Our project, simplicity in inner city bicycling, was at first glance a fun aesthetic opportunity in new trends, color, and materials. Our target lived / worked in an inner city environment with minimal space. Bicycling at this level can be more about fashion and culture than speed and performance.
After the first few brainstorm sessions we knew there where bigger opportunities. The project ended up rethinking what a “frame” meant, getting ride of basic key components, and creating a new type of compact bicycling. Inspired by the first the “hobby horse” from it’s simplicity and secondly the cafe race scene. Each is an exercise in stripping something down to its core.

Website.

Using newly gathered seismic data from 2005, researchers reconstructed the event to show the rift tore open along its entire 35-mile length in just days. Dabbahu, a volcano at the northern end of the rift, erupted first, then magma pushed up through the middle of the rift area and began “unzipping” the rift in both directions, the researchers explained in a statement today.

“We know that seafloor ridges are created by a similar intrusion of magma into a rift, but we never knew that a huge length of the ridge could break open at once like this,” said Cindy Ebinger, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochesterand co-author of the study.

Water problems solved. But things would get worse even: the new ocean is said to connect the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden. Errr… yeah.

So when we translate all the sciencalese we come to this: the largest ass crack in the world will connect two seas which are already connected together all while solving the drought problem in Ethiopia. Wait, what happens to Ethiopia?

Via MSNBC.

It could be that time is out of joint!

Everything from the concept of the black hole to GPS timing owes a debt to the theory of general relativity, which describes how gravity arises from the geometry of space and time. The sun’s gravitational field, for instance, bends starlight passing nearby because its mass is warping the surrounding space-time. This theory has held up to precision tests in the solar system and beyond, and has explained everything from the odd orbit of Mercury to the way pairs of neutron stars perform their pas de deux.

Yet it is still not clear how well general relativity holds up over cosmic scales, at distances much larger than the span of single galaxies. Now the first, tentative hint of a deviation from general relativity has been found. While the evidence is far from watertight, if confirmed by bigger surveys, it may indicate either that Einstein’s theory is incomplete, or else that dark energy, the stuff thought to be accelerating the expansion of the universe, is much weirder than we thought

Continue reading at The New Scientist.

$12 via Fashionable geek.

Via Designer Daily.

And here’s me thinking that the tattoo boob job silly was.

Via DeadDog.

Guess what.

Not only do they consistently stick to the typical open source icons with fat borders, excelling in their ugliness, but they have implemented a MS Office similar ribbon at the top. Keep trying, guys.

During an outdoor grill, Fred Denegri, complained about the horrible smell and taste of his Diet Pepsi, out of the can.When analysing the content of the can, there seemed to be a dead, decomposing mouse in.

“It did smell rotten. My husband did want to know what was in there. He did not want to look at it. He was completely grossed out,” Amy said.

Fred did not give up on Diet Pepsi though and now intends to drink his soda from a glass. Maybe buying bottles might be another option.

What had been a simmering dispute over the reproduction of a single plate reached new heights in June when James Heilman, an emergency-room doctor from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, posted images of all 10 plates to the bottom of the article about the test, along with what research had found to be the most popular responses for each.

“I just wanted to raise the bar — whether one should keep a single image on Wikipedia seemed absurd to me, so I put all 10 up,” Dr. Heilman said in an interview. “The debate has exploded from there.”

Psychologists have registered with Wikipedia to argue that the site is jeopardizing one of the oldest continuously used psychological assessment tests.

While the plates have appeared on other Web sites, it was not until they showed up on the popular Wikipedia site that psychologists became concerned.

“The more test materials are promulgated widely, the more possibility there is to game it,” said Bruce L. Smith, a psychologist and president of the International Society of the Rorschach and Projective Methods, who has posted under the user name SPAdoc. He quickly added that he did not mean that a coached subject could fool the person giving the test into making the wrong diagnosis, but rather “render the results meaningless.”

To psychologists, to render the Rorschach test meaningless would be a particularly painful development because there has been so much research conducted — tens of thousands of papers, by Dr. Smith’s estimate — to try to link a patient’s responses to certain psychological conditions. Yes, new inkblots could be used, these advocates concede, but those blots would not have had the research — “the normative data,” in the language of researchers — that allows the answers to be put into a larger context.

Source: NYT.

Hodousek says they ordered drinks, appetizers and a couple of main courses from the server. Among the items ordered was a bowl of french onion soup.

After the server brought the soup to the table, Hodousek says he immediately began eating the cheese which was spread across the top portion of the bowl.

As he ate the soup, he felt what he believed was a tough piece of cheese on the side of his mouth. When he couldn’t chew it into pieces, he told his family that it felt like rubber, according to the court filing.

Things get more interesting though.

n an effort to complete our investigation, we contacted Mr. Hodousek and his attorney numerous times over the next six weeks to request that the object be sent to an independent laboratory for testing.

Seven weeks later, on June 1, 2009, the object was finally forwarded to an independent lab. Because Mr. Hodousek took the object with him on April 12, we could not establish that this was the same object the lab received.

In addition, Mr. Hodousek asked us to conduct DNA testing of female employees at the restaurant to determine if there could be a match to any DNA that might be found on the object.

While we are mindful of our employees’ privacy rights, we asked our female employees to voluntarily comply with Mr. Hodousek’s request and they have done so.

To ensure a thorough assessment, we asked Mr. Hodousek to take a DNA test. Mr. Hodousek failed to appear for his appointment on July 20, 2009. Mr. Hodousek’s attorney filed the lawsuit against us on July 21.

Source and image theft ktla.com.

The watch is made out of 115 hand-mounted parts and has a winding mechanism. One winding is good for 8 days. At $265.000 one could at least have expected a battery or even a kinetic winding mechanism. The best thing about the watch is how it appears to defy the laws of physics with its floating movement and suspended hour and minute indicators. The secret lies in two transparent sapphire disks supporting the hour and minute hands. Oh and for $265.000 ou are also allowed to design the casing yourself, just in case you wanted to screw up the good looks of the watch.

Source: Luxury Insider.

I asked for 56 stars and initially adored them. But when my father saw them, he was furious. So I said I fell asleep and the that the tattooist mad made a mistake.

Body artist Tourmiantz now has withdrawn the offer to pay half of the removal costs and also admitted having received ample publicity for his studio during the tattoostargate case. In the future he will insist on getting written permission before tattooing anyone else.

Via The Telegraph.