Adobe Photoshop Textures and Patterns Tutorials - tons of tutorials, for example on creating textures.
wissen - 28.2.2006 - 1.12.2006
Startling Discovery: The First Human Ritual - also includes hints of the first cleric's fraud ...
VRML / X3D and 3D Presentations - VRML Tutorial in German. For some, perhaps easier to read than the new-Westphalian that you usually find on the internet ...
Antique Precision Engineering - wow. Ancient computer for calculating astronomical objects and events.
Flickr: Camera Finder - common camera types on Flickr. What does that say? Not much, except that Flickr users use cameras.
The Rolex Awards: a cheap technique for food preservation, M. B. Abba - a refrigerator made of two clay pots and water. A modern rediscovery (2000, some say even invention) of a historical technique - can be made by hand. Genius.
If I dig a very deep hole, where do I end up? - cool Google Map Mashup - select a point and calculate where a deep hole through the Earth comes out.
TEH INTERNETS - Chat abbreviations explained graphically.
Woo Math: Steiner and Theosophical Math - Waldorf-Quark from a different angle.
inches - yikes!
World Mysteries - Voynich Manuscript - strange ...
Corrupted Pharmaceutical Research - why the call for stronger industry engagement in public research is a bad idea. And why we already know this today.
THANK GOODNESS! by Daniel C Dennett - In the long run, I think religious people can be asked to live up to the same moral standards as secular people in science and medicine.
World's smallest fish title in dispute, new marine species is 20% smaller - parasitär lebende Männchen, die sich für den Rest ihres Lebens am Weibchen festbeißen und nur aus Hoden bestehen. Äh ...
Converting Pi to binary - DON'T DO IT!
Molecule of the Day: L-Methamphetamine (Would you believe this is over the counter?) - Mirror molecule to D-Methamphetamine. Same chemistry, but rolled up differently. One (D) is a drug, the other (L) a cough medicine ...
The elephant and the event horizon - what happens when an elephant falls into a black hole.
Electrosmog: Hot Topics - Effects of Microwaves on Cells. Yes, this also affects cell phones.
Genealogical Database: First Names - only one first name starting with Sch, and it's also so obscure? (And yes, I read the Titanic RSS feed)
100,000-year-old camel bones found - rumored to be the party chairman of a large conservative people's party.
How to create a new generation of scientists. - awesome. Bringing science closer.
Types of Mazes - Types of Mazes.
One Planet Many People - cool, an environmental atlas using Google Maps technology by UNEP. Sometimes Web 2.0 can indeed be more than just silly marketing hype.
The denial industry - how Exxon fights climate studies on global warming - and why Phillip Morris is behind these studies and why PM also fights other environmental studies, even though they have nothing to do with smoking (Solution: where do you hide a tree? In the forest. Where do you hide an unwanted study? In a collection of discredited studies)
Connecting with people in six steps - don't trust a statistic you haven't faked yourself ...
John Graham-Cumming: Did SoftScan, Sophos and Panda rip off my blog? - how "research" really works at the big antivirus companies. Well, stealing is better than bad research ...
Wearing helmets 'more dangerous' - because the psychological effect on drivers is added. Hey, the researcher at least made sacrifices, he was touched twice during work ...
Pluto no longer a planet - Rewrite textbooks. Pluto is now just a dwarf planet, along with Ceres and Xena. And Charon remains a moon. Too bad - a double planet would have been cool for our solar system.
Sternwarte Bochum has original recordings of the Apollo mission - only part of it, and certainly recorded differently than at NASA, but it still helps as a bulwark against all the moon hoax fanatics.
Vampire sea spiders suck on prey - Deep-sea monster spiders.
Idaho Observer: Aspartame - The World’s Best Ant Poison - Diet Cola? Perfect Ant Poison. At least the sweetener used - developed as ant poison, but as a sweetener it makes more money ...
The scientist whom history forgot - Emilie du Châtelet.
Girllovers - Behind the Mirrors - click and read. I mean it!
Atomic Rocket: Space War: Weapons - Considerations of various SciFi weapons (some of which are real weapons) and their effects in space.
Free Movies Fallen out of Copyright (Public Domain) - free movies. There are a few gems among them.
Numbers station - these strange shortwave stations that only read streams of numbers.
The Phrontistery: Obscure Words and Vocabulary Resources - exactly what it says on the tin. Fascinating.
Theory for cloaking devices - Invisiprims for RL ... (SL-Insider-Joke, sorry)
What Happened To Dynamic Range - Dynamic range in CD recordings and the (negative) development over the years.
How to cure your asthma or hayfever using hookworm - a practical guide || kuro5hin.org - well. doesn't sound very nice, the method.
Yummy mummy feeds young its skin - an amphibian. Looks like an earthworm. Lays eggs. And feeds the young with its own skin. Strange Nature ...
2003 UB313: "Tenth Planet" barely larger than Pluto - I still support giving this object planetary status - or revoking it from Pluto.
Get A-Life: Core Wars / Tierra - a researcher lets a few Core-Wars algorithms loose in a digital primordial soup with simple mutation and simple death - and finds evolution and parasites shortly thereafter.
Man Was Enduring the Dentist's Drill 9,000 Years Ago - a 9,000-year-old dentist? Scary ...
Seed: Prime Numbers Get Hitched - about the distribution of prime numbers in the universe of numbers. And why the answer is 42 after all.
NASA probe makes super photo of Mars - new image material on the way!
Naked Objects in Virtual Life
Stupid title, I know. But that's exactly what the Linden Script Language (LSL) is - the programming language used to control objects in Second Life. Every virtual object is also a program object with its own methods that react to external events. Somehow, I can imagine that Second Life would be well suited for introducing event-oriented programming, as you can directly interact with the objects.
The physics simulation in the game is also exciting - because scripts also have access to it. This way, it directly offers an experimental platform for virtual robotics experiments and the visualization of simulations (or even directly experiential visual simulations - a complete virtual world).
One does wonder why a game developer has such ideas, and why many simulation environments for "serious" research come across as so boring. Perhaps scientists should make contact with game designers to liven up classrooms and labs a bit? Dealing with such topics is certainly much easier to convey in a playful way, especially because students might actually listen then ...
Cassini Finds Signs of Liquid Water on Saturn's Moon - Enceladus may have liquid water. And so much of it that it can throw it around ...
NASA World Wind - Software like Google Earth, but with NASA satellite images. Unfortunately only for Windows.