Thoughts from a homeless guy back on his feet
Here's a craigslist posting from a homeless guy who's now back on his feet. You can read the rest after the jump in case the post gets removed.
I won't ramble too much. Most stories are the same. I just want to tell you what I notice now that I'm stable.
Continue Reading "Thoughts from a homeless guy back on his feet"
Paraplegic walks again after a spider bite
A paraplegic man confined to a wheelchair for 20 years due to a motorcycle accident is walking again after suffering a bite from a Brown Recluse spider.
A Brown Recluse sent him to the hospital, then to rehab for eight months."I'm here for a spider bite. I didn't know I would end up walking," says David.
A nurse noticed David's leg spasm and ran a test on him.
"When they zapped my legs, I felt the current, I was like 'whoa' and I yelled," he says.
He felt the current and the rush of a renewed sense of hope.
"She says,'your nerves are alive. They're just asleep'," explained David.
Five days later David was walking.
The untold story of the world's largest diamond heist
Leonardo Notarbartolo, the mastermind behind what many consider the world's biggest diamond heist, tells his story for the first time after six years in prison:
In February 2003, Notarbartolo was arrested for heading a ring of Italian thieves. They were accused of breaking into a vault two floors beneath the Antwerp Diamond Center and making off with at least $100 million worth of loose diamonds, gold, jewelry, and other spoils. The vault was thought to be impenetrable. It was protected by 10 layers of security, including infrared heat detectors, Doppler radar, a magnetic field, a seismic sensor, and a lock with 100 million possible combinations. The robbery was called the heist of the century, and even now the police can't explain exactly how it was done.
Guy accidentally buys a stolen meterorite for $10 at a rummage sale
Tom Lynch paid $10 for an odd hunk of metal he figured might be copper or bronze with potential salvage value, but which turned out to be a stolen meteorite.
He had no idea it had dropped from space into the Arizona desert some 50,000 years ago."For the last two years, it kept my grandson's basketball hoop from blowing over in the yard. It weighs 50 pounds," said Lynch, a retired foundry and General Motors worker who lives in South Milwaukee.
Recently, he saw a show about meteorites on the Travel Channel and realized that's probably what he had. It was curious, he thought, that the thing never oxidized in the weather. Following advice from the TV show, he held a magnet up to the object and it stuck.
He took his 4.6 billion-year-old find to the Milwaukee Public Museum and then to Chicago's Field Museum last month. The scientists got excited. Yes, they said, it's a meteorite.
He got one offer from a collector for $10,000, but soon had a sense from Internet research that a meteorite with this unique basket shape might fetch closer to $100,000.
Before he could get too excited, a call came from Jim DuFoe, a minerals expert he had consulted. Bad news, DuFoe said. The meteorite was stolen in 1968 from the Meteor Crater Visitor Center near Flagstaff. He had himself a hot rock.
The Daily Show talks Wall Street
Last night's The Daily Show was a full on assault on financial news networks and the hypocrisy and greed of Wall Street.
Robots
Here's a collection of robot photos by The Big Picture, particularly robots interacting with humans.
Robotic systems continue to evolve, slowly penetrating many areas of our lives, from manufacturing, medicine and remote exploration to entertainment, security and personal assistance. Developers in Japan are currently building robots to assist the elderly, while NASA develops the next generation of space explorers, and artists are exploring new avenues of entertainment. Collected here are a handful of images of our recent robotic past, and perhaps a glimpse into the near future.
Bionic eye gives blind man sight
A man who lost his sight 30 years ago says he can now see flashes of light after being fitted with a bionic eye.
It uses a camera and video processor mounted on sunglasses to send captured images wirelessly to a tiny receiver on the outside of the eye.When these electrodes are stimulated they send messages along the optic nerve to the brain, which is able to perceive patterns of light and dark spots corresponding to which electrodes have been stimulated.
Free throw rate remains the same
The general expectation in sports is that performance improves over time. Future athletes will surely be faster, throw farther, jump higher. But for some reason, as other records are broken, free-throw shooting has remained the same over the past 50 years.
The consistency of free-throw percentages stands out when contrasted with field-goal shooting over all. In men's college basketball, field-goal percentage was below 40 percent until 1960, then climbed steadily to 48.1 in 1984, still the highest on record. The long-range 3-point shot was introduced in 1986, and the overall shooting percentage has settled in at about 44 percent.
Surprise asteroid buzzed earth Monday
Last night, an asteroid the size of a 10 story building moving 12 miles per second buzzed pass earth within 1/5 the distance to the moon.
Discovered only days ago, asteroid 2009 DD45 zipped between our planet and the moon at 13:44 universal time (8:44 a.m. ET). The asteroid was moving at about 12 miles (20 kilometers) a second when it was closest to Earth.
Books and music that make you dumb/smart
Virgil Griffith has used aggregated Facebook data about the favorite bands and books among students of various colleges and plotted them against the average SAT scores at those schools, creating a tongue-in-cheek statistical look at taste and intelligence.
For example, the favorite musician of the smartest students was Beethoven, with an average SAT score of 1371. Also on the "smart" end of the scale were Sufjan Stevens (1260), Counting Crows (1247), and Radiohead (1220). And sadly for Lil Wayne, enjoying his music was associated with being the dumbest, with an average SAT score of 889.On the book front, Lolita was favorite tome of the brightest students (a result which Griffith called "charming"), with an average SAT score of 1317. The lowest-scoring students liked the erotica author Zane, with an average score of 980. And strangely, the students who listed their favorite book as "The Bible" were smarter (1047) than those who said it was "The Holy Bible" (980).
Baby Travis
Apparently somebody named Travis left their Facebook account open on their mom's computer.
Travis, this is what happens when you leave your facebook account open on my computer :) Love Mom
Scientists' stem cell breakthrough ends ethical dilemma
Scientists have found a way to make an almost limitless supply of stem cells that could safely be used in patients while avoiding the ethical dilemma of destroying embryos.
In a breakthrough that could have huge implications, British and Canadian scientists have found a way of reprogramming skin cells taken from adults, effectively winding the clock back on the cells until they were in an embryonic form.The work has been hailed as a major step forward by scientists and welcomed by pro-life organisations, who called on researchers to halt other experiments which use stem cells collected from embryos made at IVF clinics.
The origins of 8 high-tech names
Mental Floss breaks down the background behind 8 high-tech names and what they mean, including TiVo, Hulu, and BlackBerry.
Hulu means many things to many people. To some, it's a great online resource for watching their favorite TV shows and movies. But to a native Hawaiian, it means "hair." To someone who speaks Swahili, it means "cease." To an Indonesian, it means "butt." While these translations are accurate, the folks behind naming hulu.com were inspired by a couple of Mandarin Chinese definitions instead - "interactive recording" and "a hollowed-out gourd used to hold precious things." Despite this often misunderstood word, the website is rapidly becoming one of the biggest names in streaming video.
Newsweek's The District - Episode 1
Ever wondered what it would be like if the makers of MTV's hit 'The City' made a reality show about Obama's first 100 days?