Archive for April, 2007

Dutchman builds Noah’s Ark

A contractor, Johan Huibers, just completed a replica Noah’s ark from the bible. The ark is filled it with life size replicas of animals, and a theater showing the flood story. Huibers plans to turn the ark into a tourist attraction. If you are ever in Holland, in the town of Schagen, you should check [ READ MORE ]

Miraculin taste test

Miraculin is an extract of the berries from the Miracle Fruit bush. It has a unique property, in that it makes sour food(especially acidic food) taste sweet. Mixing it with a lemon, causes the lemon to taste like sweet lemonade. Kind of a strange trick. Miraculin is interesting in that it itself does not taste [ READ MORE ]

Student arrested after writing violent essay that "disturbed" his teacher

Allen Lee, a high school student in Cary Illinois was arrested after he wrote a violent essay in his creative writing class. The teacher directed her students to write in an uncensored stream of consciousness format. The assignment said, “write whatever comes to your mind. Do not judge or censor what you are writing,” Lee [ READ MORE ]

Robotic Falcons to fight Pigeon menace

The city of Liverpool is beginning a campaign to fight the pigeon menace that is plaguing their city. As part of the campaign, they are purchasing 10 robotic falcons to be placed around the city to scare the pigeons away. The flying rats, as many people are calling them, are all getting fat from eating [ READ MORE ]

Poodles aren’t Sheep? Really! They aren’t the same!

What? You say poodles and sheep aren’t the same thing? This has got to be one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard of. Thousands of people in Japan were sold sheep that they thought were miniature poodles. The “miniature poodles” were sold for $1600, which in Japan is a good deal for a poodle. [ READ MORE ]

Plaster Casts of Ant colonies

The cast above was made by pouring plaster into an ant hill. It was made by scientists studying ant colony building. BioOne has the scientific journal paper on the study of the Florida harvester ant. The journal article is a bit dry, and I would even say boring. Of course, I’m not really into ants. [ READ MORE ]

Modern Piracy Map

Here is an interesting Google maps mashup. It’s a map of pirate attacks from 2007. The data comes from the IMB piracy reporting center. Looks like Indonesia isn’t a safe place to go boating. Follow the link below to check it out yourself. You can click on each marker on the map to see details [ READ MORE ]

Being smart has nothing to do with being rich

There is a study that was just concluded that proves that being smart has a lot less to do with being rich than most people think. The study was conducted by a researcher, Jay Zagorsky, at Ohio State University. His study showed that having a higher IQ meant you were more likely to have a [ READ MORE ]

Use an inkjet to Print 16mm/8mm movies

Jesse England found a way to print film using a standard inkjet printer. He used the Adobe premier to convert his video into a “filmstrip” format. Then printed it on to a transparency using a standard inkjet printer. The film does have to be manually cut out of the transparency, which is kind of a [ READ MORE ]

Earthlike planet discovered

Astronomers in Europe claim to have discovered a planet that is in the habitable zone orbiting a red dwarf star. This is the first planet that has been found that is warm enough to have the possibility of liquid water. As you probably recall, it was only earlier this month that evidence of water outside [ READ MORE ]