News-o-matic
November 29, 2006
- Google continues to impress me - this time they're implementing a massive solar photovoltaic system for the Googleplex in Mountain View. The system will be 1.6MW in size, offset aroung 30% of their peak electricity consumption for the campus, and save $393,000 in electricity annually. This means that it will pay for itself in approximately 7.5 years. I suppose crazy cool stuff like this comes from being the grooviest company on the planet at the moment, and having moneyhats the size of planets... but it seems to make sense financially too, which is great. Hopefully more companies will follow their lead.
- Researchers were thrilled to discover a 400 tonne Roman ship off the coast of Spain. This is the largest Roman ship ever discovered in the Mediterranean, and is thought to be carrying lead, copper and fish sauce.
- ModBlog has some crazy pics of a guy who had his face tattooed to look like a death mask. Told you he was hardcore.
- Amp passed on details of an awesome comic-styled room for rent in the Arte Luise Kunsthotel in Berlin.
- More Amperage - this time it's an excellent interview with author China Mieville. I loved Perdido Street Station, and thought Iron Council was pretty good too, and Mieville seems so otherwhelmingly intriguing and intelligent that I'm sure he'll keep producing great books.
- Swimming legend Ian Thorpe has retired at the age of 24. He is Australia's greatest Olympian, with five gold medals, three silver and a bronze.
- Nintendo are planning an SD card based MP3 player addon for the DS and GBA. It's expected to cost around US$40, which could make it a quite useful addition for portable Nintendo owners.
- International agreement has finally been reached to build the 10 billion euro Iter fusion reactor in the Cadarache region of France. While its detractors have said the enormous costs of the experimental reactor would be better used on improving existing energy technologies, it is believed that fusion might provide a viable solution to spiralling energy demands and global warming.
- An Australian researcher is theorizing that Australian wildlife may be evolving resistances to cane toad poison. The cane toad, which was introduced in 1935 to control cane beetles, is decimating many animal populations across the country, so it would be nice to have nature fight back against the wee buggers.
- CityRag has a fairly amazing video of cocaine being made in the jungles of South America. Farmers use cement, caustic soda, ammonia, quicklime, sulfuric acid and petrol to turn the coca leaves into a lump of unrefined cocaine, with sells to local guerillas for about $800. Ewww.
- Blizzard have done an amusing advertisement that re-uses footage from the movie Office Space to pimp the World of Warcraft. Do they even need to advertise the game? Isn't everyone playing it already? Maybe there are four guys in Guatamala who aren't playing yet.
- I'm not exactly sure which family member you'd give this to for Christmas, but Zombie Portraits will take a nice headshot (heh) of you and turn it into a grotesque zombie portrait for only $80.
- Being one of the eternal legion afflicted with lower back pain, I'm quite interested to hear that that a report by the Radiological Society of North America says that the standard 90-degree sitting position may actually be quite bad for your back. MRI scans have shown that spinal disk movement is significantly less when the subject sits in a more laid-back 135-degree position. I KNEW it!