Category: Uncategorized

Apparently, there exists beneath Beijing a series of secret chambers and passageways, the likes of which rivals the Paris catacombs. From Pmgtg.com:

In 1969, Chairman Mao commanded the construction of a second Beijing
beneath the surface of the original city, designed to accommodate all
six million of its then inhabitants so that if nuclear war did kick off,
folk would still have somewhere to hang out and play Mah Jong while
the rest of us burnt to death in a shower of atomic rain. War never came, but the city is still there.

You can read and see more here.

This is something I’ve wondered about from time to time. It turns out that

The small distinguishing mark you see over a lowercase /i/ and a lowercase /j/ is called a tittle – an interesting name that seems like a portmanteau
(combination) of “tiny” and “little,” and refers to a small point or
stroke in writing and printing. Generally, a diacritic dot such as a
tittle is also referred to as a glyph.
However, in regards to /i/ and /j/ – the removal of the mark is still
likely to be read as /I/ or /J/; as such, these are not examples of a
glyph.

Derived from the Latin word “titulus,”
meaning “inscription, heading,” the tittle initially appeared in Latin
manuscripts beginning in the 11th century as a way of individualizing
the neighboring letters /i/ and /j/ in the thicket of handwriting. With
the introduction of the Roman-style typeface in the late 1400’s, the
original large mark was reduced to the small dot we use today.

More details here.

Cordyceps, as we noted last September, is the name of a parasitic fungus that can possess the brains of carpenter ants. Check out this video clip of the phenomenon from Planet Earth:

While Mazda is handling the situation admirably, I can’t help but suspect that this incident will irrevocably tarnish their reputation among the arachnophobic.

Mazda has some creepy crawly culprits in its new safety recall — spiders.

After discovering spider webs in the vents, the Japanese automaker
is recalling more than 50,000 Mazda6 cars from the 2009-2010 model years
in the United States and an additional 15,000 vehicles in Canada,
Mexico and Puerto Rico.

The company said Thursday a spider could weave a web in a vent
connected to the fuel tank system and clog up the tank’s ventilation.
Pressure on the fuel tank could lead to a crack, causing fuel leakage
and the risk of a fire.

Read more here.

Word is that bread trucks and lunch-meat trucks have been dispatched to deal with this incident.

The earth is restless in Arkansas – remarkably so – and no one is quite sure why. Since last September, more than 800 earthquakes have rocked the central Arkansas town of Greenbrier, and residents are becoming “unsettled by the[ir] increasing severity and lack of warning.” 1
The Huffington Post reports that

earthquakes ranging in magnitude from 1.8 to 3.8 have
rattled the north-central Arkansas cities of Greenbrier and Guy this
week, and the cause is unknown.

The U.S. Geological Survey has reported more than 30 earthquakes in
the area since Sunday [February 13], including a magnitude 3.8 quake Thursday morning
and at least 16 others occurring Wednesday, two of which were magnitude
3.2 and 3.5.

The latest quake to shake the area was

A 4.7-magnitude earthquake that researchers described as the largest in
Arkansas in 35 years […] There were no reports of major damage, though some residents spoke of
dislodged screen doors and cracked ceilings. Damage or not, some said
this was the longest and scariest quake yet.

While experts are largely at a loss to explain this swarm of earthquakes, some scientists have suggested a connection to natural gas drilling in the area:

Researchers with the Arkansas Geological Survey have pointed out
spatial and temporal relationships between the earthquakes and the use
of injection wells, which are used to dispose of the wastewater left
over from gas drilling. (Researchers see no such correlation between the
quakes and the drilling itself, a process called hydraulic fracturing.)
While a possible connection is being studied, the Arkansas Oil and Gas
Commission has imposed an emergency moratorium on the drilling of new
injection wells in the area.

You can read more here. (Map from NYT.)

The odd headline of the hour. From our correspondents at National Geographic:

Fossils of an ancient, spiny creature dubbed a “walking cactus” have been found in China, a new study says.

The 2.4-inch-long (6-centimeter-long) Diania cactiformis
had a worm-like body and ten pairs of armored and likely jointed legs.
It would have lived about 500 million years ago during a period of rapid
evolution called the Cambrian explosion.

You can read the rest – and see an artist’s recreation of this bizarre creature – here.

… is entitled “The Power of Decision,” and was recently declassified. It

may be the first (and perhaps the only) U.S. government film depicting
the Cold War nightmare of a U.S.-Soviet nuclear conflict.  The U.S. Air
Force produced it during 1956-1957 at the request of the Strategic Air
Command.  Unseen for years and made public for the first time by the
National Security Archive, the film depicts the U.S. Air Force’s
implementation of war plan “Quick Strike” in response to a Soviet
surprise attack against the United States and European and East Asian
allies. 

Check it out:

(Source.)

… by Bushells Tea (“The Tea of Flavor”):

Oh predictions about the future, you’re so entertaining in hindsight! (See also our earlier posts, “The Ten Dumbest Tech Predictions” and “Amusing predictions about the year 2010, circa 2000.”)

It’s called Utricularia (common name: bladderwort), and it’s far faster than the Venus Flytrap. Check out this footage:

The night, increasingly, is aglow with the luminescence of polar mesospheric, or noctilucent, clouds. Space.com examines this phenomenon:

Clouds bright enough to see at night are not as hard to find as they once were.

These so-called night-shining clouds are still rare — rare enough that
Matthew DeLand, who has been studying them for 11 years, has seen them
only once. But his odds are increasing. [Related: In Images: Reading the Clouds.]

These mysterious clouds form between 50 and 53 miles (80 and 85 kilometers) up in the atmosphere, altitudes so high that they reflect light long after the sun has dropped below the horizon.

DeLand, an atmospheric scientist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
in Greenbelt, Md., has found that night-shining clouds — technically
known as polar mesospheric or noctilucent clouds
— are forming more frequently and becoming brighter. He has been
observing the clouds in data from instruments that have been flown on
satellites since 1978.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Here’s something interesting, courtesy of Harvard’s Vision Sciences Laboratory:

Instructions: Play the movie while looking at the small white speck in the center of the ring. At first, the ring is motionless and it’s easy to tell that the dots are changing color. When the ring begins to rotate, the dots suddenly appear to stop changing. But in reality they are changing the entire time. Take a look.

Motion silences awareness of color changes from Jordan Suchow on Vimeo.

(link.)