So big that a floating raft of pumice stone in the South Pacific Ocean, that happens to be 300 miles long and about 35 miles wide, or roughly 200 square miles larger than New Jersey, could go undetected for any length of time. It’s likely the rocks are the result of an underwater volcano, Monowai, [...]
From Jason Kottke: “Venus passed in front of the Sun yesterday for the last time until 2117. The transit took almost seven hours but this NASA video shows it in under a minute.” To which, I add the more eloquent, “daaaaamn.”
Score another point for MIT and its long, illustrious list of pranks. On April 20th, hackers at the college turned the Green Building on campus into a giant playable game of Tetris. The photo speaks for itself, but there is an awesome video of the prank as well. MIT hackers have long considered “Tetris on the Green Building” to be the Holy [...]
What would it look like if modern mapping technology still relied on a handrawn look? Stamen Design overlaid watercolor textures on OpenStreetMap map tiles and the effect does indeed add “warm pop” to the maps. The Watercolor mapping project was inspired by the Bicycle Portraits project. It’s fun to peak at various cities. Though at the moment the site [...]
Is New Portland, Maine’s Katies Crotch Rd. the best name for a street sign ever? Yes, it almost certainly is. Especially because the origins of the road’s name are vague and mostly mysterious. Luckily, even though it costs the town $200 to replace the signs every time they are stolen (which is quite often!), the [...]
How much does this story tickle me? After Rick Ruzzamenti, upper left, decided to donate his kidney, it set off a chain of kidney donation that led to 30 people getting 30 kidneys from people they didn’t know. It was the ultimate case of paying it forward. Ruzzamenti’s selfless gesture inspired the loved ones of those receiving kidneys [...]
NPR on Leonardo da Vinci keeping to-do lists: In a book soon to be published, [historian Toby] Lester says Leonardo used to travel with a small notebook hanging from his belt, and “whenever something caught his eye,” he would make a note, or begin “sketching furiously.” “It is useful,” Leonardo wrote, to “constantly observe, note, and [...]
Pst, I’ve got more invites two one invites to Jason Kottke’s Stellar if anyone is interested in trying it out. Sorry. I’ve quite enjoyed it to this point. Basically, Stellar aggregates all the things you like or favorite around the web, specifically on Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo and Flickr. It’s a simple site that allows for a very [...]
Today’s difficult but important read comes from journalist Mac McClelland: It was my research editor who told me it was completely nuts to willingly get fucked at gunpoint. That’s what she called me when I told her the story. We were drunk and in a karaoke bar, so at the time I came up with [...]
Having a hard time disagreeing or summing it up better than John Struan, when he writes, “this presentation by Paul Nicklen is possibly the best TED talk I’ve watched - - funny, fascinating, well-delivered, and supported by tremendous photographs. Among the interesting factoids: The ice he regularly dove in was so cold that he typically vomited [...]
