July 2011
2 posts
4 tags
Action Park / Looping Water Slide
Action Park was an amusement park, open from 1978 to 1996 in Vernon Township, New Jersey at the former Vernon Valley / Great Gorge ski area, now known as Mountain Creek.
At least six people are known to have died as a result of mishaps on rides at the park. It was nicknamed “Traction Park”, “Accident Park”, “Class Action Park”, “Danger Park”...
3 tags
The Fencing Response
The fencing response is an unnatural position of the arms following a concussion. Immediately after moderate forces have been applied to the brainstem, the forearms are held flexed or extended (typically into the air) for a period lasting up to several seconds after the impact. The fencing response is often observed during athletic competition involving contact, such as football, hockey, rugby,...
June 2011
11 posts
2 tags
La Princesse
La Princesse is a 15-metre (50-foot) mechanical spider designed and operated by French performance art company La Machine. The spider was showcased in Liverpool, England, as part of the 2008 European Capital of Culture celebrations, travelling around the city between 3-7 September.
Fearing the spider was about to lay eggs, scientists removed it to Albert Dock to quarantine it and to perform...
2 tags
Dymaxion map
The Dymaxion map or Fuller map is a projection of a world map onto the surface of a polyhedron, which can be unfolded and flattened to two dimensions. The projection depicts the earth’s continents as “one island,” or nearly contiguous land masses.
More unusually, the Dymaxion map does not have any “right way up”. Fuller argued frequently that in the universe...
2 tags
Thagomizer
Thagomizer is an informal name for the distinctive arrangement of four to ten spikes on the tails of stegosaurid dinosaurs. These spikes are believed to have been a defensive measure against predators.
The term “thagomizer” was coined by Gary Larson in a 1982 Far Side comic strip, in which a group of cavemen in a faux-modern lecture hall are taught by their caveman professor that...
2 tags
Tsukumogami
Tsukumogami are a type of Japanese spirit. According to the Tsukumogami-emaki, tsukumogami originate from items or artifacts that have reached their 100th birthday and thus become alive and aware. Any object of this age, from swords to toys, can become a tsukumogami. Tsukumogami are considered spirits and supernatural beings, as opposed to enchanted items.
Some of the famous tsukumogami...
4 tags
William Adolphe Bouguereau
William-Adolphe Bouguereau was a French academic painter. [He] was a traditionalist whose realistic genre paintings and mythological themes were modern interpretations of Classical subjects with a heavy emphasis on the female human body.
4 tags
Understanding Joshua
Understanding Joshua is a series of photographs of a puppet, meant to represent ontological insecurity, who is placed in the midst of various human relationships in order to reflect the discomfort of those interactions.
3 tags
Lichtenberg figure
Lichtenberg figures, or Lichtenberg Dust Figures are branching electric discharges that sometimes appear on the surface or the interior of insulating materials.
Lichtenberg figures may also appear on the skin of lightning strike victims. These are reddish, fernlike patterns that may persist for hours or days. They are also a useful indicator for medical examiners when determining the...
The Ass of Venus
The Venus Kallipygos or Aphrodite Kallipygos, also known as the Callipygean Venus, all literally meaning “Venus (or Aphrodite) of the beautiful buttocks”, is an Ancient Roman marble statue, thought to be a copy of an older Greek original.
“The people of those days were so attached to their sensual pleasures that they even went so far as to dedicate a temple to Aphrodite...
3 tags
Pareidolia
Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the Moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse.
In Cosmos: A Personal Voyage Sagan claimed that Heikegani crabs occasional resemblance...
3 tags
Humors
Humorism, or humoralism, is a now discredited theory of the makeup and workings of the human body adopted by Greek and Roman physicians and philosophers.
The imbalance of humors, or dyscrasia, was thought to be the direct cause of all diseases. Health was associated with a balance of humors, or eucrasia. The qualities of the humors, in turn, influenced the nature of the diseases they...
3 tags
Hammerhead Shark
The hammerhead sharks are a group of sharks in the family Sphyrnidae, so named for the unusual and distinctive structure of their heads, which are flattened and laterally extended into a “hammer” shape called a “cephalofoil”.
