Mike’s posterous

From the Bottle to the Bang [Science After Sunclipse]

To provide some background to the momentous event of seeing the first collisions in the LHC, here's a video from CERN:

ALSO: Happy sesquicentennial to the Origin of Species! Have a site done in Flash to celebrate.

Creating a Tornado Inside a Soap Bubble [Science]

I'm not quite sure what exactly is going on here, me being somewhat of a dullard and all, but I do know one thing: this there is one neat video. [Random Good Stuff]

Adidas Imperial Stormtrooper Sneakers [Star Wars]

Adidas Imperial Stormtropper sneakers. You know, so you can run faster when random people start chasing you down the street. To beat the crap out of you. Or ask where did you buy them. It can go either way.

There are also Darth Vader shoes and hoodies, all part of next year's Adidas Star Wars Collection. Check out the rest of the images at [Kicks on Fire]

Gifts for Science Nerds Who Love To Tinker [Gift Guide]

Meteorites, microscopes, or mixing things to go boom. Your science nerd loves it all. Here are a couple of gift ideas for that space explorer, mad scientist, or engineer in your life.

BTW, if you hate the gallery format as much as the Grinch hated Christmas, click here.

Lego: It's not really a secret that Lego building blocks are widely loved. They're perfect for any age, but a particularly fun gift for an engineering or physics nerd who lacks some brightly-colored fun. Whether you go for a Millennium Falcon, a Mindstorms NXT robot set, or a smaller kit, just be sure your beloved recipient has time for construction. If you've got a younger nerd-in-the-making, check out programs like Dean Kamen's FIRST, which encourages learning and development of science, math, and technology through hands-on activities (many of which are Lego-based). Prices vary widely [Lego; Image Source]

BuckyBalls: 216 pellet-shaped rare earth magnets may scream "physics lesson," but in reality they're a jar full of fun. Your science nut can construct all sorts of 3D shapes for hours of mindless—or extremely brain-intensive—entertainment. And should he ever manage to get bored with the balls, he can just use them for one heck of a refrigerator magnet collection. $30 Link; Busted Tees]

DON'T BUY A Star: I don't know how you could imagine that getting someone a sheet of paper proclaiming that you've named a star after her is a clever idea. It's a scam to begin with and even the most thoughtless gift certificate would be a better idea (and won't leave you stuttering that you thought she "likes space and umm..stuff").

Photo by jared

I've never seen a stocking that didn't like being filled with a bit of awkward science-themed, cotton-based humor and somehow science nerds in particular have a soft spot for geeky shirts. You can head to ThinkGeek, Threadless, and Snorg Tees if you're looking for some of the shirts we've mentioned in the past—my personal favorite is still the ingredient shirt. $19 [Snorg Tees]

Chemistry Experiment Kit:This one's more geared to the younger lab rats, but no science nerd should miss out on a proper chemistry set. This C3000 set is a nice splurge, and even guides you through building a DIY fire extinguisher for when experiments go wrong, but you can certainly go for a smaller kit or even put one together on your own. $230 [Scientifics]

Casio EX-FC100: Science types want to document the entire world in pictures and video. Thanks to technological advancements, falling prices and MythBusters, highspeed slow-mo photography has carved out a nerdy niche in recent years. Casio's EX-FC100 may not be an EX-F1, but it's nice and small and has most of that slow mo covered, plus some nice nature-watcher tricks in still shooting, too. Despite the fact that still picture quality isn't as high as a similarly sized Canon, the FC100's set of unique talents make it a worthwhile toy for active observers of the physical world. $226 [Review; Amazon]

Giant Plush Microbes: If you're in need of a stocking stuffer for a biology nerd, these plush microbes are a sure thing. They're cute (just look at syphilis!) and add a bit of silliness to many all-too-serious subjects. $12 [Think Geek]

Processing Time on a Supercomputer: If you've got a mad, crazy, number-crunching, super science nerd on your hands—along with your own pretty thick wallet—then you can go through a company like Exa and get them some quiet time with a supercomputer. Your nerd will be able to run her insane calculations using high-performance computing and save quite a bit of time, so be sure to have some hot chocolate for two ready for a calm evening after. Prices vary, but they're gonna clean out your pockets [Exa]

Photo by Argonne National Laboratory

Don't forget to recommend your own favorite gift ideas for science nerds in comments—include pic and pricing if possible.

