Clipmarks | JediKnut's 'balloon' clips

London's Little People Project

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 23:34:27 GMT

clipped by: haraya
clipper's remarks:

[T]he Little People Project: it's a guilt-free street art project. Tiny little figures (tiny! Smaller than a dime!) are placed around London. Most of them will never be noticed, but I like to imagine some kid will find some of these someday and be delighted by the surreal magic of the world. --John Brownlee, Wired Blogs: Table of Malcontents

Like Amelie finding the little boy's treasure box in her wall-- I'd like to imagine that too.

Clip Source: little-people.blogspot.com

Roadworks

Clip Source: little-people.blogspot.com

Rubbish

Clip Source: little-people.blogspot.com

Wrong turn

Clip Source: little-people.blogspot.com

Balloon man

Clip Source: little-people.blogspot.com

Commuting

Clip Source: little-people.blogspot.com

London sun

Tags: street art, art, street, installations, figures, cute, tiny, photographs, london, fun, entertainment, people, miniature, treasure

What Gender Is It?

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 14:51:33 GMT

clipped by: Newfman

Clip Source: naucon.net

ZIPLOC BAGS - male, because they hold everything in,but you can always see right through them.

COPIER - female, because once turned off, it takes a while to warm up. It is an effective reproductive device when the right buttons are pushed. And it can wreak havoc when the wrong buttons are pushed.

TIRE - male, because it goes bald and often is over inflated.

HOT AIR BALLOON - male, because to get it to go anywhere you have to light a fire under it ... and, of course, there's the hot air part.

SPONGES - female, because they are soft and squeezable and retain water.

HOURGLASS - female, because over time, the weight shifts to the bottom.

HAMMER - male, because it hasn't evolved much over the last 5,000 years, but it's handy to have around.

REMOTE CONTROL - female... Ha! You thought it would be male. But consider...it gives a man pleasure, he'd be lost without it, and while he doesn't always know the right buttons to push, he keeps trying.

Tags: funny

Rememeber the ballooning priest???

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 07:18:50 GMT

clipped by: dakotayii
clipper's remarks: Never, Never try a cheap stunt...........

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - The body of a Brazilian priest who floated out over the ocean suspended by hundreds of helium-filled party balloons, has been found off the coast of southeastern Brazil, police have confirmed.

The corpse of Father Adelir Antonio de Carli was spotted by a tugboat at sea near the city of Macae, three months after he disappeared while flying a contraption buoyed by balloons over the Atlantic Ocean in a fund-raising stunt.

"We were almost certain that it was the priest due to various elements, such as the clothes and material used in the balloon trip," Macae's chief of police, Daniel Bandeira, said on Monday. "The DNA only confirmed our suspicions."

The priest disappeared on April 20 after he called friends from his mobile phone to say he was about to crash into the ocean.

He staged the stunt to help raise money for a chapel for truckers in his highway parish.

Tags: news

Global Warming Scientist Comes Clean

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 02:17:01 GMT

clipped by: willhelm
clipper's remarks: 1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.

Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most... We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.

If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming.

2. There is no evidence that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. ...

3. The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year

4. ice cores show that in the past... half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon.

Clip Source: www.powerlineblog.com

David Evans was a consultant to the "Australian Greenhouse Office" from 1999 to 2005. He is a former global warming alarmist; however, he is also a scientist who goes where the evidence leads him. In this important article in The Australian, he blows the whistle on the fraud that many of the world's governments are in the midst of perpetrating:

When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

Tags: global warming, climate change, scientism

Why sugar is bad for you

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 04:16:41 GMT

clipped by: Salamander

Clip Source: tuberose.com

Excess sugar eventually affects every organ in the body. Initially, it is stored in the liver in the form of glucose (glycogen). Since the liver's capacity is limited, a daily intake of refined sugar (above the required amount of natural sugar) soon makes the liver expand like a balloon. When the liver is filled to its maximum capacity, the excess glycogen is returned to the blood in the form of fatty acids. These are taken to every part of the body and stored in the most inactive areas: the belly, the buttocks, the breasts and the thighs.

