bizarro

Article

The Tallest Building in Kraków is "Szkieletor," He-Man's Nemesis

Photo circa 2008 courtesy of Joanna J., used by Creative Commons license. In 1975, construction began on a high-rise building in the center of Kraków, Poland. The massive structure (planned to be 24 stories high) was to be the headquarters for the Polish Federation of Engineering Associations (aka Naczelna Organizacja Techniczna, or "NOT"). After the skeleton of the building was completed, political and economic unrest hit Poland and the project was halted. 37 years later, the unfinished shell still... READ ON

Article

This Sand Hates Water!

If you take regular sand and expose it to trimethylsilanol vapor (ahem, (CH3)3SiOH for the chemists in the crowd), the sand becomes hydrophobic -- literally meaning "water-fearing." The resulting "magic sand" does interesting stuff when exposed to water, as the sand repels the water. Here are two neat videos showing water interacting with water-fearing sand. Water Drops on Hydrophobic Sand A weirdly soothing video, this shows what happens as puddles form on top of the sand. Hydrophobic... READ ON

Article

How Fake Snow Works

Last Christmas, I received a curious gift: a tiny bag of white crystals labeled Fake Snow. "Just add water," it said. So I did. And the crazy stuff puffed up unbelievably, forming a white-ish snow-like substance. Even weirder, the bag indicated that the snow could be dried out and reused (!) -- I didn't try that part. So what is fake snow? Apparently the powder I had was primarily sodium polyacrylate, a polymer that can absorb 200-300x its own mass in water. This polymer also shows up in diapers... READ ON

Article

David Blaine: How I Held My Breath for 17 Minutes

As a little light science-ish fare for Friday, here's a TED Talk in which David Blaine explains his quest to hold his breath for a really, really long time. He goes through a variety of possible "trick" techniques (none of which worked), and discusses his much-publicized failure to escape from handcuffs during his "Drowned Alive" feat. But then he gets to the interesting stuff -- a seemingly credible story of how he trained to do a sustained breath-hold after breathing pure oxygen. This is a different... READ ON

List

11 Weird and Wonderful Webcams

In the go-go 90s, the Internet was new and we were all excited about the potential of "webcams," a new technology allowing tiny images, almost-live, to be viewed online. Nearly twenty years after the advent of the technology, the bloom is off the webcam rose, and today the webcam landscape is a bit barren. But fear not, dear reader: I've combed through the remaining sites and collected 11 fun webcams for your amusement (and/or bemusement). Fire up Mosaic and follow me! 1. Live Bubbles On Command... READ ON

Article

Watch, Live, as Almost Nothing Happens

From Wikimedia Commons: Picture of the Pitch Drop Experiment from University of Queensland featuring the current (2007) custodian, John Mainstone (picture taken in 1990), two years into the life of the 8th drop. On what is quite likely the most boring webcam ever, you can stare in rapt dumb awe as a drop of Australian pitch (a petroleum product used in waterproofing, among other things) very, very, very slowly drips out of a funnel. How slowly? Well, only eight drops of pitch have fallen since the... READ ON

Article

The Craziest Hall & Oates Video Ever

Sometimes there's a music video that changes everything -- a video that makes your bad day turn good, turns your frown upside down, and confuses the everliving hell out of you. Today, I bring you that video. In 1976 1973, Hall & Oates made a "promotional video" for their single "She's Gone." It's a spectacular testament to the power of the format: Hall and Oates slump in armchairs, scowling, lazily smoking and occasionally lip-syncing. There's so much going on here (and not going on here) that I think... READ ON

List

4 People With Super Memory

(Originally published on September 21, 2009 and quite possibly my most famous post on this... READ ON

Article

That Time They Found Those Bodies in Ben Franklin's Basement

© Bob Krist/CORBIS From 1757 to 1775, Ben Franklin lived in an elegant four-story Georgian house at No. 36 Craven Street in London during his time as an ambassador for the American colonies. In late 1998, a group calling itself Friends of Benjamin Franklin House began to convert the dilapidated building into a museum to honor Franklin, whose other home in Philadelphia had been razed in 1812 to make way for new construction (a "ghost house" frame now sits on the site). One month into the renovations,... READ ON

Article

Cramming People Into a Thing: A Photo History

Phone Booth Cramming was a late-1950s fad with a simple premise: cram a phone booth full of dudes (and/or ladies) and take a picture before the people on the bottom suffocate. As you can imagine, this pastime was most popular among college students, and led to international rivalries. Yes, kids, this is the kind of thing we thought was fun back before we had video games...and when we still had phone booths. But this practice of people-packing goes to places weirder than phone booths, as you'll see in... READ ON