My alma mater, the “University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign”:http://www.uiuc.edu, recently removed “Chief Illiniwek”:http://www.uillinois.edu/chief/index.html as its mascot. The appropriateness of The Chief as a mascot has been a hotly contested issue for decades, but at long last Illinois students have a solution to the mascot situation that they can all rally behind.
That solution is Farm Bot.
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Farm Bot represents Illinois’ rich, agricultural tradition and its commitment to excellence in engineering via its unique, “Mega Man-style”:http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/4766/xpw8.jpg corn cannon, Abraham Lincoln hat that shoots fireworks, and jetpack that also pops popcorn. Not convinced? Let Farm Bot come to life in this nine-minute masterpiece!
The sweet irony of bike helmets
Believe it or not, bike helmets are not universally loved. In fact there are big groups of people in the biking world who think that they bring more harm than good. As a bike advocate, I’ve often found myself in the middle of this conversation but never knew what to believe, but now there’s more data.
Ian Walker, a psychology professor from the University of Bath, has been conducting research about how motorists react to him riding on his bicycle with and without his helmet. By attaching ultrasonic sensors to his bike that measured just how much room cars give him while passing. He found that when NOT wearing his helmet, drivers gave him an average of 3.35 inches more room while passing. In fact, if he didn’t wear his helmet AND wore a wig to look like a woman, he got an additional 2.2 inches.
I’d always heard that you get more room when you don’t wear a helmet, but it was cool to see that assertion backed up by the numbers. Is the extra respect worth the sacrifice in protection? That’s up to you to decide. More about this research at “Scientific American”:http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleid=778EF0AB-E7F2-99DF-3594A60E4D9A76B2.
Nerd Alert!: Finger Boarding
Even if the content of this article may not interest you, it will certainly make you feel way cooler then people who like “fingerboarding”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerskate. There’s a group of dexterous tabletop surfers who use 96 mm (~3.75”) skate boards to use their fingers to perform tricks like grinding, ollies, and…well, do you really even care? These finger freaks have small scale “ramps & parks”:http://www.blackriver-ramps.de/, “DVDs”:http://www.blackriver-ramps.de/, and “dozens of fansites”:http://www.techdeck.com/links/othersites.htm. Scary enough, the infection has spread worldwide to the “US”:http://www.usfbshop.co.nr/, “UK”:http://www.empirefbs.co.uk/arctic/homeindex.htm, and even “Germany”:http://www.berlinwood.com/. If you are a finger-sk8r 4life, you need to re-evaluate yourself, pronto. Try some other hobby like “collecting rubber duckies”:http://duenos.net/article/242/RubberDuckieyouaretheone, “dumpster diving”:http://duenos.net/article/233/BarelyUsedInfoonDumpsterDiving, “ballooning”:http://duenos.net/article/225/InterestedinBallooning, or “finding friends for you pets”:http://duenos.net/article/147/AFriendsterfortheFamilyPet.
Peer-to-peer parking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge but who still want to drive into the city have a new option. Drive most of the way into the city, park in someone's driveway and then take public transport the rest of the way. Reacting to an intense shortage of public parking spaces in crowded London, "ParkatMyHouse.com":http://www.parkatmyhouse.com/ is a web2.0 approach to solving everyone's problem. London residents with parking spaces to let can list them and the times they are available on the "website":http://www.parkatmyhouse.com/ and wannabe commuters can rent (or let) it.
This is a really cool application of appropriate technology with people helping people. We've profiled similarly-spirited projects here at duenos before, including: "social lending at Zopa.com":http://duenos.net/article/136/ZopacomItslendingwithoutthebanks and "third-world direct lending at Kiva.org":http://duenos.net/article/106/lend-money-online-to-third-world-entrepreneurs.
Governments shame property owners for heat waste
“Hotmapping”:http://www.hotmapping.co.uk/ is a company that uses spy-plane infrared technology to conduct surveys of municipalities looking for buildings that are losing heat. They have been hired by a number of local governments in the UK to create maps of their areas that they then have posted online in an effort to publicly shame property owners into not wasting heat energy. “This article”:http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/article1744293.ece for more about one government’s efforts to make their more wasteful residents accountable and also offer energy saving ideas and advice. People don’t often know when or how they’re going wrong when it comes to waste, so I think this program could produce some good results.
First Nat'l Rock-Paper-Scissors tournament in Las Vegas
It’s American superficiality at its best in Las Vegas today as the World Rock, Paper, Scissors final tournament is being held. The prize? $50,000.
