President Obama says Yucca Mountain is off the table as a storage center for waste from America's nuclear power plants. Congress seems to disagree and are still authorizing funding for the project. While political footballs are tossed about, people like Abraham Van Luik--a geoscientist with the U.... More.
Guestblogger Paul Spinrad is a freelance writer/editor with Catholic interests, and is Projects Editor for MAKE magazine. He is the author of The VJ Book and The Re/Search Guide to Bodily Fluids, and was an early contributor to bOING bOING when it was an online zine. He lives in San Francisco.
As ... More.
Gretchen Rubin has a list of 8 clues that you are being boring. She says her list is "utterly unscientific" but I think she's right on. Most of them are obvious, but boring people seem unaware that they are boring.
She also has a list of topics to avoid if you don't want to be a bore:
1. A dream. ... More.
Adam Ciralsky's Vanity Fair profile of Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater ("a company dogged by a grand-jury investigation, bribery accusations, and the voluntary-manslaughter trial of five ex-employees") reveals that Prince was a spy for the CIA while he was at the same time raking in over a bi... More.
Gentlemen of Bacongo by photographer Daniele Tamagni, documents a subculture of slum-dwelling men in the Congo who dress in luxurious handmade suits.
The movement, called Le Sape, combines French styles from their colonial roots and the individual's (often flamboyant) style. Le Sapeurs, as they'r... More.
They're also quite effective against armor but are entirely susceptable to air strikes.
Damn. At first glance that looked like a really great tube water slide.
Frankenpunk
Sure that's not just my old "pipes" screensaver?
You fools! Those are Tesla coils!
Looks like a MegaMan level.
Why is this considered creepy?
Where are the wires?
The vertical parts remind me of tarantula legs.
More trippy Russian design aesthetic. (Is that a series of tubes?)
You see 'creepy high-voltage tower'.
I see 'awesome sci-fi movie set'!
That's Ted Stevens' internet!
Oooh. Pretty.
(I like epic-size artwork. If it's functional, so much the better.)
WANT!
And a hydroelectric dam to power it...
Every time it rained they probably had to wait a week for the thing to dry out before using it.
#5:
You beat me to it. It was exactly what I thought, damn!
Creepy? What are these located in Russia's Uncanny Valley?
Unless the one in Baghdad is online, nobody can control the weather.
As a Slavic Russian let me chime in: Russian cultural products seem creepy to North Americans and Europeans because Russians openly and persistently ruminate on our mortality, which comes across in our literature, art, playground equipment, and the like.
The weirdness is reciprocal, however: How in the hell can you be so enamored by Obama, who is a fragile mortal leading a short, brutish life? ... Dick Cheney, now, that is a soul to relate to...
#18 I must be a Slavic Russian at heart because I completely relate your sentiment. Maybe I'm just a malcontent,
its like a giant waterslide, only with electricity! fun times!
It's a futuristic jail. The inmates are in the black pods.
Looks like a Marx generator.
There are a few similar structures used for particle physics experiments in the US -- 36 Marx generators power Sandia's Z Machine, while a pair of similar-looking Cockcroft-Walton generators serve as one of Fermilab's particle sources.
viva russia