Just when you thought it was safe to go out on the Intarwebs:
Happy invoicing!
- The Unfortunate Sex Life of the Banana - "The banana, however, is a freakish and fragile genetic mutant; one that has survived through the centuries due to the sustained application of selective breeding by diligent humans. Indeed, the “miraculous” banana is far from being a no-strings-attached gift from nature. Its cheerful appearance hides a fatal flaw— one that threatens its proud place in the grocery basket. The banana’s problem can be summed up in a single word: sex." Matt Castle explains the fragility of the banana's lifecycle.
- Daily Mail's Secret Editorial Formula Revealed - "Journalist F, rumoured to be less than five years in the job, somehow gained access to Dacre’s high-security office, known in journalistic circles as ‘Fortress Britain’, and saw the secret formula tacked to the wall. Shocked by its similarity to a public transport system so often maligned within The Daily Mail’s own pages, he rolled it up, put it under his jacket and walked out of his job into a media firestorm." Excellent rendition of the Mail's various obsessions in the form of the Tube map. (Direct link to full-size graphic.)
- How To Salvage A Sunken Car Freighter - "MV Tricolor, a 55,000-ton Norwegian-flagged vehicle freighter, sank in the English Channel in 2002 carrying 2,871 Volvos, Saabs, and BMWs worth $100 million. How do you salvage a boat that big? Start with a really big band saw." Lots of cool photos of the salvage operation in this article.
- NASA Face in Space - "NASA wants to put a picture of you on one of the two remaining space shuttle missions and launch it into orbit. To launch your face into space and become a part of history, just follow these steps..." Go on, you know you want to put your photo into orbit
- RIAA Accounting: Why Even Major Label Musicians Rarely Make Money From Album Sales - "Reader Jay pointed out in the comments an article from The Root that goes through who gets paid what for music sales, and the basic answer is not the musician. That report suggests that for every $1,000 sold, the average musician gets $23.40." Next time you hear some git from the music industry claiming that file sharing harms artists, remember the graphs in this article (and the articles it links to).
- Flying the SR-71 Blackbird - "We had crossed into Libya and were approaching our final turn over the bleak desert landscape when Walter informed me that he was receiving missile launch signals. I quickly increased our speed, calculating the time it would take for the weapons-most likely SA-2 and SA-4 surface-to-air missiles capable of Mach 5 - to reach our altitude. I estimated that we could beat the rocket-powered missiles to the turn and stayed our course, betting our lives on the plane's performance." Pete Wallace reminisces about life as a Blackbird pilot.
- Self-Referential Aptitude Test - "1. The first question whose answer is B is question..." Weird, wonderful, and yes, it can be solved
- The Great Storm: Solar Tempest of 1859 Revealed - "In early September in 1859, telegraph wires suddenly shorted out in the United States and Europe, igniting widespread fires. Colorful aurora, normally visible only in polar regions, were seen as far south as Rome and Hawaii... The event 144 years ago was three times more powerful than the strongest space storm in modern memory, one that cut power to an entire Canadian province in 1989. A new account of the 1859 event, from research led by Bruce Tsurutani of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, details the most powerful onslaught of solar energy in recorded history." The next time this happens, civilisation will collapse
- Sierra Papa India Echo Sierra - "Skipping off the ionosphere every day and night of the year are strange passages of audio, oddball tunes and electronic voices reciting strings of numbers, intended for secret agents in foreign countries. Broadcast in the dead zones between radio stations, these curious transmissions can be heard by anyone with a simple radio, says Jason Walsh." This is a good overview of the strange business of "Numbers Stations". Bonus linky: The Conet Project's recordings of lots of Numbers Stations are now freely available at archive.org.
- Hard Times - Slideshow of part of Michael Zinman's collection of mendicants' signs. From his introductory essay: "I did engage with all the individuals I purchased signs from, and quite often, my offer of purchase was declined. I would guess at least two out of every five people on the street turned me down, and I was not able to purchase their signs. They were just unwilling to part with them. I think it was a matter of self dignity, and I was ever sensitive to their condition and never tried to further persuade them to sell."
Happy invoicing!
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