Tags: health, nutrition

Scientists Create World's Thinnest Balloon

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 21:28:33 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: Other potential applications include hyper-fine sensors and ultra-pure filters.

"Once you have a membrane that won't let anything past, the most interesting thing is to then poke a hole in it. Then you can detect what leaks through that hole with high sensitivity, or make sure only what you want leaks through that hole," McEuen said.

The only way gas leaked out from inside the balloons was through the glass that the bubbles were anchored on, McEuen explained.

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

Scientists have created the world's thinnest balloon, made of a single layer of carbon just one atom thick.

The fabric that the balloon is made of is leakproof to even the tiniest airborne molecules. It could find use in "aquariums" smaller than a red blood cell, through which scientists could peer at molecules, researchers suggested.

The balloon is made of graphite, as found in pencils, which is made of atom-thin sheets of carbon stacked on top of each other known. The sheets are known as graphene.

Graphene is highly electrically conductive, and scientists are feverishly researching whether it could find use in advanced circuitry and other devices.

In terms of applications,

"You could have instruments on one side of the membrane, in vacuum or air, and on the other side you would have DNA or proteins suspended in liquid," he explained. "And then you could get right up close to image the molecules, within a few angstroms," or widths of an atom.

Tags: technology

balloon art

Tue, 27 May 2008 20:29:03 GMT

clipped by: boozich

Clip Source: www.toxel.com

10 Lamps I Want In My House

Sun, 18 May 2008 22:15:36 GMT

clipped by: Sheroug

Clip Source: adamfuhrer.wordpress.com

Alien Abduction Lamp

Trojan Arc Lamp

Paperclip Lamp

Pipe Lamp

Retro Lamp

Zebra Lamp

Gravity Lamp

“front has a concept design for a new lamp called the gravity that goes totally soft when you’re not in the room and then when you walk in automatically wakes up, gets upright, and starts illuminating your world”

Solar Lamp

Helium Balloon Lamp

Mario Mushroom Lamp

Tags: lamp

can a man survive when crossing the sound barrier?”

Sun, 25 May 2008 16:13:05 GMT

clipped by: einbar

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

20-Year Journey for 15-Minute Fall

Depending on the weather, Fournier, a 64-year-old retired French army officer, will attempt what he is calling Le Grand Saut (The Great Leap) on Sunday from the plains of northern Saskatchewan.

He intends to climb into the pressurized gondola of the 650-foot balloon, which resembles a giant jellyfish, and make a two-hour journey to 130,000 feet. At that altitude, almost 25 miles up, Fournier will see both the blackness of space and the curvature of the earth.

“It’s not a question of the world records,” Fournier wrote

“What is important are what the results from the jump will bring to the safety of the conquest of space. However, the main question that is being asked today by all scientists is, can a man survive when crossing the sound barrier?”

Google Options

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 15:57:56 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 11 — Bonnie Brown was fresh from a nasty divorce in 1999, living with her sister and uncertain of her future. On a lark, she answered an ad for an in-house masseuse at Google, then a Silicon Valley start-up with 40 employees. She was offered the part-time job, which started out at $450 a week but included a pile of Google stock options that she figured might never be worth a penny.

After five years of kneading engineers’ backs, Ms. Brown retired, cashing in most of her stock options, which were worth millions of dollars. To her delight, the shares she held onto have continued to balloon in value.

She has traveled the world to oversee a charitable foundation she started with her Google wealth and has written a book, still unpublished, “Giigle: How I Got Lucky Massaging Google.”

Tags: you, go, girl

20 Year Journey For a 15 Minute Fall

Sat, 24 May 2008 13:34:59 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

He has spent two decades and nearly $20 million in a quest to fly to the upper reaches of the atmosphere with a helium balloon, just so he can jump back to earth again. Now, Michel Fournier says, he is ready at last.

