This campaign poster for biological evolution by natural selection turned up recently:
But it’s not quite right! Someone quickly whipped up a fix:
This is closer… but still not correct! Here’s the ultimate version:
I imagine this is exactly the sort of science early pioneers of the Internet envisioned.
This comes from Gala Darling from two years ago. I also belatedly like her December Activity Guide giving something to do every day of “the month of Christmas”. Most of the suggestions could be just as applicable in January: “Carry chocolate coins in your purse & give them to people who make you smile” and “decide to do Twelve Dates of Christmas”, for example.
Image Text:
If you have food in your fridge, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep you are richer than 75% of the world. If you have money in the bank, your wallet, and some spare change you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy. If you woke up this morning with more health than illness you are more blessed than the million people who will not survive this week. if you have never experienced the danger of battle, the agony of improimprosimprisonment or torture, or the horrible pangs of starvation you are luckier than 500 million people alive and suffering. If you can read this message you are more fortunate than 3 billion people in the world who cannot read it at all.
Medical imaging firm EIZO released a pinup calendar a couple years ago. But they’re a medical imaging firm… so the pinups all look like this:
Miss March
I’m sure most people only read it for the clavicles.
(via Geekosystem)
Supposedly an actual message from a school answering machine:
File this under “if it’s not real, it should be”.
Electric Delorean
That’s right. DeLorean Motor Company announced an all-new, all-electric DeLorean. It debuted last week, and the want it in production by 2013.
I did the math so you don’t have to. Given typical electrical efficiences of present-day electric cars, 1.21 gigawatt (hours) would power a car for about 7.5 million miles.
Lightning-powered cars. Tell your friends.
(Bonus question: how large would the flux capacitor have to be to power a car at 12 volts for a 30 mile round trip?)
When an oxygen tank on Apollo 13 exploded, astronauts had to depend mainly on the Lunar Module systems, designed only for landing on the moon, to carry them safely through space.
According to Futility Closet, when the crew had returned safely to Earth, Lunar Module manufacturer Grumman sent a bill for services rendered to Command Module manufacturer North American Rockwell.
Inspection: $ 20.00 Towing Charge @ $1.00/mile 300,000.00 Loss of altitude vehicle 24,100.00 $20/day plus .08¢ per mile Battery charge 5.00 Air conditioning @ $5.00/day 25.00 Room and board @ $40.00 each 600.00 per day
I haven’t been able to find any confirmation this actually happened, but it’s the sort of story that’s so fun I’m choosing to believe it’s true anyway.
I’m delighted to discover that Sarah Kay spoke at TED2011, reciting two poems already featured here but then speaking so eloquently on her experiences learning and teaching spoken word poetry as to render her entire presentation poetic.
Okay, one more. These are just way too awesome. Here’s Law and Order: Special Letters Unit
“In the alphabet system there are 26 letters. The detectives who investigate these ABCs are members of an elite squad called the Special Letters Unit. These are their stories. [chung chung]“
Sesame Street should get medals for this stuff. I hereby delightedly present: Meal or No Meal with Howie Eatswell.
I honestly can’t decide if my favorite part is the muppet’s earrings or the fact that he keeps taking calls from “The Baker”.
Halloween has always been a great testament to the flexibility of our capitalist economy.
A Halloween Superstore took over a massive (previously abandoned) retail space at our town’s shopping mall this year — an anchor location that might once have been a Sears or a JCPenney. They converted half the space into an enormous stock room and the other half into display areas for packaged costumes, masks, wigs, makeup, accessories (like “Toto in a Basket” to accompany the quintessential Dorothy costume), and elaborate holiday decorations (like bloodied hands you can place strategically under your garage door to frighten unsuspecting children).
Of course, at dawn on November 1st, the entire operation became a liability. The remaining inventory was immediately reduced to 50% its original prices and sold off to people planning for next year. The store closed a couple days later.
The extra candy stockpiled at grocery stores across the country was also reduced to clearance prices on November 1st, kitschy candy buckets in the shapes of pumpkins and severed heads were thrown away to linger forever in landfills, and trick-or-treaters everywhere stuffed this year’s costumes back into dressers and closets to be forgotten until next year.
It’s capitalism at its finest. An industry emerges overnight and disappears by the next morning, all for the sake of profiting from a few hours of children’s entertainment.
But this doesn’t compare in brilliance to the economic transaction a friend of ours offers her children after every Halloween: “I’ll buy as much candy as you’re willing to sell for 5¢ apiece. Then you can use the money to go buy a toy you can keep forever, instead of candy that will be gone after you eat it.”
The kids get toys to play with and eat less sugar, while the parents get to devour Halloween treats without the guilt of taking candy from their babies.
