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Was the most interesting statement in the History section of the same site. This refers to the Matthew Broedrick 1983 movie War Games.

I'm waiting to see the "repost" notice next.

Helevius

Was Ark of the Covenant an electrical device?

O_o hmmm I've had a couple experiences that people say I'm lucky to be alive. I guess thats why my friends say "I keep telling myself my friends are normal..." When they see something I've done.

But back on subject, there was an episode of Myth Busters where they tried the myth of dropping a penny off of a tall building, to see if it in fact would kill someone if they were hit by it. This was done with a specially fitted barrell on a gun that would fire a blank and expel the pennie toward a flesh target (not human of course). Even at an extremely high velocity the penny would not even break the skin strangely enough, I believe at the speed of a bullet but I can't be sure. Interesting either way, these pictures just reminded me of it. But wheres the test on the water mellon? *grin*

when the FUCK will you people learn how to add a link properly - http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20040119/mars soil.html if ya want to display the full url properly for the goatse fearful... they can always copy link location, paste it into their location bar, and away we go anyway

Sloan's Ice Cream Parlor
Address: 112 Clematis Street,
West Palm Beach, FL 33401
Phone: (561) 833-3335

For more information regarding the "10 best list" and this particular bathroom, Click here

This link describes an Ice Cream parlor in Florida that has a clear glass bathroom door, activated to opaque by the lock. According to this source they cost $15,000 installed.

Discovery Channel has visited the Dig in Extreme Engineering series. There's lots of stuff to explore online too.

I watched a documentary on the Big Dig a couple of weeks ago on Discovery channel's "Extreme Engineering" series.. it was quite interesting.

I watched a documentary on the Big Dig a couple of weeks ago on Discovery channel's "Extreme Engineering" series.. it was quite interesting.

I wonder if this will have any sort of noticeable effect on Seasonal Affective Disorder. It has been shown that people feel more depressed with less exposure to the sun (this disorder is especially common in winter).

It's funny, everyone talks about how people seem sadder and grumpier "these days". I wonder if there could be an actual link to this "global dimming".

Whos is to say that these sentient beings would want to do that at all? This seems to me to be anthropomorphism at its finest. Its the same "logic" used to discount the existance of other cultures in space.

The argument goes like this:

"An old culture would inevitably produce a machine that when launched into space would use whatever resources it could find to produce copies of itself that had the same capability. Since the galaxy is not filled with these machines, we can rule out the existance of such cultures"

Its nonsense of course, just as the supposition that an AI would want to reproduce is nonsense. It may be the case that an AI would want to make another copy of itself, but this is only a probability, not an inevitable event.

I would add that giving mankind rights, including the right to reproduce ad infinitum is a big problem. The human population is 1000 times bigger than it should be given the limitations of our environment. If anything, less rights are the order of the day, not more, if we are to live in a sustainable world. Either that, or education on a scale previously unimagined.

I would prefer the latter.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20031201/leon ardo.html

I had been hoping for a bridge.

Quite simply there is no sequencing ocurring. It's merely separation of DNA molecules. This will just tell you their size. There's not sufficient information in the article or the store blurb for me to figure out if restriction enzymes are being included, which would make things slightly more interesting. In the days before PCR and DNA sequencing was as easy as it is now, genetic tests were done via Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphisms, so your DNA would break up into differently sized bits depending on which sequence was present at a cutting site.

Its not quite what it says on the story, its not DNA sequencing its just a DNA seperation kit using the bog standard ethanol prep which you can do with washing up liquid, salt and a bottle of (80%) Polish vodka. The electrophoresis step is quite nice using a battery to provide the DC current. However the kit is nothing you could not make yourself (Most of Molecular biology is really quite low tech the main requirement is getting pure reagents to do it with)

Thats not to say its not a cool gift/toy, at the very least the Centrifuge, and Electrophoresis chamber could probably be reused by the budding geekling

here is the link to the actual product.

The Remote control car is already done.

I thought I remembered hearing that the lawnermower episode was the pilot. I was wrong. It's the forth episode. (Although I believe that car was the first "idea" the producers came up with.)

I gave up interest in the show when it became crystal clear that the first rule ("When completed, the monster machine must appear to be stock.") was completely and totally ignored. In fact, none of the rules seem to actually apply. The only rule for winning is that the completed car must do whatever was chosen for that episode.

I no longer watch the Discovery Channel. There's nothing good on anymore. (Same with TLC, but that happened earlier.) I'm left with the History Channel for TV entertainment. I wonder why I'm playing more video games now...

Yet again, Mozilla won't let me preview (the HTML is there, I can View Source, but Mozilla won't display it). I'm going to have to switch back to IE until this is fixed... *sigh* Please forgive any errors that should have been fixed on preview!