Then he plans to step out of the capsule, wearing only a special space suit and a parachute, and plunge down in a mere 15 minutes.

If successful, Fournier will fall longer, farther and faster than anyone in history. Along the way, he can accomplish other firsts, by breaking the sound barrier and records that have stood for nearly 50 years.

A curious quest

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:13:01 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: play it, you'll love it

Clip Source: scienceblogs.com

Now, this is the way we ought to be testing our children:

Questionaut: A Point-and-Click Quiz Adventure by Amanita Design and the BBC

One of the most talented names in the casual gaming business, Amanita Design, creators of the delightful Samorost series, have just teamed up with the BBC to come up with this absolute gem of a game. It’s so cute, you won’t realize it is supposed to be educational... that is until you find yourself completely stumped on a math* question.

The questions are aimed at 11-year-olds, but that may not keep you from scratching your head a few times. Even finding the questions can be a little tricky. The game begins with two friends lazily lounging on a tiny pastoral planet. As you click around and explore, you’ll set off little chain reactions. One of these will lead to one of the friend’s hat being blown away. The other friend promptly chases after it in his hot air balloon. Now, this is where you come in

it is worth playing through more than once.

Tags: games, quest, knowledge

Does the Universe Have an Edge?

Wed, 23 May 2007 12:06:49 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

No. That's the simple answer. And I recommend you stop there and be satisfied, because as soon as you dig deeper, you'll be as confused as the average cosmologist.

You're still reading. Okay, here goes: Imagine ants crawling on a balloon. They can crawl forever and never reach an edge; at best, they might return to where they started. Of course now you're thinking, "Hey, if I'm inside the balloon and I head outward, I will hit it and that'll sure seem like an edge." Thing is, the balloon is expanding so rapidly that you'll never get there. And even if you did, those same wacky cosmologists that dreamed up the ants-on-a-balloon explanation say they have no clue whether there is more of our universe (or more universes) beyond the limits of the observable one.

Tags: science, physics, cosmology, universe, edge

Man flies 193 miles in lawn chair

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 18:33:06 GMT

clipped by: Newfman

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

Story Highlights
Man uses 105 helium balloons for lift, plastic bags of water for ballast
Kent Couch, 47, flew 25 mph while wife, dog followed in car below
In 1982, Larry Walters flew lawn chair three miles above Los Angeles
Next Article in U.S. »

BEND, Oregon (AP) -- Last weekend, Kent Couch settled down in his lawn chair with some snacks -- and a parachute. Attached to his lawn chair were 105 large helium balloons.

With instruments to measure his altitude and speed, a global positioning system device in his pocket, and about four plastic bags holding five gallons of water each to act as ballast -- he could turn a spigot, release water and rise -- Couch headed into the Oregon sky.

Nearly nine hours later, the 47-year-old gas station owner came back to earth in a farmer's field near Union, short of Idaho but about 193 miles from home.

"When you're a little kid and you're holding a helium balloon, it has to cross your mind," Couch told the Bend Bulletin.

Tags: science

Unidentified falling object.

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:51:50 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman
clipper's remarks: A couple of suggestions in the comments thread at the site.

Clip Source: www.badastronomy.com

Jim Oberg sent me an odd note: a news article from Brazil has pictures and a description of a weird thing that fell to the ground a few hundred kilometers south and west of Brasilia (translated in the email Jim sent me):

An unidentified object fell on a farm on Goias, Brazil. The farmers are afraid that the object may be something radioactive or part of something dangerous. So far, it seems that the local police discards the possibilities of it being a weather balloon. The object has approximately 1 meter in diameter; it is made of steel and covered in some kind of plastic. It has an axle inside and seems to be of copper.

Anyone have any clue what this thing might be? I’m not sure if it came from an airplane or from orbit; there don’t appear to be any burn marks, but sometimes space debris doesn’t have them. Still, beats me. I know a few aeronautical engineers and rocket scientists read this blog, so if you have any thoughts, pipe up! Weird.