The real reason Israel stormed al-Shifa Hospital yet again
31 minutes ago
Exponential Innovations Everywhere
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Joost Bonsen's Opinions on How Money, Ideas, and Talent can
Enable Health, Wealth, and Happyness for Each plus Achieve Liberty, Prosperity, and Vitality for All and Ultimately Help Us Spread Beyond Our Cradle Planet Earth
"By 2025 Malaysia will have a brand new metropolis of three million people. But will tourists be tempted by what Iskandar has to offer? Several flagship projects are under construction, including luxury hotels, shopping centres and theme parks - all aimed at increasing investment in Malaysia."
"The development region encompasses an area about three times the size (2,217 sq km) of Singapore [...] Iskandar Malaysia is modelled after the Pearl River Delta Economic Zone, it is envisaged to capitalize on its current synergies with Singapore as it aims to complement each other as an economic hub."
"Woolery's ranch on Beaver Creek outside Kinnear, Wyo., has been beaver-free for decades, but he could sure use their help now. A small beaver colony, he says, would engineer dams that raise the water table under his pastures, opening up drinking holes for his cattle. [...] It's a bit of a turnabout in these parts, where beavers have long been considered something of a nuisance -- blamed for everything from damming irrigation canals and gnawing fruit orchards to just generally wreaking havoc with agriculture. [...] But their slick skill set is what many landscapes now need, says a cadre of pro-beaver ranchers and environmentalists [...] Trapping, not killing, "nuisance" beavers, they say, can add value to wilderness reserves and farmland by increasing their water content."Nice to hear people like Nature's engineer!
"CMLP is thrilled to report that in the case of Glik v. Cunniffe [...] the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has issued a resounding and unanimous opinion in support of the First Amendment right to record the actions of police in public. [...] Glik was arrested on October 1, 2007, after openly using his cell phone to record three police officers arresting a suspect on Boston Common. In return for his efforts to record what he suspected might be police brutality -- in a pattern that is now all too familiar -- Glik was charged with criminal violation of the Massachusetts wiretap act, aiding the escape of a prisoner and disturbing the peace. As tends to happen in cases like these, the charges didn't hold up [but he wanted to clearly fight for and win back his Constitutionally guaranteed Rights, so] in February 2010, Glik filed suit in federal court against the officers and the City of Boston under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act. Glik alleged that the police officers violated his First Amendment right to record police activity in public and that the officers violated his Fourth Amendment rights by arresting him without probable cause to believe a crime had occurred."Bottom line? He won. And the opinion is full of pointed findings...
"Scientists tracking one of Africa’s most elusive and poorly understood animals say they’ve recorded a rare -- and possibly the only publicly released -- video of the species in the wild. The video, recorded by a motion-activated camera left in a Gabon forest, shows an African golden cat: a shy, medium-sized feline that ducks human contact and lives in hard-to-access parts of central African forests. “As far as we know, it’s never before been filmed (in the wild) for... the public domain,” said Luke Hunter, president of Panthera, the conservation group providing most of the funding for the team that captured the video this year."
"Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended. [...] There are Makers and Breakers in the world..."
"Do what you love. [...] Keep looking, don't settle. [...] Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."PS Special bonus! New Apple CEO Cook keynote at Auburn in 2010...
"The bulb and the casing contain hidden circuitry [...] that uses electromagnetic feedback to levitate the bulb roughly 2.5" from the nearest object, and uses coupled resonant wireless power transfer to beam power from the housing into the bulb itself."
"They call him 'Twenty-Four.' Yoandri Hernandez Garrido's nickname comes from the six perfectly formed fingers on each of his hands and the six impeccable toes on each foot. Hernandez is proud of his extra digits and calls them a blessing, saying they set him apart and enable him to make a living by scrambling up palm trees to cut coconuts and posing for photographs in this eastern Cuban city popular with tourists. [...] Known as polydactyly, Hernandez's condition is relatively common, but it's rare for the extra digits to be so perfect."I wonder if he can play musical instruments -- like piano, for example!
"A one-eyed documentary filmmaker has revealed how he has turned his prosthetic eye into a miniature video camera. Rob Spence, from Toronto, is able to record what he sees through his other eye. It is not linked to his brain and hasn't restored his vision. [...] The device crams a video camera, wireless transmitted and battery inside Rob's empty eye socket -- no mean feat when you consider the tallest space is only 9mm high. The 'eyeborg' then transmits a video signal to a handheld screen. [...] It can show others how he sees the world in real-time. [...The] tiny camera, just 3.2mm squared, was donated by OmniVision, a California-based company that specializes in the miniature cameras found in cell phones, laptops and endoscopes. It had a resolution of 328 x 250 pixels."
