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2011/01/05

Neatorama

Neatorama

6-Chamber Revolver Can Fire 12 Rounds

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 08:00 PM PST

This unique revolver invented by John Walch in 1859. It has two triggers and two hammers to fire two rounds that were loaded into each chamber. James R. Rummel explains how it works:

The secret to the extra firepower is what is known as "superimposed loads". Basically, the chambers are loaded with a powder charge with a bullet sitting on top, as is normal. Then another powder charge and bullet is loaded on top of the first.

The reason this doesn't lead to an exploded gun and missing fingers is due to the unique ignition system. There are two percussion caps for every cylinder.

The gun is equipped with two hammers, and two triggers. Both hammers are cocked at the same time, but only the right-handed trigger is squeezed to set off the first shot. Then the left-hand trigger is squeezed, the left-hand hammer drops, and the second bullet goes flying. Cocking the hammers again will cause the cylinder to revolve as per normal.

Percussion caps are supposed to create a spark to set off the powder. Notice the ring of nipples to the outside of the cylinder? Those are the caps that are set off by the right-hand hammer, the hammer you are supposed to squeeze first. They don't have a hole which goes directly into the back of the chamber, but instead channels the spark down a little tunnel. After about an inch, the tunnel makes a left hand turn and finally emerges into the chamber.

The hope is that the extra inch traveled will mean that the spark from the right-hand trigger will set off the powder charge in front, which will send the first bullet flying down the barrel while leaving the second bullet and powder charge untouched. The left-hand trigger will cause the left-hand hammer to drop, which will impact on the inner percussion cap, and hopefully cause the second charge to ignite.

Link | Photos: Hell in a Handbasket

Previously: 20-Shot Revolver

7 Billion

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 06:44 PM PST


(YouTube link)

Sometime this year, the world’s population will pass the 7 billion mark. By 2045, that figure is expected to be 9 billion. National Geographic is beginning a year-long series on how the world’s population came to be, where we are headed, and the challenges that come with so many of us living together. Those challenges include energy consumption, education, birth control, natural resources, immigration, and more. The first article of the series is up at the NatGeo website, along with a photo gallery, interactive pages, and video. Link

Spock Learns about Anger Management

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 06:10 PM PST


(Video Link)

YouTube user OneMinuteGalactica mashes up classic hygiene films with scenes from science fiction, such as Luke Skywalker’s and Leia’s first date. In this mashup, Spock is trying to overcome his problem with anger. As he will discover, only a fool fights in a burning house.

via blastr

The 10 Dumbest Tech Predictions

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 05:58 PM PST

When David Sarnoff tried to find investors to develop commercial radio in 1921, this was the response from one group of financiers:

The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to no one in particular?

Sarnoff pressed on anyway and eventually founded NBC and RCA. You can read nine other failed, pessimistic predictions about technology at the link.

Link via TigerHawk | Photo by Flickr user slgckgc used under Creative Commons license

Homeless Man Has Amazing Radio Voice

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 05:45 PM PST


(Video Link)

Ted Williams, a homeless man in Columbus, Ohio, has become an Internet sensation. He has an outstanding voice — like that of a professional radio announcer. Today, redditors led the charge to get Mr. Williams back on his feet, and he’s already been scheduled for local radio appearances. You can read the details at Urlesque.

Performer’s Website (under construction) via Urlesque

Could Fire Truck Ladders Be Replaced with Escalators?

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 05:40 PM PST

Orville Douglas Denison thinks that telescoping ladders used by firefighters are too slow for firefighters to use effectively. So he designed a system that would lift up firefighters on something like a conveyor belt or an escalator:

In a rescue, firemen could extend Denison's hydraulic ladder to windows as high as 113 feet. But rather than clamber up the ladder, the firefighter would hop on, and the rungs would roll up at 200 feet per minute—more than twice the average climbing speed of a firefighter weighed down by 130 pounds of gear. The firefighter would ride to a window, load unconscious victims into a rescue bag, hook the bag to the ladder, and shift it into reverse to bring the person to safety. Denison says it can now take up to 15 minutes, and sometimes several men, to carry one victim down a ladder from 10 stories. He estimates that his ladder could lower four people to the ground in less than four minutes.

Link | Image: Kevin Hand

The Battery That's Been Operating Continuously for the Past 60 Years

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 05:30 PM PST

It keeps going…and going…and going. Karpen’s Pile, a battery built in Romania, has been providing power since the 1950s:

The prototype has been assembled in 1950 and consists of two series-connected electric piles moving a small galvanometric motor. The motor moves a blade that is connected to a switch. With every half rotation, the blade opens the circuit and closes it at the the start of the second half. The blade’s rotation time had been calculated so that the piles have time to recharge and that they can rebuild their polarity during the time that the circuit is open.

