I have no clue how Yahoo! got the Tolkien estate to give them rights to use Bilbo and Gandalf to advertise how you can text and chat inside Yahoo!’s email offering. Half of me thinks it is oddly interesting to “watch” Mr. Wizard and the Halfling converse as if they were 15 year old girls. The other half thinks it is sacrilegious. You decide which half you fall on.
When John Kanzius of Erie, PA man announced he’d ignited salt water with the radio-frequency generator he’d invented, some thought it was a hoax. Not only is it not a hoax, scientists know why burns the way it does and he has been able to keep salt water in a test tube burning like a candle, as long as it is exposed to radio frequencies.
This leads me to think that the (to use the pun you know is coming) burning question is how can we use the world’s most abundant substance as clean fuel? Or, more importantly, as my friend and former WGTCTIP2 author Erik puts it, “Does it take more energy to run the necessary storage equipment than the process generates?”
To continue, Erik wants to know why the article does not mention the obvious:
“Hydrogen fuel cells are totally possible, but the one hang-up is the current effort and cost to generate pure hydrogen needed to fuel them. Right now you’d need to capture it from a fossil fuel burning reaction, which obviously isn’t ideal, and then store it at a gas station for people to fill up, making it a huge infrastructure challenge as well. With this machine, instead of burning the released hydrogen, capture it. We could all one day have these in our garages and use them to fuel our cars ourselves.”
Below is a clip from the local news about this cancer fighter who accidentally lit salt water on fire and maybe in the process has saved mankind:
Via Neu
For those who have a few minutes for a geeky laugh, check out the video below. My favorite part of “Vista Sucks” is when the announcer says, “From the company that taught you to turn off the computer by clicking the start button.” Enjoy.
2013 UPDATE: the video mentioned above has been removed due to a copyright issue – a photo used in it is actually a rights managed photo and I’ve taken the video down per a request from Getty Images.
Sure, I’m giving away a secret but future victories will be even sweeter knowing that my opponent could have been on the same level as I am in terms of obscure word knowledge. Courtesey of Wired Mag’s “How To” issue, here are recommended “words to know” from John Williams Jr., executive director of the National Scrabble Association:
azo, jo, ka, ki, qaid, qat, qi, xi, xu, za, zin and zoa.
Also on the list for when you have too few or too many vowels:
hm, hmm and ourie.
When I pull a “zin” on someone, when he or she is complaining that it isn’t a word, I’m simply going to say “next time read my blog.”
Via Wired.
This omni-directional treadmill represents a massive step forward in designing and developing virtual worlds. So far its just the floor of the holodeck, but still it’s something…
Via Neu
This is what smart kids do at a good school – use their knowledge to better themselves and the rest of humanity in the process. Those of use who went to a state school would have loaded it with the Beast, not a primo brew like Miller Light. Enjoy.
The Hole – video powered by Metacafe
A large cast of nerdy French individuals with some time on their hands decided to devout those precious minutes to recreate the classic co-op Space Invaders using stop-motion animation of people sitting in auditorium seats. It’s super geeky and oh so cool!
Via Ro (via Amos)
My friend Sam told me about DotNetNuke, a fully customizable and scalable open source web platform that I deem cool enough to share. It is exactly what I was looking for as I have been trying to figure out how to help my friend Steven take his Democratic Lawyer Council org to the proverbial next level. For my goals, its much better than doing something simple in Ruby.
At first, the idea of building 51 commonly themed web sites – one for each state plus one for the national chapter – each with their own special characteristics was a daunting proposition. After watching the 20 min video on what DotNetNuke can do, I’m really ready to fully geek out and try and change our country for the better. Sam and I are planning to use this platform to tackle a completely separate business idea. Man, it just keeps getting easier to do all the cool tech stuff I want and as I don’t love to code that much anymore, this platform makes me really excited. Check it out for yourself.
This Indian kid can name Pi to over 8700 places. Insane! Happy Friday!
SCI FI Channel is currently conducting the first-ever nationwide search for America’s most talented new psychic. Eight finalists will be selected by a panel of experts to compete on SCI FI’s new original reality series The Gift, slated to premiere this summer.
First of all, I can’t wait to see what these experts look like. Second and more important, if you are a psychic, then how do you not know you won already? I would love to see 8 people besieging the producer saying “Of course I won! I’m psychic! Dismiss these pretenders immediately!”
Via Monty