All Giz Wants is our annual round-up of favorite gift ideas, including amazing attainable objects and a few far-out fantasies. We'll be popping guides catered to different interests several times per day for the next week, so keep checking back.

Sundial cannon fires at noon

The glass is aligned to concentrate the sun's rays, lighting the cannon's fuse at high noon. More pics here, and a very detailed .pdf from the British Sundial Society on so-called "noon cannons" here. [via Neatorama]

Music Break: Massive Attack video by United Visual Artists

“generative video built with #openFrameworks” via @generatorx

United Snakes from United Visual Artists on Vimeo.

Punking the Tea Partiers [Dispatches from the Culture Wars]

Here's a hilarious video from an anti-illegal immigration rally in Minnesota last Saturday called the Tea Party Against Amnesty. A young man calling himself Robert Erickson got up to the podium and began a righteous rant about the evils of immigration, how waves of immigrants had brought diseases to America and taken jobs from Americans. "Are you with me?" he asked the cheering crowd as he yelled that it was time to send the immigrants back where they came from: Europe. It took a while before a few of the gathered crowd caught on that they were being punked, right about the time a bunch of counter-protestors began changing "Columbus go home." Video below the fold.

N.A.S.A., feat. Tom Waits + Kool Keith: "Spacious Thoughts"

Watch video: Download MP4, YouTube.

Boing Boing Video proudly debuts a new piece from the "great god almighty could it get any more awesome?" N.A.S.A. music project, this one from two personal music heroes: Tom Waits, and Kool Keith. The track is called Spacious Thoughts, and you can pick it up on the project's debut album, Spirit of Apollo (Amazon link.)

NASA, short for "North America South America," is a music collaboration project assembled by Squeak E. Clean (aka Sam Spiegel, brother of film director Spike Jonze) and DJ Zegon (Ze Gonzales, professional skateboarder).

The music video embedded above was created by Montreal-based Fluorescent Hill, and I asked collaborators Mark Lomond and Johanne Ste-Marie a few questions about how all that crazy magic came together. Below, and after the jump, are their replies.

BB: Tell me a little about Fluorescent Hill? Who are you guys, where are you, what do you do?

Fluorescent Hill: Well, we're a very small collective of artists, basically myself (mark lomond) and johanne ste-marie. we started working together while in school here in Montreal, along with some other friends. So we've been together for almost eight years. We do design, illustration, animation, live action, basically anything artistic, but with a primary focus on film.

BB: How did the NASA video project come together, and what were your first thoughts when you learned what track and what musical artists would be involved?

Fluorescent Hill: We got an email one day describing the entire NASA project, the musicians involved the visual artists involved and it just blew our minds. As soon as I saw the list of musicians, deep in my brain I already was hoping to work on the Kool Keith and Tom Waits collab. They're two artists that I go way back to my early tape buying days with. So when we finally got on the phone, and they said it was this track "Spacious Thoughts" a small peice of my brain exploded. Then when they sent the track I was absolutely just ecstatic.

Then came the realisation that our work would be seen by such artists as Marcel Dzama, Syd Garon, Barry McGee, Shepard Fairey, etc.. and panic set in. So we had to step it up in every way.

BB: Can you tell us a little about the characters we see in the video? I love the anthropomorphization of Tom Waits' voice -- it's as if the very sound of his voice, not Waits as a person, is being brought to life. Same thing with the bouncing, spherical ball critter. How did these beings take form?

Fluorescent Hill: Well the characters went through a couple stages of redesign. At first he was more of a giant oninon, and then cleaned up into a drop of oil. We initially were going to do the character in 2D and the backgrounds would be 3D. But then we just flipped everything 180 degrees as a challenge to ourselves, because we had never really done a fully animated 3d character and it would force us to rethink how we approach everything.

