currently reading: Avram Davidson, Rogue Dragon

All the water and air on Earth gathered into spheres on the planet's surface. Seem surprisingly small at first, but it makes sense if you consider the fact that the bottom of the ocean and the edge of space are only a few miles apart.

Animated timeline of human migration. We wandered around for over 100,000 years before inventing agriculture. From that point, it was basically the blink of an eye before we were sitting at computers writing blogs. Makes talk of the next singularity seem somewhat more believable. Similar animation of the history of religion.

360-degree videos have arrived! Each frame is like one of those Quicktime VR panoramas, which are still a good cure for a case of wanderlust. Some of other good sources of immersive media: Arounder, Panoramas.dk, WHTour, Tokyo VR Project, and Brovision.

This water-powered outpost makes me want to take up kayaking.

One instantly noticeable thing about Taiwan traffic (aside from the terrifying state of anarchy) is that traffic and crosswalk signals have countdown timers. Installed to improve safety, the timers were actually found to increase the number of accidents. I saw a similar article about a study that showed red light cameras also increase accidents (people slam on brakes to avoid running yellows and get rear-ended). I tried looking for the specific article, but couldn't find it in the mountain of relevant links. Humans just weren't meant to control giant hunks of steel moving at high speeds. The sooner we have robots behind the wheel, the better!

Kinetic sculptures. The last one (by Theo Jansen) is completely wind-powered.

Fun POV video. Light drawings are a great way to spend a lazy evening.

Bouncing liquid.

Karate chop in slow motion. Apparently, everything turns into jelly when you slow it down enough. Some more videos here and here.