In the final of Scrapheap Challenge series 6 - "Cat-alysts" vs. "Megalomaniacs" http://jyw.tacorp.net/specials/jousting/joust.html
http://tlc.discovery.com/fansites/junkyard/episode /season_07_07.html
http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/S/scrap heap2001/text/12/

This has been done on both MythBusters and Junkyard Wars. Nothing new.

At least in the Junkyard version, the two teams fought the RC cars Battlebots style, and Mythbusters strapped a set of rocket engines to it!

Don't get me wrong, Monster Garage is a good show, but sometimes it's a little overhyped.
=Smidge=

Nov 26 is Computer Clutter Warehouse on Clean Sweep! Looks like turkey day is a marathon of Clean Sweep episodes.

Nov 26 is Computer Clutter Warehouse on Clean Sweep! Looks like turkey day is a marathon of Clean Sweep episodes.

Here is the official site for the show. There are a few fan sites that are navigable off of the main site too.

It's quite and entertaining and informative show, and should definately be Tivo'd (since, you know, we're all out on Friday nights).

It's called Monster House.

The retro-future house made me drool.

My favorite, though, was from Discovery Kids:

Discovery Kids - Vomit

Learn new vomit words as well as facts about why people vomit, how we do it, and why it looks green.

yucky.kids.discovery.com/noflash/body/yuckystuff/v omit/js.index.html

This is a common troll.
"I did post production on movie."
"I work for XYZ corporation, and we will have press release soon"
"I am a staff writer for XYZ journal, and in our new issue..."

No evidence, no content, just an empty, poorly worded promise for something to come that gets modded up without CHECKING.
(hint, it's not on at 7 PDT or EDT, in fact, it's going to be all thanksgiving re-runs, all day)

Every moderator who modded this up should get SLAUGHTERED in M2 for such stupidity.

Jesus.

For example, in the medical journal Angiology, there was a recent study of people on the Atkins diet for one year who decreased the blood flow to their heart by 40 percent and increased the inflammatory markers. Ketogenic diets like these can also cause dilation of the heart, or cardio-myopathy. The high saturated-fat levels in those high-protein diets are linked to certain cancers. Some cancers are exquisitely sensitive to levels of saturated fat. So much so, that there's a six-fold increase in certain cancers in the saturated fat ranges that you see in some of those diets you mentioned.

The source

Diets are always a bad idea. It's like exchanging long term health for a few months of looking fit. The point to living well should be becoming fit, not just looking fit.

Discovery/TLC once had two BBC series dedicated to exactly this purpose called Connections and Connections 2 by James Burke. It demonstrated that most everything you count as normal was discovered by just this method: seeking one outcome, failing, and using the failure for something new. Cereal, air conditioning, rocketry, take your pick. Think Edison didn't use all those failures? That's one step above research, that's creative research.

From the article: "...the Australian Antarctic Division scientists have developed a method that allows them to collect whale feces and study its DNA to figure out what the whale recently consumed. "

Quick! Patent that before Jeff Bezos does!

2003 saw the first scientifically reported incidence of a whale flatulence. A picture and writeup can be found here. Warning: the picture caption is bound to induce fits of giggles in young children...or people like me who still find poop jokes funny.

Ever try looking at The Science Channel?

TLC was bought out by the Discovery Channel quite a few years back, before the fluff even. It was probably 1995-97ish when they merged. Hell, TLC's official website is tlc.discovery.com.

Every time I go back to Canada I am stunned at the difference in quality between the US Discovery Channel and the Canadian edition. While the US version seems to focus on UFOs, John Edwards, Junkyard wars and other hocus pocus, the Canadian version has real content, interviews and articles about real science.

In particular the US version has NOTHING like the Daily Planet program. I don't know why it is that the Canadian version of Discovery Channel is SOOOOO much better.

It's depressing that there is no market incentive to produce a real science channel. With the Discovery channel and affiliates as part of basic cable and covering (squatting on actually) the "science beat" there is little hope that we will see competition.

compare :

Discovery Channel (USA)

Discovery Channel (Canada)

... including based on the female anatomy.

Somebody obviously needs to spend more time away from the office. That one week trip in the southwestern English countryside was apparently not enough. Seriously, this seems to be more a case of how if you spend your life swinging a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

... including based on the female anatomy.

I came across another link since submitting the story. This one actually gives the name of this new species: Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis

They love to read; they spend time with friends; they do all sorts of stuff. So I swear by this: Television is a waste of time.

Get off your damn high horse. Television has plenty of crap on it, but that doesn't mean the medium sucks. There's plenty of crap published in book format too. People who argue this 'television sucks' focus on the crap and ignore the quality stuff out there.

It is akin to saying 'CDs suck' because the local Wherehouse music has a rack full of NSync. If you are unhappy with the programs you watch, find better programs. There are plenty of good, entertaining, moving, educational shows on television.

