Month: December 2003

Create your own 3-D snowflake at Absolut.com. Very cool…

“Being humourous outlines of various countries, with an introduction and descriptive lines.” The Library of Congress has a massive online image archive with fun things like this, although it can take a while to look through it all. I found this particular collection via MetaFilter.

Secretary of State Colin Powell has apparently “appointed [James] Brown to be the first US ‘secretary of soul and foreign minister of funk,’” according to Yahoo. But don’t worry, this is only a “fictitious” position, granted after the Kennedy Center awards over the weekend. I think maybe Colin had a little too much wine at the dinner… 😉

Ask MetaFilter is a “discussion area for sharing knowledge among members of MetaFilter.” Unfortunately, MetaFilter is not accepting new members at this time, but the web site is still full of useful, albeit somewhat eclectic, information shared by its members.

ertdfgcvb is a collection of Shockwave “projects” that includes 3-D animations, games, and more. Well worth exploring…

Take a look at these awesome pictures taken from the Hubble Space Telescope. (links to Shockwave “slideshow” application)

I have no idea what I was trying to come up with here, but I had to stop somewhere. :-p Give it a try… (links to page with Shockwave app)

“A type of beetle that defends itself by spraying high-pressure streams of boiling liquid at predators may help engineers design a better aircraft engine.” Engineers are specifically studying the shape of the combustion chamber in the bombardier beetle’s abdomen in order to design propulsion systems that more reliably re-ignite engines that have stalled due to extremely cold temperatures. Cool…

Mmm… beer…

Along the lines of the Powers of 10 site, the Atlas of The Universe does a really nice job depicting the Earth’s spatial relationship with the rest of the universe, ranging from 12.5 light years to 14 billion light years from the sun.