New Scientist: Wild chimpanzees create spears and use them to hunt and kill smaller primates for food. So what is it, exactly, that separates us from chimps? (Via Boing Boing)
Category Archives: General
Laser pointer + projector + video camera = crazy delicious.
This rig lets people paint light on the side of buildings. Its creators wrote some software that requires a video capture rig and a projector, detecting a 60mW green laser and instantly “painting” the shined-upon surface with light from the projector. It’s brilliant.
So wrong it’s right.
The last Calvin and Hobbes. (Via MeFi)
Original covers.
Last week’s Coverville was brilliant. It’s an “Originalville” episode, which the host does periodically — the original version of a song better known for its cover. I know “I’ve Got My Mind Set on You” from George Harrison’s “Cloud Nine”, but it turns out that it’s a cover of a song by one James Ray. …
Oh Yeah.
I met Garrett Dutton — “G. Love” of G. Love & Special Sauce — at a concert at Trax in 1994, or thereabouts, after he’d released his first, eponymously-titled album. I disliked him immediately. He was brash, strutting, proud beyond all reason; in short, everything a rock star should be. But I loved his music, …
Mah Nà Mah Nà.
5 life lessons that I learned while hiking the Appalachian Trail that totally turned out to not apply to the real world.
I must not own more possessions than I can carry all at once. Hitchhiking is a totally reasonable primary form of transportation. I must never buy more groceries than I will eat before the next time I’m within a few miles of a grocery store. There’s no point in seeing a doctor about pain, illness …
Degree days and energy usage.
As my wife and I have been planning to build our house, we’ve been doing a lot of research into energy usage. We will construct a passive-solar house, meaning that we intend to capture the energy of the sun to heat and cool the structure. This is how houses have been built for centuries. It’s …
8mm Mauser: Just plain fun.
Not my Mauser, but a Mauser, that looks basically the same as mine. Image from Wikipedia. One of the toys that I received for Christmas is a 1948 Turkish Mauser from my brother. It’s a bolt-action rifle that fires 8mm rounds, has a five-round capacity, a 29″ barrel and a weight of 9.2lbs. It’s a …
The Big Here.
I first took The Big Here quiz a year ago, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Here are the first 10 of the 30 items: Point north. What time is sunset today? Trace the water you drink from rainfall to your tap. When you flush, where do the solids go? What happens to …