- Knight News Challenge: Round 2 Launches. The Knight News Challenge, in which winners get grants ranging from tiny to huge, is in its second year. It awards big money for innovative ideas using digital experiments to transform community news. The contest is run by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Last year’s winners won awards ranging from $15K to $5 million. If you’ve got a worthwhile idea that’s news-related, by all means, submit it!
- ProBlogger.net has a great post that points out five WP plugins that can help with managing your comments and responding to readers.
- Brian Auer of the Epic Edits Weblog has a post on the differences between exposing for highlights, shadows or midtones.
- A couple of Russians put together a wry video where they demonstrate a new product, the Americanizer. Their English accent is a bit thick, so pay close attention.
- On the same blog, English Russia, you’ll find another post with HDR photos of the Moscow sewers. These are pretty well done, and I do believe I spotted a crocodile in two of them…
- The top tech blogs are revolting against Wikipedia’s “no follow” link policy by using the same rel=”no follow” tag in their outgoing links to Wikipedia. Alright! Wikipedia’s been getting a lot of link love for years, and I think they’ve been entirely ungrateful by not responding in kind.
- Sal Marinello, writing for BlogCritics, has a few words to say about the famed “300 Workout”, the physical regime that prepared the actors for their roles in that movie. A lot of people got it wrong. Also very worth checking out is the site of the physical trainers that put together that workout and trained the actors, Gym Jones. Have a look at the Video section. Very different stuff from what you see in gyms today, but you can’t argue with the results.
- Mental_Floss has a GREAT post on life before air conditioning. Why is it great? Because it points out why today’s construction is so horribly shoddy — our overreliance on air conditioning lets builders get away with using cardboard and plywood for what passes for homes in the DC area. The homes of old were built with thick insulation, out of stone or brick, and they could do just fine without A/C. If we’d be without A/C nowadays, we couldn’t live in our homes. Kind of makes me sad for all these people buying McMansions on River Road and Georgetown Pike and the like. I see the way they’re built, and it’s an insult to millenia of good building practices…
- The Daily Mail has an article on spotting illness by looking at our faces.
- On a similar note, Deputy Dog has a post on the 5 scariest medical mistakes. Don’t read it during lunch…
- Have you ever wondered about the 100 Inuit words for snow? Here they are.
- Hans Rosling gave a speech at TED this year, and they’ve posted it to their website. It’s really, really good stuff. You will not regret the 19 minutes spent watching it, I guarantee it. It’s about poverty and developing countries, but he’s got a very different take on things.
Tag Archives: videos
Some interesting documentaries
Here are seven interesting documentary-type videos found on YouTube:
You’ve probably heard that Geek Squad technicians snoop around on customers’ hard drives and copy photos and other files for their own use. But have you also heard that they overcharge ridiculously for simple little repairs? Have a look below:
The metro bridge over the river Tyne at Newcastle, UK, was recently outfitted with LED lights that are programmed to never shine in the same sequence. The result is a mesmerizing light show that goes on and on:
Bill Crosby did a documentary in 1968 called “A Boy Like Me”, where he pointed out racial inequalities between black and white children. But he did it in such a poignant way that it’s really, really hard to miss the point. Watch this segment in its entirety, it’s only 3:28 minutes long.
The Falkirk Wheel is an advanced bridge for boats. It connects two bodies of water that are separated by a great height in a very interesting way:
Whether you may or may not agree with this first part of the documentary entitled “The Great Global Warming Swindle” (the other parts can be found on YouTube as well), I think you’ll realize it raises some interesting and valid points. I watched the entire documentary, and if you’ve got the time, I would encourage you to do the same.
The next video is pretty geeky in its approach, but it was made to demonstrate how IT security works for non-techies, and it does a great job of it. It’s entertaining, so you won’t get bored, either.
This last video is controversial, and I don’t know what to make of it. It’s actual news footage aired immediately after the crash of United Flight 93. It shows the crash site and surrounding areas, but the strange thing is that the place looks very much unlike a plane crash site. There are no large pieces of fuselage, no bodies, nothing — just a small hole in the ground, and that’s what makes it unusual. It just doesn’t look like a plane crashed there at all.
Cool science videos
The Japanese have come up with a swimming snake robot:
Ronald Mallett is a university professor and a physicist. He believes time travel is possible, has a theory about how it can be done, and is working on a time machine:
The first dynamically-balanced robot, Dexter, learns to walk:
Here’s another robot, called Murata Boy, that can ride bicycles:
A home-made anti-gravity kit. Could be a hoax, but then again, I haven’t tried it out for myself, so I don’t know:
A demonstration of the principle of atomic halving through noodle-making. Awesome!
The FLIP is a research vessel that can literally flip to a vertical position while in water. It’s designed so its stern submerges deep underwater. It becomes incredibly stable that way, and this allows scientists to perform very precise measurements at sea.
Sports videos
I’m not really into motorsports, but I understand there’s a big Formula One race going on in Europe this weekend. I admire the capabilities of the F1 cars, and I thought I’d post a few racing-related videos. Enjoy!
The best video is up first. Ari Vatanen climbs Pike’s Peak in a Peugeot 405 T16. This is back from 1988. If you watch it, you will very likely break into a cold sweat. Ari literally speeds through hairpin turns where even the slightest miscalculation can throw him right over the edge and into the deadly precipice below.
“Top Gear” shows off one of the most exclusive cars in the world, the Ferrari Enzo:
The Dutch (I think) came up with this souped up cart that runs on a 1100CC bike engine and puts out 164 bhp. That thing looks terminally unsafe and I’d never get in it, but it does put up a good fight against a Dodge Viper:
Some spoiled brats race a Ferrari 355 against a Dodge Viper GTS through a twisty mountain road in California. What do you think happens when someone that doesn’t know how to drive rally-style gets behind the wheel of a Doge Viper? Watch and see:
A plane lands on a motorhome in this next video — it gets billed as the world’s shortest runway:
This last one is another thriller. A stunt plane comes within inches of crashing miserably as it undergoes a loopdeloop:
Funny animal videos
Yes, it’s Monday again. Here are some funny animal videos to tide you over.
A really sweet pitbull taking care of little chicks:
This little scrappy tortoise won’t let up defending her territory:
Remember those scenes from old cartoons when cats would get a hold of catnip? Well, it turns out they weren’t that far off. See what happens to these kitties when they stumble onto the catnip patch:
A compilation of funny animal segments:
From a Japanese TV show, the top five funny animals:
Talking animals. Yeah.
A lake overrun with jellyfish. I’m not kidding. Have a look. This is part funny, part scary.
Raoul Pop 