Thinkcage

The Global Rich list is a clever way to market a charitable cause. While it is clearly simplistic, the message is very clear.

Yikes. America at 10MPH is the journey of a solo rider on a Segway human transporter from Seattle, WA to Boston, MA traveling at the Segway’s top speed of 10MPH. Should be fun to follow along as they post video accounts on the project’s website. A documentary is to follow.

There is a really fascinating story coming in from the London papers this morning… the tale of a baby dragon preserved in a jar of formaldehyde for over a hundred years.

Found by an Oxfordshire man in his garage, the prevailing theory is that it is a clever fake, devised by German scientists in the late 19th century to out do rival English scientists. Speculation is that it is made of rubber or wax but it has reportedly not been opened, x-rayed, or examined yet so I suppose there is also the possibility that it is real.

Photos like this one show a very detailed, miniature dragon in a tall glass jar. Witnesses have described the intricate detail of claws, teeth, and even the umbilical cord.

Likely its a clever fake and we’ll never hear of it again, but I’ve always been one who believed that many of these types of legends have some basis in fact. Perhaps there is a lost fantastic reptile that gives the dragon its name.

I discovered the MODIS Rapid Response System as Hurricane Isabel hit the US East Coast last month and it is quickly becoming one of my favorite sites on the web.

The site features the output of a land-mapping satellite that is primarily concerned with surface anomalies that can be detected from space such as weather and fires. The images posted on the site are extremely beautiful and detailed — all the way down to 250M per pixel! Pictures of Hurricane Isabel showed just how massive the swirling storm was and I was particularly amazed at the transparency of the water from space as you could see submerged landmasses and the general variations in the depth of the water.

Today I have been viewing pictures of the massive plumes of smoke stretching out over the Pacific Ocean from southern California. If you have the appropriate software that will let you view the pixels 1 to 1, I highly recommend that you download one of the massive 250M images and marvel at the detail. Zoom into a major city area and you can see the cold concrete metropolis. Fascinating.

Take a look at these images:

Hurricane Issabel | San Diego Fires