New Florence. New Renaissance.

Brainiest College Pranks

Popular Science has a gallery of the best from Caltech, MIT and the legend of George Burdell

Square Watermelons!

Well, not high-tech, but certainly innovative - read the genesis of the idea here.

I read it courtesy of Guy Kawasaki.

HP and the Crystal Skull

As the Indiana Jones movie with Crystal Skulls delights audiences I found the website of the Mitchell-Hedges skull and it talks of the experiments scientists at HP Labs conducted on it in 1970.

"In one of the tests the skull was submersed in a glass chamber containing benzyl alcohol of exactly the same density and refractive index as pure quartz. As the skull was lowered into the tank it seemed to disappear. This proved that it was made of the most incredibly pure type of quartz. But not only was it pure, it was also natural “rock crystal supplied by the earth”. Polarized light was directed at the skull in its chamber and vague shadows or ‘veils’ then appeared, which showed that the skull was of natural origin. These shadows, tiny variations in the growth pattern of the crystal, somewhat akin to rings on a tree, are removed in the precisely controlled environment of manufactured quartz."

Google Artist Themes

Want  or Oscar de la Renta or Lance Amstrong to grace your iGoogle page?  Check out the artist themes they have lined up like designer Diane von Fustenberg below

The Mustangs have escaped!

from Las Colinas...

Not.

I hope this is the lamest trick your eyes see today - April Fools's Day!

It did make me long for a balloon ride over the Masai Mara. April is also the month where the Serengeti herds of wildebeest and zebras rush back from their October trek out..

The Google Leprechaun!

 Happy Paddy's Day!

So I was noodling around the web this weekend and came across Shamrock, TX.
On historic Route 66 no less...

I go to Google Maps to see how far it might be from Dallas, and what do I find?...in Street View a leprechaun and a shamrock! (click picture to enlarge)

The Irish and Foam

The spectacular Water Cube which will host the swim meets at the Beijing Olympics had its inspiration in the Weaire-€“Phelan structure - work around foam bubbles engineered by two physicists at Trinity College in Dublin.

A few years ago, scientists were confounded but confirmed that bubbles in Guinness do actually move downwards. The irish sure know their foam - and how to grow shamrocks in them...

Spore: Game of the Decade?

The latest Fortune calls Spore, from creator Will Wright, the game of the year. Due out this summer, if it has any of the impact his previous Sims series did, it will be around for much longer and in many more user modified formats - via widgets on a Facebook page, animated videoclips passed around on YouTube and 3-D printing.

Here is a demo Will Wright did for NASA recently.

Flexible Fluid-Lubricated Foils, or better known as Magic Carpets

This is what Physics researchers do for fun and fantasy -)

New Scientist  on the physics of flying carpets "a 10cm long carpet 0.1 millimetres thick would have to vibrate with 0.25 millimetre high waves 10 times a second to stay aloft in air and fly horizontally at 0.3 metres per second."