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With results as you see them. Just sayin’.

Just sayin’.

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A young Beluga whale spent four years apparently trying to speak English recently, according to scientists in California. The cetacean’s enunciation was apparently clear enough that it was actually discovered when the creature ordered a startled diver to get out of the water.

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I bet you didn’t know that.

The shocking news.

I always thought that he belonged in a museum, myself.

Heh.

 The study randomly assigned 5,145 overweight or obese people with Type 2 diabetes to either a rigorous diet and exercise regimen or to sessions in which they got general health information. The diet involved 1,200 to 1,500 calories a day for those weighing less than 250 pounds and 1,500 to 1,800 calories a day for those weighing more. The exercise program was at least 175 minutes a week of moderate exercise.

But 11 years after the study began, researchers concluded it was futile to continue — the two groups had nearly identical rates of heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular deaths.

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This has got to be a hoax or a setup. I refuse to believe that a Democrat candidate for political office would engage in so entrepreneurial an activity.

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When I first saw this guys picture, my immediate thought was ‘OMG! Somebody tried to electrocute Mayor Bloomberg, and the only result was that it caused him to spit out the lemon he’s been sucking on all these years!’ Imagine my disappointment when I found out that it was someone else entirely.

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 Izhar Gafni, 50, is an expert in designing automated mass-production lines. He is an amateur cycling enthusiast who for years toyed with an idea of making a bicycle from cardboard.

He told Reuters during a recent demonstration that after much trial and error, his latest prototype has now proven itself and mass production will begin in a few months.

Bonus points if you can determine what ‘game’ is ‘changing’ here.

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We have the technology — or will soon.

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This is the only writeup I can find that isn’t just a copy of the wire service ‘press release’.

Arlen Specter has died.

I have detested Arlen Specter ever since he came up with the ‘magic bullet’ theory that so corrupted the Warren Commission Report on the assassination of President Kennedy. He did many evil things from thence until he was thrown out of the Senate in 2010, but that was the worst.

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 Technologies like NFC, RFID and QR codes are quickly becoming a normal part of everyday life, and now a group from Carnegie Mellon University has a fresh take on close-quarters data it calls acoustic barcodes. It involves physically etching a barcode-like pattern onto almost any surface, so it produces sound when something’s dragged across it — a fingernail, for example. A computer is then fed that sound through a microphone, recognizes the waveform and executes a command based on it. By altering the space between the grooves, it’s possible to create endless unique identifiers that are associated with different actions.

You’ve heard of storing data in the cloud? Well, we’re going to store it on the road. We have the technology.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

EcoCharge

Do the Right Things at the Right Time

Super Rope Cinch

LarkLife

Hands-Free Video Phone. Plenty of room on top of that head for a helmet. Just sayin’.

How to Survive an Atomic Bomb. Hey, it could happen.

Your Phone’s Camera = Microscope.

How to Get Better Sleep After Using a Computer All Day Long

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Sometimes the old ways are best.

Check it out.

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Let that be a lesson to us all.

I’ve never understood what these stickers were trying to communicate. ‘I have a baby here so I can be a jerk in traffic and you have to accommodate me’? ‘There’s a baby in here so if I get in an accident be sure to look for it in the wreckage’? ‘If I do something stupid it’s probably because I’m cooing at the kid so give me a break’?

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Of course, this is still only half of the amount of the reward offered for the murder of the fool who made the ‘anti-Mohammed’ video of which Barack and Hillary are so fond, so it’s sort of a mixed message. Still, it shows that their hearts are in the right place, which is its obvious objective.

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 A man dressed in a bulletproof vest and fire-resistant pants was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport after a smoke grenade, gas mask, leg irons and other weapons were discovered in his luggage.

Hey, be prepared, you know?

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Why not? It makes as much sense as whatever it is Ben Bernanke is doing … if, indeed, he is doing anything at all.

I’d rather have a dollar coin with Bilbo’s face on it than whoever is the feminist-icon-of-the-moment.

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Unless the Department of Energy gets involved, then it could take forever.

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Thousand of tin-foil hats go in the trash….

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What does it do? Make Democrats move somewhere else, as they keep threatening to do?

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Plans for Titanic II, a replica of the ill-fated ship, will be unveiled in New York in December, it has been announced.

Any resemblance to Obama’s economic plan for a potential second term is purely coincidental.

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 “The fusion fuel we’re focusing on is deuterium [a stable isotope of hydrogen] and Li6 [a stable isotope of the metal lithium] in a crystal structure,” Txchnologist quotes team member and aerospace engineering Ph.D. candidate Ross Cortez saying. “That’s basically dilithium crystals we’re using.” Let’s pause and savor that for a moment. Dilithium crystals. Awesome.

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Let that be a lesson to us all.

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Let that be a lesson to us all.

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Well, you know, I worry about these things.

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Good. Maybe then the Global Warming alarmists will STFU.

(NB: Business Insider is a left-wing rag, and it’s pulling from The Guardian, another left-wing rag, so you’re free to believe as much or as little of this as you care to.)

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 In analyzing that and other longitudinal studies, Dr. Andres determined that Metropolitan Life’s weight recommendations were too high for the early years and too low for later years. Among other things, he observed that the group with the smallest percentages of deaths, or “minimum mortality,” was 10 to 20 percent over the recommended weights and increased with age.

