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The Discovery Channel Website doesn't indicate that these will air again anytime in the near future. You will also note that the Discovery Channel's web strategy is severely lacking because there is no way to have them notify you when it is coming on again. Or are they just being obscure because they reap more profits from DVD sales?

But I digress, this series kicks ass. It doesn't focus solely on the deep-sea critters, but rather casts a wide net. If you saw this show and were not completely freaked out by the presence of crazy brine pools at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, you aren't very curious about the world you live on.

I sort of assumed there was such a thing all along. Something like those "pinpression" toys with all the parallel pins that you can push on and make an imprint of your hand, only driven by actuators. Why wouldn't this work?

(Hold on...after a little Googling, I found this instance of the exact thing I'm proposing. Go and buy it, blind people! And not just for anti-spam graphics; as with any new medium, just imagine the pr0n possibilities.)

What happens when the technology for laying the nanotubes onto substrates becomes so good that we
are able to build car frames or house frames from it(think 3D substrates of nanotubes) ?

Automobile frames will probably be made of carbon fiber in the next few years, I think that will be "good enough". Check Discovery channel's "Extreme Engineering" for how nanotubes could really be used, on that gigantic pyramid thing.

http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/engineering/p yramidcity/interactive/interactive.html

anyone interested in topics of this flavor, may want to check out the discovery series that aired last nite. re-airing on Saturday, June 21, at 4. Walking With Cavemen also, there is a very interesting book on human evolution that i read recently, and i highly suggest it. it's fiction/sci-fi, not factual. Darwin's Radio, and a review

This sounds like a feature that one of these top ten truck stops already has, or better, if it wants to stay on that list!

I know that I'm glad these truckers are getting a little pampering...God knows how many goods in the United States are shipped via the big rigs...thanks truckers!

geez, calm down -- it's only slashdot!
"Neanderthal" on Discovery Channel

Contrary to popular belief, Neaderthals were not an evolutionary dead-end. They in fact merged with CroMagnion into a little-known genus calls slashdottus-assholus. Examples of these non-sapien hominids can be seen wandering about at comic book stores, at sci-fi movies or at computer equipment retailers. Most commonly, they can be observed making insulting comments at each other via an electronic medium known as the internet. It is believed that this line will shortly die out, given their tendancy to prefer self-stimulation over mating with members of the opposite sex.

wanker

If anybody's interested, here's some more links:

Discovery Channel
Sky News
Space Daily
Voice of America
BBC News

Channel 1's Story

Boy, that MSNBC article was bad. They even mispelled the researcher's name. It is "Akiko Mizutani" not "Aikiko Mizutani".

Here is some better coverage of the story. discovery, NationalPost, and Ananova.

And here is a nice page from the Insect Vision, Navigation and "Cognition" Laboratory at ANU, but it doesn't cover the dragonfly work.

Discovery.com provides a few more details but since the scientists themselves are still baffled, I don't think we will find any lengthy explanations of the phenomenom except perhaps by reading the article in Nature itself which is not available except by subscription.

The thing new in the Discovery article I found significant was that they performed the movements with "millimetric" precision.

I wonder if the dragonfly's 3 foot long ancestors were also capable of such precision, or whether the need to remain so precise led to their reduced current size.

• http://www.nature.com/nsu/020826/020826-2.html
  
• http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20020826/geck o.html
  
• http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/10/18/03840/816
  

I wonder if I could get Paul Teutul of American Chopper to build me one of those!

...Do MUY ESTUPIDA stories like this one get posted, but truly fascinating stories, like the NEW SPECIES OF GIANT JELLYFISH and the NEW SPECIES OF TINY SEAHORSES get rejected?

