Yummy Wakame Weblog

I found this great link on Jam‘s site…

MyADSL.co.za: A computerised typewriter that can read minds was on display at the giant CeBIT high-tech fair, touted as a potential tool to help patients incapacitated by injury or disease to communicate again.

Prototypes of the “mental typewriter”, developed by computer scientists from Germany’s renowned Fraunhofer Institute and neurology specialists from Berlin’s Charite Hospital, made their public debut at the event.

Two subjects wearing a sort of leather swimming cap covered with a web of wires that were linked to a computer in front of them tested out the invention before CeBIT crowds. While their bodies remained perfectly still, both men imagined movements that were then played out on the screen. Without either of the men moving a muscle, the cursor on the screen began to float, letters eventually appeared and sentences formed. (more…)

Tired of getting lost on your way to the North Polar Sand Sea? Trying to find directions to get back to your Mars Rover? No more “Roger Wilcos” needed, now you can just hop onto Google Mars and get yourself directions.

And if Mars is a little far for your summer vacation, consider taking a trip to any one of the Apollo landing sites on a little rock I like to call the Moon. (Don’t forget to Zoom In!)

“You have to see this robot:

Its 11 megs… and by far the most amazing robot ive ever witnessed… its been developed for the us army to carry heavy equipment long distances…

It can negotiate pretty much all terrains and has amazing balance and aviodance… they even kick it as it comes past to try and topple it and it regains itself amazingly…

This is mind boggling technology

Read more about it on New Scientist.”

Thanks ken!

For sale on eBay. Seriously.

Thanks ken!

“If you see a Gummi Bear in real life, do you think you could squeeze them and get juice out of them?”

PITTSBURGH – A man and woman were cited Friday in connection with a bizarre incident that resulted in a fake penis being microwaved at a convenience store last week.

Guardian Unlimited: There is a small bottle containing a red fluid on a shelf in Sheffield University’s microbiology laboratory. The liquid looks cloudy and uninteresting. Yet, if one group of scientists is correct, the phial contains the first samples of extraterrestrial life isolated by researchers.

Inside the bottle are samples left over from one of the strangest incidents in recent meteorological history. On 25 July, 2001, blood-red rain fell over the Kerala district of western India. And these rain bursts continued for the next two months. All along the coast it rained crimson, turning local people’s clothes pink, burning leaves on trees and falling as scarlet sheets at some points.

Investigations suggested the rain was red because winds had swept up dust from Arabia and dumped it on Kerala. But Godfrey Louis, a physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam, after gathering samples left over from the rains, concluded this was nonsense. ‘If you look at these particles under a microscope, you can see they are not dust, they have a clear biological appearance.’ Instead Louis decided that the rain was made up of bacteria-like material that had been swept to Earth from a passing comet. In short, it rained aliens over India during the summer of 2001. (more…)

I LOVE this story:

Diver captures colossal lobster
… “On one of my dives, I found a hole, poked my head in and couldn’t believe how big this lobster was,” Fulks said. “I never dreamed I’d ever see a lobster that big.”

“I reached in and grabbed him by the antennae around the thick part at the base, and he didn’t move,” Fulks said. “He was just big and slow, but he held onto the cave’s sides really tight. I had to pull really hard to get him out. When I got him out, he looked like the biggest thing I’d ever seen. I put him under my arm and expected him to kick the heck out of me as I surfaced, but he never did.”

“David saw me swimming with it, and he couldn’t figure out what I had under my arm. When I got it to the beach and we looked at it, I said, ‘This could be someone’s pet. We could put a collar and a leash on it and take it for a walk.’ ”

They took it home, snapped some pictures and took some measurements. The carapace was 7 inches long (more than twice the length of a legal lobster’s required 3¼ inches from eye socket to the edge of the carapace), and the lobster measured 20 inches from eyes to tail. It takes spiny lobsters five to seven years just to reach legal size of 1 to 1½ pounds, so a lobster 12 pounds likely is 20 years old or more. Fulks figures Ralph is at least 40. Spiny lobsters can live to be 50, and the biggest ever recorded went 26 pounds and was 3 feet long.

“The more we looked at him the more we realized there was no way we could kill him,” Fulks said. “In the course of his long life – what, 30 to 40 years? – to grow to that size he must have dodged all kinds of divers grabbing after him, hundreds of lobster traps.”

Knowing how unique Ralph was they decided to release him to the protected La Jolla Underwater Park.

Wow, I CAN’T WAIT to play this game!!

• Spore Gameplay video
• Spore.ea.com

Bsti found this!

Tristan David has been hailed as Pittsburgh’s premiere up-and-coming, after practically redefining rock music with his debut single No Jello? This is making me nervous… he blasts back with his sophomore effort, entitled Grandma Sharon.

Lyrics:

i hope that i dream that i come to your house real soon
and i hope that you dream that too

yah-hoo

you know, i can never leave your house
right now
so are you gonna leave
now?

(refrain)

please clean this guitar…