To live longer, he concluded, people should start thin and then gain about six pounds a decade beginning in their early 40s. That advice went against the prevailing wisdom, which held that the most healthful way to age was to maintain the same weight throughout adulthood.

“For some reason the idea has grabbed us that the best weight throughout the life span is that of a 20-year-old,” Dr. Andres said in a 1985 interview with The New York Times. “But there’s just overwhelming evidence now that as you go through life, it’s in your best interests to lay down some fat.”

Dr. Andres was not advocating obesity. “It is not my contention that the fatter the better,” he said. “It is my contention that the desirable range rises with age.”

Sounds good to me.

The Economist, somewhat late to the party.

WHAT could well be the next great technological disruption is fermenting away, out of sight, in small workshops, college labs, garages and basements. Tinkerers with machines that turn binary digits into molecules are pioneering a whole new way of making things—one that could well rewrite the rules of manufacturing in much the same way as the PC trashed the traditional world of computing.

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Well, some people worry about these things.

Last month, a 114-year-old former schoolteacher from Georgia named Besse Cooper became the world’s oldest living person. Her predecessor, Brazil’s Maria Gomes Valentim, was 114 when she died. So was the oldest living person before her, and the one before her. In fact, eight of the last nine “world’s oldest” titleholders were 114 when they achieved the distinction. Here’s the morbid part: All but two were still 114 when they passed it on. Those two? They died at 115.

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 Zhang Yue, 52, says his 220-storey, 2,750ft-tall building in Changsha, which he has called “Sky City”, will be the world’s first standardised, factory-built skyscraper: bringing China’s mass manufacturing skills to our cities.

The Wobbly Boot Pico-Brewery

i-Ruler

Actifry

The Ostrich Pillow. Wouldn’t mind having one of these.

5 High-Tech Toys for Your Geeky Cat.

Bacon Bubbles for Your Dog. I am not making this up.

Pollution-Eating Clothing.

Recording Police Encounters? There’s An App for That.

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 Eating cherries can reduce the risk of gout by more than a third, according to new research.

Don’t say we never have useful stuff here.

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Two species of African spiny mouse have been caught at something no other mammal is known to do — completely regenerating damaged tissue1. The work could help improve wound healing in humans.

And they did it without using embryonic stem cells. Don’t tell the Huffington Post.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

Read it. And watch the video.

This trend could bring some serious automation to the construction industry. Speed the day.

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 The FORM 1 is capable of creating objects with layers as thin as 25 microns — that’s 75 percent thinner than even the new Replicator 2. The company didn’t scrimp on design and polish to meet its affordability goals either. The base is a stylish brushed metal with the small build platform protected by an orange plastic shell. There’s even a companion software tool for simple model creation. You can still get one, though the price of entry is now $2,500, at the Kickstarter page. Or you can simply get a sneak peek in the gallery and video below.

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Built inside a 20-foot shipping container placed on its end, the Kamermaker – ” room maker” in Dutch – is one of the largest 3D printers we’ve ever seen. Able to print objects as big as 2 meter square and 3.5 meters high, the Kamermaker is designed to print huge objects including furniture, architectural elements, and even entire rooms.

The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed.

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The new filament – going by the name Laywood – is a mix of recycled wood fibers and polymer binders that can be melted and extruded just like any other 3D printer filament.

Parts printed with Laywood have about the same properties as parts printed with PLA filament. One interesting feature of this material is the ability to add ‘tree rings,’ or a subtle gradation in color from a rich brown to a very nice beige. The color can be changed on the fly by setting the temperature of your printer’s hot end to 180° C for a light color, and 230° C for a darker color.

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 Ultrasound is likely most often associated with sonograms, but some MIT engineers are poised to change that. By using two separate beams of inaudible sound waves (one at low-frequency, the other high) the team were able to increase the permeability of skin, in a bid to improve the efficiency of transdermal drug delivery. The technique works thanks to the waves exciting bubbles in a fluid (such as water), forcing them to swell and move chaotically. Once the bubbles reach a certain size they implode, sucking the surrounding fluid into the void. This process creates micro-jets of liquid, which cause miniscule tears in the skin, allowing it to (painlessly) absorb chemicals more effectively. In practice, a pre-treated area of skin is then covered with a patch containing the correct dose of drugs — but don’t worry, the skin is said to grow back just a few hours later.

I can hardly wait.

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Read it and weep.

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Dunno whether this says more about dogs or about the French.

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Enviromission’s solar tower is a simple idea taken to gigantic proportions. The sun beats down on a large covered greenhouse area at the bottom, warming the air underneath it. Hot air wants to rise, so there’s a central point for it to rush towards and escape; the tower in the middle. And there’s a bunch of turbines at the base of the tower that generate electricity from that natural updraft.

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 Contrary to popular culture, diamonds are not formed from the metamorphosis of coal under tremendous heat and pressure. It makes for nice poetry, but it’s not true. The real story is actually a bit more interesting than that.

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General Fusion is developing fusion technology to generate affordable, safe and plentiful energy without greenhouse gas emissions, pollution, or radioactive waste.

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UC San Diego has discovered a way to grow nerve fibers in rats with severe spinal cord injuries, a potentially big step toward treating some of the 300,000 Americans who are fully or partially paralyzed.

Researchers used stem cells to basically rewire the central nervous system, enabling the rats to regain some movement. The technique, reported in the journal Cell, causes connections from neurons to spread beyond the injury, restoring the ability of the brain and spine to communicate.