Happy Friday -- short bits, including lots of links

[damont]

From velveteenrabbi via cellio: Tractate Laundry, a talmudic discussion of issues pertaining to, yes, laundry.

Welcome to joshua_green, narniarose, and adelheid_p!

hrj reviews low-cal and other alternative cheeses. I giggled a lot at the line "It doesn't even rise to tasting like a cross between silly putty and rubber..."

Happy Birthday to william_mary -- today is the 315th anniversary of the signing of the Charter of The College of William and Mary.

ayrfield points out a TV piece from 2006 about a guy who's going back to basics for moving and lifting heavy objects, and its possible application to how the vertical rocks at Stonehenge might have been raised. No indication in the story of how the cross-pieces might have been placed; the guy has put up a small arch but no explanation was given for how he got the cross-piece up either.

From missbabyblue aka laurelzimmer: Major Andrew Olmstead's final blog post. Major Olmstead was killed in action in Iraq on Thursday, 3 January 2008, and had left a blog post for a friend to post in case he did buy a farm. He'd placed his private blog on hiatus while he on active duty due to military regulations about political activity; he was also blogging for the Rocky Mountain News about being a soldier in the sandbox.

ext_42142 points out that Arlo Guthrie has endorsed Ron Paul in the current Presidential election. After seeing so many of my favorites drop out of the race so far, I am hesitant to say anything lest I jinx any other wannabees. I'm still not sure who I'll vote for in the "Chesapeake Tuesday" primary on Feb 12th. Heck, I'm not sure who *else* might drop out between now and then.

ext_42142 also notes this story from WTOP radio (which I heard on the air)... Amtrak: Service Could be More Frequent in VA. The story, however, incorrectly implies that Norfolk Southern owns the old RF&P tracks used by Amtrak (and VRE) between Washington and Richmond; those tracks are actually owned by CSX now.

From a mailing list (it may have been bronx_baroness who pointed it out): Sci-Fi objects and more made with a Spectrum Z510 3D printer (from Make: magazine). Cooool. I am reminded of the Candyfab (as I noted in this post back in May 07).

Looking up the Candyfab reference led me to the Evil Mad Scientist Labs article about computer numerically controlled toast. To which the canonical response is "Yeah, TOAST!" of course.

From IEEE Spectrum via ext_42142... Dean Kamen's "Luke Arm" Prosthesis Readies for Clinical Trials. There's also a video demonstrating the arm and its capabilities. I hope they get funding for said clinical trials.

Looking forward to seeing people at the Carnivale event. What's your weekend looking like?

Comments

Re: the Stonehenge speculation thing

[visgoth.livejournal.com]

See http://www.theforgottentechnology.com/ (click the picture, then go page by page to page three) for the explanation of how to put heavy stuff on top of other stuff.

WARNING - This guy's website design is astoundingly, freakishly horrible. I was hoping it had improved since I last visited, but no such luck.

Re: the Stonehenge speculation thing

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

yeah, that web page design was, er, less than comfortable...

[maugorn.livejournal.com]

I liked the Stonehenge thing.

I've used some of the same principles moving huge things myself.

As for the putting on the top pieces, it's all there, just not shown.

1) Using the moving tricks he described, you move the block so that it's resting between the two supports, perpendicular to a line between them.

2) Build up the "lever box", raising the crosspiece.

3) Raise the cross piece until it's a wee bit higher than the supports.

4) Rotate the stone so that it now spans the supports.

5) Dismantle the lever box

6) Tada! Stone is resting on the supports.

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

Cool.

[luscious-purple.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm going to the Storvik Performers' Revel. So, what made you choose Carnivale over Performers' Revel or BH Baronial B'day or Ymir?

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

A zillion friends in Pittsburgh that I haven't seen since Pennsic... it's become something of a tradition for me to go to the BMDL event in February. (This will be the third year in a row... oh wait, that makes it A Tradition Whose Origins Are Lost In The Mists Of Time, doesn't it?)