With all this brouhaha about Secret Service agents misbehaving in Cartagena, I remembered this story in Smithsonian magazine two years ago about the unreliable presidential bodyguard who was supposed to be protecting Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theater the night he got shot.
View Link [smithsonianmag.com]
A part of its Giant Paper Airplane Project to get kids psyched about aviation and engineering, the Pima Air & Space Museum launched what may be the largest paper airplane (45-ft-long, 800 lbs, with a 24-ft wingspan) from a helicopter at 2,700 feet over the Arizona desert. It flew (glided actually) about 7 to 10 seconds before crashing.
From the LA Times:
…The plane was constructed of layers of falcon board, which Vimmerstedt described as a type of corrugated cardboard, similar to a pizza box.
The plane was designed and built in Lancaster by Art Thompson, who helped design the B-2 stealth bomber, but the design was based on a paper airplane folded by 12-year-old Tucson resident Arturo Valdenegro—winner of a paper airplane fly-off sponsored by the Pima Air & Space Museum in January.
In a video interview with the museum on the day of the launch, Valdenegro said before the Great Paper Airplane Project he thought that he might pursue a career in engineering, but after meeting Thompson and seeing his plane realized in giant size, he now knows he’s going to be an engineer when he grows up…”
View Link [latimes.com]
Over on Chris Elliott’s blog, you can read brief bios of 5 people who stood up to the Transportation Safety Administration, and vote for your favorite.
View Link [elliott.org]
From Dark Roasted Blend: http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2011/07/link-latte-161.html
View Link [map.baidu.com]
Scientists investigating several 70-million-year-old titanosaur eggs in the Patagonia region of Argentina found 8 tiny, sausage-shaped structures about an inch long and nearly a half-inch wide that appear to be fossilized insect cocoons similar in size and shape to cocoons belonging to a number of modern wasp species.
View Link [news.nationalgeographic.com]
Richard Scarano is no longer allowed to practice architecture in New York City because of the imaginative & illegal tactics he used to get his developments cleared by the Department of Buildings, such as hiding extra bedrooms and bathrooms behind drywall. From BLDGBLOG: “Like something out of House of Leaves–or a kind of architectural Advent calendar…the building contained more space than its own exterior had indicated.” Geoff Manaugh riffs on this concept with examples in Cappadocia.
View Link [bldgblog.blogspot.com]
Everyone’s heard of Machu Picchu, but how about Pisac, Moray, Choquequirao or Sacsahuaman? There are dozens of outstanding Inca sites in Peru with expertly fitted stone walls, trapezoidal doors, central plazas and agricultural terraces, it’s just that most people have never heard of them. At Tipon there are finely cut stone fountains, intricate baths and irrigation channels still functioning 500 years after the Spanish conquest. [photo gallery at National Geographic]
View Link [travel.nationalgeographic.com]
Sociologists had collected a motherlode of data on the Harvard class of 2009 based on some 1,700 Facebook profiles that could yield tons of useful research on class, race and social ties. Trouble is, nobody told the students that their Facebook profiles were being downloaded for the study. Oops. And apparently, the profiles for the study were downloaded by grad students on the project who had access to Facebook profiles that their professors lacked.
View Link [chronicle.com]
A 41-year-pld woman who yelled and swore at TSA agents who tried to pat down her daughter at a securlty checkpoint at Nashville airport was arrested Saturday afternoon when she refused to calm down.
View Link [tennessean.com]
Photographer Rick Sheremeta had been watching brown bears catching salmon for four days at the McNeil River in Alaska, and noticed that their usual habit was to eat their fill and then toddle off to take a nap on the grass. This one didn’t make it that far before falling asleep.
View Link [travel.nationalgeographic.com]
A single photo captures the drama between a Grand Central Station info booth attendant and a lost little girl. Happily, she was soon found. Submitted to the National Geographic Traveler photo contest in the Spontaneous Moments category.
View Link [travel.nationalgeographic.com]
From Carlos Miller on Pixiq: “Not only does this Seattle police car appear to be parked more than 12 inches from the curb, its officers carelessly left this AR-15 rifle sitting on the trunk of the car while they ate donuts or drank gourmet coffee or whatever it is Seattle cops do…Police officials now say they are “very embarrassed” over the incident, adding that they are not sure if the gun was loaded, which means it probably was.”
View Link [pixiq.com]
“At the Office 365 launch, Gordon Frazer, managing director of Microsoft UK, gave the first admission that cloud data — regardless of where it is in the world — is not protected against the USA PATRIOT Act…Frazer explained that, as Microsoft is a U.S.-headquartered company, it has to comply with local laws (the United States, as well as any other location where one of its subsidiary companies is based).
Though he said that “customers would be informed wherever possible”, he could not provide a guarantee.
View Link [zdnet.com]
Not sure how Solve Media came up with these statistics but they’re fun anyway: “you are 31.25 times more likely to win a prize in the Mega Millions than you are to click on a banner ad.” Not only that, “you are 87.8 times more likely to apply to Harvard and get in…112.50 times more likely to sign up for and complete NAVY SEAL training…279.64 times more likely to climb Mount Everest…and 475.28 times more likely to survive a plane crash than you are to click on a banner ad.”