Reproduction only occurs once a year for hammerhead sharks and usually occurs with the male shark biting the female shark violently until...
October 2010
7 posts
3 tags
Perpetual Motion
Perpetual motion describes hypothetical machines that operate or produce useful work indefinitely and, more generally, hypothetical machines that produce more work or energy than they consume, whether they might operate indefinitely or not.
There is undisputed scientific consensus that perpetual motion would violate either the first law of thermodynamics, the second law of thermodynamics,...
5 tags
Cat intelligence
Cat intelligence is the considered capacity of learning, thinking, problem solving, reasoning, and adaptability possessed by the domestic cat.
Wikipedia
7 tags
Master Shake
Master Shake (also known as Shake, Cup, Master, Milk Shake, or Don Shake) is a fictional character on Adult Swim’s television series, Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
It is not completely clear what is inside of Shake. In “Rabbot”, he appears to be filled with a pistachio shake that comes out of his straw; in the episode “Carl”, his skin is ripped off and appears to...
5 tags
Fan Death
Fan death is an urban legend prevailing in South Korea in which an electric fan left running overnight in a closed room can cause the death of those inside. Fans sold in Korea are equipped with a timer switch that turns them off after a set number of minutes, which users are frequently urged to set when going to sleep with a fan on.
The specifics behind belief in the myth of fan-death...
5 tags
Mary Toft
Mary Toft was an English woman from Godalming, Surrey, who in 1726 became the subject of considerable controversy when she tricked doctors into believing that she had given birth to rabbits.
The story first came to the attention of the public in late October 1726, when reports began to reach London. It was mentioned in the Weekly Journal, on 19 November 1726:
From Guildford comes a...
6 tags
Catatumbo Lightning
The Catatumbo Lightning (Spanish Relámpago del Catatumbo) is an atmospheric phenomenon in Venezuela. It occurs strictly in an area located over the mouth of the Catatumbo River where it empties into Maracaibo Lake. The frequent, powerful flashes of lightning over this relatively small area are considered by some to be the world’s largest single generator of tropospheric ozone. It...
5 tags
Pigeon photographer
The pigeon photographer was a technique for aerial photography, invented in the year 1907 by the German apothecary Julius Neubronner, when one of his pigeons lost its orientation in fog and mysteriously arrived, well-fed, four weeks late.
Neubronner was inspired with the playful idea of equipping his pigeons with automatic cameras to trace their paths. This thought led him to merge his two...
September 2010
17 posts
4 tags
IP over Avian Carriers
In computer networking, IP over Avian Carriers (IPoAC) is a humorously-intended proposal to carry Internet Protocol (IP) traffic by birds such as homing pigeons. IP over Avian Carriers was initially described in RFC 1149, a “Request for Comments” (RFC) issued by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) written by D. Waitzman and released on 1 April 1990
On 28 April 2001...
5 tags
John Titor
John Titor is the name used on several bulletin boards during 2000 and 2001 by a poster claiming to be a time traveler from the year 2036. In these posts he made numerous predictions (a number of them vague, some quite specific) about events in the near future, starting with events in 2004. He described a drastically changed future in which the United States had broken into five smaller...
4 tags
Project Excelsior
Project Excelsior was a series of high-altitude parachute jumps made by Colonel (then Captain) Joseph Kittinger of the United States Air Force (USAF) in 1959 and 1960 to test the Beaupre multi-stage parachute system. In one of these jumps Kittinger set world records for the highest parachute jump, the longest parachute drogue fall and the fastest speed by a human through the atmosphere, all...
5 tags
Gabriel's Horn
Gabriel’s Horn (also called Torricelli’s trumpet) is a geometric figure which has infinite surface area but encloses a finite volume. The name refers to the tradition identifying the Archangel Gabriel with the angel who blows the horn to announce Judgment Day, associating the infinite with the divine. The properties of this figure were first studied by Italian physicist and...
6 tags
Cyclocosmia
Cyclocosmia or “trapdoor spider” is a genus of spiders in the Ctenizidae family.
The abdomen of spiders in this genus is abruptly truncated and ends in a hardened disc which is strengthened by a system of ribs and grooves. They use this to clog the entrance of their 7 to 15 cm deep vertical burrows when threatened, a phenomenon called phragmosis.
