Friday Links: February 12

Another potential Class M planet discovered only 22 light years away. [link]

OK, it's probably Class K which means it can become class M with a bit of terraforming. [link]

A building with 55,000 LED lights. But Belgium? Looks more Indian to me. [link]

This an advanced version of an electric car charging proposal I saw back in high school. Both plans have the same basic problem of needing to rebuild the national highway system. But, if you can start with the major highways and work down to the modest highways I think it'd be good. You can still get a respectable distance once you're off the major roads. [link]

20 nifty things to do with shipping palettes. Some repeats. [link]

Millennium Falcon found on the bottom of the Baltic Sea. [link]

Japanese manhole cover artwork. [link]

A letter from a former slave to his former owner. [link]

Ron Paul and his connections to white supremacist groups. [link]

Quick pictures of things exploding. [link]

Old trucks. [link]
I'd love to see a company still using trucks of this style to move product.

What the left gets right. [link]
What the right gets right. [link]
I take issue with parts of the second. I see several things that they claim and apparently did in the pre-Reagan years, but don't actually do anymore. Not on the federal level, anyway.

What Rick Santorum says according to lip readers.


Proposed trailer for the Doctor Who 50th anniversary in 2013.


New research indicates volcanoes may be a bigger risk these days than we thought. [link]

Reddit IAmI Q&A with a former Chuck E Cheese employee. [link]

A new Spider-Man trailer is coming out. It's not associated with the last three. Gwen Stacy is the female lead while she had just an appearance in one of the earlier movies. And the villain is the one we were waiting for through the last three movies. Remember Curt Connors? That professor with one arm?


"Transparent" phone for Android devices. [link]

The final veteran of World War I died recently. She was 2 weeks short of her 111th birthday. [link]

Brits and Americans have different ideas of what makes a prom. This is Tim Minchin playing the Doctor Who theme at the end of a recent comedy proms.


Newt's people have been futzing with his Wikipedia page. Or, at least trying. This article talks about their effort to purge unflattering facts and Wikipedia's protections from such actions. [link]

picture: Thor and Hulk have come a long way since the 70's. [link]

Werner Herzog dissing chickens. Mom and my brother are actually pretty good at hypnotizing chickens. [link]

This picture shows two maps. We've used the lower one in a couple of our textbooks. It's Napoleon's march. The thickness of the line indicates the number of troops. Pinkish is the advance and black is the retreat. It illustrates why you never get involved in a land war in Asia. [link]

Hydrocarbon reactors? Photonic crystals? Are you trying to power a warp engine or a mobile phone? This article does a decent job of explaining the technology that could move from deep space probes to mobile phones in the near future. [link]

I forgot all about the latest X-prize venture. Build a Star Trek-style tricorder. [link]

To to raise kids that aren't obnoxious little shits. [link]

Art through sci-fi colored glasses. [link]

Republicans say that they more they learn about Romney the more they dislike him. Personally, the man comes off as a snake every time I see him, but if I look at what he did in office instead of what he says I find he's the only GOP candidate that isn't a completely repugnant human being. [link]

I don't watch enough Daily Show/Colbert Report. But I love them. I find them to be sources of the most honest reporting anywhere. And I'm loving what Stephen Colbert is doing to the Supreme Court about the Citizens United decision. I love even more that he's doing it against the wishes of Viacom and Comedy Central. This is why we have free speech. Because nothing disrupts bad thinking and stupid ideas as much as laughing at it. [link]

I have never eaten a squirrel and I will not be upset if I never do. But if you want to, here's some cooking tips. [link]

Middle school student models a molecule with great potential.


Camden council in north London has restricted access to the communal garden at Walker House. I do look forward to seeing how this plays out. [link]

Self portraits done by someone suffering Alzheimers. [link]

Awkward feline sleeping positions. [link]

For the fate of your soul, pick one athlete and one sport. Jon Lovitz as the Devil gets to pick the field and the opposition. [link]

Cinnamon Challenge defined. [link]

Jobs done in midieval ages. note: blogger isn't on the list. [link]

This video on how robots view the world isn't quite correct. Or... rather... damn. It shows a graphical representation of what data the robots get from the video and then overlays it on top of the video. But what does the robot "see"? Then again, how would we show what information we get from our eyes and separate it from the picture we looked at? [link]

I'll be reading this long article for awhile. It's the story of what happens when someone releases their private zoo into a suburban area. [link]

What did ""Well, I hope Neil Young will remember a southern man don't need him around anyhow" really mean? What was "Sweet Home Alabama" actually about? [link]

Complete lower jaw replacement with titanium jaw. [link]

Model plane with a camera finds a river of blood. [link]

Wasn't this a Wallace and Grommet movie? [link]

Food art. [link]

Poor cold kitty.


And lets end it with a comic. Darkness: The story of the most dramatic roommate ever. [link]