Halloween Frights

This is the scariest thing I've seen all week:


I mean, I knew she was running and all, but somehow it didn't really hit me until I saw it on the absentee ballot. They're actually letting her do it. That's ... messed up.

Sweet!

Tokyo Game Show, October 2008. Whoah, he should turn around and roll up all those newspapers.

Photo by Lisa Katayama for Wired.com. More at Wired.com.

katamari.namco.com

Medieval Babes...Riiiight.

Just found this ad in an old newspaper I was throwing out (gotta make sure I've read Savage Love before I put it in the recycle bin).


To this, I can only say.... "Amateurs."
http://www.flickr.com/search/?s=int&w=all&q=sca+cleavage&m=text

Oobleck?

Apparently there's a commercial product that has similar qualities to oobleck, the classic geek toy made from a saturated cornstarch solution. (Or is it a suspension?)
Post-Gazette: Zoombang Protects Teen Athlete's Insulin Pump

The company says its product, "Zoombang" (wowie zowie), is a "viscoelastic, shear thickening" polymer. It even references its corn starch relative in the explanation.
Zoombang Protective Gear: What's Zoombang?

They make custom garments for athletes who need extra protection because of injuries or whatever. The Post-Gazette story was about a gadget they made for a youth football player who needed to protect his insulin pump. Apparently it's the viscoelastic part that makes it protective - standard oobleck is quite rigid under stress and wouldn't protect anything from impact.

Oobleck, I just learned by Googling, is named after some goo in a Dr. Seuss book. To make it, mix about one part water with 1.5 to 2 parts corn starch. It's said to be a "non-newtonian fluid" which means it has variable viscosity. Oobleck flows and behaves like a liquid under gentle pressure (it conforms to the shape of a cup and can be stirred slowly) but under more intense pressure it becomes rigid, like a solid. Quicksand is another example.

Oobleck also made an appearance on network TV recently. On Big Bang Theory, the guys had wrapped a stereo speaker in plastic wrap and set a puddle of oobleck on it. There are lots of videos of this on YouTube, but they use a steady tone instead of music like the TV show had. So turn your volume down.

There's lots more fun with non-newtonian fluids on YouTube (including a bunch of British science videos featuring Richard Hammond from Top Gear - who knew!), but this one is probably the best:

Unintentional Time Capsule Found in Lancashire, UK

Wow. Just, wow.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/7664661.stm

Apparently someone went to investigate an abandoned building and found a boarded-up corner shop with fixtures and some stock intact. There's at least one magazine from 1971, but the rest of the stuff could be from the 60s.

Here's another video where they poke at some of the stuff: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7664369.stm

From my new favorite blog, Dinosaurs and Robots. Which is unfortunately flooding my tiny little Google Reader box with multiple posts a day and crowding out my friends' blogs....

No Fun with Plastic

No Fun with Plastic
Originally uploaded by erink

Somehow, of all the plastic bags wrapped around the new computer parts, this was the only one with such a graphic warning.

I think the one on the left means, "Do not use for autoerotic asphyxiation." At least if you're a lefty.

The one on the right seems to mean "No matter how funny you think it will be, do not put this on your baby." Well, duh. It will be much funnier on the cat.

The one in the middle means you can recycle it at the supermarket. Which is to say that you can stash it in your basement for ages and ages forgetting about it, then get really annoyed and throw it out when you move.

Enjoy!

Book Sale!

One of my favorite publishers, Small Beer Press, is having a sale. http://lcrw.net/special.htm

Among their products are the excellent Carol Emshwiller books The Mount, Carmen Dog, and Report To The Men's Club and other stories. I also recommend Maureen McHugh's collection Mothers and Other Monsters and anything by Kelly Link. I've also heard good things about Laurie Marks' Elemental Logic series.

For the cheap, they also have some free content available for download.

Go forth and shop!

Look, Ma, No Bags!

Ikea took the next step in eliminating plastic litter today when it stopped offering disposable bags at its checkouts. Wow.

They started the bag reduction program a year or so ago. They started selling more inexpensive reusable bags at the checkouts and charged five cents per disposable plastic bag. The disposable bag fee was donated to an environmental charity. They'd hoped to reduce disposable bag usage by 50% - but they got 92% fewer bags instead!

Actually, it's probably much easier for Ikea to go bag-free than it would be for other stores. Usually when I go to Ikea I buy at least one box or basket that I can pack the other things inside. And a lot of their furniture comes flat-packed in cardboard boxes that don't fit in bags anyway.

On the other hand, I hear Whole Foods is going this way too. Not sure if they will eliminate disposable bags, but I think they are going to start charging for them if they haven't already.

I've been pretty happy since I started using reusable grocery bags. It's just much less guilt in my life. I used to reuse grocery bags for trash, but now we use big kitchen bags, and even when I used them I always had a big backlog of once-used plastic bags accumulating in my kitchen or basement. It took some work to get used to bringing the bags into the store, but I seem to have got the hang of it. Also I have a tiny nylon bag that fits in my purse for emergency shopping. Yeah, it happens.

Still, I am a little nostalgic about the Ikea bags. I remember when the store first came to town, those big yellow bags were always associated with good things. Even when they changed to clear bags, they had good design. Even if they did change the cinnamon rolls and make them crappier (okay, I still buy them, but not every time - the old ones were much better). There are still a few Ikea bags floating around my house, as dust covers for off-season fans and in bags of fabric I haven't used yet. So they'll be with me for a while yet. Better there than in the ocean!