Tag: more-at-boing-boing

The plant with 1000 faces

There is a vine that is capable of contorting the size, shape, color, orientation, and vein patterns of its leaves to match nearby foliage. It’s able to match not just one or two other species, but a whole host of them. Nobody has any clue how it knows what neighboring plants look like .

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The plant with 1000 faces

Unedited silent footage of Nagasaki bombing

From preparing the bomb to dropping it—the explosion is a few seconds after 8:40. [ Video Link ] This silent film shows the final preparation and loading of the “Fat Man” bomb into “Bockscar,” the plane which dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. It then shows the Nagasaki explosion from the window of an observation plane. This footage comes from Los Alamos National Laboratory. I have not edited it in any way from what they gave me except to improve the contrast a little — it is basically “raw.” I have annotated it with some notes on the bombing and what you can see — feel free to disable it if you don’t want it. I suggest leaving them on. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a video benefit from YouTube annotations! [via Nuclear Secrecy and MeFi ]        

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Unedited silent footage of Nagasaki bombing

Google Maps image of boy’s dead body to be removed

Google Maps is replacing a satellite image that shows the body of Kevin Barrera, a 14-year-old who was murdered in 2009 in Richmond, California. The boy’s father, Jose Barrera, apparently found out about the picture just a few days ago, commenting “When I see this image, that’s still like that happened yesterday.” Google says it will take eight days to swap it out. “Google has never accelerated the replacement of updated satellite imagery from our maps before, but given the circumstances we wanted to make an exception in this case,” Google Maps VP Brian McClendon told the San Francisco Chronicle. I don’t care to reproduce the sad image here, but the San Francisco Chronicle did. ” Google to fix map image showing slain boy ” (SF Chronicle)        

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Google Maps image of boy’s dead body to be removed

Newborn twins mistake bath for womb

Via Her.ie : …the original source of the clip has been discovered. Sonia Rochel, a nurse at Clinique de la Muette in Paris, captured this video to showcase a very unique ‘baby spa’ bathing technique. What the 51-year-old nurse didn’t realise was the remarkable effect the special interaction between these new born twins would have around the world. Rochel gently massages and caresses the tiny baby boy and girl in a ‘Thalasso Baby Bath’, as they mimic life inside the womb. Video via LiveLeak        

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Newborn twins mistake bath for womb

Smithsonian goes 3D

Jessica Sadeq from the Smithsonian shares big news–the Institution has launched the Smithsonian X 3D Collection and 3-D explorer . They’ve gathered data on some of the most treasured items in the archives, and they’re encouraging people who work with 3D printers to help them explore new ways of using the data. Our team scanned 20 of our collection items (The Wright Flyer, a fossil whale and even an exploded star!) in 3D and have made the data available for download (and print for those with 3D printers). You can also take tours and explore the models through a custom built viewer that is embeddable and shareable. Take a look: http://3d.si.edu/ . The announcement kicks off the Smithsonian X 3D Conference, a two-day event focused on the current state of the Institution’s 3-D program and where 3D digitization of objects in its collection is headed. A webcast of the conference is available.        

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Smithsonian goes 3D

On Windows’ battery life problems

Jeff Atwood loves everything about his Surface Pro 2 except for its terrible battery life . The Windows light usage battery life situation has not improved at all since 2009. If anything the disparity between OS X and Windows light usage battery life has gotten worse. Microsoft positions Windows 8 as an operating system that’s great for tablets, which are designed for casual web browsing and light app use – but how can that possibly be true when Windows idle power management is so much worse than the competition’s desktop operating system in OS X – much less their tablet and phone operating system, iOS? A typical data point: Windows, on a 13″ MacBook Air, lasts about half as long per charge as OS X. What’s the deal?        

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On Windows’ battery life problems

Cable customers pay $5.54 a month for ESPN whether they want it or not

Cable bundling, whereby we have to pay for channels we don’t want to get ones that we do, hits us in the pocket harder than we realize .        

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Cable customers pay $5.54 a month for ESPN whether they want it or not

The future past of the iWatch

Anil Dash offers a timeline of the legendary iWatch’s “entrance to the market” . June 17, 2014: Microsoft’s rumored return to watchmaking ships not as the leaked xWatch, but as the Surface Band.        

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The future past of the iWatch

World’s largest tunnel boring machine lands in Seattle

Known affectionately as Bertha, this tunnel boring machine has the widest diameter of any boring machine ever built; 57.5 feet. It’s being used to dig a highway tunnel under downtown Seattle and it just arrived there today after being shipped from Japan. I feel this warrants your attention for two reasons: 1) If you live near Seattle, you can actually go get a look at this massive beast before it starts chewing its way through the city. If you like looking at giant machines (or know someone who does) now’s your chance. She’s coming into the Port of Seattle, Terminal 46, as you read this and there will be ample opportunities to get a look as the pieces are assembled and moved into the nearby launch pit. The Washington State Department of Transportation has suggestions on places to go to get a good view . 2) If, for some reason, you were looking for a new way to lose massive amounts of time on YouTube, Bertha (and boring machines, in general) can help with that. Here’s a cutaway animation explaining how boring machines work . Here’s a video of Big Becky, another boring machine, breaking through to the other side of a tunnel at Niagara Falls, Canada . (In fact, boring machine breakthrough videos are, in and of themselves, a mesmerizing genre.) And in this video, you can watch the massively long line of support equipment go by in the wake of a boring machine .

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World’s largest tunnel boring machine lands in Seattle