The Nueva Extraterrestrial Project was the “culmination of the Nueva sixth and seventh grade science classes’ physiology unit in 1998-99.”
The kids created three different science-fictional planets, then populated those planets with creatures that filled appropriate ecological niches.
My favorite creature? The Europan Devil’s Minion.
I’m not sure whether I’m more terrified by the fact that the P-Mate exists, or the fact that it “won the Dutch Millenium Award.”
Scary as it is, I do admire the …intestinal fortitude… of the marketing team that came up with phrases like “Surprise a friend and be orginal!” “Stand up, aim and go!” and “The vertical solution for women who want to go when they have to go; anywhere, anytime.”
An Aerogel is a super-porous silicon-based substance that is over 99.8% air. Aerogels are currently being used by NASA to catch micrometeorites, as well as for insulation.
Since aerogels can possibly (rarely) occur in nature, there has been some speculation that there are aerogel-based organisms living in the higher reaches of Earth’s atmosphere. These organisms would be almost invisible, nearly weightless, and would almost never reach the surface without dissolving.
Sometimes dreams do come true: since id open-sourced the code to Quake 1, some lunatics have ported the game to the Dreamcast. What makes this even cooler is the fact that since the code is all OpenSource, it’s perfectly legit to post the software anywhere.
More details can be found at DC Emulation.
At CStoreWarehouse.com, you can order 12-packs of Jolt, 24-packs of Red Bull, and 12-packs of Bawls. Bottled glee!
I’ve always been fascinated by scientific future-casting (if such a thing can be scientific). I’m particularly interested in future timelines that are constantly modified to account for current events. Two such timelines are presented by J. R. Mooneyham: The aptly-named “Timeline“, and “Perspectives“.
The Timeline is a general outline of future history, and somewhat conservative and circumscribed in what it offers the reader. The Timeline is meant to be the ‘harder’ of the two works, in terms of science and predictions. But this also means the Timeline must be more generalized, more risk-averse– and also peter out entirely as we venture into the deep, deep future, where everything must ultimately give way to outrageous guesswork (partly due to technology advancing to levels indistinguishable from magic, as a famous quote by Arthur C. Clarke suggests).
“Since Alt-X‘s inception in 1993, our primary mission has been to challenge both the art and literary publishing establishments by supporting some of the most iconoclastic voices and visions in the international art world. “
I highly recommend Black Ice Fiction and Alt-X Audio.
The next great Work, “Project Pillsbury Doughboy,” will include a fleet of Armored Motor Homes and the help of our silver-haired brethren in the Snowbird Legion.
Florida will soon be ours!
Dennis Wingo, head of Huntsville, Alabama-based SkyCorp, wants to fling modified Macintosh G4 Cubes into space, where they’ll become part of a communications satellite constellation used for webhosting and email. The G4-turned-satellites will communicate with the ground with modified versions of the Apple Airport wireless-data device.
Sure, it’s a wacko idea, but I like the concept of using lots of dirt cheap, off-the-shelf components to supplant roles commonly held by extremely expensive singular ones. Extending this concept, I’d like to see a satellite constellation made up of hundreds of thousands of Palm-Pilot-sized devices that cost less than $20 to manufacture. If one burns up, who cares? This concept also bears curious resemblance to that of the “localizer” that I posted about here.