Also the challenge of going from 2d drawing to realizing it in 3d changed the overall design adding more to it and streamlinig other aspects. We also wanted both Tom Waits Oil Drop/Bouncing Ball character and Kool Keiths' to essentially be the same in design but different in movement and colour, like different aspects or personalities of the same person.

The giant Cloud in the chorus was the first thing we came up with. We felt the chorus had to be big, and Waits' voice is just so huge you just have to go with something towering over the rest of the video, and in this case the city....which ended up working out really well for the lyrics in that section. Also we didn't want to do caricatures of the singers, it had been done before with waits, I believe Ralph Bakshi had anmiated/rotoscoped him, so to try and just get at the quick pop of Kool Keith and the growl and bark of Tom Waits.

BB: How did the project progress, how long did it take? Can you talk us
through a little of the "making of"?

Fluorescent Hill: For the video we tried to mix as many mediums as possible. We had access
to the shipping docks here in Montreal and so we went down and
photographed all the nooks and crannies, then made collages out of th
photos, then redrew the collages. The character animation took a
long time,one because we had never done 3d before, and two because it's
just the two of us. OUr friend and frequent collaborator
Jacques Khouri modeled and rigged the character, he's a wizard.... and
also teaches at Savannagh college of art and design.
The cloud character is made up of so many things it'd be pretty hard to
explain 3d 2d vector hand drawn particle etc.
you name it, we did it.

This was the longest production we've ever done.

BB: What do you love most, and hate most, about animation?

Fluorescent Hill: I love everything about animation, sounds cheezy, but it's true. You can
really do everything you can think of and more. The only thing we hate
is the amount of time it takes, but i guess if we had more people it would
go faster, but we like the control we have over every frame.

BB: Favorite part of this project?

Fluorescent Hill: Our absolute favourite part is the mix of the music and visual. We think
it's a really fun mix, and hope people get some enjoyment out of it
and will want to watch it over and over again.

(Special thanks to Susan Applegate and Syd Garon)

How Do You Trim The Top of a Hedge With a Ride-On Lawnmower? [Lawnmowers]

The answer: with a crane people...with a crane. It makes perfect sense now.

I mean, the manual for the ride-on lawnmower did not specifically state that you couldn't raise it up with a crane to trim the top of a very large hedge, so that's just what two lunatics from Cambridge New Zealand did.

"The mower was doing an all-right job, but I reckon it would work better on a hedge that's not so spiky."

Maybe they need one of those Zero-Turn mowers with a larger cutting deck instead of a basic lawn tractor. Yeah, that's the problem with this whole setup. [Stuff NZ via Fark]

The Lung Flute: A Sort of Gross (But Important) Medical Innovation

The Lung Flute is a simple device that uses sound waves to vibrate wads of mucus in your chest cavity until they rip apart and become more easily cough-up-able. (For better or for worse, the ultimate "results" of using the Flute are not shown in the above video.) Handy, certainly. But why, you may be wondering, would such a thing end up on Popular Science's list of The Best Innovations of 2009? Easy. It's because you and your common cold are not the primary audience for a Lung Flute concerto.

The idea for the horn came one night in 1985. Hawkins, an acoustics engineer, and his colleagues began brainstorming how they could use sound to mess with various bodily functions. They joked about what frequency a toilet would need to vibrate at to force an uncontrollable bowel movement and, slightly more seriously, a way to dislodge goo in sick people's lungs. Months later, Hawkins was reminded of that discussion when he learned that chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a group of lung diseases that includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis, makes breathing tough for 10 million people, and causes 127,000 deaths in the U.S. every year. "It's the number-four cause of death in the U.S.," he says. "I thought, 'Yeah, I should do something about this.' "

Today, doctors in Japan use the $40 Lung Flute as a tool to collect sputum from patients suspected of carrying tuberculosis, and in Europe and Canada it's used to help test phlegm for lung cancer. Clinical trials in the U.S. have shown that it is at least as effective as current COPD treatments. At press time, Hawkins expected the device to receive FDA approval any day, and says the reusable device could also provide home relief for patients with cystic fibrosis, influenza and asthma.

The Pied Piper of Mucus from Popular Science

Thumbnail image courtesy Flickr user JeffK, via CC.