The purpose of the motor and the blades was to show that the piles actually generate electricity, but they’re not needed anymore, since current technology allows us to measure all the parameters and outline all of them in a more proper way.

The science behind it (assuming that it’s not an elaborate hoax) challenges conventional physics:

According to some who studied Karpen’s theoretical work, the pile he invented defies the second principle of thermodynamics (referring to the transformation of thermal energy into mechanical work), and this makes it a second-degree perpetual motion machine. Others say it doesn’t, being merely a generalization to the law, and an application of zero point energy.

If Karpen was right, and the principle is 100% correct, it would revolutionize all of the physics theories from the bottom up, with hard to imagine consequences. Though I guess this isn’t going to happen very soon, the museum still needs proper private funding to acquire the necessary security equipment required by the police to exhibit the device.

Link via Gizmodo | Photo: National Technical Museum of Romania

Which Novels of 2010 Can Stop a Bullet?

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 04:53 PM PST


(Video Link)

A book may be able to save your life. Specifically, it may be capable of stopping a bullet. Which novel of 2010 is the most protective? Is it Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom? Or Joshua Cohen’s Witz? Or will it be something on the high-tech Kindle? The people at Electric Literature decided to find out. Alas, they didn’t address a more important question, which I leave to you: which book of 2010 is most deserving of being shot?

Official Website via Joe Carter

New Food Movement: People Who Hunt and Eat Invasive Species

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 03:59 PM PST

You may have heard of locavores — people who prefer to eat food grown or raised locally — or freegans — people who dine on wasted food. Now there’s a new food movement that advocates curbing the growth of invasive species by eating them. Invasivors prey upon species that are taking over the established habitats of other animals. Jackson Landers is an adherent of this movement:

As the Locavore Hunter, based in Virginia, he teaches urbanites how to hunt and butcher deer. He has branched out from the locavore life to invasives, and lionfish are one target. But as he has pushed the envelope of the invasivore approach, he has hunted and eaten feral pigs, two species of iguana, armadillos, starlings, pigeons and resident Canada geese. He says that all of these activities will be chronicled in a book, "Eating Aliens," and perhaps a television show as well.

Mr. Landers, who grew up in a vegetarian household, taught himself to hunt. He believes that eating invasives can have a real effect. "When human beings decide that something tastes good, we can take them down pretty quickly," he said. Our taste for passenger pigeon wiped that species out, he said. What if we developed a similar taste for starlings?

Link via Glenn Reynolds | Jackson Landers’ Blog | Photo by Flickr user jon hanson used under Creative Commons license

Solar Eclipse Photograph with a Bonus Feature

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 02:30 PM PST

Astrophotographer Thierry Legault (featured previously at Neatorama) went all the way to Oman to take a picture of a solar eclipse. The shot he wanted was only available for a split second today, and he got it! Not only is the moon moving across the sun, but you can see other things in the picture (see the full-size version at the link). The small spot towards the bottom is a sunspot twice the size of the earth, and toward the top is something that looks like a TIE fighter. That is the International Space Station (ISS)! The Bad Astronomer explains how rare this picture is:

That's why Thierry sojourned to Oman; due to the geometry of the ISS orbit, it was from there that he had the best chance of getting a picture of the station as it passed in front of the Sun during the relatively brief duration of the actual solar eclipse. But talk about brief; the ISS was in front of the Sun for less than second, so not only did he have one chance at getting this spectacular once-in-a-lifetime shot, but he had only a fraction of a second to snap it!

The ISS was only in front of the sun for .86 seconds during the eclipse. Link

(Image courtesy of Thierry Legault)

Mass Suicide of Birds?

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 10:51 AM PST

Remember the thousands of blackbirds dropping dead over the skies of Arkansas? The one that officials are referring to as being caused by a "stress event" (well, duh!)

Well, it’s happening again. This time in Point Coupee Parish, Louisiana, 300 miles south of the original death spot in Beebe, Arkansas:

The birds were found Monday along Louisiana Highway 1, about 300 miles south of Beebe, Ark., where more than 3,000 blackbirds fell from the sky three days earlier. Authorities say examinations showed those birds suffered internal injuries that formed deadly blood clots. [...]

"They collided or were hit by something that caused hemorrhages or bleeding, internal bleeding or bruising," Karen Rowe, an ornithologist at the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, told CBS News.

Some speculated Monday that a bout of bad weather was to blame. Others said one confused bird could have led the group in a fatal plunge. A few spooked schoolkids even guessed that the birds had committed mass suicide.

