Boeing 747 mock-up
At first it looks like a real 747 before you realize it has a second cockpit and barely a tail fin.
At RAAF (Royal Australian Air Base) base Pearce, 35 kilometers to the north of Perth, in Western Australia, the Special Air Service Regiment (SASR), the Australian Special Forces, can put their counter-terrorism procedures to the test using a Boeing 747 mock-up.
(via The Aviationist)
- If Earth weren’t tilted on its axis, we wouldn’t have woodgrain, just “tree brown”.
- A pencil has the potential to draw a line 38 miles long.
- If you could fold a piece of paper in half 50 times, its thickness will be 3/4 the distance from the Earth to the Sun (71 million miles).
- There is a species of jellyfish that is immortal (turritopsis nutricula).
- A small enough animal can fall at terminal velocity without suffering any injury upon impact. An ant (or even a smallish spider) dropped from a tall building will be just fine.
Twenty Four Hour Photograph of the Sky
Chris Kotsiopoloulos does it again. A 24 hour view of the sky, seen as a single polarized panorama.
(via Colossal via news.com.au)
Amongst the endless praise Apple receives on a regular basis, there are some interesting negative sides to the company.
So, there we were. Not more than 2 minutes into the trial, and Apple conceded to trying to hoodwink the judge.
From the Bristol Cryptography Blog, an interesting bit of research on the U.S. and Russia’s disarmament efforts using zero knowledge proofs.
As a result, the current approach uses a so-called information barrier: they put both warheads in a black box. This black box then compares the two by performing some measurements and outputs yes/no depending on whether the warhead is equivalent to the template warhead, without revealing any information about the design of the warheads.
Kottke highlights this passage from a review of the Color Uncovered iPad app:
Late in his life, Claude Monet developed cataracts. As his lenses degraded, they blocked parts of the visible spectrum, and the colors he perceived grew muddy. Monet’s cataracts left him struggling to paint; he complained to friends that he felt as if he saw everything in a fog. After years of failed treatments, he agreed at age 82 to have the lens of his left eye completely removed. Light could now stream through the opening unimpeded. Monet could now see familiar colors again. And he could also see colors he had never seen before. Monet began to see — and to paint — in ultraviolet.
(via kottke)
Every flawed school of argument is listed. Including the error of my previous sentence: Hasty Generalization.