Crappy TV rots brains about the same amount as crappy romance novels, or teeny bopper pop, or Gigli. Don't identify the medium with only its dregs.

-Ted

I happened to notice a show (On The Edge) on the Discovery Wings channel covering a lot of this. Not as in depth, of course, but interesting nonetheless.

I happened to notice a show (On The Edge) on the Discovery Wings channel covering a lot of this. Not as in depth, of course, but interesting nonetheless.

Science: Asteroid Headed for Earth in 2014

Posted by michael in The Mysterious Future!
from the send-in-liv-tyler dept.

FooAtWFU writes "Fresh off of Discovery Channel News (and others), it appears that the Near Earth Objects center thinks a giant asteroid *might* hit Earth around March 2014 (though the odds are slim). Duck and cover, break out the duct tape, and start renting Armageddon, Deep Impact, and other end-of-the-world movies." Chances of losing the rock-might-hit-Earth lottery: 1 in 909,000. Chance of winning the Powerball lottery: 1 in 120,000,000.

See any serious problems with this story? Email our on-duty editor.

( Read More... | science.slashdot.org )

CowboyNeal's "white ring" discovered off the coast of Antarctica.

Story Here

In this you can see a face reconstructed from a skull, all computer generated, no clay.

Interesting article, but just this weekend I watched a special on the Discovery Channel that included this very technique. The cable channel's Nefertiti Resurrected special climaxed with a computer-generated rendering of the "mystery" mummy's face, based on the skull and average tissue thickness at key points. They even noted that the technique was "much faster than traditional clay-sculpture reconstruction"... just like the referenced article.

Jump here to see the results.

By the way, I recommend watching the show. Call me superficial, but I liked the look of the actress who played the doomed queen -- especially her dark skin and freckles. Egypt gets a lot of sun, and SPF 45 was still about 2,900 years away. Much more convincing than Yul Brenner, and a darn sight better looking.

Interesting article, but just this weekend I watched a special on the Discovery Channel that included this very technique. The cable channel's Nefertiti Resurrected special climaxed with a computer-generated rendering of the "mystery" mummy's face, based on the skull and average tissue thickness at key points. They even noted that the technique was "much faster than traditional clay-sculpture reconstruction"... just like the referenced article.

Jump here to see the results.

By the way, I recommend watching the show. Call me superficial, but I liked the look of the actress who played the doomed queen -- especially her dark skin and freckles. Egypt gets a lot of sun, and SPF 45 was still about 2,900 years away. Much more convincing than Yul Brenner, and a darn sight better looking.

Yep some nematodes (little worms) survived the shuttle crash. They were on their 4th or 5th generation "post-crash" when they were recovered.

You can get more info here

1. In Boston, The Museum of Science home page is pretty good way to spend a day or half day. I mention it only 'cause I live there.

2. Also, if you're into that kinda thing, the Monster Garage vehicles are on semi-tour, you can check when and where they're being displayed here

3. The Computer History Museum here . Never been, but they used to have a part of it here in Boston.
...and if you do a blog with pictures, let us know where.

Just yesterday night I was watching this show on the Science channel about the Stars.

They showed the interview of guy who went to space in Apollo mission. He talked about his experience with Cosmic rays. He was telling that if he closed his eyes, he could see fast flashes of light moving across. They didn't know what it was. Later they found out that it was Cosmic rays (high energy particles from a supernova explosion). When they looked at their helmets under magnification, they saw trails where the cosmic ray particles had passed. They said those cosmic ray nuclei were so powerful that they could pass through the spaceship unhindered. He was saying that if he had stayed in that environment for a long period of time, his brain probably would be fried.

I don't know how exactly our atmosphere stops such high energy particles but I am glad it does !!

Just yesterday night I was watching this show on the Science channel about the Stars.

They showed the interview of guy who went to space in Apollo mission. He talked about his experience with Cosmic rays. He was telling that if he closed his eyes, he could see fast flashes of light moving across. They didn't know what it was. Later they found out that it was Cosmic rays (high energy particles from a supernova explosion). When they looked at their helmets under magnification, they saw trails where the cosmic ray particles had passed. They said those cosmic ray nuclei were so powerful that they could pass through the spaceship unhindered. He was saying that if he had stayed in that environment for a long period of time, his brain probably would be fried.

I don't know how exactly our atmosphere stops such high energy particles but I am glad it does !!

planetary.org

Discovery.com

Some of the context is redundant, the first link is the most informative.

It's amazing to think that prior shuttle launches have had foam break off and strike the wing without this happening (according to Discovery Channel). Makes me wonder what was different, perhaps just the size of the foam chunk. It's good to know they finally tested it out to measure the impact. Tragic that people died first. Here's a link to another article on VOANews.com