"There was probably some physical reason, but I doubt anyone will ever know what it was," said Thurman Booth, the state’s wildlife services director.

Obviously it’s a new military death ray! Link – via Boing Boing

Huckleberry Finn to be Published Without the N-Word

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 10:50 AM PST

Huckleberry Finn, the American classic written by Mark Twain and staple of high school English class everywhere, has always been controversial for its use of the "N-word." (I mean, I even remember my own high school English class debate on the appropriateness of using such word – as I’m sure every class before and after mine had as well)

Now, Twain scholar Alan Gribben plans to do something about it: he’s going to replace the word with something less racially offensive.

Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a classic by most any measure—T.S. Eliot called it a masterpiece, and Ernest Hemingway pronounced it the source of "all modern American literature." Yet, for decades, it has been disappearing from grade school curricula across the country, relegated to optional reading lists, or banned outright, appearing again and again on lists of the nation’s most challenged books, and all for its repeated use of a single, singularly offensive word: "nigger."

Twain himself defined a "classic" as "a book which people praise and don’t read." Rather than see Twain’s most important work succumb to that fate, Twain scholar Alan Gribben and NewSouth Books plan to release a version of Huckleberry Finn, in a single volume with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, that does away with the "n" word (as well as the "in" word, "Injun") by replacing it with the word "slave."

"This is not an effort to render Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn colorblind," said Gribben, speaking from his office at Auburn University at Montgomery, where he’s spent most of the past 20 years heading the English department. "Race matters in these books. It’s a matter of how you express that in the 21st century."

Link

A classic case of cencorship by the politically correct or the appropriately sensitive approach to racial injustice of the past? What do you think?

Living in an Abandoned Men's Club

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 10:48 AM PST

When David Hurlbut saw the 20,000-square-foot Harmony Club, it had been empty for nearly 40 years. But he didn’t see what it was, a dirty pigeon and rat motel – he saw what it could be: a one of a kind home, carved out of an abandoned men’s club.

“The building’s sole inhabitants were a flock of pigeons that left behind what he estimates to be about 140 cubic yards of guano. There was no plumbing, and the electrical wiring was in shambles,” he said. Still, he knew he’d found his home. “I thought it would be a perfect clubhouse for me,” he said. “It’s probably a guy thing.” After a small number of visits he purchased the property for a little less than $100,000 and moved in the turn of the new millennium – January 1, 2000!

Yatzer has a fantastic gallery of the home, which Hurlbut renovated into a liveable space a mere two years later: Link (Photo: Robert Rausch of GAS Design Center/NY Times)

Soapman: Corpse Turned Completely Into Soap

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 10:47 AM PST


Photo: Dave Hunt / Smithsonian Institution

We don’t usually post such a gruesome image on Neatorama, but bear with me. The story behind the corpse shown above is quite very intriguing.

When the corpse above was discovered in 1875 during the digging of a train depot foundation in Philadelphia, it has turned into soap (that’s why it’s called "Soapman" by the Smithsonian Institute). Water had seeped into the casket and brought alkaline soil with it, turning the fats in the man’s body through a type of hydrolysis called saponification.

Thanks Jessica Porter!

8-Bit NES Season's Greetings in LEGO

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 10:46 AM PST

Christmas may be over but this Season’s Greetings video clip of your favorite 8-bit NES video game characters recreated in LEGO by Andrew Jive is so well made that it deserves a bit of your time. Take a quick peek at the 2 minute YouTube clip: Link – Thanks Andrew (who resolved to start these kinds of projects earlier next time!)

10-Year-Old Discovered Supernova

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 10:44 AM PST

Kathryn Aurora Gray knew a superstar when she saw one (and with a middle name like that, how could she not?). The 10-year-old girl from New Brunswick, Canada, just became the youngest person to ever to find a supernova (with a little help from astronomer dad):

Since a supernova can outshine millions of ordinary stars, it can be easy to spot with a modest telescope — even in a distant galaxy such as UGC 3378, which is about 240 million light-years away. The trick is to check previous images of the same location to see if there are any changes. That’s what Kathryn was doing for the images of the galaxy taken by her father.

Nancy Atkinson of Universe Today has the story: Link (Photo: David Smith/AP)

Man Captured Killer in His Last Photo

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 10:44 AM PST

This one is gruesome – a man in the Philippines taking a picture of his family ended up taking one of his killer as well. Here’s what the man’s last photo showed:

The picture, taken outside the man’s house in Manila, shows a man aiming his gun from behind the victim’s smiling three-member family, seconds before he was shot.

