Friday Links: January 30

Senior citizens playing GTA 5. [link]

Animals get stoned on purpose, too, and for the same reasons. [link]

Giving kids a place to play dangerously. [link]

The good and the bad about the return of the wolves. [link]

The poster child for the perfect Aryan was a jew. [link]

The Moon was recently buzzed by an asteroid that had it's own moon. [link]

Two of SpaceX's new ships to be named after ships in novels by Ian M Banks. [link]

Friday Links: January 23

Steven Sodeebergh's remastering of 2001: A Space Odyssey. [link]

Tough on crime politician sees the error of his ways... by being sent to prison. [link]

Video of the SpaceX Falcon 9 booster's failure to land. [link]
Yeah, so this failed. It would have been destroyed anyway. This is a step in finding out how to make one that works. The only thing that went wrong this time is that it landed too hard.

Death Star fire pit (a real one). [link]

Death Star fire pit (Photoshopped). [link]

Atheist 10 commandments. [link]

Beagle lander found. [link]

Alfred Hitchcock's edit and narration of Concentration Camp footage.


It's a dog! That's a raccoon! It's RACCOON DOG! [link]

An interview with a man named Doom who worked at Los Alamos back in the day. [link]
DOOOOOOOOOM!

Cigarette butts act as an insecticide in nests. But do birds use them for that purpose? [link]

Dating when autistic. [link]

NEW AGATHA HETERODYNE NOVEL! WOOO! [link]

Top viewed Wikipedia page for every day in 2014. [link]

Fallout 3/Skyrim crossover.


Jewish newspaper edits women out of photo of Charlie Hebdo march. [link]

Sunni cleric issues fatwa on snowmen. [link]

Time lapse creation of paper mache dragon. [link]

Fine surgical robot peeling a grape and tying knots and whatnot. [link]

Augmented hand exhibit. [link]

Fishing for piranha.


Morality and parenting without gods. [link]

What would happen if you put a person in a microwave? [link]

How to jump from a moving car. [link]

Hunger on/off switch. [link]

Induction stove

So, I'm back in my house. Details on the work will come soon, but today I want to talk about my new induction cooktop.

First, let me explain what an induction cooktop is. You're probably familiar with how electricity run through a coil of wire can create a magnetic field. That's how electromagnets work. The opposite is also true. A fluctuating magnetic field applied to wire can create an electric current in the wire. That's how generators work. If you put two coils of wire near each other and run a current through one then you'll get a current in the other. The difference in the two currents varies depending on the number of loops in each coil and the thickness of the wires. That's how transformers work. But, if you apply a magnetic field to something with a lot of electrical resistance then the electricity gets turned to heat. Ferric pans, pans with iron in them, are magnetic enough to respond to the electrical field, but resistant enough to get hot. You can tell if your pans will work if magnets stick to them.  

The reason you might want an induction cooktop instead of one of gas or electricity is the efficiency. Gas stoves get you heat fast, but there's lots of waste heat. Electric stoves have less waste heat, but it takes longer to get the heat. Induction has the least waste heat because it's the pot itself that gets hot, not the coil or the gas. As for speed... I turned on the heat, dropped an egg on the skillet, cracked open another egg, and the first egg was already turning white. The pan got hot just that fast.

There is a downside or two. First, induction cooktops are expensive. I only got a two burner cooktop because a four or five burner cooktop would have cost as much as most of the other appliances in my kitchen put together. I got a gas two burner cooktop in addition to the induction two burner cooktop because someday I'll want to move and rent out this place. A larger family will want more burners and probably something less unusual.

The second issue is that not all cookware will work. I thought I had bought cookware that was compatible with induction stoves. But the oven returns an error message if you try to use pans that won't work. Luckily, the cooktop came with an unexpected set of pots.

So far I'm very happy with the choice and plan to have another put in future houses.

Friday Links: January 16

3 AM and I remember I'm supposed to be putting links together. Screw it. Take what I give you.

A moving map of the winds in the United States. [link]

A short documentary about the staff at an Antarctic research base. [link]

NASA's list of most and least realistic movies. [link]

Everything you need to know about Skyrim.


Conditions where underage drinking is OK. [link]

Arrow proof armor from a parachute.


Cops who killed a homeless camper will be charged with murder. [link]

Friday Links: January 9

Rhea flock in Germany. [link]

The Archer pilot with Velociraptor as Sterling Archer. [link]

Why releasing 1.5 million balloons might be a bad idea. [link]

Every copy of Popular Electronics. [link]

Multi-direction elevators. [link]

Snoopy the astronaut safety beagle. [link]

A fan film set in the Judge Dredd universe


The making of a Bioshock themed fish tank.


Music video done to sound experiments. [link]
Sorry if this is a repost.

Cartoonist Richard Thompson's work in a museum. [link]

The 1837 Indian Smallpox outbreak was not due to the Army distributing infected blankets, but a fur trader who wouldn't turn back. [link]

The effort to save and restore forests is having a notable effect on global climate change. [link]

And in gloomier news... animals that went extinct in 2014. [link]

Some of the greatest science pics and videos of 2014. [link]

Cartoonist documents her time in prison. [link]

The wheels of the Curiosity rover have a lot of wear, tear, and holes. Here's why and how much of an issue it is. [link]

The Gingerbread people have a starship. [link]

1300 year old onion. [link]

The story of the Star Wars Christmas Album. [link]

Texas plumber's used truck ends up in the hands of terrorists. [link]

Marijuana themed cooking show. [link]

The soundtrack for 2001: A Space Odyssey was originally put there to inspire the musician who would write the real soundtrack. That guy's soundtrack was never used and he didn't know until the movie started to roll at the premier. Here is some of his soundtrack restored.


Can people be identified from reflections in eyes like in CSI? [link]

Off duty black cops in New York City feel threatened by police. [link]

Brilliant shark bed for babies or cats. [link]

A town for electrosensitives to hide in. [link]

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but with CNN. [link]

Earth's 8th ocean. [link]

Marvel Universe: Phase 2 ends here.


The story of Bad News Brian. [link]

We get a leap second this year. [link]

Frederick County (where I work) Councilman is amazingly uninformed about what the press is and how it works for someone governing so close to Washington, DC. [link]

That is a big skinny TV. [link]

Links

The Epic of Gilgamesh tells of a great flood. The translator was so excited by it that he started to strip. [link]

This programmer saved Apollo 11. [link]

The results of losing all track of time for four months. [link]

A complicated, but 90% effective, treatment for Alzheimers. [link]





And Dexter has suffered from a terrible lab accident. [link]