View Link [theatlanticwire.com]
It looks unreal, this 213-ft. brick tower, decorated top to bottom with intricate designs and brickwork calligraphy, looming up in the remote Hindu Kush in Afghanistan. The minaret of Jam was built during 1190s by the Ghorid empire, then forgotten for centuries, rediscovered by Westerners in 1886, forgotten again until 1957, briefly surfaced again just before the 1979 Soviet invasion closed down the area. Few Westerners have seen this monument which was once the world’s second largest religious structure.
View Link [darkroastedblend.com]
“Last week a group email went out to the staff of National Geographic. This is what it said:
Date: Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 2:37 PM
Subject: Bear Urine- not a joke
A package arrived at Geo…(talk about weird) 2 small bottles of Pee. Bear Urine. No… really.
Can you please send a blast to see if some brave soul will claim the urine.
But wait, it gets better…” – see Ben Shaw’s post on Nat Geo News Watch blog to find out more.
View Link [newswatch.nationalgeographic.com]
If you visit Alexander Graham Bell’s homestead outside the town of Brantford, Ontario, you can see some of the first telephones, which were wooden boxes with a speaking hole. To make a call, you put your finger in the hole and scratched a metal plate & hoped someone heard you on the other end. Behind the house on a river is a spot Bell called his “Dreaming Place”, where he went to think. It’s not part of the official tour, but if you know where to look you can find it. Andrew Evans describes it here.
View Link [digitalnomad.nationalgeographic.com]
Syndicated advice columnist Amy Alkon blogged about the TSA patdown she received in March at an airport that involved the officer’s hand going into her vagina four times: http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2011/04/26/make_it_tough_t.html Recently someone claiming to work for TSA at the same airport left a comment on her blog saying:”to me your just a typical blogger with.nuthing else to do.”
View Link [advicegoddess.com]
7,000 years before Stonehenge, in southern Turkey, Neolithic humans carved dozens of 16-ton stone pillars & arranged them in a set of rings. The pillars are vaguely reminiscent of Stonehenge, but more sophisticated.
“Discovering that hunter-gatherers had constructed Göbekli Tepe was like finding that someone had built a 747 in a basement with an X-Acto knife.” From the June issue of National Geographic. Photos by Vincent J. Musi http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/06/gobekli-tepe/musi-photography
View Link [ngm.nationalgeographic.com]
Back in 1963, the first edition of the National Geographic Atlas of the World showed Tibetan place-names in romanized Tibetan followed by their romanized Chinese names in parentheses. In today’s Atlas, the traditional romanized Tibetan place-names have been changed to Pinyin. National Geographic’s Geographer Juan José Valdés explains why.
View Link [newswatch.nationalgeographic.com]
The Senate late Monday confirmed former Recording Industry Association of America lawyer Donald Verrilli Jr.to serve as the nation’s solicitor general. Verrilli, one of at least five former RIAA attorneys appointed to the administration, is best known for leading the recording industry’s legal charge against music- and movie-sharing site Grokster. That 2003 case ultimately led to Grokster’s demise, when the U.S. Supreme Court sided with a lower court’s pro-RIAA verdict.
View Link [wired.com]
Matthew “I make things, and I make things awesome”, says Matthew Borgani. He’s been working on his enormous mobile interactive musical sculpture called The Anywhere Organ for almost a year. It’s made of organ pipes salvaged from discarded church organs. With a combination of some electronics and CAD driven laser cut plywood he’s designed a system that can easily be expanded as he gathers more pipes and add to the system. Via Dark Roasted Blend
View Link [darkroastedblend.com]
TSA tries to force son to stop filming.”Show me the law and I’ll stop recording” says her son politely.
View Link [youtube.com]
Via Youtube:
DIRECT QUOTE FROM SON OF VICTIM BELOW:
5-28-11 at Sky Harbor International in Phoenix, AZ my mother was sexually assaulted which brought her to tears. Multiple TSA agents claimed to know my whole family (WELCOME TO 1984) TSA then threatened to steal my luggage because I left it unattended… rather because I was 10 feet from it. I was then threatened to have my ability to fly revoked by Southwest Airlines, NOT TSA. Southwest Airlines then threatened to have me arrested for filming the event, even though TSA, Southwest, and Phoenix Police couldn’t provide me with the statute or law that claims I cannot film in a public area. Here is that event. Police- Protecting and Serving??? Why is TSA asking for my father’s phone number and address at the end of this ordeal, to add us to a no-fly list or spy on us?
It reminds you to read your books, not just look at them in the bookcase.
View Link [holykaw.alltop.com]
An illustrated timeline of arcade games from Dark Roasted Blend. Long before Grand Theft Auto was a gleam in some degenerate’s eye, there was “Egg Head,” “Moto Champ,” “Mold-A-Rama,” and “Space Age” (“New as Tomorrow!” the game boasts). And who could resist shooting at “ENEMY SPACE MEN” in the Apollo Moon Shot Rifle Gallery?
View Link [darkroastedblend.com]
Marilyn Terrell is discussing.
Marilyn Terrell 4:48 am on 07/11/2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Oops! Photographer’s name is Rick not Rich Sheremeta.