Curiosities – Page 9 – St. Eutychus

3D printed Fetus

I’ve been saying since we had our first (non 3D) ultrasound that the future is hooking up a 3D printer to the 3D scanner. Well people. The future is now.

“The result is a scale reproduction of your unborn baby, composed of an opaque white fetus encased in the mother’s clear, colorless abdomen. If you’re interested in procuring your own 7-ounce inaction figure, the price is ¥100,000 (about $1,275), and while that includes the decorative pink-and-white box, fetus keychains and cellphone dongles made with the same process will cost you extra.”

From theverge.com

August 9, 2012

High Res 3D Panorama of Mars

Incredible. Scroll your way around Mars. This is from a previous Mars Rover but was released by NASA last month. There are more panoramas like this here.

Here’s a nice little bit of perspective for those people who are saying trips to Mars are a waste of dollars…

August 9, 2012

This Mars thing is pretty cool. We listened to the landing on the radio today, while driving through a massive tunnel that goes under the Brisbane River, and under a bunch of Brisbane suburbs. These are fun times we live in.

It’s amazing that it worked. Really.

You can follow the Curiosity Rover on Twitter.

Here’s a photo of Mars the rover tweeted an hour ago.

August 6, 2012

Arty movie of guys throwing stuff with their weaker arm

Love this.

August 2, 2012

Being a hero is a rich man’s game

While you can be a real life superhero for the cost of some kevlar body armour and some lycra, being the real deal, ala playboy superheroes (as in the type who are single and wealthy, as in Batman or Iron Man), is apparently a costly exercise. The other day io9 worked out what it would cost to be Iron Man, and moneysupermarket.com pulled together these two infographics.

August 1, 2012

Most manly candles ever (made with bacon fat)

Amazing. I can’t wait to try this.

You can even (allegedly) use them to season your food.

From Squidoo, via Lifehacker

July 31, 2012

Bug-A-Salt: Add a pinch of salt and preserve a fly in an instant

This is brilliant. This gun, called the BugASalt, kills insects with just a pinch of salt. You can pledge some funds, safe in the knowledge its already hit its target, to grab yours today. Sure beats swatting.

Arthur sent me this on Facebook.

July 31, 2012

The science (or statistics) of roadkill intentionality

This video made me decide that our turtles are definitely live in a tank turtles, and not walking on the road, fighting crime, turtles.

July 26, 2012

How to hit a baseball travelling at the speed of light

It seems obvious that you can’t do this. XKCD does the math (or physics) to demonstrate that not only is it impossible, it’s also fatal for pitcher, batter, and probably the entire city…

“After about 70 nanoseconds the ball arrives at home plate. The batter hasn’t even seen the pitcher let go of the ball, since the light carrying that information arrives at about the same time the ball does. Collisions with the air have eaten the ball away almost completely, and it is now a bullet-shaped cloud of expanding plasma (mainly carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen) ramming into the air and triggering more fusion as it goes. The shell of x-rays hits the batter first, and a handful of nanoseconds later the debris cloud hits.”

mushroom cloud

It’s not all bad news though. The batter gets on base.

A careful reading of official Major League Baseball Rule 6.08(b) suggests that in this situation, the batter would be considered “hit by pitch”, and would be eligible to advance to first base.

I love this stuff. The XKCD “What If” blog is tackling similar questions on a weekly basis. Like trying to figure out how much power Yoda could generate via the Force.

July 25, 2012

Third Eagle says zombie attacks sign of end times…

You have no idea how much pleasure I took from writing the title of this post.

The video is a ramble, but it’s posted here for posterity’s sake so that we can all look back when the zombie attacks aren’t the bear attack from the book of Daniel.

As it turns out the zompocalypse and apocalypse are possibly the same thing. Who knew?

July 17, 2012

Opossums can’t be poisoned

Image Credit: animal.discovery.com.

A serum derived from the humble Opossum, who seems to be protected against any form of poisoning, could completely revolutionise the way snake bites are treated.

Some scientists have done some tests on a natural lethal toxin neutralizing factor (LTNF) occurring in the Opossum.

The study concludes:

“On the other hand, LTNF is effective against the venoms of all species of snakes. Therefore, LTNF can become a universal treatment for snakebites. Furthermore, LTNF is effective against scorpion and bee venoms, plant-derived ricin and bacterial toxin botulinum. Therefore, LTNF can become a universal treatment for toxins derived from animals, plants, and bacteria. In the standard treatment for snakebites, massive amounts of antivenom are administered for effectiveness, even though a large part of the population is hypersensitive to antivenom made in horses. Under such conditions, LTNF will be a most favorable replacement. It is further anticipated that the invention of LTNF has military applications due to the variety of unknown exposures that can occur under military conditions.”

So cool. BoingBoing has a bit of a story on the test that makes it clear just how awesome this gear is – some rats who had the serum introduced were also immune to poisoning.

July 10, 2012

Guy interviewed by his 12 year old self

This is sensational. I wish my twelve year old self had done something like this for my thirty year old self. But alas.

There’s a slight language warning first up.

July 7, 2012

Toy soldiers dancing

I enjoyed this.

Vimeo streams really fast on the iPad. On my Mac it puts the stop into stop motion…

July 7, 2012

Real life Hotwheels loop

Amazing. Mind blowing. Gravity defying.

July 3, 2012

Theory of motorsport relativity

Somehow, mostly related to picking up a couple of consulting clients, I’ve become professionally interested in motor sport. So I watched this video. Relative to really fast cars, Formula One cars are really fast.

This is an overlay of two videos – one featuring normal fast cars, the other featuring Formula One cars.

Via Kottke.org

June 24, 2012

Category: Curiosities