Archive for December 30th, 2005
DRS Technologies uses some really good Ultra High-Speed Cameras. I love watching stuff in slow motion - especially destructive forces. They have one especially cool gadget that tracks the flight trajectory of a projectile and seems to even detect the shockwaves - check out the clip of this tank shell. The Mythbusters need something this high tech! Of course I’d be happy to have their hi-speed camera any day! electricstuff.co.uk has some crazy electrics tomfoolery going on that I recommend you check out, especially the hi-speed footage stuff.
December 30th, 2005
Boing Boing addresses why not to shoot a gun into the air for fun. The simple and obvious answer is that a faling bullet will f*** you up worse than a regular gunshot wound. This has a Mythbusters tie-in:
What is your favorite Busted Myth and your favorite Confirmed one? ADAM SAVAGE — I’ve always been partial to the Penny Drop myth, i.e. will a penny dropped from the Empire State Building kill you when it hits the ground? To me, that was one of the most elegant and simple applications of science to a question that we’ve done. Until last week. We just worked on a myth called “bullets fired up” — i.e., will a bullet fired directly vertically kill you when it comes back down. We did tons of research on it, and in the end, added significantly to the body of knowledge that’s out there on the subject. I won’t give away the ending, but we nailed this one.
I wonder when this episode will air - it will be an interesting experiment to pull off since it would be pretty difficult to shoot a bullet in the air and have it fall to a specific location to embed itself in ballistics gel to measure results. I think they will probably drop a bullet at sufficient height in order to acheive terminal velocity. Multiple drops with multiple slugs should take care of random tumbling or lack thereof.
Check out Mythbusters shirts here
December 30th, 2005
Some poor bastard in Hawaii opened up his iPod cube packaging on Christmas morning only to find a … slab o’ meat! Turns out a former WalMart employee had tampered with several iPod shipments and replaced the mp3 player with a tasty surprise. So with “Meat” becoming today’s theme, I created this beefy iPod image. [update 12/31 - took screen capture of the meat from CNN video]
December 30th, 2005
King Kong - He’s What’s For Dinner! Soon as Peter Jackson’s giant gorilla eats it, you can eat him, thanks to this handy guide to King Kong meat cuts! Just print it out and hand it to your local butcher and you’ll have some Filet Mignon ala Kong in no time! Boy o boy that’d be a fat slab o meat… I highly recommend it with a glass of red wine and some mash potaters.
If you want to use this as desktop wallpaper, just set it up as centered to fit with a solid color background.
December 30th, 2005
I wish I had my very own Solar Death Ray™. Then I would make it burn through a barbie doll torso from whose Barbie locks is suspended the Gravity Death Log™, which would then fall and destroy any object I desired. While not quite as powerful as the MIT solar death ray, it still has the power to turn an Orea cookie into a smoldering piece of char. Shame on you Mythbusters for not taking your own contraption and burning a crater in the a nearby planet!
December 30th, 2005
In a classic poster from 1979, Jack Summerford promoted the ‘new’ typeface ITC Garamond through use of the word Helvetica typeset in ITC Garamond. This was a reaction to the overuse of Helvetica at the time, and a humorous stab at the ubiquitous typeface. Ironically, ITC Garamond subsequently gained notoriety and saturated the design world, most notably as the font for Apple Computers (albiet at 80% horiz scale) I have put this 1979 classic onto a t-shirt and can be bought here (Available as a tshirt & messenger bag).
December 30th, 2005
