The Onion brings us in its usual style a tale of woe, in which a team of international experts predicts that the combined awfulness of humankind’s descent into tastelessness will reach its lowest point at 3.22pm today.
An electrical fault has delayed the LHC startup to October. The silver lining is events have aligned in such a way that I can wear my Higgs Boson costume with confidence. October, as you know, is home to Halloween. [MSNBC]
As if you didn’t have enough with the Google case map and CDC’s Twitter, here you have the Swine Flu Tracker for your iPhone or touch. Unfortunately, it may not reach your hands soon enough.
The current H1N1 Swine Flu pandemic headlines read like those flashing through the intro sequence of a post-apocalyptical movie. Now you can see the cases spreading in real time—as the WHO declares them—in Google Maps.
A 30-50 metre-wide asteroid just passed seven times closer to us than the moon, glowing so bright you could see it through a cloud. If it had hit the ocean, it would have tsunamied.
With City of Ember, a post-apocalyptic adventure tale starring Bill Murray, two kids, and some aging gadgetry, the mecca of Bill Murray gadget movies, Ghostbusters, has some good company. In Ember, Murray plays the hapless mayor of Ember, an underground city that humanity created to escape calamity in the not so distant future. Trouble is, the big honkin’ generator we built to power the city was only meant to last 200 years, and now it’s on the fritz, which leads to some harrowing periods of darkness as it sputters and struggles to power the city. Cue the adventure.
What with the financial crisis and recent nuclear (dis)agreements and the possibility of having an insane (but like-able! Teehee!) person becoming the country’s VP, we could be headed for a The Road by Cormac McCarthy-esque situation in the near future. And when that day comes, I’ll be the person on the block with a DIY Geiger counter. Hack-n-Mod has compiled a list of the three best Geiger counter tutorials on the net. Use this one to learn everything about schematics, PCB and shielding; this one for a nifty USB interface, and–if you’re feeling particularly technical–this one for a much more detailed build. Remember: in the apocalyptic future, friends don’t let friends eat friends without testing them for radiation first. [Hack-n-Mod]
If Radiation Shield Technologies’ Demron fabric pans out, maybe our dystopian, radiation-soaked future won’t be so bad after all. At the very least, we’ll be toasty–and fashionable too! RST says the fabric (available in full body suits, blankets, gloves and boots) protects against particle ionising/nuclear radiation, and shields against X-ray and low-energy Gamma emissions. The crazy thing is it does it all without any lead inserts, which next to a few inches of solid concrete are currently most effective defence against radiation poisoning. Instead, the material uses a proprietary nanotechnology to block a host of biological, chemical and radioactive sources. The material is damn heavy too; a 90 x 75cm blanket weighs approximately 27kg. [RST via Danger Room]
When Gizmodo Commenters Overtake Gizmodo Writers
When CNN sums up Gizmodo, you might think about Jason Chen’s pantsings or Mark Wilson’s hilarious turn of a phrase (no to that second one? fair enough). Instead, it’s all about OMG! Ponies!.