Las Vegas death ray roasts hotel guests

Las Vegas death ray roasts hotel guests • The Register

Poolside guests at a newly-opened Las Vegas hotel have been enjoying the complex's quick-tan facility - a solar "death ray" with the power to burn flesh and melt plastic.

The architects responsible for the MGM Mirage Vdara underestimated the converging power of the building's concave facade, which concentrates a roasting beam onto the pool area.

Barbecued guest Bill Pintas recounted to ABC his midday experience of the ray, as he exited the pool and settled into his lounge chair. He said: "I'm sitting there in the chair and all of the sudden my hair and the top of my head are burning. I'm rubbing my head and it felt like a chemical burn. I couldn't imagine what it could be."

Pintas quickly found out that taking shelter under an umbrella offered no protection from the intense beam, which burned right through a plastic bag the grilled guest was using to carry newspapers.

More @ The Register

The Levytator - Awesome freeform escalator

Kissing - Why do we do it?

Kissing

We love to kiss, and we do it instinctively. The urge to do it springs up from deep within – but why?

One of the answers is the cytomegalovirus.

It has been a hypothesis for a while, but recent research by Colin Hendrie from the University of Leeds may have pinned it down:

“Female inoculation with a specific male’s cytomegalovirus is most efficiently achieved through mouth-to-mouth contact and saliva exchange, particularly where the flow of saliva is from the male to the typically shorter female.”

According to the research, kissing transmits germs from man to woman, and after about six months of it she becomes immune to the bad stuff in the man’s body. By the time the baby is born, it is immune to the things the parents are immune to.

More @ You Are Not So Smart

Stand by Me on Vimeo - FANTASTIC MIX

Stand by Me on Vimeo

Stand by Me from theRedPillRadio on Vimeo.

Passengers heap praise on pilot Jack Conroyd after Delta Flight 4951 scare

'He was our Capt. Sully!' Passengers heap praise on pilot Jack Conroyd after Delta Flight 4951 scare

"Passengers on the jet that made a miraculous safe landing at JFK compared their icy calm pilot Sunday to Chesley (Sully) Sullenberger, the Hero of the Hudson.

The cool and collected flier at the controls was Navy vet Jack Conroyd, 55, who is being hailed for saving 64 lives by effortlessly landing his crippled jetliner Saturday with its right wheel jammed in the up position."

This is a news website article about a scientific finding [parody/ criticism[

This is a news website article about a scientific finding | Martin Robbins | Science

This picture has been optimised by SEO experts to appeal to our key target demographics

In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of "scare quotes" to ensure that it's clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever.

In this paragraph I will briefly (because no paragraph should be more than one line) state which existing scientific ideas this new research "challenges".

If the research is about a potential cure, or a solution to a problem, this paragraph will describe how it will raise hopes for a group of sufferers or victims.(...)

More @ guardian.co.uk

Mouseless - an invisible computer mouse

CANCERING: Listening In On The Body's Proteomic Conversation

CANCERING: Listening In On The Body's Proteomic Conversation

W. DANIEL HILLIS: "We make a mistake when we think of cancer as a noun. It is not something you have, it is something you do. Your body is probably cancering all the time. What keeps it under control is a conversation that is happening between your cells, and the language of that conversation is proteins. Proteomics will allow us to listen in on that conversation, and that will lead to much better way to treat cancer."

More @ edge.org

Interesting concept: Mozilla Seabird 2D

Awesome - tap dancing 2.0?

HDR Video Demonstration Using Two Canon 5D mark II's on Vimeo

HDR Video Demonstration Using Two Canon 5D mark II's on Vimeo

HDR Video Demonstration Using Two Canon 5D mark II's from Soviet Montage on Vimeo.

Google Instant is trying to kill me - The Guardian

Charlie Brooker | Google Instant is trying to kill me | Comment is free | The Guardian

Last week I realised the internet wants to kill me. I was trying to write a script in a small room with nothing but a laptop for company. Perfect conditions for quiet contemplation – but thanks to the accompanying net connection, I may as well have been sharing the space with a 200-piece marching band.

I entered the room at 10.30am. Because I was interested in the phone-hacking story, I'd set up an automatic Twitter search for the term "Coulson" (eavesdropping, essentially: he'd hate it). Whenever someone mentioned his name, a window would pop up in the corner of my screen to alert me. Often their messages included a link to a webpage, which I'd end up skim-reading. This was on top of the other usual web distractions: emails, messageboards, self-deluding "research" on Wikipedia, and so on.

By 1pm I'd written precisely three lines of script. Yet my fingers had scarcely left the keyboard. My brain felt like a loose, whirring wheel that span with an audible buzz yet never quite touched the ground.

At around 2pm, Google announced the final straw.

I'm starting to feel like an unwitting test subject in a global experiment conducted by Google, in which it attempts to discover how much raw information it can inject directly into my hippocampus before I crumple to the floor and start fitting uncontrollably.

More @ The Guardian

David Sedaris and the Stadium Pal @ Letterman

This is hilarious!

Evolution in Action: Lizard Moving From Eggs to Live Birth

A yellow-bellied three-toed skink carrying embryos, visible as light orbs inside its body.

"Evolution has been caught in the act, according to scientists who are decoding how a species of Australian lizard is abandoning egg-laying in favor of live birth.

Along the warm coastal lowlands of New South Wales (map), the yellow-bellied three-toed skink lays eggs to reproduce. But individuals of the same species living in the state's higher, colder mountains are almost all giving birth to live young."