This site sells inflatable weaponry. You can buy a life-sized inflatable F16 fighter jet. Random.
Anyway, they also sell these cool missile balloons that you can tie to your car. Creates a fun effect
Missile balloons
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Author Archives: alistair
He is smiling at you!
Check out this National Geographic article about a very rare bird photographed for the first time. It has an “upside down” beak which makes it look like it’s smiling. I wonder what evolutionary advantage the bird got from that arrangement.
- “Recently rediscovered by scientists in Colombia after a 40-year absence.”
- “First ever [photo] taken of a live bushbird
Lunch time in a Chinese textiles factory
Wired has some interesting photos of factories in China. This one showing lunch time at a textiles factory is almost exactly how I imagined things while I was reading Nineteen Eighty-Four.
This looks a little strange because of all the pink. It is taken in one of the biggest chicken processing plants in China.
1 ATM bombing per day in SA
In South Africa criminals have taken to blowing up ATM’s in order to make off with the cash in them. This Financial Mail article discusses the trend:
In the first five months of this year, 148 ATM blasts were carried out across SA – an average of one a day, and nearly three times the number in all of 2006.
Security analysts are growing increasingly concerned at the ease with which the bombers are able to obtain the mining explosives used in most bombings.
Giant ancient penguins
“Giant ancient penguins” – what a phrase. Anyway, here is an article about some penguins that lived in Peru 30 million years ago.
- They stood 1.5 meters (4.5 feet) tall
- They had huge beaks and are suspected to have used spear-fishing techniques
- The fossils were found near a Peruvian desert so dry that they think some parts haven’t seen rain in 40 million years!
Here is an artist’s impression showing the size of the penguin relative to a modern penguin.
Drugged up driver tries to escape cops in a corn field
Check out this very brief article about a drugged up Hollander who was trying to escape the cops when he decided to turn into a field. As you can see, he caused havoc.
Iceberg waterfalls
I was reading about a study of the life found on and around icebergs (there is a lot of it) and they had this cool pic. Sometimes ice on the top of an iceberg begins to melt and forms a lake. Eventually the lake breaks through the edge of the berg and a waterfall can form. Pretty cool.
Youg web millionaires
This is an article about an elite group of young guys who have made it seriously big on the internet. Many of them got going in their teens and are now seriously rich and famous in their 20’s.
They are undoubtedly talented, but also a little lucky. They were in the right place at the right time, but they were able to take the chance when it came. Yes I suppose I am a little jealous…
Thing is, these guys are a bit like movie stars. Out of the thousands that try, only a few lucky people really make it big – many talented people fail. It’s a risky goal, but if you win, you win big.
For instance Mark Zuckerberg who is more than a year younger than me (he is 23) started and runs Facebook – a great, great website which I often use. Facebook is one of the 20 most often visited sites in the world and has more than 25 million registered users.
Volunteers needed for a 17 month mission to Mars (kinda)
The Russians want to run a simulated trip to Mars in order to assess the physiological and psychological effects of being enclosed with 5 other people for 520 days. They are asking for volunteers willing to take part in the simulation which sounds horrible to me.Highlights from the article:
- Once the doors are closed tight, the volunteers will be cut off from all contact with the outside world except by a delayed radio link.
- Communications with the simulated mission control and loved-ones will take up to 40 minutes, the time that a radio signal takes to cross the void between Earth and a spaceship on Mars
- They will get paid 120 euros (158 dollars) a day.
Another article on the South African economy
The Economist has another article on the South African economy. Although they say things are going well right now, not everything is looking up in the long run.
- Growth has outpaced infrastructural development:
The country’s infrastructure is creaking—roads are overcrowded, cement and refined fuels are having to be imported, and power outages are a growing problem
- They are also concerned about the current-account deficit:
At present the deficit is being funded comparatively easily, but an emerging-markets sell-off—which many analysts believe to be inevitable over the next year—would hit South Africa hard, putting first the rand and then domestic interest rates under pressure.
- The skills deficit is also mentioned as a serious (and worsening) problem. This is especially true in the public sector at all levels.
According to the country’s largest bank, ABSA, managers are battling to cope with “severe shortages of skilled labour and production capacity constraints”
Several factors are mentioned as contributing to the skills shortage but emigration is specifically talked about.
The South African Institute of Race Relations estimates that some 850,000 whites have left the country since 1995, reducing the white population (which, for historical reasons, is still the most skilled segment) to around 4.3m people from more than 5m a decade ago. ABSA believes that “the vast majority” of those who have left the country—or are contemplating doing so—are skilled people between the ages of 20 and 40. This white exodus is being compounded, according to the bank, by the increasing emigration of mixed-race, Asian and black professionals, especially from the public sector, which is losing medical, technical and engineering skills very rapidly.