Friday Ephemera

Squirrels want your snack treats. // Fresh Guacamole. // Batman & Robin run away from shit. // Quadrotor drones in “aggressive manoeuvres.” // Live like the Flintstones in Malibu, California. // The Hindenburg’s interiors. // A day in the life of the internet. // Musical instruments made of ice. // The Museum of Government Waste. // “Whitehall departments spent £1.4 billion in an attempt to save £159 million.” // How to extract your DNA using everyday household items. // LA sci-fi convention, 1980. // Baked potato bean bag chair. // Avengers be assembling. // Two visions. // Antarctica in colour, 1915. // San Diego penguin cam.

Comments

[Sam]

Whitehall departments spent £1.4 billion in an attempt to save £159 million.

Hahahahaha.

Oh wait... That's our money.

Damn. It's not funny.

[sk60]

I want a squadron of quadrotor drones.

And a dozen squirrels.

[carbon based lifeform]

The thin wall challenge (via metafilter)…

http://youtu.be/3hq5ScfEUw8

http://www.youtube.com/user/95Camry4Life/videos

[David]

“The thin wall challenge.”

Heh. My neighbours are also rather spirited in their coitus, though thankfully it isn’t quite so alarmingly loud. But still, loud enough. On one occasion I was tempted to applaud.

[Stuck-Record]

Rupert Sheldrake must be a bit miffed at quadrotor swarm behaviour.

[JuliaM]

" As Kumar explained at TED, the physical equations governing the angular inertia of objects favor small size—the smaller you make a bird, the faster it can turn in the air. That means the nano drones are incredibly agile."

Didn't Michael Crichton try to warn us about these things?

[Ted S., Catskill Mtns., NY, USA]

Penile fracture

[Bessie]

Oh no! About six hours ago the area in front of the penguin cam had been hosed down to bare concrete. All the little penguins were skipping over the hoses and mobbing the humans for fish. The big penguins had buggered off to the other side of the rocks for a bit of peace and quiet. But now it's covered in snow again. What happened in between? Did they bring in a huge snow machine? Did anybody see??

Maybe I should get out more ...

[Henry]

I like the Quadrators - more like Wasps than birds building a nest, though.

When one of the designers says "we are only limited by the battery life and.." wouldn't that be a rather big limitation?

Battery-life also greatly affects the cost and eco-friendliness of several of the electric cars out there. (Sir Clive Sinclair always argued that that's because the current crop of electric cars are too big - hence his small electric cars that attracted such derision)

Also, the Quadrators manoeuver better when smaller, so they don't seem well suited for carrying heavy objects around, as Kumar suggests, but for (noisy, short-range) reconnaissance tasks... :)

I'm reminded of the "man-hacks" in the game Half-Life 2.

[David]

Mark Steyn on the Sandra Fluke affair:

When even casual sex requires a state welfare programme you’re pretty much done for… The most basic issue here is not religious morality, individual liberty, or fiscal responsibility. It’s that a society in which middle-aged children of privilege testify before the most powerful figures in the land to demand state-enforced funding for their sex lives at a time when their government owes more money than anyone has ever owed in the history of the planet is quite simply nuts.

Also,

Sandra Fluke mows the lawn.

[TimT]

Hey, the museum of teapots sounds kind of cool. That's my idea of government waste.