Friday Ephemera

12 Glowing Men. Still angry, but now glowing. (h/t, Coudal.) // The Microsoft Surface Sphere. // Unnecessary knowledge. // The musical Pikachu. Oh, you’ll never tire of that. // Social skills 101 for Japan’s hikikomori. // A keyboard without keys. // Meet Gore-Al. // When galaxies collide (2). // The 50 megaton Tsar Bomba. “Its enormous size made the bomb impractical for warfare purposes.” (h/t, Things.) // Soviet atomic weapons tests. // Filmed effects of atomic weapons. // Details of warp drive remain somewhat sketchy. Requires energy equivalent to entire mass of Jupiter. // At last, the jetpack. // Zoom with Motorola. They’re saving the world. // Fallen. A meteor’s tale. // Beluga whales and bubble rings. // Guardian hypocrisy shock #37. // The periodic table of videos. // The periodic coffee table. // The table is melting. (h/t, Artblog.) // An archive of magazine first issue covers. // Heather MacDonald on maths and gender. // The political correctness of academic disciplines. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Mr Fats Waller.

Comments

[John D]

'Al Gore - or, as he is known in his own language, Gore-Al - placed his son, Kal-Al, gently in the one-passenger rocket ship, his brow furrowed by the great weight he carried in preserving the sole survivor of humanity's hubristic folly… "I will send him to a new planet, where he will, I hope, be raised by simple but kindly country folk and grow up to be a hero and protector to his adopted home."'

Brilliant.

[JuliaM]

£4750 for a coffee table is a bit steep, even if it does include the periodic table! Scientists must be too well paid...

[David]

Julia,

Maybe you could buy one in instalments and assemble it yourself. The individual sample boxes are a less daunting £25 - £150. And the tellurium looks rather nice. Or maybe something radioactive, to impress dinner guests.

[Anna]

Must... kill... pikachu.

[JuliaM]

"The individual sample boxes are a less daunting £25 - £150"

Probably easier to assemble than anything from Ikea, too...

But on the whole, I think I prefer the dripping paint table. Quite the conversation piece!

[TDK]

Interesting alternate take on 12 Angry Men here http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/03/12_angry_men_turns_50.html

It doesn't pick up on the one really silly bit of counter evidence though. In the film we learn that since the knife is a flick knife it wouldn't have been used to stab down. Ergo the boy didn't do it. But the knife was a flick knife and it was used to stab down regardless of who the killer really was so the point is irrelevant.

[AntiCitizenOne]

Anna,

You must love Pikachu, like this dog does.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SPuPBS-VXE

[Anna]

I like the slow-mo. :D

[David]

TDK,

“Fonda's juror # 8 no doubt could have said with similar ease, ‘I’m not saying it wasn’t Islamic terrorists who plowed two planes into the WTC, but it’s possible’.”

Heh. I hadn’t thought of it quite that way before. I haven’t seen it in ages, but I remember the odd way that the evidence first damns, then exonerates, equally dramatically, which is, well, a wee bit implausible. And I remember some fine acting and plenty of atmosphere. I may have to dig it out again and take another look…

[Anna]

David, you've gone up in the wikio ranking. You're a big cheese now.

[David]

I know. I’m practically royalty. Soon I won’t be seen dead talking to the likes of you.

[AntiCitizenOne]

For this Friday.

http://www.vimeo.com/1223566