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Movable Walls
Over at McSweeney’s: On the Implausibilty of the Death Star’s Trash Compactor (via reddit)
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Necromania
This is perhaps the most interesting Wikipedia entry I have ever seen: List of Unusual Deaths Most Notable: 892: Sigurd I of Orkney. Sigurd the Mighty conquered much of northern Scotland, which brought him into conflict with Maelbrigte of Moray. Sigurd defeated Maelbrigte in 892, killed him, cut off his head and strapped it to his saddle as a sign of triumph. As he rode, however, Maelbrigte’s tooth rubbed against Sigurd’s leg causing a wound which turned septic and Sigurd died of the poison. 1063: King Béla I of Hungary died when his tall wooden throne collapsed due to sabotage. 1327: King Edward II of England (to be later reincarnated…
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Street Legal, Jet-powered Beetle
“The engine is a General Electric Model T58-8F. This is a helicopter turboshaft engine that was converted to a jet engine by some internal modifications and a custom tailpipe. The engine spins up to 26,000 RPM (idle is 13,000 RPM), draws air at 11,000 CFM, and is rated at 1350 hp. It weighs only 300 lbm. It grows as it warms up so the engine mounts have to account for this. The mounts in the front are rubber and the back are sliding mounts on rubber. The structure holding the engine was designed using finite element analysis and is redundant. Strong, damage tolerant, and light. Second battery and fuse/relay panel…
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Air Tap – Erik Mongrain
Reminiscent of Michael Hedges.
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LARK – full circle
Behold two separate gifts from two different people, one from a person who doesn’t smoke, and another from a person who… doesn’t brush? At first I thought it genius that a tobacco company would sell a toothbrush specifically to remove tar, but the logos aren”t exactly alike. This product (the toothbrush) is just so… Japanese, somehow, although I can’t explain it. It has something to so with the free packs of Larks they used to hand out at ski lifts, and Mickey Rourke doing commercials for them as a matador (“Speak Lark.”), but I can’t pin it down any better than that.
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Is Buddha trying to tell me something?
I totally slept through my appointment at the dentist today. Didn’t even hear my alarm.
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Animal vs. Buddy Rich
Animal is always hungry but Buddy is just hungrier here…
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Sex Trafficking in Japan
An interesting article on the current state of affairs: The trafficking scourge “Yet to paint a picture of the victims of trafficking as poor, uneducated women duped into prostitution and kept under close guard would not be completely accurate. “Most cases are not that simple,” says Ms. Fujiwara of the Polaris Project. She tells a story of one woman from an East Asian country who had a degree from a vocational school and was making a decent living in the social welfare field, but wanted to change careers and save enough money to study in Japan. She read an advertisement for a position in a café in Tokyo that would…
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Biwako Hot Dog (??????????)
This is a foodblogging post I have put off for a year and a half. The photos were waiting patiently to be edited on my desktop for all that time, and I continually ignored their pleas of “Post me! Post me!” So it is finally time for the story to be told: A short time before encountering the Biwako Hot Dog, I wrote a post detailing the history of the Japanese fish sausage (which has turned into sort of a resource center for aspiring fish sausage makers worldwide – go read the comments!). So it was a happy coincidence that found us cruising the mountains around Lake Biwa, because the…
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Yoshida Family Dudes (-1) Kyushu Trip
Adam and my dad took a trip down to Kyushu this past April and the details are up over at Higo Blog. Most excellent photojournaling, bro! I wanted to tag along, at least for a couple days, but I was busy at work (some things never change). What the hell is that? (UPDATE: See this post for an explanation) Go check out the whole post.