On the Discovery Channel there is a show called Extreme Engineering. It looks like Japan is going to have some really cool designs to fix the growing population and urbran sprawl. One design is called Sky City which is a city in a building

On the Discovery Channel there is a show called Extreme Engineering. It looks like Japan is going to have some really cool designs to fix the growing population and urbran sprawl. One design is called Sky City which is a city in a building

The mall tour sounds more like Operation Junkyard, the kids version of Junkyard Wars as part of the Discovery Kids shows on NBC. Although all the parts are nicer rather than just being junk, the show has kids participating rather than adults. It's a little different format but still a set time period (6 hours) to build something and then a competition. Instead of experts they have engineers they can consult with for a very short time at the beginning. My kids like the show a lot along with regular Junkyard Wars. It's not bad. More info is available here.

OT rant: Now for a really lame kids version of a show (since the adult show is lame as well) there is the Discovery Kids show Endurance, a kid version of Survivor. Now that bores my kids to no end. It makes me proud to see them go build stuff instead of watching it when it comes on after Operation Junkyard.

The Science Channel had a good documentary on the moons of the solar system -- 95 Worlds and Counting. Basically, it's a lot more likely that we will find life on one of the moons (e.g. Europa).

The only other info I could find on the program on their website was the VHS they had on sale here.

The Science Channel had a good documentary on the moons of the solar system -- 95 Worlds and Counting. Basically, it's a lot more likely that we will find life on one of the moons (e.g. Europa).

The only other info I could find on the program on their website was the VHS they had on sale here.

The Science Channel had a good documentary on the moons of the solar system -- 95 Worlds and Counting. Basically, it's a lot more likely that we will find life on one of the moons (e.g. Europa).

The only other info I could find on the program on their website was the VHS they had on sale here.

But there's the annual 'two-hour forty-minute padded to almost five hours' showing every springtime. And how 'bout those SFX of the Red Sea....?

And for the non-Hollywood version....

The Discovery Channels website is perhaps the best site on the entire web (IMHO) for children. They have tons of content - although some of the great stuff takes alittle while to drill down to.

My former company built Yucky.com. Kids seem to like it and it is quite educational on the mechanincs of things like boogers and farts.

• Yahooligans is Yahoo's directory of kid-friendly sites
• Discovery Channel stuff for kids
• News for kids ... get them used to keeping up with world events!

In 1976 the British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2 that at 9:47 AM a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur that listeners could experience in their very own homes. The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would counteract and lessen the Earth's own gravity. Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment that this planetary alignment occurred, they would experience a strange floating sensation. When 9:47 AM arrived, BBC2 began to receive hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation. One woman even reported that she and her eleven friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room.

It can be pretty hard to tell the liar from the true believer!

This would be a lot more impressive if it hadn't been done before by the Junkyard War guys in 10 hours. Their cars worked too.

I was skeptical, but:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20010528/mete or.html
http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/1999/f eb/m14-013.shtml
http://www.theblob.info/xtras/kecksburg.pdf

Give the guys on Monster Garage a few programmers and a week, I'm sure they can do it!

The Learning Channel did a very nice special about this last year. An archeologist cross referenced the Hebrew garden/creation story of Eden with material from the Sumarian mythical Edin. Moden Iranians have turned the place into a dump, but if you move up into the surrounding mountains it it beautiful.

Interestingly, one of the other shows in the series - Dubai: City of Dreams - is an account of the massive infrastructure project being undertaken in the UAE. The show doesn't mention it, but another part of that project is the expansion of Dubai International Airport which will accomodate multiple A380s at Concourse 2. In fact, according to this article, Concourse 3 was added to the plan specifically to handle the increased passenger throughput from the A380.

Interestingly, one of the other shows in the series - Dubai: City of Dreams - is an account of the massive infrastructure project being undertaken in the UAE. The show doesn't mention it, but another part of that project is the expansion of Dubai International Airport which will accomodate multiple A380s at Concourse 2. In fact, according to this article, Concourse 3 was added to the plan specifically to handle the increased passenger throughput from the A380.

We need Steve Irwin to do a show on penguins then. He can make any animal into a very irate version. Crikey! This one's really cranky!

