Archive for October 12th, 2009

1 Million fps Slow Motion Video of Bullet Impacts

This is a slow motion video of the movement of bullets at 1 million frames per second. The quality of the footage is so good that the scattered material and dust particles given off when the bullet makes contact with a surface look like liquid is pouring out. It’s almost hypnotic.

The History of the Chipmunks

A history of our favorite, furry, animated friends, Simon, Theodore, and Alvin – the Chipmunks.

Production commenced and in just a few months leading up to Christmas of 1958, the record shot to the top of the charts, becoming one of the best selling singles of all time. Bagdasarian won two Grammy Awards, Liberty Records was saved from bankruptcy, and the Chipmunks became a household name with children all over the world…

Click the link for the full story.

Link Via Neatorama

Drive-In Automobile Museum

This is the project winner of the international invitation competition for the construction of an Automobile Museum, held by the Jiangsu Head Investment Group and the government of Nanjing, China.

This is what Francesco Gatti, the chief architect of the winning team, 3GATTI, said about the design.

“A building to be dedicated to the automobile, where the automobile is also the vehicle to visit the space. You visit the first external ramp of the museum with your own private car, like a SAFARI, you park your car on the roof and visit by foot the internal ramp going down. The building could seem to appear as an urban car exhibitor, with its corners and angles filled with tempting shining exposed automobiles.”

The architect describes the museum as a “movie sequence in which the principal actor is the car”, a building where two car-related panorama go hand in hand: on the one hand the architect’s conscious attention to motorway aestheticism and urban scale – the structures and materials remind one of a viaduct – and on the other, his transportation into the museum of the ergonomics of the interior of a car. The furbishing and details within the edifice are related to and on a scale with its specific functions and it is not difficult for the visitor to imagine that he is in a car on a highway, rather than in a museum.

Link

Two-year-old Has The Same IQ As Einstein

A two-year-old from Britain has become the youngest boy to ever be accepted into Mensa.

Oscar Wrigley, who has an IQ of at least 160 (the same as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking), has been ranked in the 99.99th percentile of the population and has been ranked off the scale as the Stanford-Binet test cannot measure higher than 160.

Oscar’s father Joe, 29, an IT specialist from Reading in Berkshire, said: “Oscar was recently telling my wife about the reproductive cycle of penguins.

“He is always asking questions. Every parent likes to think their child was special but we knew there was something particularly remarkable about Oscar.

“I’m fully expecting the day to come when he turns around and tells me I’m an idiot.”

This toddler certainly is extremely intelligent, but in a completely different way to Einstein. Einstein himself had early speech difficulties, whilst Oscar is clearly a child genius. So do you think that IQ tests are worthwhile, or just a measure of someone’s ego? Do they have value in the real world? Let us know.

Link

Michael Jackson’s New Song

Michael Jackson’s new song, “This Is It”, was unofficially released to the world today. Here it is.

US Olympic Committee Tries to Block The Olympian Newspaper

The US Olympic Committee is attempting to block the newspaper ‘The Olympian’ from trademarking it’s name, despite the fact the paper is from Olympia, Washington.

Lawyers for the committee say the name will cause confusion by its similarity to the Olympic brand which may threaten relationships between sponsors and partners, which is it’s main source of revenue.

Meanwhile, Michael Masnick, a legal blogger on the website Techdirt, said: “It does seem pretty ridiculous that the Olympics could suddenly claim that there might be confusion between the two after over a century of the two ‘brands’ living together peacefully.”

He added: “We didn’t realise that governments had any responsibility in helping the Olympics make lots of money.”

Link