Josh McHugh

Attention: Honey Bees on fire

What a difference being a featured video on YouTube's front page makes. From 500 views two days ago to 184k at last count. And, when you're checking every hour, those counts seem to happen once or twice a day. Agony. But what a ride.

Drug Test Cowboy Coverage

The human guinea pigs story got some solid coverage on Metafilter.

Also, I was a guest on a segment of NPR's Talk of the Nation yesterday.

Happynomics

Great piece in the April 07 issue of Mother Jones by Bill McKibben, author of Enough, on the intersection of economics and psychology. "Happynomics" is a deft moniker. The answer McKibben provides at the end, small farms, feels a little anticlimactic, but hey, maybe thinking small really is the answer.

Technorati Tags: economics, psychology, well-being

Pistorius story is up

My piece for Wired on Oscar Pistorius is on the web here. There are some photos that weren't in the hard copy version and some video of him running as well.

Genome Story Wiki

Honestly, when I thought of this in 1995, it might actually have been possible for me to learn most or all of the stuff I would've needed to learn to pull it off. Though I must say it wasn't inter-dash-active, the way I imagined it at the outset. Originally it was more of a 3-d environment where I would kind of riff masterfully (huh?) on the varied expressions of genes, all laid out visually in the form of a double helix you could cruise up and down on each chromosome to see the masterful things I had decreed . The verse (oh yes, it was to be verse) would have somehow corresponded metrically and rhyme-ically to the base pairs making up the genes, and somehow I would have been able to cover a meaningful number of genes. Hah. Somehow.

centrifuge vid

Here's a little video of the 20g centrifuge at NASA Ames Research center in action. I spent some time in this thing a few years ago for my favorite Wired assignment.

technorati tags:centrifuge, NASA, blackout, Mars, Wired

Blogged with Flock

G-LOC times 3

Entertaining video of a guy being subjected to hypergravity during a ride in a fighter jet. It brings back memories.

Funny and Extreme Videos - G Force

technorati tags:gravity, G-LOC, syncope, blackout

Cruise ship crew repels pirates with sonic weapon

So..damn...cool!

A LUXURY cruise ship with 22 British tourists aboard survived an attack by Somali pirates armed with rocket-propelled grenades yesterday as it rounded the Horn of Africa.

The 10,000-ton Seabourn Spirit came under fire at about 5.30am. The pirates approached in 25ft speedboats and shot at the ship with the grenade launcher and machineguns.

Terrified passengers watched as the pirates tried to get aboard — only to be repelled by crew members who set off what one described as a “loud bang”.

“They were firing the rifle and then fired the rocket launcher twice. One of the rockets certainly hit the ship — it went through the side of the liner into a passenger’s suite. The couple were in there at the time so it was a bit of an unpleasant experience.”

Mike Rogers, a Canadian passenger, said the captain tried to run down one of the speedboats before outmanoeuvring them. The captain did not hit the alarm, fearing passengers would be shot at if they dashed on deck.

The Seabourn Spirit, owned by the cruise giant Carnival, was on its way from Alexandria in Egypt to the Kenyan port of Mombasa. It offers the height of luxury, with huge suites, marble bathrooms and more than one crew member to each passenger. Cruises aboard the liner cost from �6,100 for a 16-day sail to �18,270 for an epic 46-day voyage.

The liner used a sonic blaster to foil the pirates. Developed by American forces to deter small boats from attacking warships, the non-lethal weapon sends out high-powered air vibrations that blow assailants off their feet. The equipment, about the size of a satellite dish, is rigged to the side of the ship.

Link: Cruise ship Britons attacked by pirates - Sunday Times - Times Online.

Computer saves drowning girl | CNET News.com

Wow - this is rad. A drowning-detection system detected a girl lying at the bottom of a pool's deep end and alerted the pool's lifeguards. Check it.

Link: Computer saves drowning girl | CNET News.com.

Blowin'

A big styrofoam peanut just rolled in through the door of Crepes on Cole, the New West's analogy to a tumbleweed blowing into a saloon. Possible origin: Williams-Sonoma, via our registry, via a box delivered to our house, via a trash bag full of post-packaging peanuts we delivered to the Postal Chase here on Cole St.

For a while now, I've been thinking "shame on Williams-Sonoma for loosing a flood of these indestructible mini-tumbleweeds of death upon their yuppified clientele." But after a little research and some hi-test coffee, I'm coming around to the stuff. See - municipal recycling places will not take it, and the heads-up garbage man (damn you!) won't take it, so you're forced to carry it to your friendly neighborhood Mailboxes Etc. or Postal Chase or some other shipping place, which then re-uses it. Huh.

The flip side: I think lots of times, people don't feel like herding all those peanuts and humping them down to the store, and so they hide them in normal trash. Lots of them end up on the loose, and they end up roaming the earth for eternity, occasionally blowing into restaurants and startling over-caffeinated journalists.

UPDATE - PROBLEM SOLVED...NEXT!
Wired News: Bacteria Turn Toxins Into Plastic
Bacteria Turn Toxins Into Plastic 
By Rowan Hooper 
02:00 AM Sep. 09, 2004 PT
Irish scientists have isolated a bacterium that can convert a toxic waste product into safe, biodegradable plastic.
This week, scientists Kevin O'Connor and Patrick Ward, of the Department of Industrial Microbiology at University College Dublin, announced that they have discovered a bacterial strain that uses styrene, a toxic byproduct of the polystyrene industry (which produces Styrofoam, among other things), as fuel to make a type of biodegradable plastic, polyhydroxyalkanoate, known as PHA.