John Baichtal says: “MAKE’s interview with hardware hacker Akiba highlighted a fascinating trend: individuals and small groups taking their safety into their own hands by creating, modifying, and networking radiation detectors, a.k.a. Geiger counters, rather than relying on governments for information…
Continue reading… “Make’s Roundup of DIY Radiation Detectors”
The effects of noise pollution in the oceans, such as from powerful sonars that can make dolphins go deaf, are still being uncovered by researchers. The latest victims are squids and octopuses (including the ‘cheeky’ ones…), which are affected by low-frequency soundwaves produced by human offshore activities…
Continue reading… “Oceans Noise Pollution Causing Massive Trauma to Squids & Octopuses”
How much do we love sugar? The amount may surprise you – the average American eat about 3,550 pounds of sugar and 313 gallons of high fructose corn syrup in a lifetime. And according to Dr. Robert Lustig, UCSF expert on pediatric hormone disorders and childhood obesity, it’s killing us…
Continue reading… “Is Sugar Toxic?”
Tajikistan’s Council of Ulema is set to issue a fatwa banning a so-called SMS-divorce, the state religious committee have announced. The move comes amid growing complaints that some Tajik men – working as migrant laborers in Russia – divorce their wives by sending a mobile-phone text message or just making a phone call.
Sunni Islamic traditions allow men to divorce their wives by merely saying “talaq,” an Islamic term for a declaration of divorce. Tajik religious leaders, however, insist that ending a marriage is not such a simple matter…
Continue reading… “Authorities In Tajikistan Plan Ban On Divorce By Text Message”
Last week there were used battleships for sale on e-bay, this week we’ve got used space shuttles. But not going as cheaply as the warships and not being turned into pots and pans either.
NASA has been trying to flog these space shuttles for a while now; they have already been marked down from $42M to $28M. And it looks like they may have finally found a new, earth-bound, home.
Continue reading… “Sold to the Highest Bidder: 3 Used Space Ships”
Pink Tentacle has a post about Pluto-kun, created by Japan’s Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation in the 1990s. The helium-voiced fellow stars in a “pro-nuclear PR cartoon entitled ‘Pluto-kun, Our Reliable Friend.’ The aim of the animated film, which features the company mascot Pluto-kun, is to dispel some of the fears surrounding plutonium.”
Continue reading… “Meet Pluto-kun, the World’s Cutest Plutonium Mascot”
Plants only need a specific wavelength to grow, not the full spectrum of the sun.
If we were to prevent a Malthusian catastrophe, we’d better figure out a way to boost crop yield to keep feeding the planet’s growing population. Gertjan Meeuws and other bioengineers of PlantLab have found an answer: a greenhouse where every aspect of the growing condition is controlled, where climate (or even the Sun) is not a factor at all…
Continue reading… “Sunless Farming of the Future”
Do you use Gmail or other email cloud service? Then you’d be surprised to learn that according to the law, the government can get your email without a warrant if it’s older than 180 days. David Kravets of Wired’s Threat Level explains…
Continue reading… “Big Brother Needs No Warrant to Snoop at Your Cloud Emails”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyZQPjUT5B4&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Sapientia University has created a series of online videos that illustrate different sorting algorithms using folk dances:
What you have to do is just check that they are in fact implementing the algorithm correctly. The dancers have numbers stuck on their front and they do seem to look down and examine the value on another dancer before performing the dance routine dictated by the algorithm…
Continue reading… “Sorting Algorithm Explained with a Hungarian Folk Dance”
Swedish philosophy student Isaac Gerson thinks that file sharing is sacred. The 19-year-old leader of the Missionary Church of Kopimism believes that stealing and sharing are signs of appreciation, and has compared closed-source software to slavery. Last year, Sweden rejected the church’s application to be recognized as a religion, but Gerson isn’t giving up so easily…
Continue reading… “Swedish File Sharers Get Religious About Stealing”
A brief update on a story from a year ago: Bolivia is about to pass laws granting all of nature equal rights to human beings. The laws were first proposed after the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth and show the deep differences in zeitgeist between Bolivia and, well, pretty much every other nation-state on the planet…
Continue reading… “Mother Earth To Be Given Rights Equal to Humans In New Bolivian Law”
While on the move, what if any of your gadgets, such as a phone, laptop or iPod, run out of energy? Since it’s not always possible to carry a charger everywhere you go, what one can do wait for a power supply nearby. So, if such a situation arises, you can’t do much but wait till you get back home to pump life into your gadgets. But Revolution designed by Carl McGreavy is here to change this theory. Revolution is a self recharging digital camera which will get all the powers to function by a Dynamo…
Continue reading… “Revolution Self Recharging Digital Camera to End Charging Woes”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.