A few months ago, I took a really cool trip out to Death Valley — check out my posts on the mysterious moving rocks of Racetrack Playa, the world’s toughest footrace and scenic pioneer graves — but since it’s no longer very cool in Death Valley (Saturday’s high will be 114 fahrenheit), what I learn about California’s Great Basin treasure will have to be sourced from the internet. As it happens, there’s one fascinating site I neglected to mention: Ubehebe Crater. Measuring about 800 feet across and 700 feet deep, it’s a blast crater created by volcanic activity, to be sure, but this wasn’t your typical volcanic explosion. It was a phreatic eruption — a particularly deadly variety. (more…)

It’s a lovely summer day — what are you doing inside, reading a blog? Probably the same thing I’m doing, writing one. Well, next time you go out, consult Falaco Soliton’s guide to finding four-leaf clovers. The article has photos of various clover mutations, and includes instructions on preserving your lucky clovers (see the bottom of the page for an amazing poster showing Soliton’s collection). From the article:

Last summer i put this skill to the test: i found 166 4-leaf clovers, 11 5-leaf, and 2 3.5 leafs. After mounting these, i found one patch while mowing the lawn containing multiple 7 and 8 leaf clovers, as well as a 10 leaf.

Link via the always amazing Anarchaia.

Remember when we wrote about how robot-controlled cars could save us lots of gas money? Turns out they could save our lives, too — and what’s more, the whole endeavor is becoming less science-fiction theoretical by the minute. A team of engineers at Stanford have developed a prototype called “Junior,” a VW Passat equipped with a trunkload of computers and GPS receivers, and a bevy of roof-, side- and front-mounted laser range-finders to image obstacles in 360 degrees. What all this means is, unlike TV’s Knight Rider, there’s nobody standing just out of the shot holding a remote control; this baby does all its own stunts.

Therefore, says project leader Sebastian Thrun, robotic cars like Junior could take a lot of the burden off of US highways. It seems that only about 8% of American highway surface is used at peak hours — the trouble isn’t the amount of surface area we’ve paved, it’s how we use it. All this stop-and-go, unpredictable, emotional driving would be a thing of the past, and cars, suddenly, would function a lot more like trains. Really convenient trains that would go anywhere you told them to go, while you read the paper, work on your laptop or take a snooze. Added bonus: if the robots work like they’re supposed to, traffic fatalities would be greatly reduced. (Even if they malfunctioned occasionally, I can’t imagine it would be worse than what we’ve already got on our freeways today — in addition to countless wrecks, there have been several road-rage-related shootings on LA’s 710 freeway recently.)

Some specs on what makes Junior tick, after the jump.
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In past discussions that took place exclusively in the confines of my head, I’ve said my dream job would be naming people’s pets. I like animals, could ostensibly work from anywhere, and would like seeing my work appear on bowls and tags and Christmas stockings.

However, I’ve never been offered this chance. Perhaps my conservative approach to naming my own pets – Jake, Rosie and Bailey – fails to inspire confidence. Though in my defense, our cat Rosie was a boy, which wins us points for both creativity and gender confusion. (I’m more than happy to offer my naming services gratis, to help build my portfolio. Email away.)

Gawker had a great post yesterday on the booming baby-naming business, which was covered by The Wall Street Journal last week. I may need to branch out this pipe dream.

A few highlights: (more…)

The bedrooms of children have always provided a kind of sabbatical for horror story/fairy tale aggressors, so it shouldn’t be surprising that someone finally manufactures a night light designed to legitimize children’s fears; enter the Blue Moon Night Light. For $29.95 it comes rigged with “14 super bright LEDs” and will make it appear as though your mattress is slightly radioactive. Well, then! I wonder what an all-child focus group would have to say about this product; it seems to me the worst thing about the monster-under-your-bed scenarios was that you were powerless to detect the beasts’ presence or approach, and the best thing about night lights was that they were clearly benevolent (or at least benign) and clearly plugged into the wall…I’m not sure a paroling illumination would be so welcome if it were coming from beneath my bed. Anybody else?

… and since you can’t buy the Inventions back issue at the online store (it’s one of my favorites, but sold out, unfortunately), I figured I’d do another post from Maggie Koerth’s wonderful cover story. This one’s on Band-Aids and the ridiculous reason we have them. Enjoy!