More Info

Some More Info

The term is most popular in the United Kingdom and some of its former colonies (not Canada, however.) In the United States, the only place you're likely to hear it is on imported television, particularly the series Junkyard Wars (a.k.a. Scrapheap Challenge in the U.K.; it runs on Wednesday nights on TLC.) On that note, host Cathy Rogers can call me whatever she wants. Junkyward Wars also exposes the world to words like bodge (v., n., syn. kludge) and brill (adj. syn. Awesome! Derived from 'brilliant'). For further Britishisms, refer to the British-American Dictionary.

To close, then. I'm a boffin, and proud of it. If the Australians are too uptight to recognize a compliment when they hear one--well, they can sod off.

The term is most popular in the United Kingdom and some of its former colonies (not Canada, however.) In the United States, the only place you're likely to hear it is on imported television, particularly the series Junkyard Wars (a.k.a. Scrapheap Challenge in the U.K.; it runs on Wednesday nights on TLC.) On that note, host Cathy Rogers can call me whatever she wants. Junkyward Wars also exposes the world to words like bodge (v., n., syn. kludge) and brill (adj. syn. Awesome! Derived from 'brilliant'). For further Britishisms, refer to the British-American Dictionary.

To close, then. I'm a boffin, and proud of it. If the Australians are too uptight to recognize a compliment when they hear one--well, they can sod off.

Yeah! We are much more interested in how Christopher Lowell turns a piece of shit into a bigger piece of shit, but colorful.

So go mind your freakin business and leave us to our champagne coolies and cats!

[Karma to burn]

MONSTER GARAGE!!

The Weather, umm... look at the sky, that's how I get my forcast.

Then, I suppose, you return to your mud-hut and bang
your stone club on the floor while the missus prepares barbequed woolly mammoth steaks. Not to worry, though, in a few thousand years, man will invent the clock, and for your weather, you could wait around until the internet is invented, and go online and get some weather info here.

Personally, I think the regular army is full of cowardly, fat-assed pussys. Everytime something dangerous comes up, such as the war with Afghanistan and the ever-pending war with Iraq, the Army calls up reserves and National Guard to do the real fighting. There are 1.4 million people in the regular armed forces, but when they need a force of 20,000 on the ground in Afghanistan, they call up the reserves. Most of the people in the reserves and National Guard are married with kids, etc. What's up with that?

I watched this on its second and third consecutive showing, and something immediately jumped out at me: in 5 million years, Paris will be an arctic wasteland, the inhabitants of which will be hunted by a creature with NO FAT. Snowstalker is "all bone, muscle, and fur", which means if it doesn't find a meal it metabolises its own muscle and organs and dies. Are there any examples of arctic dwelling mammals (or even non-mammals) today that have less than 30% body fat?

Also, I think whomever they got to be their evolution "expert" was a big anime fan, as massive, multi-tentacled squid-creatures were featured in every other segment. At least on the Walking with Dinosaurs show on Discovery Channel they had some actual PhD Archaeologists talking about the dominant dino theories.

Science Survivor?

Unfortunately, it looks like TLC is going to do almost exactly that with a show I just saw them advertise called Escape from Experiment Island.

And, if the contestants are as good at putting their science skills to practical use as the Professor on Gilligan's Island, this thing could go on for years.

I would highly recommend a book called "Watch It Made in the U.S.A.". I don't have the latest edition, but the previous edition has a lot of great detailed information (cost, freebies given, hours, nearby attractions, etc) for all kinds of tours.

Also, the Travel Channel's website has a list of the Best Factory Tours for Kids in the U.S. in case you want to act like a kid.

Jordan has even bigger geek creds: King Abdullah had a cameo on Star Trek! Okay, so it was Voyager, but still.

And some of Indy III was shot there. They're almost guaranteed to switch.

They say that European artists created biased paintings of Jesus showing he was a white man. For example, The Last Supper painting. If you watch the Discovery channel video set - Jesus: The Complete Story Video Set , it shows that this painting was completely flawed !!