Oh yes, the same method you used to decide who had to go over the fence and get the baseball as a kid can earn you more than the annual income of most people in the industrialized world. There’s some very well-written commentary about the event in “The New York Times”:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/14/us/14rock.html?ex=1336795200&en=4ced52bb8421bf8f&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss or you could just watch it on ESPN as it happens. Seriously.
For more about the world of Rock, Paper Scissors I found the “RPS Society website”:http://www.worldrps.com/ to be very helpful. They also have up to the minute tournament coverage on their main blog.
Episode of House MD comes to life
If you’ve ever seen Fox’s hit medical drama “House MD”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0412142/, you know that every installment is just an exercise in further improbability than the previous episode (a patient’s skull explodes in the most recent episode). But occasionally reality is just as strange. Near the end of the first season, House treats a malnourished baby whose vegan parents are unwittingly starving it by keeping the infant on the same strict diet as they are. I thought the whole thing was a bit contrived, but apparently not. Yesterday, Lamont Thomas and Jade Sanders, vegan parents, were convicted of gross neglect and sentenced to life terms in prison. As always, there’s more at “the BBC”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6642543.stm. Also if you’re interested, the episode in question was “season 1, episode 18”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0606013/
Mercenaries and more
To understand Iraq, we need to know more than the headlines and the sound bites. We need to hear what people there have to say and what they think is happening. Well here’s part of that puzzle. If you care at all about what’s happening in the world, you need to watch this video:
Incensed? Outraged? Well, you probably should be. A lot of what’s going on in Iraq with private contractors is still coming to the surface. I didn’t know that one of the big reasons for poor soldier retention is contractor presence in Iraq, I didn’t even know about the contractors. If you find yourself looking for more information, the rest of the documentary can be found “here”:http://iraqforsale.org/ and of course there’s the new award-winning book from Jeremy Scahill, “Blackwater”:http://www.amazon.com/Blackwater-Rise-Worlds-Powerful-Mercenary/dp/1560259795.
Via “Truthdig”:http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/20070510_legal_stealing/
Curiosity kills, and robs banks too
Just a few days ago outside the Australian city of Perth, two 16 year-old girls strangled a third girl with speaker wire, burying the body under the house. As if the facts themselves weren’t disturbing in themselves, the motive for the killing seems to be no more than curiosity. Saying that killing their victim Eliza Jane Davis, “felt right,” the two confessed killers apparently wanted to find out whether they would feel guilty. The answer? They don’t. They’ve both been sentenced to life sentences by the Australian court, more at “the BBC”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6639027.stm.
On a less violent but just as strange note, two months ago in an affluent suburb of Atlanta, two 19 year-old women (pictured above) robbed a Bank of America branch. The pair is alleged to have threatened to the teller with a note and then taken their ill-gotten gains on a shopping spree. I found this story through a “personal blog”:http://janabean.blogspot.com/2007/04/how-did-i-miss-hearing-about-this.html but would love to know if there is any more evidence of this or other “Girls Gone Wild, in a Criminal Way” stories out there. Comment if you know anything.
Save Money – Stop Junk Mail
Although most us all love getting snail mail, some can be dangerous when it comes to “ID theft”:http://duenos.net/article/156/UseProtectionAgainstIDThieves. Pre-approved credit card offers that come through the mail are one of the most deadly weapons ID thieves have against you. After a crook fills in your information (a lot easy to get than you think), they check the box that will have the card sent to another address (most likely theirs). Now they’ve got control of your credit and you don’t know it. Let’s hope at the very least you shred your unwanted offers, but a thief worth their salt can intercept it before it comes your way. A simple solution to protect yourself is visiting “optoutprescreen.com”:https://www.optoutprescreen.com/opt_form.cgi and follow the instructions to take yourself off mailing lists. Keep in mind you can reverse it, but if you still want to apply for a credit card, simply go to “creditcards.com”:http://www.creditcards.com/ for the best and safest offerings available. Thanks to “Frank W. Abagnale”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_W._Abagnale and “his book”:http://www.amazon.com/Art-Steal-Yourself-Business-Americas/dp/0767906845/ref=sr_1_3/102-7252975-2802553?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1178756189&sr=1-3 for this and other tips.
And try the following links if you’re tired of: “telemarketing”:https://www.donotcall.gov/register/Reg.aspx, “other junk mail”:https://www.dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offmailing, and “SPAM”:http://www.spamcop.net/.