• Charlie Stross - Halting State - Heist novel about an MMORPG
  Charlie Stross's latest novel Halting State starts out as a hilarious post-cyberpunk police procedural, turns into a gripping post-cyberpunk technothriller, and escalates into a Big Ideas book about the future of economics, virtual worlds, the nation stat
  (tags: Books SF ScienceFiction book fiction haltingstate heist literature science scifi stross toread …)

“Time-lapse photography is a cinematography technique whereby each film frame is captured at a rate much slower than it will be played back. When replayed at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and thus lapsing. Time-lapse photography can be considered to be the opposite of high speed photography.

Processes that would normally appear subtle to the human eye, such as motion in the sky, become very pronounced. Time-lapse is the extreme version of the cinematography technique of undercranking, and can be considered a borderline form of stop motion animation.”
Source: Answers.com

http://www.gbtimelapse.com/Gallery.aspx?groupname=All

Every pixel in the illustration represents one person alive on Earth. The first one is you. The rest is everyone else.
http://www.royalsapien.com/pop1/

We are very small, and the universe is very big…
http://www.rense.com/general72/size.htm

These 9 drawings were done by an artist under the influence of LSD — part of a test conducted by the US government during it’s dalliance with psychotomimetic drugs in the late 1950’s. The artist was given a dose of LSD 25 and free access to an activity box full of crayons and pencils. His subject is the medico that jabbed him.
http://www.cowboybooks.com.au/html/acidtrip1.html

This year’s most popular videos from National Geographic News, including the classic “Bees Battle ‘Hornets From Hell’”

Japanese giant hornets pack a venomous sting so strong it can dissolve human tissue. Watch an attack by these killer insects on a hive of honeybees and learn the surprising secret of the bees’ defense.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/12/1216_051216_top_video.html

“The following is my response to 6th grade student’s questions about Schrödinger’s cat. A full answer required an explanation of the issues in quantum mechanics which led to Schrödinger’s cat.”
http://www.mtnmath.com/cat.html

Another BRILLIANT optical illusion (via waxy)!
“The squares marked A and B are the same shade of gray.”
http://web.mit.edu/persci/people/adelson/checkershadow_illusion.html

EXCELLENT optical illusion! Must see.
(via waxy)
“When you are fixating well, after a few cycles you will actually see a rotating green spot! If your gaze is really steady, the magenta patches will disappear, leaving only a rotating green spot!”
http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/col_rapidAfterimage/index.html

Yes, you CAN make a fire from a can of coke and a chocolate bar. It is actually quite easy, and you don’t need any tools.
http://www.trackertrail.com/survival/fire/cokeandchocolatebar

From the unusual to the bizarre — The Gallery is a result of your journey into the deepest recesses of Delphion Research. Don’t stop there, take a look around…
http://www.delphion.com/gallery

An artificial intelligence asks you 20 questions and tries to guess what you are thinking about. Very powerful even on “strange” items/ideas. Try it, it helps the IA get a better idea about common knowledge on things.
http://y.20q.net

Here are the reports of the Cassini-Huygens mission on Titan.
Check the latest adventure of the largest interplanetary spacecraft ever built on the mysterious soil of one of Saturn’s satelite.
I like it when science becomes closer to science-fiction.
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens

Based on 18 months of Envisat observations, this high-resolution global atmospheric map of nitrogen dioxide pollution makes clear just how human activities impact air quality.

Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is a mainly man-made gas, excess exposure to which causes lung damage and respiratory problems.

Hi-res JPG: 1632 kb - Hi res TIFF: 7 827kb
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM340NKPZD_index_1.html

Every time you masturbate… God kills a kitten
(Please, think of the kittens)
http://www.kittenkiller.org