The relatives – Reynaldo Dagsa’s wife, daughter and mother-in-law – are seen standing beside the family car, which has its lights on, and the gunman, wearing a baseball cap, is bracing himself against the vehicle, pointing his gun at Dagsa. His face is slightly obscured by the gun. In the right-hand corner of the photograph is a man police identified as the assassin’s lookout.

Link

The Rocky IV 25th Anniversary Quiz

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 10:41 AM PST

Rocky Balboa vs. the Soviet giant Ivan Drago. The fate of the Cold War rests in his hands. That was 25 years ago already? I guess so! Rocky IV is the subject of today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. I guess it was a long time ago -I only got 3 out of 10 correct! Surely you will do better. Link

Long-beaked Boots

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 10:39 AM PST

Would you wear cowboy boots that look like these? They’re called "las botas mas picudas". See more pictures at Chuntaritos. Link -via Buzzfeed

Amazing World of Insect-Wing Color Discovered

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 08:28 AM PST

Most insects have wings that appear to be transparent. Researchers from the University of Lund have found that they actually have rainbow colors, but the background of those wings makes all the difference in what the human eye sees.

"You hold the wing up against the light, so you can see the veins," said study co-author Daniel Janzen, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Pennsylvania. "If you're looking through a microscope, you try to get a clear view behind the wing. It's the antithesis of getting wing color."

The researchers studied wings under microscopes, against black backgrounds. But once Janzen, who breeds wasps for his research on caterpillar-parasite symbioses, started to look, colors could be seen by the naked eye as wings passed over insects' black bodies.

This study looked at the wings of wasps and flies, and the team believes they may find similar results in other orders of insects. Link

Top 25 Oddball Job Interview Questions of 2010

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 08:25 AM PST

Looking for a new job can be stressful enough without the interviewer throwing a curveball that has nothing to do with the position you are seeking. Many job interviews feature questions that are designed to see how fast you think, or how well you cope under pressure, but some of these questions are mind blowing!

2. "How many ridges [are there] around a quarter?"

6. "How many basketball[s] can you fit in this room"

12. "An apple costs 20 cents, an orange costs 40 cents, and a grapefruit costs 60 cents, how much is a pear?"

20. "You are in charge of 20 people, organize them to figure out how many bicycles were sold in your area last year."

The list at Glassdoor has links to possible answers from readers. I think the correct answer to many of these might be, “I don’t know, but I know how to find the answer.” Link -via Austin Business Journal

(Image credit: Flickr user Tiffany Trewin)

Dog Sledding

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 08:22 AM PST


(YouTube link)

Oh no, this is nothing about a dog pulling a sled. This little guy just thinks it’s his turn to ride! -via I Am Bored

Prince Mike Romanoff

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 08:17 AM PST

Herschel Geguzin was born in Lithuania, but he eventually became Prince Michael Alexandrovitch Dmitry Obolensky Romanoff, the toast of Hollywood. His extensive travels, friendships, and brushes with the law left him with enough experiences to pull the wool over the eyes of many wealthy Americans. However, many others saw through him or found out about his masquerade, and didn’t mind because he was so entertaining! Actor David Niven remembered the prince:

Niven, who was himself a man of preternatural charm and roguish tendencies, recognised a kindred spirit, and his account of Mike is notable for its penetrating insights. For Niven, the root of Prince's unquestionable likeability was a humorous talent for the not-quite-plausible improvisation, the half-truth and the flamboyant gesture. When the British actor left Hollywood for Britain in 1939 to fight Hitler, Mike delighted in discussing his own alleged experiences of war, making him a present of a hand-knitted balaclava helmet ("Saved me near St Petersburg, old boy") and a large blue and white spotted scarf with a burn in the centre ("mustard gas… Cambrai… silk is the only thing against it.") The balaclava helmet Niven lost, but the scarf he kept long enough to consult a laundress about the mysterious mark of mustard gas it bore. "She told me that careless ironing was responsible for the burn." [Niven p.154]

Eventually Romanov went legit and opened a restaurant in Beverly Hills that catered to his famous friends, many of whom invested in the business. How Romanoff achieved such acclaim is a fascinating story. Link

Functional LEGO Snow Crawler

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 05:21 AM PST


(Video Link)

LEGO artist Peer Kreuger made the Stilzkin Indrik, a remarkably strong and agile vehicle that can pull heavy loads over snow. Could any reader translate the Russian text for us?

Link and Flickr Video via Jalopnik

Hands-Free Sandwich Holder

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 05:13 AM PST

I swear, it’s real! On the rare occasions when Alex allows lunch breaks here at Neatorama HQ, we have to wear these contraptions. And even if you’re not under that kind of pressure, it’s always useful to have food shoved in your mouth when you’re otherwise using your hands.

via Geekosystem
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