Nature’s Wonders Never Cease – Son Doong Cave
The story of the Son Doong Cave in Vietnam is incredible on a couple of levels. First, it’s a 5.5 mile long cave that features a river and a jungle, and the ceiling soars so high in spots you could fit a skyscraper inside of it. That alone is amazing. Follow that link and take a look at the rest of the pictures. It’s incredible.
But what really fascinates me is that the cave was only discovered in 1991. And it wasn’t explored until 2009. That’s crazy! Now that the cave has been mapped and explored, Oxalis is going to be offering a six day tour. If you want to get in on it though, you had better hurry. There are only 220 permits available for 2014.
English is hard!
We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men,
why shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen?
If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth?
Then one may be that, and three would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his, and him,
But imagine the feminine: she, shis, and shim!
-ANONYMOUS
The Stasi is everywhere
ESPN has a fascinating article about Katarina Witt that coincides with their Nine for IX series of documentaries. It tells the story of what it meant to be a world class athlete behind the wall, and how a young Katarina learned to use the power that her abilities on the ice gave her.
Of particular interest to me, given the current climate in our part of the world, is the revelation of how the Stasi was tracking her. It’s like something out of a spy movie. Transcripts of conversations, tracking her movements. And perhaps most chilling of all… the young Katarina was dating a drummer in a band. The powers that be decided this could be a distraction to her skating, so they sent him away. Just like that. The story of the fall of the wall, and how that played out for Katarina may also surprise you. The whole thing is well worth the read.
The soup is a little thick…
Kentucky Fried Chicken may have tried to distance themselves from the negative connotations of the ‘fried’ moniker with the change to KFC, but that doesn’t mean their crack team of fryologists have just packed it in. No, it would appear that they are still hard at work, fighting the good fight for the frying of things. As an example, I point you to Japan, where KFC is preparing to offer their latest creation… fried soup.
Apparently, corn potage is rather popular in Japan at the moment and KFC is taking advantage by creating a corn potage stuffed fritter based on one of the Colonel’s OG recipes for a potato bacon fritter. And if some deep fried soup isn’t enough to fulfill your corn potage cravings, apparently you can also get corn soup ice cream.
Inching ever closer to 3D printing
I think it’s a safe bet that at some point in our futures 3D printing is going to be ubiquitous. It will be no more surprising to find the capability at someone’s house than an inkjet printer is today. That future is not today. 3D printing is still very much in the enthusiast/hobbyist niche at this point, but we are slowly moving closer. The release of the Makerbot Digitizer is the next step. Taking the requirement for the running and manipulation of modeling software out of the equation is a big step toward wider adoption. There is more info on the Digitizer, as well as the Replicator, at the Makerbot website.
Will the Ubuntu Edge ever happen?
If you are not part of the Ubuntu herd, you may have missed the news about their smartphone project. In a nutshell, the Edge was slated to be a top of the line smartphone with a clever bit of OS shenanigans running behind the scenes that would let it run a mobile OS, or the full Ubuntu desktop. As you can see from the picture, it’s also gorgeous. This page on the Ubuntu website lays it all out very well.
The rub comes with that bit about crowdfunding. While the project did raise an impressive $12.8 million, that is nearly $20 million short of where it needed to be. So things are on hold for the moment. But Mark Shuttleworth remains confident. The Guardian spoke with him as the fundraising campaign wound down and it sounds like Ubuntu will continue to pursue their plans for Ubuntu mobile.
That doesn’t necessarily bode well for the Edge. Much of the talk is about getting Ubuntu mobile in the hands of device manufacturers to use on lower end phones as an alternative to Android. That’s something I could see happening, but also something I have little interest in using. So, for now, it looks like the Edge was a great concept that will never see the light of day.
Is this the best ad campaign of all time?
That is an actual ad for the ’62 Volkswagen. I think it’s brilliant. And it is just one in a series of very clever ads that Volkswagen used in the late 50s/early 60s. Caught At The Curb has a series of posts collecting many of the original ads and they are well worth a look. As to whether or not this is the best campaign of all time, it is of course arguable. But they are certainly in the conversation, and Advertising Age did deem them just that back in 1999. There is an interesting entry on the VW advertising over at wikipedia.
1939 to 1944, in color!
This is really cool. Generally we see the time of the Great Depression and World War II in black-and-white. That was the more prominent technology of the day. But color photography did exist, and was being practiced by the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information. Now, thanks to the wonders of the internet, a lot of those photographs are available to us. The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division has digitized the original color transparencies and they are making them available on flickr. These are just a few examples. You’ll find over 1600 more at the flickr site.
A reboot won’t fix that!
I’m always a little bit fascinated at the way in which LCD monitors break. To be clear, this isn’t some bizarre form of modern art I’ve created. I didn’t actually punch this monitor into this oddly artistic failure. It’s the result of very poor planning on the part of someone that shipped it. That said, it is kind of fascinating to look at, right?
The Gamers: Hands Of Fate
The internet has coughed up another treat. A new movie, The Gamers: Hands Of Fate, is streaming for free until the end of the month. Just click the play button at watchthegamers.com. And I am not just sending you off to watch a two hour movie on a whim. I’ve already seen it, and it’s really good. The Gamers is a great example of the benefits of the recent changes in movie-making technology. The tools have become so affordable that lower budget projects can now look incredible. That is the case here. The production quality is fantastic. Even better, it’s a well crafted story. And the final bonus… If you are a fan of Seattle’s theatre scene, the movie is packed with actors you will recognize.