Ads of the World – Like we don’t have enough of our own, here you can see ads from all over the world. Interesting and fun site.
But Does It Float – Odd, fascinating and awesome modern art blog
Contrary Brin – David Brin’s blog
New car engine – Engine of the future or just another amazing innovation that will be forgotten and left on the scrap heap of What Might Have Been? (via)
World recipe database – Wow! Measurements are metric but it looks like it will be worth going to the trouble of converting. (Another one from DRB)
Bacon Roses – At first glance they don’t look half bad then after you realize what they are they seem a little bit… well… wrong.
Biocoture – Growing clothing in a lab. #1. I’m attracted to the futuristic, sciency aspect of this. #2. I have a warm emotional attachment to plain old-fashioned cotton and I’m slightly repelled by the notion of lab-grown clothing. #3. That’s a really ugly blouse.
April 20th, 2011 - 6:47 pm
“I have a warm emotional attachment to plain old-fashioned cotton”
Which, by the way is a plant. Which is grown. In a field instead of a lab… which if you ask me gives it points over some Frankendress pulled “out of a vat.” Maybe if what resulted didn’t look so much like one of the more exotic fungi…
April 21st, 2011 - 5:41 pm
I’d like to see the engine take off and be used, but I can’t help but think about the other internal combustion engines that were supposed to change the world. Those of course would be the Wankel, (used in one car that is still built today) and the RandCam, which is used only in cars as (sometimes!) the air conditioning compressor. There was also the Quasiturbine that was supposed to be the greatest thing.
The problem is not that none of these engines are good. The wankel engine used in the Rx-8 makes 250 horsepower. It’s a 1.3 liter engine, that makes 250 horsepower, without a turbocharger or supercharger, on pump gas. It only has three internal moving parts. The problem is not with the engines, it’s with the management of the manufacturing companies that make the engines. They’d have to spend money on machines to make the new engines. And they can’t handle that, because hey, they can just keep making otto-cycle engines and not spend any more money than they have to doing so. It doesn’t matter that they get better mileage, it’s just going to cost too much to buy the machines to make it.
But there is light at the end of the tunnel. That engine looks like something that could be made without spending millions of bucks on machines – some smaller company might make them. Some company like… Briggs and Stratton.