"The 2010 Hurricane Season tied with 1887 and 1995 having the third highest storm count on record with 19 named storms. But short-term weather patterns dictate where storms actually travel and in many cases this season, that was away from the United States. The jet stream's position contributed to warm and dry conditions in the eastern U.S. and acted as a barrier that kept many storms over open water. Also, because many storms formed in the extreme eastern Atlantic, they re-curved back out to sea without threatening land. This movie shows GOES-13 infrared imagery from June 1 through November 30, the official extents of the Atlantic Hurricane Season."
"Inspired by XKCD, [here's a] heat map of the frequency of tweets mentioning the word "earthquake" in the 5 minutes after the Virginia earthquake on 08/23/2011. The locations are self-reported by Twitter users and may be erroneous. The spread of the earthquake is approximated to be 4000 m/s."And see here actual seismometrics across the US...
"Land assembly is tough in Tokyo; families often have owned little tiny plots for generations. These become their main source of income and they rarely sell them, to develop them, they often build really silly and inefficient sliver buildings with minuscule footprints. This one, by Martin Van Der Linden of Van Der Architects, has a floor area of 74.4 square meters, or 800 square feet. [...] When the owners of a rather small plot of land in Central Tokyo approached us to design an apartment complex the discussion on return on investment quickly led to the idea to forget about apartments and to start thinking about parking. A parking tower has the possibility to create on a relatively small plot of land a high return on investment. The idea to make use of the almost fanatical desire to own a car and to take it to the centre of Tokyo (where it needs to be parked). The parking tower with a penthouse at the top is an opportunistic way of living in the centre of Tokyo while using other people's money to pay for the mortgage."
"A set of three wheels that quickly attach to a tripod and enable fluid, rolling video in an ultra-portable package [CineSkates] work specifically with the GorillaPod Focus tripod. A ballhead is also required... most small, strong ballheads will work great. Fortunately, JOBY, the maker of GorillaPod Focus and Ballhead X has agreed to include their products in the CineSkates System..."Join me in backing them on Kickstarter! And check out their promo video made using CineSkates;-)
"Boomerang's RoboticValet™ uses automated guided vehicle (AGV) technology and robotics to provide the most cutting edge solutions to handle any parking challenge. Unlike conventional steel rack and rail systems which have a limited range of motion, Boomerang’s RoboticValet™ rolls on solid concrete slab floors and can drive in any direction anywhere in the garage including underneath parked cars."And here's the container storage solution...
"...when plans for Walt Disney’s second theme park in Florida were being developed, the Imagineers decided to design a system of tunnels under the park so that cast members and service people can travel from land to land without being seen by guests and thus help keep the magic in place. It was deemed an ambitious project at first, however, the creators were able to realize their tunnel designs. These tunnels would come to be known ads “Utilidors” short for “utility corridors." The first amazing fact about these “underground” tunnels is that they are not underground at all. While it is true they lie underneath the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World, they are actual on ground level. The Magic Kingdom is built on top of the tunnel system."Many more interesting details, including a walkthru... And here's a map of the underworld... And here's Disney's own Fact or Fiction revelation!
"...a comprehensive overview of global economic history from the beginning of the First World War through 2002. Along with a six-hour video narrative divided into short chapters, it includes extensive interviews, essays, charts, reports, an interactive atlas of history, and economic data related to the topics of globalization, economic development, and international trade."See here the promo trailer...
"A decade ago, the destruction of the World Trade Center briefly made skyscrapers seem like brontosaurs, too huge and fragile to survive; why offer fresh targets? The whole endeavor seemed insane. It’s not, though. There are now 47 buildings (complete or under construction) that are taller than the Empire State, plus the newly announced Kingdom Tower. “Supertall!,” a burst of excited clarity in the tiny but ambitious Skyscraper Museum, makes the logic clear. Any one skyscraper may spring from vanity and bluster (generous vices that also bequeathed us the pyramids of Giza), but the urge for height is growing more intense, and it is pushing architects and builders to spellbinding levels of invention and, yes, beauty. Let emirs erect ozone-scrapers on the dunes for their self-glorification. The lessons learned there will be applied in China, which needs as many as 50,000 new high-rises -- ten Manhattans -- by 2025, for the hundreds of millions of people pouring in from the countryside. China has nowhere to go but up… and up, and up."Not a museum for pedestrian-calibre buildings, the curators insisted...
"To distinguish the rarified air of the super- from the merely very tall, the Museum made the benchmark 380 meters or 1,250 feet -- the height of the Empire State Building -- rather than the common standard of 300 meters."Fantastic!