W e l l , I 'l l l e t y o u d e c i d e f o r y o u r s e l f .

W e l l , I 'l l l e t y o u d e c i d e f o r y o u r s e l f .

W e l l , I 'l l l e t y o u d e c i d e f o r y o u r s e l f .

The commercial moon mission probably is going to tell us more truth.

This article works in the same idiom as the Weekly World News...same tone, same approach to information. Referring to most of the people as simply "scientists," even calling them "famous scientists" at the end of the article. Real journalists don't quote people like this. Real journalists get information from multiple sources. And real journalists don't suddenly start talking about cyborgs and aliens in the middle of an ostensibly serious article. Is this a translation of a Russian article? Is the language used as bad in the original Russian, or is this written in English by someone for whom English is a second language?

"Neanderthal man...was considered to be in the intermediate position between the pithecanthropus and the modern human." Not by most anthropologists. Neanderthal man (Homo Sapiens Neanderthalis--HSN) was considered to have died out about 30,000 years ago. "Died out" as in "leaving no descendents," or "not able to be called the ancestor of jack squat in modern times." They thrived for about 200,000 years. Homo Sapiens Sapiens--HSS--appeared 120,000 years ago. So, for about 90,000 years HSS and HSN shared space.

For those who read the Clan of the Cave Bear series, the first book is about a HSS girl raised by a tribe of HSN.

The Neanderthals were the first group to display abstract thought. They buried their dead, they had rituals, they drew abstract symbols in their artwork. They were not nearly as dumb as previously thought.

There are 2 theories about HSN: that HSS came "out of Africa" and killed/displaced HSN, or that modern HSS are descended from HSN and other hominids in Europe and Asia.

Actually, it occurs to me that all that I wrote about journalists above really relates to editors. This wasn't posted on slashdot as a joke. This was posted under the category of "science," not humor. It doesn't belong in this category at all. It's a joke that the slashdot editors decided to let this one through.

More useful information can be found from lots of other places:

• Neanderthal-modern.com
• Discovery.com
• The Real Eve
• the cyber perspective
• BBC News from 2000

This article works in the same idiom as the Weekly World News...same tone, same approach to information. Referring to most of the people as simply "scientists," even calling them "famous scientists" at the end of the article. Real journalists don't quote people like this. Real journalists get information from multiple sources. And real journalists don't suddenly start talking about cyborgs and aliens in the middle of an ostensibly serious article. Is this a translation of a Russian article? Is the language used as bad in the original Russian, or is this written in English by someone for whom English is a second language?

"Neanderthal man...was considered to be in the intermediate position between the pithecanthropus and the modern human." Not by most anthropologists. Neanderthal man (Homo Sapiens Neanderthalis--HSN) was considered to have died out about 30,000 years ago. "Died out" as in "leaving no descendents," or "not able to be called the ancestor of jack squat in modern times." They thrived for about 200,000 years. Homo Sapiens Sapiens--HSS--appeared 120,000 years ago. So, for about 90,000 years HSS and HSN shared space.

For those who read the Clan of the Cave Bear series, the first book is about a HSS girl raised by a tribe of HSN.

The Neanderthals were the first group to display abstract thought. They buried their dead, they had rituals, they drew abstract symbols in their artwork. They were not nearly as dumb as previously thought.

There are 2 theories about HSN: that HSS came "out of Africa" and killed/displaced HSN, or that modern HSS are descended from HSN and other hominids in Europe and Asia.

Actually, it occurs to me that all that I wrote about journalists above really relates to editors. This wasn't posted on slashdot as a joke. This was posted under the category of "science," not humor. It doesn't belong in this category at all. It's a joke that the slashdot editors decided to let this one through.

More useful information can be found from lots of other places:

• Neanderthal-modern.com
• Discovery.com
• The Real Eve
• the cyber perspective
• BBC News from 2000