Earle Dickson, his clumsy wife, and the story of the BAND-AID

(IN CASE YOU’VE FORGOTTEN): It’s that thing that usually sports a lovely dinosaur print while clinging to the knees of tow-headed grade-school ruffians. BAND-AIDS are also very handy for adult injuries, but you never really see anyone older than 13 wearing them—even the ones without cartoons. BAND-AIDS, it seems, are something relegated to the backwaters of childhood. Now that you’re a big kid, you’re far too cool to display to the world that you can, in fact, be injured. But your foolish pride is single-handedly diminishing the importance of this invention, and contributing to the downfall of one of America’s greatest achievements. Don’t you think it’s time to heal this wound?

YOU SHOULD THANK: hardworking Johnson & Johnson employee Earle Dickson … and his wife. After all, it’s like they say; behind every great man is a woman who burns herself a lot.
IT ALL STARTED: in 1920, when Dickson wed his sweetheart, Josephine, and quickly discovered she wasn’t exactly Little Mary Homemaker. Turns out, she had a rather unnerving habit of kitchen klutziness. Every day, Dickson would come home to find another cut or burn that needed patching up. He was sympathetic at first, but as time passed, the score increased to Kitchen: 500, Josephine: 0, and he grew more and more frustrated. Finally, Dickson came up with a way for his wife to fix her wounds without having to wait on him. He took a roll of Johnson & Johnson surgical tape and spaced out squares of gauze down the length of it. To keep the tape from sticking to itself, he covered it in a layer of removable crinoline. Forever after, when Josephine injured herself, she simply cut a length from the roll and patched up the damage. Thus, BAND-AIDS were born. No word on the final outcome of Josephine vs. Kitchen, but we’re hoping no news is good news.

I found this ad on ettf and thought it was funny enough to share…

At least, until I started wondering why some of the VW’s on the road were left untouched! In any case, I definitely think it’s one funnier (and better done) than our Abbey Road spoof located here. [If you can't tell, that's Mark Twain, Bob Dylan, Stephen Hawking, and Einstein pushing.]

Tuesday, we took a look at Memphis and covered only the musical landmarks. There’s much more to enjoy and learn about in Memphis.

The Mississippi River itself is quite an impressive landmark. You can take a ride on the Memphis Queen riverboat or enjoy a concert at Mud Island, where you can also explore a scale model of the entire Mississippi River.

The Lorraine Motel at 450 Mulberry Street, just a couple of blocks from Beale Street, was the site where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. King was in town to support the sanitation workers strike, and had just given his famous “Mountaintop” speech the night before. The Lorraine went into foreclosure in 1982, and was bought by a group of prominent Memphians who founded The National Civil Rights Museum on the site. The museum is open every day.
Yet more Memphis, after the jump.
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Another dull day of jury duty, and, as you know, I can’t really discuss the case. But I can remind you that if you didn’t do so well on yesterday’s jury duty pop-quiz, it’s not too late to plunk down a few bucks for our new, really cool Law School in a Box, which features much more in the way of interesting trivia and legalese that’ll impress all your friends.

Meanwhile, I leave you with this funny sign I found posted in the Jurors’ Room.

I ask you: are medium-length conversations allowed with members of the media?

Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Missing Lake: Scientists are on the hunt for a five-acre lake in the Andes (or not in the Andes, perhaps?) that’s gone missing. The lake was last seen in March, but in May scientists only found a 100-foot crater with sheets of ice that originally used to float on the lake’s surface. Some think the water from the lake may have leaked through cracks in the bottom of the lake into underground fissures, but they don’t know where the fissures would have come from. My theory: David Copperfield. Just a hunch.

A Whole New Red Tide: It was 38 years ago this week that, in one of my city’s proudest moments, Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire, providing a startling visual reminder of how polluted the water had become. Now the WaterGlow project is giving us a more aesthetic and safe way to see how polluted our water is. Project creators Soo-in Yang and David Benjamin are installing pods in bodies of water to monitor how polluted the water is. The pods then signal LED lights to shine red if the water is unsafe or green if it checks out. The lights appear to float above the water and allow anyone to see how safe their H2O is. Not to burst their bubble, but I usually run when I see green water. Maybe that’s just me, though.

Cow Dung alternative energy, reinventing the (intelligent) wheel, and how to walk on walls all after the jump!

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