Wikipedia
3 tags
Magical thinking
In anthropology, psychology, and cognitive science, the term magical thinking is used to describe causal reasoning that looks for correlation between acts or utterances and certain events. In religion, folk religion and superstition, the correlation posited is between religious ritual, such as prayer, sacrifice or the observance of a taboo, and an expected benefit or recompense. In clinical...
3 tags
The Azores
The Azores is a Portuguese archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, about 1,500 km (930 mi) west from Lisbon and about 3,900 km (2,400 mi) east from the east coast of North America. The Monchique Islet on Flores Island, located at 31° 16’ 24” W is regarded as the westernmost point in Europe, even though from a geological standpoint the two westernmost Azorean islands (Flores...
4 tags
Beast of Gévaudan
The Beast of Gévaudan (French: La Bête du Gévaudan) is a name given to man-eating wolf-like animals alleged to have terrorized the former province of Gévaudan. The number of victims differs according to source. De Beaufort (1987) estimated 210 attacks, resulting in 113 deaths and 49 injuries; 98 of the victims killed were partly eaten. An enormous amount of manpower and resources was used in...
6 tags
His Masters Voice
His Master’s Voice is a famous trademark in the music business, and for many years was the name of a large record label. The name was coined in 1899 as the title of a painting of the dog Nipper listening to a wind-up gramophone. In the photograph on which the painting was based, the dog was listening to a cylinder phonograph.
The original title of the painting was “His Late...
4 tags
Sword of Damocles
Damocles is a figure featured in a single moral anecdote concerning the Sword of Damocles.
The Damocles of the anecdote was an obsequious courtier in the court of Dionysius II of Syracuse, a fourth century BC tyrant of Syracuse, Italy. Placating to his king, Damocles exclaimed that, as a great man of power and authority, Dionysius was truly fortunate, as it was “good to be the...
4 tags
La Calavera Catrina
La Calavera Catrina (‘The Elegant Skull’) is a 1913 zinc etching by Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada. The image has since become a staple of Mexican imagery, and often is incorporated into artistic manifestations of the Day of the Dead in November, such as altars and calavera costumes. The etching was part of his series of calaveras, which were humorous images of...
4 tags
Anti-Flash White
Anti-flash white is a brilliant white color commonly seen on United States and British nuclear bombers in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the Tupolev Tu-160. The purpose of the color was to reflect some of the thermal radiation from a nuclear explosion, protecting the aircraft and its occupants. For the same reason, British nuclear bombers were given – though not at first, until the problem was...
4 tags
Black Death
The Black Death was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. It is widely thought to have been an outbreak of bubonic plague caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, although this view has been challenged by a number of scholars. Usually thought to have started in Central Asia, it had reached the Crimea by 1346. From there, probably carried by...
5 tags
Trepanning
Trepanning is a medical intervention in which a hole is drilled or scraped into the human skull, exposing the dura mater in order to treat health problems related to intracranial diseases.
Evidence of trepanation has been found in prehistoric human remains from Neolithic times onwards. Cave paintings indicate that people believed the practice would cure epileptic seizures, migraines, and...
3 tags
Uncanny Valley
The uncanny valley is a hypothesis regarding the field of robotics. The hypothesis states that as a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion, the emotional response from a human being to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong revulsion. The “valley” in question is a...
3 tags
Pi
π (sometimes written pi) is a mathematical constant whose value is the ratio of any circle’s circumference to its diameter in Euclidean space.
Wikipedia
4 tags
Tropical Cyclone
A tropical cyclone is a storm system characterized by a large low-pressure center and numerous thunderstorms that produce strong winds and heavy rain. Tropical cyclones feed on heat released when moist air rises, resulting in condensation of water vapor contained in the moist air. They are fueled by a different heat mechanism than other cyclonic windstorms such as nor’easters, European...
August 2010
36 posts
3 tags
Recovery Position
The recovery position or coma position refers to one of a series of variations on a lateral recumbent or three-quarters prone position of the body, in to which an unconscious but breathing casualty can be placed as part of first aid treatment.
