 million times.
Here are some snaps from the vid for those who can’t view it.
Hour 0 (11pm Friday night) – Holding down the alarm button and hoping for help
Hour 3 (2am Friday night) – Waiting and hoping
Hour 11 (10am Saturday morning) – Catching some sleep
Hour 23 (10pm Saturday night) – Relieving himself down the elevator shaft
Hour 33 (7am Sunday morning)
Hour 41 (3pm Sunday afternoon) – Rescued…
I know you were wondering: he says that he releived himself down the elevator shaft while holding the doors open.
China is an amazing place – massive, beautiful, and so different to what we Westerners are used to. It is a wonderfully beautiful country and I have blogged about it before.
National Geographic has this short photo essay of aerial photographs of China – “China From Above“. Below are some of the better images.
This one shows limestone pinnacles along the Li River
Blooming fields of rapeseed weaving through the hills. I like the way these steep hills look as if they regularly pop out of a flat landscape.
This one is interesting. They have planted rows of vegetation alongside the roads to keep the desert sands back. The buildings dotting the roadside every few miles house the workers who maintain the greenbelt.
