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The Wild Storm: Warren Ellis reboots DC’s Wildstorm
As someone who’s struggled with his weight all his life (and who comes from a family with similar problems), I’ve long been fascinated with the science of weight and obesity; many years ago I listened to a Quirks & Quarks segment detailing the theory that the modern obesity epidemic was the result of a bird flu that affected our gut flora and changed our metabolisms to make us hungrier and more susceptible to convert the food we ate to fat. (more…)
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A virus first found in chickens is implicated in human obesity
We’ve been writing about the efforts of parfumiers to make book-smell scents ( chemistry , product , hoax ) for many years, but the reality has been pretty disappointing — I bought some smell early on and found that I ended up just smelling like vanilla. (more…)
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Parfumiers are trying to capture the smell of old books
This $14, 100-second hourglass is filled with magnetized iron filings that form beautiful fans and other shapes as the sand drains into the bottom bulb. ( via Canopy )
Noah Swartz writes, “Jie Qi from the MIT Media Lab and Bunnie Huang of Hacking the Xbox fame have teamed up to make LED stickers! Using adhesive copper tape you can turn any notebook into a fantastical light up circuit sketchbook. I got to play with them myself at FOO Camp and they’re as easy to use as the look, and in the time since Ji and Bunnie have gone back to the lab and made a number of sensor and controller stickerss that give you loads of options of what to make. They’re running a fundraiser to do a big production run of these over at Crowdsupply, and while they have funding I’m sure lots of people will be kicking themselves if they don’t manage to grab some of these while they can.” Circuit Stickers ( Thanks, Noah! )
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LED stickers: turn your notebook into a lightshow
The sheer awesome filtration power of the OKO filter is on display here as a fellow from Japan’s RocketNews24 uses it to separate the clear, relatively benign H2O out of the Black Waters of American Imperialism. If it can turn Coke into water, the entertainment industry should consider using it — after all, they’ve spent the past 20 years trying to get the food coloring out of the swimming pool. In any event, I wonder how you dispose of the sludge that remains in the bottle? I tried drinking by clear and colorless cola [filtration] ‘s great! Taste to be worried about? ( via Kottke )
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Filter can separate water from Coke
Aaron Ansarov picks up live Portuguese man-of-wars from the Delray Beach, FL, photographs them on a light-table and returns them to the beach. The photos are then mirror-imaged and post-processed into a gorgeous collection of psychedelic nature photos. You can buy some amazing prints of his work. Psychedelic Portuguese Man-of-War Photos Prove God Is a Stoner [Jakob Schiller/Wired]
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Gorgeous, psychedelic photos of Portuguese man-of-wars
The North Paw is a kit for an anklet that subtly vibrates your on the side of your ankle that faces north, so that you attain a kind of subliminal “Compass Sense” like those possessed by certain birds. What makes it way more awesome than a regular compass? Persistence. With a regular compass the owner only knows the direction when he or she checks it. With this compass, the information enters the wearer’s brain at a subconscious level, giving the wearer a true feeling of absolute direction, rather than an intellectual knowledge as with a regular compass. Because of the plasticity of the brain, it has been shown that most wearers gain a new sense of absolute direction, giving them a superhuman ability to navigate their surroundings. The original idea for North Paw comes from research done at University of Osnabrück in Germany. In this study, rather than an anklet, the researchers used a belt. They wore the belt non-stop for six weeks, and reported successive stages of integration. North Paw ( Thanks, Lucas )
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Acquire a transhuman Compass Sense with a kit-built anklet
Virtuoso hardware hacker Bunnie Huang is building an open hardware laptop. Want. We started the design in June, and last week I got my first prototype motherboards, hot off the SMT line. It’s booting linux, and I’m currently grinding through the validation of all the sub-components. I thought I’d share the design progress with my readers. Of course, a feature of a build-it-yourself laptop is that all the design documentation is open, so others of sufficient skill and resources can also build it. The hardware and its sub-components are picked so as to make this the most practically open hardware laptop I could create using state of the art technology. You can download, without NDA, the datasheets for all the components, and key peripheral options are available so it’s possible to build a complete firmware from source with no opaque blobs. Building my Own Laptop
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Bunnie Huang is building a laptop
OMGUbuntu reviews the new System76 Sable Complete , a $799, expandable, open all-in-one computer that is price-competitive and performance-competitive with iMacs and other all-in-ones. I’ve owned some System76 laptops and have been generally impressed with both the build-quality and the support offered by the company — they’re always a good bet if you want to get a pre-installed GNU/Linux machine. The Sable is a gorgeous looking PC that (on paper at least) is faster, cheaper, more expandable, and better at running Ubuntu than the 2011 iMac I’m writing this article on. More impressively to my mind (and my wallet) is that although System76 are a niché retailer (meaning costs are often higher than those of mass-manufacturers) the all-in-one PC is competitively priced, even without WiFi, a disc drive, or input accessories. Compared against two similarly specc’d machines using other OSes – namely the Vizio and the 2011 iMac – the Sable stands up well. Meet The $799 All-in-One Ubuntu PC from System76 ( via Engadget )
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All-in-one Sable Complete PC, an Ubuntu-based desktop PC that competes on price and power