The recovery position is designed to prevent suffocation through obstruction of the airway, which can occur in unconscious supine patients. Fluids,...
3 tags
Sailing stones
The sailing stones are a geological phenomenon where rocks move in long tracks along a smooth valley floor without human or animal intervention. They have been recorded and studied in a number of places around Racetrack Playa, Death Valley, where the number and length of travel grooves are notable. The force behind their movement is not understood and is the subject of research.
Various and...
4 tags
Pica
Pica is a medical disorder characterized by an appetite for substances largely non-nutritive foods (e.g. metal [coins, etc.], clay, coal, soil, feces, chalk, paper, soap, mucus, ash, gum, etc.)
In order for these actions to be considered pica, they must persist for more than one month at an age where eating such objects is considered developmentally inappropriate. Pica can also be found in...
6 tags
Anatomy of a horse
Anatomy of a horse from a 9th century AH (15th century AD) Egyptian document at the University Library, Istanbul.
Wikipedia
3 tags
Z Machine
The Z machine is the largest X-ray generator in the world and is designed to test materials in conditions of extreme temperature and pressure. Operated by Sandia National Laboratories, it gathers data to aid in computer modeling of nuclear weapons.
Due to the extremely high voltage, the power feeding equipment is submerged in concentric chambers of 2 megalitres (2,000 m³) of transformer...
4 tags
Miserere (Allegri)
Miserere, full name “Miserere mei, Deus” (Latin: “Have mercy on me, O God”) by Italian composer Gregorio Allegri, is a setting of Psalm 51 (50) composed during the reign of Pope Urban VIII, probably during the 1630s, for use in the Sistine Chapel during matins, as part of the exclusive Tenebrae service on Wednesday and Friday of Holy Week.
Three authorised copies...
3 tags
Cherenkov Radiation
Cherenkov radiation is electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle (such as an electron) passes through an insulator at a constant speed greater than the speed of light in that medium. The charged particles polarize the molecules of that medium, which then turn back rapidly to their ground state, emitting prompt radiation. The characteristic blue glow of nuclear reactors is due to...
3 tags
Larry Walters
Lawrence Richard Walters, nicknamed “Lawnchair Larry” or the “Lawn Chair Pilot”, (April 19, 1949 – October 6, 1993) was an American truck driver who took flight on July 2, 1982 in a homemade aircraft. Dubbed Inspiration I, the “flying machine” consisted of an ordinary patio chair with 45 helium-filled weather balloons attached to it. Walters rose to an altitude...
4 tags
High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program
The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) is an ionospheric research program jointly funded by the US Air Force, the US Navy, the University of Alaska and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Its purpose is to analyze the ionosphere and investigate the potential for developing ionospheric enhancement technology for radio communications and surveillance...
2 tags
Rainbow Body
A rainbow body (Tibetan: Jalü or Jalus) is a body, made not of flesh, but instead consisting of pure light.
According to Dzogchen folklore, the attainment of the Rainbow Body is the sign of complete realisation of the Dzogchen view. As Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche (2002: p. 141) states: “The realised Dzogchen practitioner, no longer deluded by apparent substantiality or dualism such as mind and...
4 tags
Tollund Man
The Tollund Man is the naturally mummified corpse of a man who lived during the 4th century BC, during the time period characterised in Scandinavia as the Pre-Roman Iron Age. He was found in 1950 buried in a peat bog on the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark, which preserved his body. Such a find is known as a bog body. The head and face were so well-preserved that he was mistaken at the time of...
3 tags
Elephant's Foot
The elephant’s foot is a solidified pool of molten radioactive material which resulted from the April 26, 1986 Chernobyl meltdown. When the reactor ran out of control, the nuclear fuel got so hot it literally melted right through the floor of the core, down through several more floors, and collected in various glassy, black ponds underneath the reactor.
The elephant’s foot was the...
3 tags
Morning Glory
The Morning Glory cloud is a rare meteorological phenomenon observed in Northern Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria. A Morning Glory cloud is a roll cloud that can be up to 1000 kilometres long, 1 to 2 kilometres high, and can move at speeds up to 60 kilometres per hour.
Despite being studied extensively, the Morning Glory cloud is not clearly understood. Regardless of the complexity...